Open Collections

Robson, Levi Edward

University of British Columbia

94% of land in BC is considered ‘public land.’ Forestry in British Columbia (BC) mostly takes place on this ‘public’ land base and has a widespread impact on its lands, waters, and socio-ecological systems. Forestry is mostly conducted by licence holders who, by law, must hire registered forest professionals. These professionals have exclusive rights to practice forestry in BC but must do so within a complicated and extensive policy framework. Some of these policies are ambiguous, leaving much interpretation to the individual professional. One such policy states that forest professionals must “uphold the public interest and professional principles above the demands of ‎employment or personal gain.” Despite this requirement, the “public interest” is left undefined. Instead, forest professionals are expected to interpret it themselves. To understand how forest professionals interpret the ‘public interest’ and the factors that influence this interpretation, a survey was sent out to forest professionals, and the results analyzed with a binomial logit model and a multinomial logit model. Respondents were generally in agreement that their interpretation of the public interest influences their professional practice and that local interests are more important to consider than non-local interests. However, there was a lack of consensus among forest professionals as to whether current forest policy is representative of the public interest, if the public is a local or non-local group, and if forest professionals should interpret the public interest themselves, or have it defined for them by regulators. Forest professionals who reported feeling connected to their community (p < 0.01) and forest professionals employed in the private sector (p < 0.05) were more likely to think that the public interest should be interpreted by themselves, rather than defined for them by a government or regulatory body. This study calls for clarification from regulators as to who the ‘public’ is (explicit definition), and where forest professionals can look for guidance when interpreting the public interest. This research sheds light on how high-level policy objectives are interpreted at the practitioner level and has implications for public policy makers in BC and abroad.

Text

2024-10-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89429

Forestry

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/