Local Level Indicators Program
The Local Level Indicators Program was established in the late 1990s. The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers earlier had identified six prerequisites “national criteria” of sustainable forest management, which required local acceptance and adoption to be effective. In response, the Canadian Model Forest Program decided to develop and report local indicators of these criteria. Additionally, Foothills Research Institute agreed to identify local goals and to determine indicators that measured performance against the goals. In brief, Foothills Research Institute established the Local level Indicators (LLI) Program to assess the national criteria at a local level. The LLI Program now has gained enough scientific information with which to measure and report many local indicators.
Our name has changed!
While we were creating this report, we changed our name. To better reflect our new business cycle and expanded mandate, the Foothills Model Forest (FtMF) is now the Foothills Research Institute (FRI). To avoid confusion, this report uses our old name, “Foothills Model Forest,” throughout.
Role of the Foothills Model Forest
The Foothills Model Forest has no land or resource management mandate; it is an organization designed to promote innovative thinking and support research that serves all its partners in their respective efforts to manage sustainably. Data for the Local Level Indicators Project was generally collected by agencies with land and resource management responsibilities, such as Jasper National Park, Hinton Wood Products (A division of West Fraser Mills Ltd.), and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. Please refer to the following link for a description of our landbase
What Are Its Tasks?
The LLI Program reports local indicators from within the entire Foothills Research Institute land base. By measuring and monitoring these indicators over time plus updating reports, the LLI Program can reveal changes and trends as they occur. These changes and trends measure progress toward local and national sustainable forest management.
Consequently, the Foothills Research Institute is encouraging groups involved in forest use to adopt its indicators and methods of indicator-development when designing forest management plans. In doing so, organizations inside and outside Foothills Research Institute can measure and demonstrate progress toward their own sustainable use objectives and toward sustainable forest management in general. In this way, the LLI program can advance ecologically sound forest use practices and help forge sustainable forest management policy.