Largest Forest to Date in N. America is FSC- Certified

Northern Ontario in Canada is home to the first FSC- certification in the Canadian Boreal Forest. The SmartWood program of the Rainforest Alliance and World Wildlife Fund-Canada announced that the Gordon Cosens Forest has been granted Forest Management certification under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system. Managed by Tembec, and located in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, this is the largest forest in Canada to attain the highly regarded FSC/SmartWood seal of approval.

The Gordon Cosens Forest covers over 2 million hectares (5 million acres) and is the largest FSC forest certification to date in North America. 75,000 hectares of the forest is owned by Tembec; the remainder is crown land, with management supervised by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. In 2001, Tembec committed to certify all its forests by 2005, an area nearly twice the size of New Brunswick – 35 million acres.

The exhaustive certification process included in depth field-oriented dialogues with First Nations, ENGOs, forest industry and other stakeholders in Ontario and throughout Canada. Richard Z. Donovan, Rainforest Alliance’s Chief of Forestry, currently in charge of SmartWood’s work in Canada, said that boreal forest management and certification is “extremely complex due to First Nation issues, as well as forest management strategies, including road density management, large openings and tree retention.” The cuts that occur at Gordon Cosens are based on emulation of historic fire disturbance patterns, are structured to reduce road construction and road presence, and retain high levels of individual trees and uncut patches to help create habitats for critical species such as marten, lynx and wolves.

SmartWood is a program of the Rainforest Alliance, an international conservation organization that works to protect endangered ecosystems and the people and wildlife that live in them by transforming land use practices, business practices, and consumer behaviour. Established in 1989, SmartWood is the oldest global forest certification program in the world and is accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. http://www.smartwood.org

The Forest Stewardship Council supports environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. FSC promotes responsible forest management by evaluating and accrediting certifiers, by encouraging the development of national and regional forest management standards, and by providing public education and information about independent, third-party certification as a tool for ensuring that the world’s forests are protected for future generations. www.fscoax.org

Tembec (TBC TO) is a Canadian forest products company involved in the production of wood products, market pulp and papers, with $4 billion in sales and over 55 manufacturing sites. www.tembec.com

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