Part A: Integrated Land Management Bureau
Strategic Context
Several key issues and market trends will impact the Bureau’s planning and delivery of services over the coming years:
Balancing the Competing Demands for Land Use: The lengthy list of economic, social and environmental activities undertaken on Crown land is extremely diverse and sometimes competitive. The Bureau is tasked with finding a balance in managing these activities in a way that is beneficial to the province.
Continued Market Demand for Natural Resources: High North American and international market demand for natural resources, particularly energy resources, continues to result in ongoing requests for the Bureau to facilitate access to a wide range of natural resources and to plan and allocate Crown land to meet the needs of communities, First Nations and economic development.
Economic Development Opportunities on Crown Land: Despite the current uncertainty of the U.S. housing market, demand for housing in B.C. remains strong. This demand, plus low interest rates, low vacancy rates and a growing population, has placed further pressure on making Crown land available. In addition, a consequence of business growth is more clients seeking access to Crown land through the tenuring process.
Engagement of First Nations: The Province continues to engage, consult and accommodate First Nations interests and values while providing responsible access to land and resources. Advancing First Nations interests and values is part of the province’s commitment to the New Relationship with Aboriginal people.
Climate Change: The challenge of climate change has led to significant growth in the interest and business of alternative forms of energy. The Province is currently managing an increase in the number of independent power project applications on Crown land. In fact, the number of such active applications has doubled every year since 2002. This demand is expected to continue for the next 10 to 15 years.
Meeting Demands for Ongoing Technological Changes and the Increasingly Sophisticated Needs of Clients: The Bureau maintains a wealth of resource information through a number of systems and services available to industry, businesses, individuals and various levels of government. Access to this information and services needs to be seamless, easy to understand and timely. For example, the base mapping service is a critical foundation geographic tool that is essential for resource management and other provincial government services such as emergency response, community planning and development, and First Nations treaty development. Managing client expectations, setting priorities and co-ordinating information sources across government within available resources is an ongoing Bureau priority. Although the Bureau is not the “steward” for all natural resource information held by government,2 the Bureau’s role is focused on managing all of the natural resource information after it has been collected and quality assured by other agencies, then providing mechanisms to disseminate this information to users.
Species-at-Risk Co-ordination: British Columbia is Canada’s most biologically diverse province and is home to a number of broad-ranging species-at-risk such as the northern spotted owl, mountain caribou and marbled murrelet. These species are at risk due to a variety of factors including the increase in the province’s population and its inherent encroachment on wildlife habitat, increased resource activity in rural areas, and the environmental impacts of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and climate change. Through management tools made available in legislation, such as the Wildlife Act and Forest and Range Practices Act, the Province has taken significant steps to implement sustainable wildlife harvesting, mining, tourism and results-based forestry practices that address and help manage species-at-risk. There remains a need, however, for effective cross government co-ordination, particularly for a number of broad-ranging species that utilize large land areas and for which recovery requires co-ordination of management activities across many government organizations, businesses and industry. Clear, practical decisions need to be made to address population declines of these species, incorporate First Nations interests, accommodate federal species-at-risk legislation and bring land and resource-use certainty to resource-based activities.
Mountain Caribou
| 2 | Agencies with the natural resource mandate retain this accountability (e.g., the Ministry of Environment manages the collection of fish and wildlife information). |
 |
 |
 |
