The Association of BC Forest Professionals (ABCFP) kicked off their annual conference with two workshops, a plenary of chief foresters and a public lecture on the future of wildfire in BC. The three-day conference promises to be an outstanding event given the attendance of more than 400 delegates and high profile speakers such as Minister George Heyman (Environment and Climate Change) and Doug Donaldson (Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development) still to come. Al Gorley (the Host Committee Chair) and Diane Nicholls (BC’s Chief Forester) introduced the first plenary “Charting the Path for Truly Sustainable Forest Management”. Gorley and Nicholls spoke of the forest professional’s management challenge given the need to balance ‘expectations and realities’—effectively the conference theme.