The Crown land silviculture program is administered by the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development (DNRED). Crown timber licensees, under the authority of the Crown Lands and Forests Act, have been assigned the responsibility of implementing silviculture at levels as specified in each License Forest Management Plan, necessary to maintain sustainable harvest levels of softwood and hardwood on each Crown Timber Licence.
The principal components of the program include:
- promoting natural regeneration;
- site preparation and tree planting; and
- implementation of vegetation management and stand tending in naturally regenerating forests and plantations.
Silviculture treatments are implemented on forested hardwood and softwood sites to support increases in both present and future sustainable wood supplies and the provision of non-timber objectives.
Over 678,000 hectares of naturally regenerated or planted Crown forest have been tended manually over the last 40+ years through pre-commercial thinning and plantation cleaning efforts.
Today, nearly 500,000 hectares of plantations have been established on Crown land since the 1970s, with tree seedlings grown in our own Kingsclear nursery. DNRED will plant its one billionth tree in 2022! As part of sustainable forest management in New Brunswick, and as an investment into the forest sector, these silviculture treatments will contribute to the royalties collected by the province when the trees are harvested in the future.