Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [229]-240).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universitat van Amsterdam, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [301]-317) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universitat van Amsterdam, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [301]-317) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universitat van Amsterdam, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [301]-317) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of British Columbia, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 374-417).

Thesis (doctoral)--Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2003. / Thesis documentation sheet inserted. Appendix reproduces five published papers and submitted manuscripts, four co-authored with others. Includes bibliographical references. Also partially issued electronically via World Wide Web in PDF format; online version lacks appendix.

British Columbia brought a tremendous natural forest endowment into the Canadian Confederation in the 1870s. The Fulton Commission estimated there to be between 200 and 240 billion board feet of accessible timber in the province at the time. Total volume by 1937 was estimated to be 254.5 billion board feet. When British Columbia's Land Act of 1896 carefully defined Crown timberland and reserved more than 91% of such lands from sale, a public-sector model had been adopted for the development of this resource. The dissertation uses a historic approach to examine the magnitude and tempo of change in public forest policy development in the province. It proposes that the magnitude of change—especially with respect to economic value of the resource—along with a narrow focus by the public landowner on exploitation, discouraged the development of links between forest exploitation and the standard of living of the province's residents especially in rural resource based communities. This study also contends that the evolution of a scientific and technical foundation for the development of coastal forests and forest resources may also have suffered because of the focus of the public-land owner. The impact of government interventions and further changes in forest policy intensified in the 1990s. Measures like the Timber Supply Review from 1992–1996; changes in the target rate of timber pricing to finance the creation of Forest Renewal BC; and the implementation of the Forest Practice Code in 1994, were serious public sector interventions in the forest economy. They resulted in severe economic shocks to the provincial forest economy. The structure of the coastal forest responded. Companies like Weldwood left the coast, the shareholders of MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. divided and sold the company to Weyerhaeuser Canada and Pacifica Papers while Fletcher Challenge Canada was purchased by Norse Skog after it had spun off solid wood operations to a new company named TimberWest. TimberWest subsequently bought Pacific Forest Products. With the consent of the Minister of Forests, Pacific's Crown tenures were transferred to Western Forest Products. These changes negatively impacted many coastal communities. Especially vulnerable were the “instant” resource-dependent towns like Ucluelet, Gold River, Port Alice and Port McNeill on Vancouver Island. These towns had been created during the late 1960s through the early 1970s and are tied, in an economic sense, very closely to the health of the company or companies controlling the timber tenures in their area. As the financial fortunes of many coastal companies declined, so did socio-economic conditions in these forest dependent communities. Using a case study of the Kingcome Timber Supply Area, the dissertation examines the flow of economic forest values associated with the depletion of the mature forest. An outflow of resource values from the sub-regional to the provincial and national economies linked directly forest tenure, pricing and tax policy is identified. To compensate the sub-region for forest depletion, the idea of a timber income stabilization fund is developed. It is suggested that the present value of the timber income stabilization fund be used as a basis for capitalizing a regional community model forest. / Graduate

No description available.

According to several recent studies, the future of the forest industry in British Columbia is in jeopardy. If present forestry management practices are continued, it is conceivable that within the next decade the timber harvest will decline, employment will be severely reduced, and government revenue from the forest resource will be significantly less than in previous decades. Public ownership of the vast majority of provincial forest land means that government policies are largely responsible for this state of affairs. However, there are relatively few academic studies of the history of those policies. The purpose of this thesis is to review the evolution one aspect of forest policy, the way in which timber is allocated in British Columbia, and to analyze the dynamics of this evolution in light of six alternative theories of the policy-making process. Forest policy in British Columbia is extremely complicated and is the result of decisions made to meet various demands at different times in history. It is only through a detailed understanding of the history of forest policy and the nature of the provincial state that planners, resource managers, and public policy-makers can attempt to resolve the current crisis in the forest industry. Public timber is allocated to private forest companies in British Columbia by a variety of tenures. The form of these tenures has changed dramatically over time. Prior to 1912, access to the forest resource was granted primarily by leases and licenses which carried few restrictions and relatively low royalties and rents. These tenures were perpetually renewable until the merchantable timber was removed. Between 1912 and 1947 the primary method of disposing crown timber was through competitive bidding on short-term timber sales. The crown not only received royalties and rental fees from these Timber Sale Licenses, but also a bid price. The Forest Branch established a minimum bid price based on the value of the end product minus the costs of production and an allowance for profit and risk. After 1947, the government attempted to regulate the harvest of timber in such a way as to guarantee a perpetual supply of timber. They did this by awarding huge tracts of public land to owners of private forest land and perpetual tenures in order for them to manage the whole property on a sustained yield basis. On the remaining majority of forest land the government set aside large areas which were to be managed by the public sector on sustained yield principles. Over time, as a result of these policies, competition for the resource was virtually eliminated and, as one consequence, the government always received the appraised upset price for timber. It appears that this has undervalued the crown's share of the resource rent. The combined effect of timber allocation policies after 1947 was to accommodate, if not encourage, the consolidation of timber rights. In order to explain the evolution of timber policy in British Columbia and to guide future policy development, the thesis examines six broad theories of how the state operates. These are categorized as follows: rationalist, pluralist, neo-conservative, neo-marxist instrumentalist, neo-marxist structuralist, and Canadian. After reviewing these theories the thesis concludes that elements of each theory can be employed to explain different policy changes over time. No single theoretical model is totally adequate to answer the question of why B.C. governments' acted the way they did. Nevertheless, the neo-marxist structuralist and Canadian theories provide the fullest explanation of the role of the state in British Columbia. It is apparent that large forest companies have had a disproportionate influence on public forest policies. Over time, the provincial state has become increasingly dependent on those companies to carry out many forest policy objectives, to provide employment arid generate tax revenues. New resource policies designed to meet the current crisis in the forest industry must recognize these two important facts. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Rural communities in the western U.S. and Alaska are highly dependent upon surrounding publicly-owned forests for various economic and non-economic values. Historically, limited data has hampered the understanding of such community-resource linkages. As a result, community interests may not be adequately considered in forest management plan development and policy formulation. Addressing this imbalance is an important issue for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), particularly as it shifts from timberdominated goals to a more holistic ecosystem-based form of management. This study seeks to understand community-resource use linkages, dependency, and vulnerability surrounding the Chugach and Tongass NFs using place-level socioeconomic data from the 2000 U.S. Census in combination with permit data from the USFS’s Timber Information Management Data System (TIM) and Special Use Data System (SUDS). Information on permittees’ activities on forestland and socioeconomic profiles of permittee’s community-of-origin are found to be valuable, not only for forest management and planning purposes, but also for community-level social assessment. An examination of 2007 permit data found that a majority of permit holders were local residents. These communities are found to be dependent on the two forests for various types of activities and are thus more likely to be vulnerable to changes in forest management and policies. The analysis also identified some limitations that may affect the quality of permit data and its potential use in community impact assessments. Despite these limitations of permit data, the methodologies utilized here demonstrate how TIM and SUDS data, in combination with U.S. Census data, could be used to describe Alaska residents’ socioeconomic profiles for communities located in close proximity to the Tongass and Chugach NFs. Such information can assist USFS managers in deriving community-level estimates of forest resource use, degree of dependency, and vulnerability to the likely impacts of alternatives management approaches. Finally, recommendations are given to improve data recording, maintenance, and use in order to better understand communities that are dependent on forest resources in both the Chugach and Tongass NFs, and to specifically identify those communities potentially vulnerable to changes in forest management policies.