Kari Stuart-Smith

East Kootenay resident Kari Stuart-Smith, Manager of Biodiversity & Wildlife with Canfor, is very positive about the changes that have occurred in the forest industry over the past 30 years of her career. She says she has seen tremendous change and improvements on the ground and that many more ecological and cultural values are considered now.

Kari is a wildlife ecologist who is recognized as an innovative and collaborative leader. She has spearheaded many successful programs that address important issues such as old growth, high conservation values, species at risk, and sustainable forest management.

“In my role, I focus on developing innovative forest management strategies to manage habitat for wildlife in B.C. and Alberta. I believe strongly in taking a collaborative approach, and in using evidence-based results and the best available information and local knowledge to inform policies and practices.”

Her main focus area is right here in the Kootenays. Completing her PhD work in the Rockies east of Canal Flats, she knows the East Kootenay well, and over the years has developed strong working relationships with many of the people who work in the forest sector, including industry, government, environmental groups, and First Nations.

“I think the strongest solutions to the complex forest management challenges we face today are those that we develop together, based on a diversity of opinions and ideas. Achieving positive results comes down to having good relationships with people in different areas and a willingness to listen, being receptive to other perspectives and open to change.”

One way to find common ground that Kari feels can be very successful is collaborative field trips where representatives from various organizations go out into the forest together to discuss the values present and how to manage for them. Kari admits that this is not always an easy task, and that people do not always agree at the end, but she emphasizes the value of bringing people together to discuss their perspectives in place.

One project Kari is particularly proud of is the development of a new Old Growth Management Plan for Canfor’s Tree Farm License (TFL) 14 southwest of Golden. For this project, Kari established a collaborative group with representation from Canfor, the Province of BC, First Nations, and Wildsight, with forestry consultants Forsite completing the technical work and providing strategic guidance.

“We used LiDAR data (purchased by Canfor and GeoBC) to rank forest stands based on their structure, so that we could assess old growth quality, rather than simply using the estimated age in the Vegetation Resource Inventory (VRI) data. Once the stands were ranked using a machine learning-based model, we went to the field as a group to ground-truth the model results, which demonstrated it was working well overall, and gave better results than the VRI data alone. We then used the old growth quality ranking, together with other considerations such as stand area and interior habitat, connectivity, and location to develop the new network. Analysis showed that the new plan has higher ecological values than the old one. All parties were able to stack hands on the new plan, and we have been implementing it for almost two years now. I would like to thank the many people that were instrumental in the development of this plan, in particular Cam Brown and Jeremy Hachey of Forsite, and Brian Feeney from Canfor.”

Based on the success of this pilot, Canfor is now working with an expanded collaborative group (including BC Timber Sales) on a similar old growth project for the Cranbrook and Invermere Timber Supply Areas, which is being led by the Ministry of Forests and Forsite.

Another example of positive change is the identification of High Conservation Value Areas (HCVAs) in the East Kootenay. Kari explains that these are areas of exceptional conservation and cultural values, and are a requirement of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.

“In order to identify the HCVAs, I initiated a collaborative team including The Nature Trust of BC, Nature Conservancy of Canada, Wildsight, government, Canfor, and wildlife experts like Dr. Michael Proctor. Together we worked to identify the biodiversity hotspots on the landscape using the best information available to us. Once those areas were identified we then developed management strategies to maintain or enhance their values should forest management occur within them.” The cultural areas were identified by local First Nations in a separate process.

Kari explains that some of the HCVAs are very large – over 10,000 hectares – and some have management strategies specifying no logging or road building because of their high conservation values. These include intact drainages (those without roads or industrial development), of which there are very few left in the East Kootenay.

“Some of these areas are phenomenal habitat for grizzly bears, mountain goats, and wolverine, and we know that high road densities are not compatible with maintaining high-value habitat for these species”.

Other examples of HCVAs include those established for high riparian and fish values, key ungulate winter ranges, wildlife movement corridors, significant wetlands, old growth areas, and key habitats for species at risk. In collaboration with Wildsight and with First Nations, field monitoring has also been done to ensure that the management practices are being implemented on the ground and effectively maintaining the values.

Kari says she got into forestry because she always wanted her work to make a difference in terms of positive change in forest management on the ground.

“I think what really cemented it for me was, after I did my masters at the University of Alberta and went to work for ALPAC (Alberta Pacific Forest Products), I saw how you can design a research project, conduct it, and then implement the results all within the span of a few years. That was really exciting and formative for me, so I wanted to do that with my PhD research. I completed my PhD in the East Kootenay, examining the effect of trees retained within cutblocks and wildfire burns on songbirds. I then used the results to work with foresters and loggers to change practices and increase the retention of trees within cutblocks, including overstory, understory, and deciduous trees. This made a big difference for many bird species and changed how we were doing our logging practices. It was very exciting for me, and I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

Kari was recognized with the National Women in Forestry Award of Excellence by the Forest Products Association of Canada in 2023, and with Canfor’s ‘Gamechanger’ President’s Award in 2024. She was appointed to the first Minister’s Wildlife Advisory Council in BC (in 2021) and was recently extended for a third term. She is very honored to be on that council (together with another East Kootenay resident John Bergenske), which provides expert advice to the Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship on the implementation of the Together for Wildlife Strategy and policies impacting wildlife and their habitat.

Kari’s message for younger people is that “Forest management is a wonderful career with lots of opportunities. The field is changing tremendously fast right now, and there are great opportunities to make significant changes going forward and have fun while doing so. It’s been a rewarding, enjoyable and exciting career for me so far, and I’m excited to continue on this journey.”

When not working, Kari loves getting out for hikes into the alpine, as well as birdwatching, travelling, skiing, and reading.

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