CONSERVATION

How to Assess
Annual Operating Plans

HOW TO ASSESS ANNUAL OPERATING PLANS

Key Issues

The consequences of logging extend well beyond the forest floor. Without proper planning and management, logging erases critical habitat for species already under pressure and undermines the natural systems that regulate water, leaving communities more vulnerable to floods and drought. Below, we break down the key threats posed by logging in Southern Alberta, and how to assess annual operating plans with these issues in mind.

Watersheds

Watersheds, sometimes known as catchments, are defined areas of land that channel rainfall and snowmelt. They can be defined at smaller and larger scales, and in Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, we can think of our headwaters watersheds as the areas where our major rivers, like the Bow, originate.

These headwaters watersheds are critically important for supplying freshwater across the province. In southern Alberta, the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan states “Watershed management and headwaters protection is the priority. Forests will be managed with this as the highest priority (including water storage, recharge and release functions.”

In short, because they’re the source of our freshwater. For example, more than 75% of the water in the South Saskatchewan river originates in the Rocky Mountain headwaters.

This water is our drinking water and the water that supplies irrigated agriculture and industry. The security of our water supply — its quantity, its cleanliness — all depend on the health of our headwaters watersheds.

Headwaters watersheds in the East Slopes are snow-dominated. Forestry operations can impact the hydrology (how water moves across a landscape) by:

Increasing the risk of flooding due to faster run-off, particularly of snowmelt.
Increasing the risk of drought (less forest storage capacity).

The larger the scale of forest removal, the larger the impacts to watershed function are likely to be. Access roads and logged areas can also become sources for landslides and debris flows, as well as increased erosion.

Impacts to watersheds are primarily assessed at the forest management planning stage, when 10-year management plans are being created, but can also be assessed more regularly during the development of operating plans.

Typically, these assessments use a single simple metric, known as Equivalent Clearcut Area, and a series of associated thresholds that have unclear scientific justification.

These assessments are overly simplistic and fail to capture the complexity of hydrological response to clearcuts. In addition, climate change scenarios are typically not included in watershed assessments.

Much more robust assessments of risk to watershed function from logging operations need to be a requirement of planning processes. Research has clearly demonstrated the high risks to watershed function that can otherwise result.
Thresholds that limit the amount of logging in a single watershed should be supported by robust hydrological assessments and should be developed using a precautionary approach.
Climate change scenarios should also inform these assessments.

What assessment process has been used to assess the risk to watershed function from logging operations and how were logging thresholds developed?

Has a full hydrological assessment been completed for the watershed where logging is planned, and if so, how did the results inform the plan?

Have climate change sensitivity analyses been included in hydrological risk assessments, and if so, how did the results inform the plan?

Is there a monitoring plan in place to assess if there is hydrological change occurring due to logging operations?

Wetlands

Wetlands are defined as land that is saturated with water long enough to promote wetland or aquatic processes as indicated by poorly drained soils, vegetation and other biological activity adapted to a wet environment.

They cover 22% of Alberta’s land and there are five classes defined: bog, fen (sometimes known as muskeg), swamp, marsh, and open shallow water. A large proportion of wetlands in Alberta have been lost, including an estimated 60 to 70% in settled areas.

Wetlands provide:

Diverse habitats for many different species of plants and animals.
Store water, acting like sponges to store and slowly release water, and thereby moderating the effects of flooding and drought.
Purify water (such as by trapping and filtering sediment), helping keep lakes and rivers clean, and helping to recharge groundwater.
Act as refugia and fire breaks during wildfires.
Are critically important carbon stores.

Native Trout

There are three species of native trout in Alberta’s Eastern Slopes that are at risk, classified as Endangered (facing imminent extirpation or extinction) or Threatened (likely to become endangered if nothing is done to reverse the factors leading to its extirpation or extinction).

These are the:

Westslope Cutthroat trout (Threatened), found in the southern East Slopes,
Athabasca Rainbow trout (Endangered), found in the northern East Slopes, and
Bull trout (Threatened), found throughout the East Slopes and Alberta’s official provincial fish.

While there are many threats to these species, habitat degradation, destruction, and fragmentation are key drivers of population declines.

Native trout are a key part of Alberta’s biodiversity and part of what makes our province a special place. Beyond this inherent value, they also tell us about health of the ecosystems that we all rely on.

Most of the freshwater in Alberta comes from the headwaters of the Rocky Mountains, the same places that native trout call home.

All three species need cool, clean, connected and complex rivers and streams to survive. This makes them excellent indicator species for the health of our watersheds. If they’re not doing well, it likely means we are not taking good care of our headwaters. That matters for all Albertans, because we all rely on the freshwater our headwaters provide.

