Progress toward sustainable forest management: Insight from the New Brunswick experience

The concept of "sustainability" is central to forest management in Canada today. Sustainable forest management strategies are deemed to be so (a) with respect to the values for which the forest is being managed, and (b) given the forest characterization used in design of those strategies. If the values of concern are changed, and/or forest characterization used in strategy formulation is changed, the verdict about sustainability of the strategy will also change. Dramatic changes in forest values and forest characterization have occurred in the last two decades, making "sustainability" a moving target. The future is apt to be no different. Thus, one challenge to forest management is to change, that is to incorporate new values, better biological understanding, and more accurate forest characterization data to devise management strategies which are deemed sustainable in the context of the day. A second challenge is to design management in a way which facilitates discovery and explanation of flaws in existing strategies and which enables continual improvement through systematic strategy revision. The first challenge suggests the need for a flexible and responsive management design system, and the second, a stable foundation underpinning that system. This paper analyses evolution of forest management on Crown Land in New Brunswick since passage of landmark legislation in 1980 and use of one management design approach as it has been applied to progress toward the moving target of sustainable forest management. Lessons from the past 18 years may have application in the next 18 years.