The forestry industry has its sights set on tapping a new resource - the public.

Taking its research to the next level, the Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA) is in the midst of a survey that it hopes will provide better insight into the future stewardship and usage of the province's forests.

"It really is the public's forest and their input, frankly, is critical," says Parker Hogan, the AFPA's director of public affairs. "We want their input and we're using a very sophisticated survey methodology to get to that.

"It's a hard survey that requires people to think and make tradeoffs and choices. But we believe that more accurately reflects the reality of the land-use situation in Alberta."

Jack Dagley, Business Edge
'It really is the public's forest,' says Parker Hogan, public affairs director for the Alberta Forest Products Association.

The Alberta Forest Usage Survey, conducted by Edmonton-based consultants Cambridge Strategies Inc. and scheduled to conclude at the end of November, is geared to allowing Albertans to identify their forest priorities and offer input on the balance between environmental, economic and social uses.

Using a technique called discrete choice modelling (DCM), Cambridge Strategies hopes to take the public's pulse by exploring attitudes, beliefs and desires as they relate to the province's forest system.

The online-only survey has set a goal of 5,000 responses.

"We're doing an outreach program to be in touch with 1,000 groups and organizations across Alberta - a broad cross-section of interest," says Cambridge principal Ken Chapman.

"We're inviting their membership to complete the survey as individuals. We're targeting 5,000 responses and we're over halfway there in the first three weeks. So, people are interested in this and we have not yet contacted everyone," says Chapman.

He says DCM is a Nobel Prize-winning public opinion/ market research technique that will allow them to better understand what citizens want.

"There are always tradeoff decisions that one needs to make amongst various attributes in a real-life situation," he says.

"DCM, in a sense, forces one to make such tradeoffs by requiring a preferential selection between two competing scenarios. The scenarios are almost always less than completely satisfying, just like in real life.

"But by making the choice of one scenario over the other and doing so through a series of alternative choices, the relative importance of certain values emerge. The tradeoffs people are prepared to make between or amongst various values also becomes apparent."

This will give an indication of what the public believes is important, both positively and negatively, and how strongly those beliefs are held, says Chapman.

But for Tim Gray, national conservation director for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), the survey leaves a lot to be desired.

"I think that it's good that the association (AFPA) is recognizing that there are significant conservation issues in the forests of Alberta. I think that's a positive sign," says Gray, whose organization works to protect wild places on public land across Canada. "But I think the survey itself presents simplistic and unrealistic alternatives."

"In the survey, when you're doing it, the person making these choices is given binary choices between two complicated scenarios - one very negative, one very positive. You're forced to choose between two scenarios. The components would never be together in real life," he adds.

"I've worked on forest planning and forest policy for 15 years and I couldn't go through that and come up with a way of managing the forest that included both industry and environmental protection working together."

Instead, Gray says he would have preferred if the survey focused on finding people's opinions on how to balance industrial use and environmental protection.

Hogan, however, is confident the survey will deliver.

"It comes as a result of a couple of factors. A regular public opinion poll doesn't get to the really inherent reasons of why people believe what they believe and is very much a snapshot of a moment in time. The survey we're doing this time will help us to more deeply understand the values that are in play when people make that decision," says Hogan.

Once the AFPA has the results, expected early in the new year, Hogan says the information will be shared with its membership and Albertans. Also, it will use the data for input into provincial government consultations on land management in Alberta.

A land-use framework, under the auspices of three provincial government departments - Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, Alberta Energy and Alberta Environment - is currently being developed.

Officials with the Sustainable Resource Development department say the framework, which is just in its preliminary stages, will be comprehensive, include all stakeholders, and go beyond the forestry sector.

Alberta's forest-products industry is the third largest primary industry in the province and represents the second largest manufacturing export sector, employing approximately 50,000 people directly or indirectly.

Web Watch: www.yourforest.org

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)