Burns Lake Community Forest Ltd. (BLCF) was incorporated on December 15, 1998 in response to the Ministry of Forest’s Community Forest Request for Proposals. Establishment of the company followed a comprehensive round of public consultations in which local residents clearly indicated that ownership of the requested forest licence should belong to everyone living in the Lakes District, and not a single political entity or special- interest group.

Local efforts to obtain a conditional community forest license were rewarded in the summer of 2000 when the Ministry of Forests announced that Burns Lake was one of the four organizations awarded a community forest pilot agreement. For local residents, it represented the realization of a dream that actually began 25 years earlier on October 10, 1973—the date when the Burns Lake Village Council first asked Lands and Forests Minister Bob Williams for a Tree Farm Licence.

The initial pilot licence was signed July 7, 2000 with an initial Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) of 23,677 cubic meters (m3). Burns Lake Community Forest Ltd. was awarded the Long-Term Community Forest Agreement K1A (K1A) for a term of 25 years in April 2005—the first of its kind in the province. The community forest has undergone several expansions since that time and now consists of 89,109.2 hectares of Crown land.