Tree Farm…or Community Forest? Revelstoke CFC cannot hope to realise sustainable practices until provincial forest legislation changes

Abstract

While generally supportive of the progress made by the community-owned forest corporation in Revelstoke, according to these authors, it is not a real community forest. They claim it cannot be under provincial forest legislation. Communities like Revelstoke are forced to fit into the tenure system, management structure, and pattern of economic development that caused the very problems the community is seeking to escape. Provincial policy has changed since 1996; however, the constraints on achieving meaningful community forests of any scale, or achieving breakthroughs such as those made by Revelstoke in the early 1990s (Weir and Pearce), are even more severe.