SUMMARY
Wetzin'Kwa Community Forest Corporation is preparing for a 2024 partial harvest within a predicted Goshawk Territory that also has cross-country ski and hiking trails, old growth forest and visual values. Conventional harvest does not retain essential forest structures for species like goshawk, marten, cavity nesters, old forest birds and lichens. This is an excellent demonstration area for education and adaptive management to apply research advances that will maintain wildlife and biodiversity in a managed forest. In 2022/23 BVRC collaborated with WCFC/Silvicon and SERNbc forestry personnel to modify the harvest plan to better protect wildlife trees and other structural features. We sampled pre-harvest woody debris, snags, lichens and wildlife use; assembled existing knowledge & research data, and prepared a monitoring plan. Preharvest arboreal lichen (Alectoria sarmentosa) abundance, breeding bird community composition, winter wildlife tracking results are presented, and operational recommendations for retention harvest are summarized in the Appendices.
