. As explained by MacKinnon, the current
| inventory situation is something like this: We
do have ' an up to date inventory of sorts for

much of bur forested land, not all of it, but:
only as far as trees are concerned. There are:

a lot of other things out there: besides trees
that are-iiot inventoried. Just how important
each individual item is, of course, depends ‘on

which interest group is assigned the task of

priorizing the list.
About 80%
described ‘as Provincial Forest, says: Mac-
Kinnon, ‘and about 90% of our Provincial
Forest falls within Timber Supply Areas.

Provincial Forest is the portion. of the prov-—

ince which falls under Ministry of Forests
jurisdiction and includes everything from
forested ' land, to grazing land and alpine
meadows: '

This: means, then, that about

of British Columbia is —

| year, and you begin to get a feel for the situ-
ation.’ And don’t forget, we've only talked
_ about trees, none of the other values ‘that

exist, - _
"When people taik ‘about a complete
inventory they’re often tines talking about

‘inventories of ‘animal populations, plants,

hydrological features... A lot of other things

we don’t have (inventoried).

"So those are the two aspects of inventory
‘MacKinnon summarizes.

incompleteness,"

"Some parts are missing, and even for the
bulk of the province for which we have inven-
tory information, the nature of thé informa-—
tion is-a timber inventory. And when you're
trying to make decisions on anything besides -
timber it’ 8 inaflequats, That’s important."

75% of our province lies within
Timber ‘Supply Areas which are —
managed by the Ministry of Forests -
- who have’a complete and up-to-—
date inventory... on the trees. .

Conversely, this also means the
Ministry: of Forests has for ‘the -
most part only sketchy information
of what exists in the balance of the |
province. True, the ministry does”
possess good data on trees growing»
in ecologicalreserves outside the
Provincial Forest boundaries.’ .

‘They do have summary, data on
Tree Farm Licences, but that. pro-
vides only. a- part of the. picture.
Summary data consists of a list of
things like age, species and stand .
type... but no maps. Only the forest
company holding the tenure has
the summary data and the maps,
the complete picture.

The ministry does have an
inventory of trees in some of our
provincial parks. But the 15-oldest
and largest parks have never r been
inventoried.

The ministry has out-of-date
information, or none at all, on
lands managed ‘by, others. This
includes private land, the 15 prov- —
incial parks, federal lands. ‘and
provincial Crown land not managed
by the Ministry of Forests. .

Consider the task of tabulating,
collating and updating forest inven-
tories for all these lands, while the |
forest industry is busy cutting —
about 250,000 hectares of trees per

‘Terrace Review — May I, 1992