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The purpose of the paper is to analyse the extent of policy change and learning in the 20 years following the implementation of Ontario's forest sustainability legislation. Extent of policy learning and change towards sustainable forest management are measured using a combination of content, co-occurrence, and textual analysis of the previous Crown Timber Act and the new Crown Forest Sustainability Act, as well as the latter's 1996 and 2009 forest planning manuals. There were four key findings. First, policy change towards sustainable forest management has been limited. Second, although there was an increased number of values mentioned in new legislation and planning manuals, the frequency of timber values remained dominant. Third, although integration occurred among a greater range of values, integration with timber values continued to dominate. Fourth, with respect to policy learning, the achievement of sustainable forest management is now explicit and judged based on evidence regarding the inclusion of a range of values beyond timber. The paper concludes that the transition to the more integrative and responsive policies of sustainable forest management remains a work in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present how elders of Pikangikum First Nation in northwestern Ontario have drawn upon their knowledge and values associated with fire to engage in fire management planning for 1.3 million hectares of their traditional boreal forest territory. Over a period of 18 months, we engaged in collaborative research strategies that included interviews, visits to historic fire sites, and community meetings with Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) to document the elders' understandings of fire behaviour, forest disturbance and renewal cycles, traditional controlled burning practices, and perspectives on current fire management policies. The elders demonstrated the relevance of their knowledge of fire to contemporary planning efforts affecting woodland caribou habitat and fire management at site and landscape scales within their territory. We identified three themes and six recommendations that elders confirmed as priorities for future fire management planning. The three themes include (i) the need for continuing dialogue for fire management planning with OMNR, (ii) extending traditional teachings of fire safety to community youth, and (iii) the desire to re-engage in fire management using traditional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact that the routine application of Ontario's forest management planning process has on the revenue generation of sport fishing tourism sites. The analysis employs a hedonic pricing model to examine jointly these effects on revenue for three tourism experiences. These tourism experiences offer different degrees of remoteness, and as a consequence, require different levels of effort and cost to visit. Modelling the relationship between price and attributes of sites such as remoteness permits the analysis to forecast the revenue generation potential of sport fishing tourism sites under a range of forest management schemes. The results show that the extent of forest harvesting had no statistical relationship with prices charged for fishing packages at road-, boat-, or train-accessible sites and a negative but small impact on the prices charged for fishing packages at sites accessible by float plane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]