Who We Are

Meet the Council

The Provincial Forestry Advisory Council is made up of dedicated professionals from across the province who share a commitment to sustainable forest management. Together, their experience and perspectives help guide important discussions and decisions that shape the future of our forests.

Council Co-Chairs

Garry Merkel, RPF

Director, Centre of Indigenous Land Stewardship, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Garry Merkel (nadi’ denezā) is Tahltan from the Northwest B.C. Stikine River watershed, and Director of the Centre of Indigenous Land Stewardship at the University of British Columbia. He is a great-grandfather and is a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) with more than 50 years of experience working in most areas of the forest/lands sector. Garry has a wide-ranging set of experiences including community planning and development, treaty negotiations, governance development, business development and management, education, housing & infrastructure and various intergovernmental agreements in various fields.

 

Garry served as the Co-Chair of the Old Growth Review Panel appointed by the Government of B.C. This panel conducted an extensive outreach process that received input from thousands of people across the province and helped inform their final report, A New Future for Old Forests, A Strategic Review of How British Columbia Manages its Old Forests Within its Ancient Ecosystems (OGSR). The B.C. government adopted the 14 recommendations in this review.

 

Garry’s core purpose is to help others to be able to envision and shape their own futures, particularly as it relates to land and community wellness. Garry’s long-term priorities include supporting Indigenous communities to be able to develop their own land stewardship systems based on their society’s land ethics, which he believes contain many of the beliefs that are necessary to bring humans back into their ‘proper place’ within nature.

Garry lives in Ktunaxa territory with his wife, Kathy.

Shannon Janzen, RPF

Owner, Hypha Consulting Inc. & Former Vice President and Chief Forester, Western Forest Products

Shannon Janzen is the owner of Hypha Consulting Inc., which collaborates with Indigenous communities to advance their vision for economic and environmental reconciliation. She serves as a strategic advisor to Iskum Investments, a consortium of 19 First Nations on the B.C. coast and supports various Indigenous economic development initiatives.

 

Shannon began her career in operations, spending over a decade in silviculture and planning. In 2004, after five years working in the Holberg logging camp, she transitioned to the Coast Forest Conservation Initiative as the Ecosystem-Based Management Implementation Manager. In this capacity, she led negotiations on behalf of five forest companies as part of the Joint Solutions Project, working alongside prominent environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and Forest Ethics. Her contributions to this work earned her recognition as the Association of BC Forest Professionals’ Professional Forester of the Year in 2009. She was involved in the development of B.C.’s Forest Carbon Offset Protocol and has led full lifecycle carbon accounting for forest products.

 

In 2013, Shannon was the first woman in Canada to be appointed Chief Forester of a major forest products company. She later became Vice President at Western Forest Products in 2015, a role she held until December 2022. With a strong business background in the forest industry, Shannon has overseen fiber supply, logistics, and quality control. She has implemented cost-saving LEAN supply chain initiatives, negotiated compensation agreements, and led teams to execute advanced capital programs, including Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) forest inventory systems. Her roles have also encompassed environmental management for timberlands and manufacturing in both the US and Canada, as well as managing fiber supply relationships between pulp, paper, and solid wood operations.

 

She has served on numerous boards and committees, including the Premier’s Women’s Economic Council, B.C. Forest Practices Advisory Committee, Forest Sciences Board, and UBC Forest Advisory Council. Once a volunteer firefighter, Shannon is committed to making business sense of doing the right thing for people and the planet, tackling complex challenges with optimism and focus.

 

Throughout her career, Shannon has taken on complex and challenging issues, driven by her belief in finding solutions that benefit all stakeholders. Known for her tenacity, she has focused on negotiating innovative agreements and ensuring their successful implementation.

 

Shannon lives in the Stzuminus and Snuneymuxw traditional territories with her husband Keith and dog Charlie near Ladysmith on Vancouver Island.

Council Members

Norah White

Deputy Chief Forester, B.C. Government

Norah White is Deputy Chief Forester and Executive Director in B.C.’s Office of the Chief Forester within the provincial Ministry of Forests, the division of the provincial government responsible for leadership in forest stewardship and sustainable fibre supply.

 

Norah has an extensive background in provincial forest stewardship policy and has led recent sector-wide change in the areas of forest planning, forest carbon, and the management of old forests and ecosystems.

 

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of British Columbia (2004), an executive Master of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University (2022), and a Micro-certificate in Forest Carbon Management from UBC (2022). Norah received her Registered Professional Forester designation in 2007 and is an active member of Forest Professionals B.C.

 

Norah lives within the territory of the Lekwungen peoples, also known as Victoria, B.C., with her spouse and their two teenage daughters.

Executive Director, Forest Enhancement Society of B.C.

