The Board randomly chosen 2002 audit of TFL 23, held by Pope & Talbot Ltd. (P&T), enabled the Board to develop and test its auditing procedures for a certified company. P&T’s operations under TFL 23 are certified under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).

This is the Board’s report on the full scope compliance audit of TFL 23 held by Pope & Talbot Ltd. The primary operating area of TFL 23 is located between Castlegar in the south, and Revelstoke in the north.

On October 17, 2002, a complaint was submitted to the Board about planned road deactivation in the Tangier River and Woolsey Creek watersheds. Deactivation plans included imminent removal of a bridge over the Tangier River. The complainant is a trapper, and he said the deactivation would prevent him from safely accessing his registered trap line. The complainant believed that the Ministry of Forests had not given him enough time to move his trap line cabin across the bridge so that it would be accessible after the bridge was removed.

The July Creek Ratepayers Association (the complainant) expressed its concerns about arsenic to the Ministry of Forests (MOF) Boundary Forest District at a meeting in 1998. The district manager ordered a watershed assessment for July Creek. A representative of the association participated on a watershed advisory committee that oversaw the watershed assessment. The assessment was completed in November 1999, and did not identify any significant hydrological concerns for the proposed cutblocks or road-building within the assessment area.

Pope and Talbot Ltd.’s (the licensee) 1999 forest development plan (FDP) was approved shortly after, in December 1999. However, cutblocks planned within the July Creek watershed were changed from category A (for approval) status to category I (for information only) status prior to the plan approval because the watershed assessment was not available during the review and comment period.