Native trout are reliant on cool and clean streams and rivers. Forestry operations can increase water temperatures (by removing forest cover) and damage or destroy habitat (e.g., with equipment in streambeds or the removal of riparian vegetation).

Perhaps most difficult to address is the vulnerability of native trout to increased sediment levels, because forestry access roads and crossings regularly cause erosion, leading to sediment entering streams and rivers, where it can impact native trout survival, particularly of vulnerable eggs and juveniles.

Forestry is provincially managed. Operating Ground Rules provide some protection for habitat by designating buffers where logging cannot occur around rivers and streams, as well as regulations that aim to prevent sediment release intro streams from access roads and crossings.

However, buffers are often insufficient to prevent damage, particularly on smaller streams where minimal protections are required. Erosion and sediment control measures, like silt fencing, regularly fail.

Because Alberta’s native trout are listed as at risk under the federal Species at Risk Act, recovery strategies and accompanying legal habitat protections have been developed by the federal government.

These require forestry operations to use larger buffers on the small watercourses and for companies to apply for permits if their operations will destroy critical habitat. However, even these larger buffers can be insufficient or are not applied. The permitting process also regularly allows critical habitat destruction to occur, even in the most sensitive places.

Provincial regulations should be updated to, at a minimum:

Conform to the recovery strategy requirements for habitat protection. Prioritize enforcement, including meaningful fines for non-compliance, to address issues such as the systematic failures of erosion and sediment control on access roads and crossings.

Federal regulations should be updated to:

Clarify and extend protection to the full extent of critical habitat streams.
Stop authorizing critical habitat destruction in sensitive habitats.
Prioritize enforcement, including meaningful fines for non-compliance.

Are Annual Operating Plans clearly showing 30m buffer no-logging zones on ALL watercourses, even those that are seasonal, in watersheds where native trout are found?

Are access roads and crossings avoiding sensitive habitat?

Is there a monitoring plan in place for populations and habitat with pre- and post- logging assessments in place?

Are crossings and access roads causing erosion and is sediment reaching streams and rivers?

Are erosion and sediment control measures (e.g. silt fencing) maintained and functional?

Wildfire and Forests

Wildfire is a natural part of forest processes, particularly in the boreal. Forests and trees are adapted to fire. For example, species such as jack pine and lodgepole pine have cones with a resin coating that requires fire to melt the resin and release seeds.

However, wildfire seasons are changing, leading to bigger, hotter fires and longer fire seasons.

A combination of climate change, successful fire suppression in the past, the loss of Indigenous cultural burning practices, and more people living close to forests means that the risk to lives and property is increasing.

The impacts of wildfire are already severe, as evidenced by recent devastating wildfires in Slave Lake, Fort McMurray, and Jasper. With more area being burnt, the number of evacuations, the cost of firefighting, and the impacts of smoke are all increasing.

The forest industry has an important role to play in helping to protect communities from wildfire, but current practices don’t do enough and some even make the problem worse.

Forestry can have both a negative and a positive impact on wildfire risk depending on a wide variety of factors.

In Alberta, almost all forestry uses a clearcut logging method and the majority of logging targets conifer species. Companies are required to replant logged conifer with more conifer and often do so in dense homogenous stands.

In contrast, deciduous trees and shrubs, which are less flammable, are suppressed (e.g. with herbicide or mechanical treatments) in order to grow the more valuable conifers.

However, research indicates that deciduous trees, such as aspen, are less prone to burning than conifers, and that fires in deciduous stands burn slower and with less intensity than conifer stands. The existing focus on maximizing conifer regrowth at the expense of deciduous trees increases fire risk.

Many other details, such as how logging waste (called ‘slash’) is treated, how refugia such as wetlands are protected, and layouts of logging plans at a landscape level are also important.

It’s clear that the focus on conifer timber production is not the best way to reduce landscape-level fire risk. Deciduous and mixed-wood re-growth should be encouraged wherever possible. Forestry also has a critical role to play in creating and maintaining fire breaks around vulnerable communities.

How forestry and wildfire interact is complex and nuanced. In short, a business-as-usual approach to logging is unlikely to be effective.

Logging plans need to be adapted as part of a comprehensive strategy that includes community-specific fuel reduction treatments, FireSmart, and prescribed or cultural burning.

Has a comprehensive assessment of fire risk been completed for the area under forest management agreement? If so, how has that informed logging plans?

