The Forestry Research Advisory Council of Canada (FRACC) advises Forestry Canada on national forest research priorities and policies. This report covers calendar 1990, during which FRACC held four meetings and visited four Forestry Canada research centres.Once again FRACC prepared a national overview of research priorities with the assistance of the provincial and territorial forest research advisory groups. This appeared in the February 1991 Forestry Chronicle of the Canadian Institute of Forestry. Twenty-three new research priorities were identified in the 1990 overview. Many of the new items were related to the need for predictive models, better resource and land use decision methods, socioeconomic studies, and studies on climate change. This reflects the increasing attention forest managers are giving to public attitudes on resource and environmental matters. At the same time, the forest managers' more traditional long-term concerns about protecting, harvesting, and regenerating forests are still prominent in research priorities. The importance of the Forest Resource Development Agreements in funding forest research was again emphasized.As a result of its deliberations in 1990, Council makes the following recommendations:1. Forestry Canada should ensure that a broad spectrum of forest stakeholders have input to its forest research advisory process, and should encourage other agencies to do likewise.2. Forestry Canada should seek every opportunity to connect its research work with site classification systems. This will broaden the use of research results in ways that maximize their application without having them misapplied in inappropriate situations.3. Forestry Canada should strengthen its linkages with the universities and urge them to do more to broaden their search for graduate students by emphasizing the very real challenges in forestry. Forestry Canada should also consider seconding scientists to universities for two to three years to alleviate a shortage of specific skills and to further the training of specialists in those disciplines.4. Forestry Canada should make every effort to develop other techniques and approaches to enhance cooperative programs along the lines of the National Science and Engineering Research Council partnership model.5. In setting up cooperative programs of research with industry, Forestry Canada should ensure that the participating companies are fully aware of the steps necessary to qualify for favorable tax treatment for their contributions to research programs.6. Forestry Canada should carefully examine its forest economics and policy program to assess its adequacy and to determine whether sufficient linkage has been established with the provinces, industry, and the universities. An in-depth program review of this subject should be undertaken, with full program documentation being assembled and made available to FRACC and Forestry Canada clients and cooperators.7. A serious effort should be made to raise the profiles of Forestry Canada's two specialized institutes so that their role, particularly in relation to environmental concerns, is more widely appreciated in forestry and environmental circles. A change of names should be considered. Drawing on the views of scientists and staff, Forestry Canada should seek alternatives that would give much more stress to the ideas of sustainable development and ecological balance.8. The practice of consulting with staff and involving them in the planning and execution of research programs should be reinforced and firmly embedded in the management culture of Forestry Canada.9. Forestry Canada should actively involve its leading scientists in developing national strategies and plans and in developing research networks.In its work program for 1991, Council will:1. Continue to examine the factors affecting the supply of young scientists and the elements that make for a productive research climate.2. Continue the input of various forest stakeholders to the deliberations of Council so that the forces shaping the future demands on the forest ecosystem can be better understood.3. Identify emerging regional and national issues and priorities in forestry research.4. Continue to work with provincial and territorial research advisory bodies to assemble a national overview of forest research priorities for the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers.5. Study the implications for Forestry Canada's research program of the following reports:(a) The Report of the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Fisheries and Forestry entitled Forests of Canada: The Federal Role (the Bird Report).(b) The Green Plan of Environment Canada.(c) The report by Pierre Lortie on science policy and the organization of science in Canada.(d) Forestry Canada's report to parliament.6. Make input to developing the new Forest Sector Strategy for Canada due for completion in March 1992.7. Obtain and review an action plan for the forest economics program of Forestry Canada.8. Hold a "think-tank" session to explore in broad terms what the future holds for forest resource management in Canada and the world, and to attempt to assess what this means for forest research at present and in the near future.9. Study the terms of reference of FRACC and make recommendations as required to Forestry Canada.
A framework for identifying public research priorities: an application in forestry research.