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Indicator 6.5.2 - Availabilty of forest inventory information to the public core indicator 
Provincial and territorial forest management agencies have maintained detailed forest inventories to aid in effective decision making toward the sustainable management of the forest resources. Increasingly, forest resources inventories are being collected and maintained by private companies, often a forest products company that has tenure in a given area. The concern is that these inventories may be considered proprietary information and may not be fully available to either the public or to governments to aid in fair and effective forest management decision making. This indicator measures the extent to which forest resource inventories are available to the public or government agents. Only the most recent inventories are considered. For example, in an area where an older government inventory exists, but a more current inventory is now maintained by a private interest, the area is considered to be covered by a private inventory. In most cases, inventory data are available for decision making by agents of the Crown, and the public does have access to inventory data (Table 6.5b). In the Territories, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, there are no limitations on the availability of the information and it is offered at no cost. In the other provincial jurisdictions, the data is freely available to resource managers but only available to the public for an administrative fee (essentially the cost to reproduce the information). In New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, the Crown and tenure holders share inventory responsibility on crown land. In these cases, the inventory data collected by the government are available to the public under the restrictions outlined in Table 6.5b. The inventory data collected and maintained by the tenure holder are either freely available to the Crown or available through a data sharing agreement established between the Crown and the tenure holder. Public access to this data is granted usually for an administrative fee, and a data sharing agreement stipulating the use of the data is occasionally required. Tenure holders are often given some public funds to help acquire data; this data is treated as if the Crown had collected it (i.e., available without limitations to the Crown, and available for an administrative fee to the public). Table 6.5b Availability of forest inventory information to government agents and the public.
In Ontario, the forest products industry manages approximately 75% of the inventoried lands through sustainable forest licenses. Licensees are responsible for the production and maintenance of their Forest Resources Inventory (FRI). However, the Crown reserves the right to treat the FRI as if it were the property of the Crown. As a result, all inventories in Ontario share the same access limitations, and are described as crown inventories. The FRI is therefore available free to resource managers and for a fee to the public. Inventory data collected and maintained by forest product companies on private forest lands are considered proprietary and are not available to the Crown and only available to the public on a case-by-case basis. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||