Jason Fisher, a Registered Professional Forester, is the Executive Director of the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC). FESBC invests the funding it receives from the Ministry of Forests to support forest enhancement projects throughout B.C. that reduce wildfire risk, enhance wildlife habitat, assist in the recovery of forests affected by fire, insects and disease, and/or reduce greenhouse emissions through enhancing the utilization of wood waste for bioenergy.

 

Jason has earned degrees in forestry and law, and has worked in both the private and public sector, serving as a vice-president with Dunkley Lumber and Pinnacle Renewable Energy and as an Associate Deputy Minister in B.C.’s Ministry of Forests  He is also an instructor at the University of Northern British Columbia, where he teaches a senior-level forest policy and management course.

 

Jason and his family live in Prince George, located within the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh.

Chairperson, United Steelworkers Wood Council

Elected Steelworkers Wood Council Chair in 2019, Jeff Bromley was a rank and file IWA member beginning in 1994 when he was hired as an operator at the Elko Sawmill at age 25.

 

Jeff earned his associated degree at East Kootenay Community College (now College of the Rockies) with a major in History and a minor in Political Science.

 

Rising through the ranks of Local 1-405, Jeff was elected shop steward and plant committee secretary in 1999 and served as trustee from 2001 until 2008. His advocacy and political action activities have included the USW’s Stop the Killing, Enforce the Law campaign, the softwood lumber lobby effort in Ottawa and the Forest Renewal campaign in Victoria. Bromley has been a local union instructor through District 3’s Back to the Locals instructor program.

 

Jeff was elected third vice-president of Local 1-405 in 2008 and, in 2010 graduated from the USW’s leadership development program. Elected financial secretary in 2012, he has served the local union in a full-time staff role since 2012.

 

Jeff lives with his wife Melanie in Cranbrook, B.C.

Associate Professor, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Harry Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, specializing in economics and policy.

 

His research interests are in analyzing natural and environmental resource policy around how lands and resources are managed in Canada, and the forces driving change in forestry, with the goal of developing solutions that can help enhance the long run sustainability of Canadian forests and the communities and businesses that rely upon them.

 

Long-standing areas of his research include investigating the changing role of Indigenous peoples in land and resource management in Canada and assessing how forest-sector firms, governments and others are adapting to climate change impacts in forestry.

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Hugh Scorah is a researcher at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry and is a business and finance consultant for the agricultural and forest sectors.

 

He has worked on projects related to softwood lumber trade, small and medium-sized enterprises in forestry, community forestry, wildfire risk mitigation, economics of silviculture, hydrological risk and liability in forestry, timber auction design, the economics of sustained yield forestry and pricing of forest tenures.

Former Chair of the BC Forest Practices Board

Al Gorley has over 50 years’ experience in forestry and natural resource management. Born in Burns Lake, he has lived in a variety of communities in the Northwest. His early career with the BC Forest Service saw him stationed in Houston, Lower Post, Ootsa Lake and Smithers.

 

Al also served as president of the Association of British Columbia Forest Professionals and board chair for Northwest Community College. In 1994, he was appointed Regional Manager for the Prince George Forest Region and served as Executive Director of Forest Practices Code implementation. In 1998, he moved to Victoria to take on the role of Vice President for land and resources at Forest Renewal B.C. and was later promoted to Chief Operating Officer.

 

In 2002, Al started his own consulting firm and worked with a wide variety of industries, communities and governments throughout the province, nationally and internationally, on natural resource and management matters. From 2004 until 2007, he served as president of the McGregor Model Forest and was a founding director of the Canadian Model Forest Network. He is a past member of the B.C. Forest Appeals Commission and Environmental Board and was chair of the Forest Practices Board from 2010 until 2013. In 2019, Gorley was appointed to co-chair with Garry Merkel a strategic review of how old growth forests are managed in B.C., resulting in the 2020 report A New Future for Old Forests.

 

Al is now retired and divides his time between his homes in Colwood and at Uncha Lake.

Professional Forester, Biologist, Researcher and Educator

Laurie Kremsater is a professional forester and professional biologist with more than 35 years’ experience in forest ecology and wildlife resource management. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Forestry with honours, and her Master of Science in Forest Wildlife Ecology at UBC (1989). She was recognized by the FPBC as Distinguished Professional Forester in 2023.

 

Laurie was a member of the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel, part of the 1990s Old Growth Strategy and part of the team that directed Weyerhaeuser’s Forest Strategy – the most extensive research, adaptive management and monitoring work in B.C. concerning sustaining biodiversity during forest management. Her initial research concerned black-tailed deer ecology and forest birds, and has since expanded to study small mammals, amphibians, species at risk and biodiversity more broadly.

 

Laurie’s work now focuses on managing ecosystems as a whole, helping to develop sustainable forest management plans that maintain biological diversity. She designs landscape reserves for the Great Bear Rainforest Order area and trains others to undertake that task. She is helping incorporate Ecosystem-Based Management into planning for Sechelt Community Forest and Lakes Forest Landscape Plan.

 

Laurie lives with her family in the lower Fraser Valley.