ecosystem based management

An Ecosystem Based Management  (EBM) strategy has the following three key pillars:

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1. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation

2. Social

3. Economic Community Needs

 

The objective is to achieve a balance between the three but recognizes that in the long term if we don't do a good job of maintaining fully functioning forest ecosystems, we will not have forests in a condition that will meet our sociocultural and economic needs in the future.  Biodiversity and ecosystem conservation is the most important pillar, and that is why 42% of the community forest is protected within our conservation network.​

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Have a look at the conservation network, and other important info such as;

community watershed boundaries & proposed harvesting.

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What About Old Growth?

The community forest doesn't log old growth, and never has. 

 

The fact is that the land we now call the community forest was heavily logged in the past, and also experienced several massive fires.  The result is that old growth in the community forest makes up only 452 hectares or 4.2% of the forest.  By protecting 42% of our forests in an ecosystem conservation network, with a minimum 30% representation from each ecosystem, in time these forests will become old, or as old as natural disturbance allows.   

 

This is a ten fold increase in the amount of old growth in the community forest within one generation of trees.  The only thing to solve the lack of old growth is time.  (The required level of protection in the community forest is mostly 9-13%, with a maximum of 19% only within one ecosystem type which makes up 7% of our forest.)

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Old Growth Recruitment

Using the Forest Attribute Score (FAS)

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Because we don't have nearly enough old growth, we identify areas that have old growth-like characteristics using the Forest Attribute Score (FAS) as an objective way to rank forests using key identifiers of good old forest habitat.  The conditions they look for include the presence of veteran overstory trees, snags, complex canopy structure, understory plants, coarse woody debris, and the disturbance history. 

 

Third party biologists have used desktop mapping followed by field plot sampling  for verification for some of this, and additionally they visit all areas we propose to log to evaluate the stand for old growth characteristics.  This is known as old growth recruitment, allowing us to identify the best candidate stands to meet the ecosystem needs that old forests provide for as they become old.

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How do we choose what goes into a conservation network?

Water, and old growth recruitment are the cornerstones of the conservation network. Next, is interconnectedness across landscapes.

 

On the Sunshine Coast we all understand that water is our most vital resource and generous buffers around waterways and their surrounding riparian ecosystems are necessary to maintain shade and keep our streams, lakes, ponds and wetlands healthy.   

 

The next key value for protected forest is interconnectedness across the landscape.  If we know the areas we must protect for water and old growth values, and we also have some legally protected areas, where can we create corridors to connect these protected areas? 

 

Planning this also considers what is happening outside the boundaries of the community forest - where do we know there are parks or conservation areas we can tie into, or future development that may reduce the efficacy of this landscape level planning in the long run?

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Data, Research & Reports

We publish all of our research and are committed to transparency, because a forestry-informed community elevates our community's forest now and for the future.  ​​​​​​​

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Below you will find primarily reports prepared by third party biologists outlining their methodology in performing all the above planning work, detailed tables showing which ecosystem types have forest of what age in each and links to more resources, photos of plot samples, and supporting information for the work that has informed our conservation network and each block we have logged since we began our EBM journey in 2021.