The Ministry of Forest approved the Cheakamus Community Forest's Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) late last Friday.
RMOW Environmental Stewardship Manager Heather Beresford said this is step one in the process toward tree harvesting this year. The CCF is currently waiting on cutting permits from the ministry, which could come at any time.
There are some time constraints however - winter weather makes shipping harvested logs difficult. The window for harvest this year is closing fast.
"We're definitely at the 11 th hour," Beresford said. "We're at the eleventh-and-a-half-hour actually, we were at the 11 th hour last week."
A FSP must be filed to the ministry before it grants cutting permits, to ensure that the loggers manage 11 different areas of the forest when harvesting, including wildlife management and old growth forest management.
The CCF is legally bound to cut 100,000 cubic metres within the next five years. The CCF's target was to harvest 20,000 cubic metres per year until the deadline is up, but this year's target will likely be deferred to 2011.
Last week, CCF spokesperson Peter Ackhurst said that the lost opportunity to log will likely pose a financial problem - no logs means no revenue for the CCF in 2010.
