BC Timber Sales - Climate Change Action

Forest stewardship is highlighted within the business principles and priorities in BCTS’ Strategic Plan. Sound forest stewardship includes considering the potential risks resulting from climate change in our planning and activities.

BCTS is taking action to manage risk and seek opportunity in a changing climate that will support the sustainability of our operations and the ecosystems in which we operate.

Climate Change Strategy

BCTS's Climate Change Action Strategy (PDF, 167KB) fosters the adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation actions into BCTS business processes while ensuring consistency and alignment with the Ministry of Forests service plan and the provincial and ministry climate change strategies and action plans.

The climate change strategy consists of:

• BCTS's Climate Change Action Plan which identifies the actions that BCTS will take in the short, mid, and long term to address climate change
• A community of climate change leads who work together to develop, implement, and monitor the BCTS Climate Change Action Plan
• Climate change communication tools to support BCTS staff awareness of current climate change information affecting BCTS business and available tools to take action
• A Carbon Program that identifies greenhouse gas emissions associated with BCTS’ business activities and prioritizes actions to address the emissions that are under BCTS’ control 

Climate action principles

In taking action on climate change, BCTS follows the following principles:

• We acknowledge that changes in climate have a high potential of impacting our operations and the achievement of our obligations, therefore, we accept that as a forest manager in B.C. we must take proactive action on climate change
• BCTS staff will stay up-to-date on emerging climate change information and incorporate this information in their job functions
• We rely on the professionals we hire to ensure they are current on best practices to address climate change risk and opportunity
• We actively participate on ministry and forest industry groups to identify climate change solutions

Climate action goals

BCTS’ climate change actions focus on five main goals:

• Building BCTS adaptive capacity
• Establishing resilient forests
• Protecting and enhancing future harvest opportunities
• Protecting infrastructure – function and investment
• Evolving business practices in a changing climate