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At Resolute Forest Products we want to have an open and honest discussion about the Canadian boreal forest and sustainable forest management. We welcome the opportunity to answer any questions you have. We created this page to field your questions, provide our responses, and have that discussion.

We also posted frequently asked questions with answers below. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then we invite you to ask your question at the bottom of the page and we’ll do our best to respond quickly.

1) What is the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement?

Signed in 2010, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) is the world’s largest conservation agreement, originally bringing together 21 member companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and nine environmental organizations to achieve the joint goal of ensuring the sustainability of the Canadian boreal forest for generations to come.

Resolute helped found the CBFA because of our commitment to sustainable forest management.

Read more about the CBFA and our involvement here.

2) How do you care for the Canadian boreal forest?

Resolute Forest Products practices forest stewardship to ensure the sustainability of the natural resources in our care. Stewardship means choosing carefully where to harvest, adopting nature’s methods, and ensuring regeneration. We take a multi-pronged approach to forest stewardship.

First, we develop comprehensive plans with regards to where we harvest. In Canada, we work on public lands, and only a portion of the boreal is open to harvesting. The boreal forest is one of the world’s most carefully managed forests, and we make sure to comply with all of the stringent regulations that govern it.

This involves:

  • Picking the right spot: Drawing on hundreds of maps, comprehensive wildlife surveys and decades of data, we block off areas where harvesting might conflict with traditional activities of First Nations (Native Canadians), consider the impact on wildlife habitat and take into account the area’s topographical features (for example, proximity to a river).
  • Mimicking nature’s method: We emulate natural disturbances in order to optimize forest regeneration.
  • Harvesting only certain trees: In the boreal, Resolute primarily works with softwood species such as black spruce, white spruce, jack pine and balsam fir. We also work with some hardwood species such as white birch and poplar. All these species require little to no help to regenerate quickly and abundantly. One exception is jack pine, which requires high temperatures (such as in the case of a forest fire) for its cones to release seeds.

Learn more about our forest management practices.

3) What have you done to protect caribou?

First, Resolute has supported proposals to set aside additional territory to safeguard caribou, specifically:

  • In Northeastern Ontario, an area in which Resolute receives 57 percent of the wood allocation, the Company, along with CBFA partners, supports a proposal for an additional caribou conservation area covering almost 3,223 square miles (835,000 hectares).
  • In Northwestern Ontario, Resolute has proposed setting aside an additional 787 square miles (204,000 hectares) of forest.
  • In Quebec, Resolute proposed an additional 2,671 square miles (692,000 hectares).

In addition to setting aside land, within the caribou range where harvesting is permitted, numerous techniques, best practices and guidelines are used to ensure prompt renewal of the forest, to emulate patterns of natural disturbance, and to ensure minimal disruption to wildlife, and especially the unique needs of caribou. These techniques govern:

  • The location of roads and how they are built
  • Distances between bodies of water and roads
  • Distances between bodies of water and the blocks designated for harvesting wood
  • Methodology for building bridges and tunnels to ensure minimum disruption

Learn more about how Resolute safeguards caribou.

 Care to discuss the issues? We want to hear from you.

Resolute Forest Products created Boreal Forest Facts to give everyone a place to discuss the sustainable management of our natural resources. We drafted the following rules to foster and protect open, honest, and respectful dialogue.

Rules on Commenting

Be civil and respectful: We reserve the right to delete posts that contain offensive or hurtful language and will not tolerate personal insults.

Check your facts: We reserve the right to correct incorrect statements or information taken out of context.

Stay on topic: We reserve the right to delete off-topic posts and unrelated links.

Don’t advertise: All spam and ads will be deleted.

Post your own thoughts: We reserve the right to delete posts that are in violation of another person’s intellectual property or copyright.

Don’t imitate other people: We reserve the right to remove content attempting to impersonate someone else including, but not limited to customers, clients, Resolute employees or other community members.

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