Are there efforts to ensure that logged areas re-grow in a such a way as to minimize future fire risk (e.g. use of less flammable species, lower density planting)?

What is being done differently from business-as-usual in priority areas (e.g. close to communities) to reduce fire risk?

Cumulative Effects

On southern Alberta’s public lands, as in many places, there are multiple types of activities taking place. These might be resource extraction projects, like coal mining or logging, or recreational activities, like off-highway vehicle use or random camping, or infrastructure projects, like roads and power lines.

More often than not, these different activities are regulated in isolation, failing to account for the cumulative footprint, over space and time, of many different land uses. As a result, the level of disturbance on the landscape has increased over time, fragmenting habitat and increasing stress on ecosystems.

Land use planning is one way to address cumulative effects and plan holistically for a whole landscape. The South Saskatchewan Regional Plan made some progress toward this, with limits on access road density. However, other components, like ecologically defensible thresholds on the amount of disturbance, have not been implemented as promised.

As part of the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, plans were made by government to develop thresholds to manage the cumulative effects of spatial human footprint, but sadly, this hasn’t happened.

However, other organizations, like the Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society (ACTWS) have produced their own cumulative effects analysis, which could be the basis for ecologically appropriate thresholds to be applied in forest management.

We believe that logging plans in this region shouldn’t be approved without incorporating this type of analysis and using it to adapt plans to reduce cumulative effects.

Helpful Terms

A metric used as an indicator of hydrologic change. It is calculated as the proportion of a watershed that is acting hydrologically as a clearcut. Forest re-growth after logging is accounted for in this metric. During the planning process that determines the amount and location of logging, Alberta Forestry and Parks set ECA thresholds to assess hydrologic risk. ECA as originally developed was intended to be only one of many tools used by hydrologists for such risk assessment, but it is currently the default, and often only, assessment of hydrological risk from planned logging.

A detailed plan developed by the FMA holder (the forestry company) with a 20-year scope but one is completed every 10 years. It outlines the forest management objectives and strategies. They must be developed in accordance with the Alberta Forest Management Planning Standard.

For example, West Fraser Cochrane has two different forest management units, each of which has its own forest management plan. The B12 unit includes the Highwood, Elbow, and Ghost regions. The most recent FMP for this unit was completed in 2021. The C5 (Crowsnest) unit includes the Livingstone, Oldman, and Crowsnest regions. The FMP for this region is currently under development and available in draft.

The Species at Risk Act is a federal act that was adopted in 2002. Its purpose is to prevent wildlife species from becoming extinct in Canada. Species that are in decline can be listed under SARA as at risk (e.g. threatened, endangered) based on an assessment by an independent committee of wildlife experts (COSEWIC). Listing leads to the development of recovery strategies and legally enforceable habitat protection, which aim to ensure the survival and recovery of the species.

Useful Links

West Fraser Cochrane Forest Management Plan for unit B12

Draft West Fraser Cochrane Forest Management Plan for unit C5 (Crowsnest)

Draft West Fraser Cochrane Spatial Harvest Sequence for the C5 (Crowsnest) plan

West Fraser Cochrane Annual Operating Plans

Alberta Operating Ground Rules (2025)

Note that individual FMAs/companies may have additional locally-specific operating ground rule addendums

Reforestation Standard of Alberta

Recovery strategy for Bull Trout

Recovery strategy and action plan for Westslope Cutthroat Trout

Recovery strategy for Athabasca rainbow trout

TAKE ACTION

How to Engage
in Logging Plans

By reviewing and responding to logging companies' annual operating plans, you can help safeguard local forests, native trout habitat, and the health of our watersheds.

Learn how to take action

CONSERVATION

How to Assess
Annual Operating Plans

HOW TO ASSESS ANNUAL OPERATING PLANS

Key Issues

Watersheds

Wetlands

Native Trout

Wildfire and Forests

Cumulative Effects

Helpful Terms

Useful Links

TAKE ACTION

How to Engage
in Logging Plans

STAY INFORMED

Protect the Wilderness

Southern Alberta Chapter

EXPLORE CHAPTERS

WHO WE ARE

WHAT WE DO

HOW TO HELP

FOLLOW US

CPAWS Southern Alberta

CONSERVATION

How to AssessAnnual Operating Plans

HOW TO ASSESS ANNUAL OPERATING PLANS

Key Issues

Watersheds

Wetlands

Native Trout

Wildfire and Forests

Cumulative Effects

Helpful Terms

Useful Links

TAKE ACTION

How to Engagein Logging Plans

How to Assess
Annual Operating Plans

How to Engage
in Logging Plans