Community forests in Canada: An overview

A great deal of attention is being given in Canada at present to the idea of community forest. This is occurring at a time of unprecedented attention to forest management on one hand, and to community empowerment on the other. We conceive of a community forest as a tree-dominated ecosystem managed for multiple community values and benefits by the community. We review the literature and present examples of community forests in Europe and the United States. For Canada, we present an overview of community forest initiatives, policy developments, and research projects. For communities contemplating the concept of community forest, we present a series of considerations that need to be made early on: (a) landbase; (b) range of resources involved; (c) property rights and tenure options; (d) models of administration; (e) decision-making; (f) public participation; and (g) financing. The apparent growing interest in community forests in Canada has opened an exciting and challenging frontier for forest interests. We are convinced that Canada's future will be characterized by increases in people's demands for community forests, and by more experiments and trials to test a variety of manifestations of the concept. Learning from both successes and failures is vital.