This chapter provides a case study of the early grassroots organizing and operational challenges in what has been widely regarded as a success story for community forestry. The reality is that Creston's community forest has had to struggle to maintain itself, remain viable and build local support. The story of the Creston Valley Forest Corporation (CVFC) provides the archetypical case of the promise and the implementation challenges associated with community forestry in a conflicted, multiple-use forest setting.

COMMUNITY CONTEXT, TOWN OF CRESTON, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The community of Creston is located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia's interior, just north of the US border. The 8.5-km2 town site lies in the scenic Kootenay River Valley, bounded by the Selkirk and Purcell Mountains. Incorporated as a municipality in 1924, the current population is 4,826 (Statistics Canada 2006). Creston is surrounded by a number of unincorporated communities and large tracts of Crown land within the Regional District of Central Kootenay (Creston 2005). The Lower Kootenay Indian Band (of Ktunaxa First Nation) has 25.5 km2 of reserve land in the vicinity.

Mining was the main interest of the first European settlers who pushed north from the United States via the Dewdney Trail in the late 1800s (Creston 2001). But by the early 1900s, agriculture and forestry became the main drivers of the local economy. The first sawmill was built in the first decade of the 1900s, and fruit and grain agriculture became highly productive. As in the rest of British Columbia, Creston’s forest economy is in transition. Notably, Crestbrook Forest Industries began scaling back operations in the early 1980s, closing its Creston mill in 1991 (Sunderman 2003). Wood processing operations were moved to nearby Cranbrook so that half of the wood harvested in the Creston area is now processed out of town. J. H. Huscroft Ltd. and Wyndell Box Ltd. are the largest lumber mills operating in the Creston area, consuming about 260,000 m3 of wood annually (Creston 2004). These local mills now heavily depend upon private wood supplies because of regional wood shortages.