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The Silviculture Industry

BC's silviculture industry is supported by key organizations, collaborating to implement innovative strategies and maintain a delicate balance between human needs and forest preservation.

 

Today, BC's silviculture industry serves as a model for forest management excellence. Through meticulous planning, responsible harvesting, and rigorous reforestation efforts, we meet global timber demands while safeguarding our natural heritage. These practices not only support our economy but also protect biodiversity, preserve wildlife habitats, and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

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British Columbia's
Key Silviculture Organizations 

​Guiding Principles

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  • We learn from mistakes as well as successes. We look at what is going well to support creative problem-solving. We investigate and correct failures while amplifying success generated by industry innovators and leaders.

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  • Our job is to build trust in order to change culture. To do this, we collaborate as peers when sharing ideas. We are bounded by mutual respect and a commitment to increase safety and well-being within the industry.

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  • We do not compete on safety. This ethical tenet informs all the work we do. Working together as a whole industry to keep everyone safe is in everyone's best interest. 

BC Forest Safety Program's Strategic Advisory Committee (SAC)

The SAC aims to support the health, safety and culture of employees and contractors within BC's Silviculture contracting sector. This goal is achieved through strategic objectives set out in the BC SAFE Forestry Program. The program is managed by the Western Forestry Contractors' Association (WFCA) and supported by the BC Forest Safety Council (BCFSC). The SAC reports to the WFCA Board and the BCFSC. Decisions are made via consensus. While the SAC works to develop industry best practices and guidelines the group has no enforcement capabilities. The program’s outcomes are guided and monitored by SAC members, including volunteer silviculture workers and employers, government and industry clients, WorkSafeBC and the BCFSC representatives. As the membership suggests, collaboration among the group is the principal method used to achieve SAC’s purpose. The SAC has quietly led the way on important health and safety issues in the industry since the early 2000s. Issues such as Musculoskeletal Injury, resource road driver training, SAFE companies certifications, competency-based training, bullying and harassment, and many more have been addressed by the committee.  The SAC develops annual work plans and brings those plans to the BCFSC for approval. The group works to anticipate, identify and respond to emerging issues related to silviculture workplace health, safety, and wellness and acts as a strategy forum for that agenda.  The committee has at least three regular annual meetings, late winter, early spring and fall. There is an executive committee that meets once a month and monitors the program regularly. The  SAC submits a work plan to the BCFSC annually and runs a daylong safety program at the WFCA's Annual Conference. The SAC’s primary vessel for education is the Forest Safety Advocate position, held by Jordan Tesluk. The Safety advocate engages with various stakeholders, employees and employers to understand health and safety issues, responds to questions, direct people towards resources, and generally advocate for industry best practices. Overall, the SAC commits to continuous improvement, ongoing self-review, self-correction, responsiveness, curiosity, and a willingness to consider practices and opinions outside the sector and beyond the status quo.

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© WFCA 2023

Members of the Cache project team are grateful to live, work, and be in relationship with people from across many traditional and unceded territories, covering all parts of the land known as British Columbia, Canada. We thoughtfully offer this acknowledgement recognizing that reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples' is a commitment we all share as Canadians. We are grateful to live on this land and are committed to reconciliation, decolonization, and building relationships in our communities and workplaces. Land acknowledgements are one small step towards reconciling the relationships between settlers and Indigenous Peoples, in Canada. Colonialism is a current and ongoing process. Being mindful of our participation is another step on the path of healing. Learn more about land acknowledgements and moving beyond them here: https://native-land.ca/resources/territory-acknowledgement/

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