Under the Land Based Investment Strategy program, Forsite implements activities to rehabilitate Crown Land that has been affected by natural disturbances such as catastrophic wildfires and the mountain pine beetle epidemic. The objective of this program is to mitigate the declines in the midterm timber supply. For projects in past years we analyzed fire severity mapping to identify priority stands to target, confirmed this analysis through aerial surveys, carried out field surveys and developed survey reports and rehabilitation prescriptions, laid out the treatment areas with consideration of other values, supervised the site preparation and planting activities, and conducted reporting to RESULTS.

In 2017, the Elephant Hills Wildfire near Ashcroft, British Columbia grew to an incredible 192,000 hectares over the course of 75 days Burning from early July to late September. Forsite was asked by the Province of BC to manage the silviculture activities for this fire using Forest Carbon Initiative funding. Communications were coordinated by the Thompson Rivers Natural Resources Region between all stakeholders in the area. All activities from helicopter recces, surveys, planting prescriptions, planting planning, tendering contracts to tree planters, implementing planting programs and following up with survival surveys were covered by the provincial funding. Forsite has a long history of silviculture surveying in and adjacent to the affected area of the Elephant Hills fire and knowledge of the landbase was crucial to decision making during and after the fire. Within the first year after the 2017 fire Forsite’s team noticed a significant difference between the responses of competing vegetation, particularly pinegrass. In the first years after the fire, focus was on surveying and reforesting the sites with the greatest fire mortality. Today, we are still surveying and learning about sites with lower fire intensities. See full case study here.