A Supreme Court of B.C. decision released last week has ordered the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals (ABCFP) to reconsider investigating a rejected complaint alleging harm to marbled murrelets on the Coast.
The Sunshine Coast Con-servation Association (SCCA) filed the complaint against a forester during a transition period between the old and new Foresters Act in 2003. The ABCFP's registrar assessed the complaint under the old act, which the court says should have fallen under the new act. Under the old act, the registrar had more discretion whether to refer a complaint to its committee to investigate.
SCCA executive director Daniel Bouman said it's important the ABCFP accept public complaints against registered professional foresters (RPF) and sees this decision and the new act as moving in that direction.
"Up until now the ABCFP has protected foresters against complaints," Bouman said. "In the future, one way or another, the public will be able to make complaints against foresters, and one way or another they will be heard."
But the ABCFP's executive director Van Scoffield said the court decision will not have a huge effect on future complaints.
"The decision is not all that significant because the judge simply said to reconsider the matter under the new act," Scoffield said.
The ABCFP made a judgement call to go by the old act because new bylaws coming out of the act weren't yet in place and the complaint referred to events prior to 2003.
"We thought we did the right thing," he said.
The registrar will review the complaint over the coming weeks then make a decision, he said.Bouman is confident the complaint will go forward.
"I think at the end of the day they are going to refer the complaint to an investigation," Bouman said.
The substance of the specific complaint was not at issue in the Supreme Court case. The SCCA originally filed the complaint against RPF Jeffrey Pollock, working for International Forest Products coming up with forest development plans. The SCCA alleged the plans were in areas where endangered birds, the marbled murrelets, were nesting.
"We're trying to get [the ABCFP] to face the issue because they're the only body that can deal with the issues raised," Bouman said.
"We're not stating Pollock did it; we're asking them to decide." Professional associations need to hold their members accountable, he added.
The registrar, Jerome Marburg, after he had decided to not pursue the complaint, wrote to the SCCA that "previous investigations have not found any wrong doing on the part of the concerned member," according to the court's written decision.
Interfor's production manager for the Sechelt division, Alan Blattler, said the issue went through four investigations before going before the ABCFP Ñ the Forest Practices Board, KPMG Performance Registrar certification services, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative's certification task force and an independent third party hired by Interfor. None of the investigations found a breach of conduct by any of Interfor's foresters, Blattler said.
Finding where the murrelets are nesting is complex, he said, but Interfor has completed an inventory of the birds' locations to use in its planning. New information about the murrelets is coming out all the time so it is an ongoing issue that Interfor remains up-to-date on, he said.
