Those were the days; timber cruises, calculating harvest levels on a single piece of paper, setting goals and objectives we considered appropriate, and developing our own management strategies. Yes, forests were being managed, and as forest practitioners, we understood how forests should be managed. However, managing forests today, is like following “the yellow brick road!” There are many forks in the road and the direction to follow is difficult to determine. During the past ten years in Canada, forest practitioners have been asking local
stakeholders to walk down the road beside them and help determine which direction to go. The necessity of the forest practitioners and stakeholders to join forces in the common goal of sustainable forest management was recently articulated in The Forestry Chronicle by Jack Ward Thomas who stated that “managers’ prerogatives would not be implemented unless accepted by the public.”

Model forest, canadian, gestion