Forest Practices Board Says Inspections Inconsistent

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 03:58 AM

The Forest Practices Board is taking a swipe at the way on site inspection reporting of forestry practices is being done in the province.

The Board says there is too much variation, that there are inconsistencies.

For example,

One district had over 12 times more harvesting and road inspections than another district.
Alleged non compliance levels ranging from two per cent to 35 per cent between districts.
Alleged non compliance levels ranging from zero to 61 per cent between inspectors within the same district.

The six regions examined Skeena-Stikine and Fort Nelson in the Northern Interior Region; Kamloops and Chilcotin in the Southern Interior Region and North Coast and Campbell River in the Coast Region.

"The investigation couldn't determine precise reasons for the variations, but found that policy issues, workforce issues and variable application of assessment tools seem to be factors in this lack of consistency," said Board Chair, Bruce Fraser.

The main assessment tool used is the Ministry's compliance information management system (CIMS). The investigation found that the CIMS system is applied and utilized inconsistently. The Board has made two recommendations to improve the system

1. Strengthen policy guidance for C&E inspection coverage.

2. Ensure CIMS provides information in a form more useful to local C&E management to achieve good inspection coverage and consistency in identifying and addressing non-compliances.

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Posted on Wednesday, May 07, 2008 03:58 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on May 7 2008 7:53 AM

Interesting how some districts are real aggressive and some seem to be OK.

Might be some districts want the good old NDP days back where the "people" ruled the bush and everything else? Everybody's got an agenda, even the inspector.

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on May 7 2008 7:54 AM

Chinese saying, "There is never a shortage of evidence when you wish to convict someone." Vancouver 1968 BCTV News Expo grounds.

Posted by: owl on May 7 2008 8:29 AM

YDPC .....

Does not surprise me one bit .... do the same in building inspection and you will find the same ... has nothing to do with your boogey man, the NDP or the BCLiberals or whoever, it has to do with the lack of training and with the lack of understanding by those who are trained.

The key here is where are the major infractions and how are we making sure major infractions are taken care of.

Of course, we can let the whole thing go. Get rid of all inspectors everywhere, not just forestry, and have the entire system complaint driven and have an answering machine at the complaint desk.

There goes 25% of government/tax dollars at the least. We could start paving some roads. The again, that would also go into the same revised compliance system, and we would not even get the patching we get now ..... which is zilch as far as I can tell this spring.

;-)

Posted by: metalman on May 7 2008 8:43 AM

Oh gee, inconsistancy, from government? that is....................................so easy to believe. Watch out, now they will have to re-invent the F.P.C. call in the experts.
metalman.

Posted by: northman on May 7 2008 7:19 PM

The main reason for the lack of consistency in this case is determined by certain factors of risk from district to district. If you get a district with alot more roads there will be more road inspections. If you get a district that is doing more harvesting then others then you will get more harvesting inspections. Another determining factor here is the amount of licences operating the districts. A district with more permit holders and licencees will get more non compliance issues.

Posted by: dogs on May 7 2008 8:21 PM

Over the years the ministry has gone from generlist to specialist and back and now most are specialist with little or no operation experience- most lack the experience to make these judgements- I should now work in 5 of the 6 forest regions (when there were six) from a junior assistant ranager to senior management and then left for industry and have over 35 years in the industry. We need to cross train personnal people in all phazes of the industry and both MOF and Industry.

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on May 8 2008 8:16 AM

The NDP were narrow minded specialists. That was their weakness and attractiveness to those with an agenda. The people that were attractted to NDP government positions because of the power, never went away, and lots of those people now are really chaffing at being reined in by the BC Liberals.

It is not whether a district has more roads or more havesting that caused the inconsistancy in input.