B.C.’s independent forest-industry watchdog said Tuesday that the province still doesn’t have a good handle on the management of the thousands of kilometres of resource access roads carved into the back country, a decade after it first warned the province about the looming liabilities they pose.
In its 2015 report, the B.C. Forest Practices Board estimates the province has 600,000 kilometres of resource roads on Crown land, with 10,000 kilometres added per year, but the government’s “information about and management of these roads remains inadequate,” the report said.
Resource companies build the roads to access timber, establish natural-gas drilling sites or mining operations, but the province doesn’t have an accurate inventory of them, the report said. Often the most current information about them comes from permits issued approving their construction, not reports on how many were actually built.
DERRICK PENNER – VANCOUVER SUN – APRIL 22, 2015.