That person with his forestry must have went to school with some of my people here in good ole Florida. I hit a brick wall with Florida DOF and one of the nice water management districts. 
I was trying to get a lease on pristine pine and palmetto woods and was told by two different biologists that they had concerns the bees might compete with the native pollinators and cause endangered plants on the locations to not get pollinated?. I reasoned that it would seem to be a plus to have extra pollinators to help the cause, but they just blew me off. 
 
It amazes me the thought processes of some that are educated beyond there intelligence and the things we have to endure from the government we put in place. At the time I didn't have time to look for studies to argue the native pollinators might need help from bees  , so I wrote that plan off.
 
I never ran into your dilemma and hope I don't . That sounds like a case of busy work from a public leach dept that needed to justify jobs in that division and look like there saving the forest from evil beekeepers spreading junk. 		 	   		  
             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm