The rehabilitation of forest stands that do not support commercial crop vegetation is necessitated by the fact that competing non-crop vegetation suppresses or kills desirable crop species. These stands occupy some of the most productive forest sites. Reforestation failures are the result of intense brush competition and in the absence of some measure of control, these stands will be lost for forest production.
To alleviate the problem, management of non-crop vegetation is mandatory to re-convert these stands to the level of productivity. Otherwise well-established regeneration will become suppressed or the stand will further degenerate to the non-satisfactorily restocked state, increasing backlog.
Vegetation management is also the strategy to address the problem of re-conversion and to release established but suppressed conifer crop regeneration to become free-growing.
This paper discusses the magnitude of the problem, the Ministry Policy to provide the logistical framework, some of the operational techniques, current plans and projections for future planning of vegetation management on Crown Lands.