South Island Forest District, Compliance and Enforcement

The Compliance and Enforcement (C&E) section of the South Island Forest District (SIFD) is responsible for ensuring that licensees, including the BC Timber Sales Program, are complying with the Forest Practices Code, the Forest Act, the Forest and Range Practices Act, the Range Act, the Wildland Fire Act, and the Defined Forest Area Act.

Link to Legislation and Regulations

Recent government initiatives have seen legislation transformed from a prescriptive approval process to one that is focused on results in the field. Today there is a greater reliance on resource professionals to ensure that these results are achieved. Licensees that do not achieve compliance with these results will face enforcement action and penalties.

Our 20-member team includes one operations manager, two registered professional foresters, 6 check scalers, and 11 forest technicians.

We have 14 staff members located in Port Alberni, and 6 in our field office in Cobble Hill. Link to District Directory


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Logging has come a long way from the early days of steam donkeys and rutted yarding roads to the refined and planned extraction techniques of today’s technology. Gone are the yarding trenches, spar trees, and logging around fish streams. Today stream banks and soils are protected and there is light touch to the visual landscape.


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To ensure public safety we inspect forest roads and bridges.


Before	After

To ensure that licensees achieve the results specified in their approved operational plans and legislation we randomly inspect harvesting cutblocks.

To ensure that the crown receives its share of revenue we randomly inspect sites for scaling and timber marking.


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To ensure that licensees reforest their cutblocks we randomly inspect sites for regeneration, silviculture treatments, and insects and disease.

To ensure compliance our staff work with other agencies such as the Conservation Officers, the Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, The Ministry of Energy and Mines, the RCMP and Crown Counsel.

When an inspection finds contraventions of an approved operational plan or of legislation the licensee may be issued either a warning ticket or a monetary ticket. Contraventions of a more serious variety, generally those that cause or have the potential to cause environmental damage, are investigated and reported to a government senior official.

The senior official will review information provided by C&E staff and the licensee and render a determination that may include a monetary penalty. This determination must be able to withstand an internal appeal process, the Forest Appeals Commission, and the judicial appeal process.

Forest crime includes theft, fraud, vandalism, and arson and costs the people of BC millions of dollars every year. The South Island Forest District continues to work with Crimestoppers in a joint effort to combat forest crime. The district was among the first to pilot this project.