In 2007 and 2008 John led a team of tenure experts from BC to the newly independent nation of Montenegro, in south eastern Europe. The team helped to design and write the legal framework the government of Montenegro would use to manage their timber resources, drawing on large and small scale models from the BC tenure system. The team conducted extensive in-country research and consultation, as well as collaborated with leading EU agencies and representatives to support the tenure reform in Montenegro.

In 2010, a Canadian company, CoastEcoTimber began to harvest the standing timber preserved beneath Lake Gatun — the reservoir created when the Panama Canal was built a century ago. In order to provide consumers with assurances of social and ecological responsibility, a chain of custody monitoring was developed to trace shipments of timber from the underwater harvesting, through the milling, manufacturing and distribution processes. Coast Eco Timber hired John to design the documented control system to demonstrate that only Forest Stewardship Council certified Controlled Wood was being exported. John helped put in place transparent set of procedures, including material handling, training and and documentation, that would confirm the source of the the logs.

With a team of international technical experts, John helped draft the legality assurance system as part of the the Liberian Voluntary Partnership Agreement with the European Union. The objective of this project, as part of the Forestry Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, is to put in place the procedures and traceability system to demonstrate that all logs exported are legally sourced. John’s focus within this project was to establish legal procedures for issuing of concessions, wildlife management, rare and endangered species and chain of custody. This project included time in Monrovia consulting with Liberian Forestry Development Agency staff, representatives of civil society organizations and technical forestry organizations in Liberia.