Old-growth forests for wilderness preservation and timber production in British Columbia: a goal programming model

• Main Author: Wang, Sen
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4936

The B.C. government’s Protected Areas Strategy (PAS), aimed at protecting 12 per cent of the province’s land base, will affect the old-growth forests considerably. Based on the Valhalla proposal, at least 0.65 million hectares of old growth will need to be set aside as wilderness. Given the nature of multiple uses of the old growth, a Goal Programming approach is appropriate for the assessment of the preservation plan. For model construction, six goal items have been identified: the net benefits from old-growth stands, wilderness expansion, direct forest employment, government stumpage revenue, sustained yield, and current timber harvesting. Targets have been determined for each. On the basis of the results from a survey, goals are ranked in terms of priority, and their achievement is attempted in a sequential order to seek minimal deviations from the specified levels. The Goal Programming model indicates that old-growth preservation on the scale of the Valhalla proposal will cause reduction in the province’s level of direct forest employment, and the magnitude of the adverse effects is variable, depending on the intensity of the goal constraints concerned. The goals of net benefits and Crown revenue from stumpage charges do not appear to be vulnerable, but the conflicts between the preservation plan and the goals of long run sustained yield and current timber harvest are serious. === Forestry, Faculty of === Graduate