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Stocking standards

Last updated on February 24, 2026

One of the most important goals in any reforestation effort is meeting future stand objectives as determined by a silvicultural pathway. This means understanding how a stand fits within the management unit and within landscape priorities, and how best to meet those priorities.

Creating a healthy and resilient stand depends on choosing suitable species, determining stocking levels and achieving the prompt and effective establishment of a healthy free-growing stand. Together these factors influence stand structure, forest health and biodiversity, stand economics, future utilization, and rotation lengths.

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Tree species selection

Most forest sites in British Columbia can support a variety of tree species. This allows silviculture professionals to select from a range of tree species that can succeed within a stand. The documents below are intended as an aid to developing stocking standards and as a guide that can be used by licensees to prepare stocking standards and for district managers to approve stocking standards. The guide rates ecologically suitable species as primary, secondary and tertiary species with an assumed timber management objective. 

Free growing stands

The Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) set the expectation for reforestation and defines a "free growing stand" as a stand of healthy trees of a commercially valuable species, the growth of which is not impeded by competition from plants, shrubs or other trees.

Establishment to free growing guidebooks provide guidance in selecting preferred and acceptable tree species from the primary, secondary and tertiary species summarized in the Reference Guide for Forest Development Plan Stocking Standards (XLSX, 500KB) and outline a process for species-selection decision making. The legislative references are no longer valid, but provide context for the Reference Guide and guidance for developing stocking standards.

Learn more about how the term free growing is used (PDF, 185KB) in British Columbia.

Stocking standards and forest health

Regeneration dates and stocking standards will result in areas being stocked with ecologically suitable species that address immediate and long-term forest health issues.

Density and espacement

Forest density management techniques, such as espacement, influence the growing space and resources available to each tree, which in turn control crown and root development, the size and quality of each tree and the stand's productivity.

Guidelines for Developing Stand Density Management Regimes (PDF, 334KB) provides essential information on the biological, economic and forest-level effects of stand-density management, and provides a structured process for making density management decisions.

Land Management Handbook 50 (PDF, 1.9MB) discusses the silviculture survey system used by government to assess stands for free-growing status and explains the decision curve as a statistical tool to assess risk. Decision curves are used to explore the effects of changes to survey parameters, as determined by a simulation study of homogeneous stem maps. Projected volumes for homogeneous lodgepole pine stands (based on TASS, a growth and yield model) are also presented and discussed.

Chief Forester Memo - FSP Stocking Standards Based on Tree Density Averaged Over the Standards Unit (PDF, 388KB) outlines the ministry's position on the legal requirements regarding stocking standards, the unsuitability of standards that average tree density over the entire standards unit, and ministry actions to clarify stocking standards.  

Looking ahead: Will Free-growing stands produce the volumes we expect? (PDF, 5MB) is a presentation highlighting the influence of density, distribution, minimum intertree distance and stratification on long-term projected yields.

Stocking standards reference material

An Overview Reference for the Evaluation of Stocking Standards Under FRPA (PDF, 80.1KB) focuses on the key content, legislative tests and critical issues that must be considered when reviewing and approving stocking standards under FRPA.

Stocking Standards Content and Why It Matters (2011) (PDF, 17MB) provides insight for developing stocking standards in the context of FRPA legislative requirements

The Silviculture Innovation Program will improve knowledge, through extension and applied research, to accelerate the growth of innovative silviculture practice for the stewardship of multiple values.

 A Short History of the Control of Species Selection for Reforestation in BC (PDF, 478KB)  provide a record of how the Ministry of Forests has managed the regeneration of tree species on harvested, wildfire affected and other disturbed sites through policy, regulation and standards over the past 30 years.

Seed used in Crown land reforestation must meet the requirements set out in the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) and its regulations, and in the Chief Forester's Standards for Seed Use.