Government sets out management objectives for stand-level and landscape-level biodiversity in the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation.
The term biodiversity in British Columbia is used to refer to life in all its forms and the habitat and natural processes that support life. A component of this biodiversity definition is species diversity, meaning the number of different plants, animals, fungi and simple organisms such as bacteria and protozoa.
The goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of forest practices in meeting government’s objective for stand-level wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
“Is stand-level retention providing the range of habitat with the structural attributes understood as necessary for maintaining the species dependent on wildlife trees and coarse woody debris?”
The stand-level retention monitoring protocol quantifies the levels of stand structure attributes by biogeoclimatic zone unit. It then compares this data with known historical levels to determine if any structures are lacking or significantly below expected quantities. The information is placed in a landscape context to determine the significance of results.