North Cowichan Forest Survey Results are in and decisive
76% pick a Conservation Scenario as their first choice
This chart shows the first choice scenario selection as a % of the 1,922 Open Survey respondents.
40.7% Active Conservation
34.4% Passive Conservation
7.5% Reduced Harvest
17.3% Status Quo Logging
The Municipality also conducted a Random Phone Survey of 215 North Cowichan Citizens - the first choice scenario selection percentages are listed below.
38.25% Active Conservation
29.25% Passive Conservation
12.25% Reduced Harvest
20.25% Status Quo Logging
The results of the random and open surveys are consistent.
Key Takeaways related to Conservation:
The importance of protecting biodiversity, watersheds, old growth forest, habitats.
The importance of managing invasive species, ecotourism, recreation, rights of nature.
Results are consistent with other recent surveys
This chart is from the 2022 North Cowichan Citizen Satisfaction Survey Results. Nature is mentioned as residents' favourite thing about North Cowichan
This excerpt below is from the 2022 Round 1 Public Engagement Report:
"During the first round of engagement on the future management of the MFR, we heard a diverse range of perspectives from over 1,275 community members. The thoughtful input from participants in this first round of engagement reflects the deep care people share for their community and the forest reserve in particular. There was agreement that the MFR is a valued community asset, and many are in favour of an approach to forest management that shifts the primary management focus of the MFR toward the ecological and recreational benefits."
About the Survey
1,922 people completed the open online survey (compared to 404 for the 2022 Citizen Satisfaction Survey, 1,200 for the OCP Survey and 1,275 for the Forest Review Values Survey)
Over 90% felt they had enough information to answer the questions in the survey.
The survey and the discussion guide were vetted by a volunteer citizens working group that met 6 times over the last two years.
Barb Floden, (North Cowichan -Manager, Communications and Public Engagement) told the Working Group that the survey ran smoothly with few citizen complaints. There were some people supporting different scenarios who didn't want to rank their scenario selections, they just wanted to give their preferred scenario. (note: the charts presented here only show first choice)
To ensure that the survey results reflected the views of the whole community, a randomized sample of North Cowichan residents was recruited by telephone. The margin of error on this sample is +/6.7% at the 95% confidence level in the most conservative case.
The results of the statistically valid survey were consistent with the total survey results. For example Status Quo logging was the first choice of 17% of the open survey and 20% of the statistically valid survey.