Business View Magazine | July 2022

19 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 7 environmental, economic, and social values. These values and objectives are set out in the company’s policy charter, balancing the interests of all Dryden Forest stakeholders while ensuring a sustainable and predictable supply of quality wood fiber. The company currently manages 136,000 hectares of Crown-managed forested land within the Dryden District, administering a forest management plan (FMP) that provides direction for forestry activities while ensuring a sustainable balance of social, economic, and environmental values. “A group of 23 small business loggers working in the local forests started DFMC on August 21, 1997,” narrates Steve Young, General Manager at DFMC. “When the tenure system around sustainable forest licenses in Ontario was being created, they saw the formation of the forest management company as an opportunity to protect their small businesses. The concept behind the company was that it would oversee all the forest management activities, including licensing and planning, and leave the logging companies to focus on their businesses timber harvest, forest renewal and tending operations.” The company’s formation not only covered the licensing needs of the forest but provided protection for the small businesses from larger companies that were competing in acquiring timber rights in the area. Young believes the formation of DFMC is one of the main reasons why the timber industry in the area is still mainly in the hands of individual and small-scale loggers compared to other places where larger, integrated logging companies control more of the timber industry. DFMC’s mandate is to achieve a healthy, sustainable forest ecosystem vital to the well- being of forest-based, as well as non-forest- based, regional communities. Certified to SFI 2015-2021 Standards and Rules - Section 2: Forest Management Standards since November DRYDEN FOREST MANAGEMENT COMPANY LTD .