REGIONAL— A nationally-based nonprofit advocacy group has filed a formal complaint alleging that the Forest Stewardship Council and its auditing affiliate improperly certified wood harvested from forests managed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The complaint, filed by Public Employees for Professional Responsibility, or PEER, cites mounting evidence of violations of law, federal funding holdbacks, and retaliation against DNR employees who speak up with their concerns.
PEER filed the complaint April 2 with both the Forest Stewardship Council and its certifying body, Bureau Veritas, asking that the DNR’s certification be suspended pending a thorough investigation. The complaint, authored by PEER attorney Chandra Rosenthal and law clerk Sean Hilzendeger, argues the certification process was riddled with procedural irregularities and that auditors ignored a series of damning state and federal reports documenting the DNR’s forest management shortcomings, particularly its excessive harvesting of timber from wildlife management areas. The Timberjay has reported on the DNR’s management of wildlife management areas, or WMAs, several times in recent years, as the agency’s actions led to cutoffs of federal funding for failure to abide by federal law. Those issues, which continued into 2025, were not addressed by the most recent audit, according to the complaint.
“The certification of Minnesota DNR was issued without adequate audit, transparency, or consideration of significant legal, environmental, and stakeholder concerns,” states the complaint.
A certificate before
the audit
At the heart of PEER’s complaint is a timeline that the organization says undermines the credibility of the entire certification process.
The auditors issued the state’s 2025 certificate of compliance on Oct. 29, 2025, yet auditors hired by Bureau Veritas did not come to Minnesota for the required field audit until early December, more than a month after it had already issued the certificate. The audit’s final report wasn’t issued until Jan. 6 of this year.
“This sequence raises concerns about the integrity of the certification process, suggesting that it was a mere formality rather than a rigorous review,” states PEER in its complaint.
A longtime DNR wildlife biologist, based in northcentral Minnesota, with knowledge of the process went further, calling it “insane.” “They were here for the audit in December, yet they had already issued the certificate back in October,” he said. “It’s outrageous.”
If anything, Bureau Veritas might have been expected to be more thorough than usual last year, since it was the organization’s first time auditing the DNR’s forest management. And 2025 was a significant year for the DNR’s timber harvesting program, with the issuance of two major reports, including a critical one from the Legislative Auditor’s office as well as a more mixed one by the Interior Department Inspector General that confirmed some of the concerns of critics of the agency’s forest management on WMAs, while concluding that no laws were broken.
Yet, according to two DNR wildlife biologists who spoke to the Timberjay for this story, the auditors from Bureau Veritas were entirely unaware of the two investigative reports. “That’s not just sloppy, it’s negligence,” said one of the biologists.
Both biologists who spoke to the Timberjay said field audits are typically done in late summer or fall, after which the auditors have up to 90 days to issue their reports. That timeline normally allowed the auditors to finish their report before the end of the year, which provided the basis for the certifying entity to decide whether to approve certification for the coming year.
One of the DNR biologists, Tim Quincer, who retired late last year, had emailed some of his concerns to the Bureau Veritas auditors. Either Quincer, or his supervisor Ted Dick, had long been involved in the annual field audits, but this year neither was invited to take part in the process.
But with the certification already issued weeks prior to the field audit, Quincer said the auditors didn’t seem interested in what he had to say and none of the concerns made it into the final report.
Quincer noted that auditors have several ways to push land managers to improve their practices short of pulling certification. Auditors can and routinely do issue corrective action requests, or CARs, that provide a land management entity a period of time to correct their actions to better comply with harvest standards. Those can include minor CARs, which typically come with a year-long period for correction, or major CARs, which are for more serious issues that must typically be corrected in a matter of months. But the issues raised by wildlife officials, some of which had previously led to the cutoff of $22 million in federal funding, never rated even a minor CAR, much to Quincer’s chagrin.
Quincer said the auditors promised to look into the issues he raised in their 2026 audit, but he notes that the track record isn’t encouraging. Despite input from DNR staff, the concerns were not addressed in the 2024 audit and had been downplayed in a 2023 audit report that accepted the assurances of DNR forestry officials that the agency would work to comply with the federal rules in the future. DNR wildlife managers contend that the auditors never followed up to see if the DNR actually lived up to its promises.
PEER officials, in their complaint, note that they raised similar concerns with auditors in Minnesota during the field audit back in December. Three months later, PEER received a response from Bureau Veritas informing them that their concerns had been reviewed and would be considered as part of the 2026 audit.
Retaliation alleged
For the issues to be ignored once again in the 2025 report was frustrating to many wildlife officials within the agency. But for the most part, wildlife managers within the agency were reluctant to speak out too much about their concerns.
Those who did, like Ted Dick, soon found themselves shut out of the conversation when it came to forest management. Dick, based in Grand Rapids, who was originally hired as the DNR’s ruffed grouse coordinator and is an avid grouse hunter himself, said he fully understands the value of forest management and younger forests. But as he watched the percentage of older aspen forests decline sharply over the past ten years, he began objecting to the impacts on other forms of wildlife. He notes that as older aspen stands disappear, and the DNR begins to manage those lands on 40-50-year rotations, the larger aspen, which provide cavities for a wide range of wildlife, vanish as well.
But the more he spoke out about his concerns, it seemed, the less that higher-ups in the agency wanted to hear from him. Soon he found himself largely on the outside looking in, as the agency hired others to take over aspects of his job. For years, Dick had been a part of internal planning sessions on timber management and he was part of the team that met with certification auditors when they arrived each year for field reviews. But when the auditors came to Grand Rapids last December, Dick wasn’t invited to meet with them.
“I’ve got almost nothing left of my position description,” said Dick, who has officially been designated a whistleblower. “I’ve experienced as much retaliation on you can get without being fired,” he said.
The consequences haven’t been limited to his work life. He said Grand Rapids is a small community and a timber town and his willingness to speak up hasn’t been appreciated by many in town. He said he’s lost sleep and lost friends for taking a stand on the issue. “You see the looks at the gas station,” he said.
DNR responds
The DNR took issue with the specifics of PEER’s complaint as well as similar criticism from the organization CURE.
“The DNR is disappointed in PEER’s and CURE’s continued pattern of misrepresentation on the topic and irresponsible, redundant claims,” said a DNR spokesperson. “At no time have DNR’s policies or procedures placed timber or other values above wildlife values when managing WMAs, nor has any independent audit found that this occurred. The DNR remains committed to its work to ensure forest management on public lands is aligned with federal and state statutory requirements and the multitude of benefits to wildlife, natural resources and the state.”
Forest certifications being questioned
The PEER complaint comes at a time when forest certification organizations across North America are coming under increased scrutiny from critics who view the certificates issued by these organizations to be little more than “greenwashing,” designed to make industry look environmentally conscious when, in reality, management practices have changed little.
A recent investigation by the Reuters news organization of forest management practices in Canada raised similar questions about the validity of certification of forests there.
Forest certification became an important stamp-of-approval back in the 1990s as public concern about forest management grew. Major retailers demanded wood products they sold in their stores be certified as sustainably harvested and many companies that manufacture products, from 2x4s to toilet paper, responded by only accepting certified wood in their supply chains. Since 2005, the DNR has achieved certification from the two largest certifying agencies, the Forest Stewardship Council, or FSC, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, on about 4.96 million acres of forestland under its management, making it the largest certified land manager in the country. That allows the DNR to command a premium price for the timber under its control.
The Timberjay reached out to Bureau Veritas for comment on this story. The organization had not responded as of presstime.