Developing a Multi-Objective Thinning Prescription for Wetzin’kwa Community Forest, British Columbia

A literature review indicates that thinning intensities of 25-50% support a range of ecological outcomes, including increased ungulate habitat use, enhanced understory biodiversity, reduced wildfire risk, and increased huckleberry cover and fruit production. Based on these findings, a thinning prescription at 40% basal area removal was developed, demonstrating that multiple management objectives can be achieved with only modest trade-offs in merchantable volume.

Developing this prescription revealed a mismatch between the fine scale precision enabled by individual tree-level stand models and the coarser operational guidelines useful for practical and cost-effective implementation. Overall, this study provides further evidence that multi-objective forest management does not necessarily require trade-offs between ecological integrity, cultural values, and economic feasibility.