BC has announced a “new” three-zone forest model. But there’s very little new about it. Mostly, it’s new labels on a map. The problem hasn’t changed: the government’s three zones leave the underlying forestry system intact.
The provincial government has announced a three-zone Working Forest Landscape Model under the banner of “modernizing forest management.” Despite the new terminology, the underlying system – including its priority on maintaining timber supply – remains largely unchanged.
The Working-Forest Zone is explicitly designed to protect a timber-producing land base and support a harvest of 45 million cubic metres a year. Recent actual harvest levels have been 30-35 million m3.
That isn’t a new approach to forestry. It is the old approach organized into new zones.
The Multiple-Use Zone isn’t necessarily protected either. The government says forestry can continue there, including logging carried out under the banners of wildfire risk reduction, restoration, and “forest health.”
Then there’s the Conservation and Protection Zone. Much of this appears to incorporate commitments the government has already made, including protecting 30% of BC’s land base by 2030 and implementing its Old Growth Action Plan.
So how much additional forest that could otherwise be logged will actually be protected by this announcement?
Strip away the terminology, and this is essentially a new map laid over the existing forestry system.
There is still:
- No commitment to protect all remaining primary forests.
- No commitment to end clearcutting.
- No requirement that ecological limits determine the allowable harvest.
- No fundamental reform of the tenure system that gives corporations enormous control over public forests.
- No requirement to restore previously logged and roaded landscapes without extracting more timber from them.
- No departure from the objective of maintaining a predetermined timber supply.
By contrast, the New Forest Act framework, developed by citizens, also has three categories – Protect, Restore, Harvest – but that is where the resemblance ends.
The NFA starts from an entirely different question.
Instead of asking, How do we organize the land to maintain timber supply?, it asks, What does the land require to remain ecologically functional, and what level of logging can occur within those limits?
PROTECT: Primary forests are protected from industrial logging and road building.
RESTORE: Previously logged and degraded landscapes are allowed and helped to recover. “Restoration” does not become another justification for extracting timber.
HARVEST: Logging occurs on previously disturbed lands using partial cutting, continuous forest cover, and retention – and only where ecological thresholds permit it.
That difference is fundamental.
Under the New Forest Act, you don’t pick a harvest number first and then arrange the landscape to produce it.
You determine what the ecosystems can support first. Then the harvest fits the land – not the other way around.
After decades of declining timber supply, mill closures, lost forestry jobs, damaged watersheds, biodiversity loss, and growing costs from floods, fires, and drought, dividing the same system into three newly named zones does not fix what is wrong with it.
Changing the map doesn’t change the system.
BC needs forest legislation that puts ecological integrity first and requires timber production to operate within those limits – not another planning framework built around maintaining timber supply.
Read the BC government announcement: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026FOR0033-000989
Read the New Forest Act framework: https://boundaryforest.org/