2005 Forest Audit

The 2005 audit was the third environmental audit of timber production on public land undertaken in Victoria.

In total, 45 coupes in the Bendigo, Central Highlands, Central Gippsland and East Gippsland Forest Management Areas (FMAs) were assessed, including:

• 31 completed coupes
• ten active coupes assessed prior to completion of harvesting
• seven coupes from within State forest that are part of Melbourne's water supply catchments and
• four road line coupes, totalling up to 6 kilometres of roads.

In addition, an office-based assessment of the steps taken to regenerate 25 coupes harvested in the 2000–01 financial year was undertaken; and harvesting rates within the Thompson, Yarra Tributaries and Tarago catchments assessed against nominated limits set by the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE).

The 2005 Environmental Audit of Timber Production on Public Land report is available along with the audit methodology used.

• Download the 2005 audit program overview (Adobe PDF file, 58KB).
• Download the complete environmental audit (Adobe PDF file, 4843KB or 4.8MB).

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Coupe assessment

The auditor selected 45 coupes, representing approximately 9 per cent of coupe harvested in the 2004–05 season.

The audit criteria are based on the requirements contained within the Code of Forest Practices for Timber Production. Other documents referred to by the code, and which were also assessed, included:

• Statewide management procedures and utilisation procedures
• forest coupe plan
• relevant sections of the wood utilisation plan, and
• forest management plans.

In undertaking the audit, evidence is collected both in the field and in the office that enable assessment against the audit criteria. The audit team reviews documentation, interviews DSE and VicForests officers, undertakes field measurements and observe physical aspects in the coupe.

In documenting the audit, a scoring system is used to note compliance or non-compliance against all relevant guidelines within the code (in total around 170). In some cases part compliance may be noted, for example where a guideline has several steps to be undertaken to achieve full compliance and not all steps were completed.

The auditor also undertook an environmental impact assessment (Adobe PDF file, 36KB) where instances of non-compliance were found that could lead to a direct environmental impact. The field assessment is designed to occur at regular times during the year, generally between April and June.

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Methodology

The audit methodology was designed to be risk-based, repeatable and provide for comparison of audited harvesting areas across the State within a given year. The audit methodology used in 2005 is largely based on that developed by the auditor in 2004.

Key changes to the methodology were:

• minor amendments to audit criteria within the auditors' workbook (for example, recognise the establishment of VicForests)
• minor changes to the environmental impact assessment (for example, increased asset weighting for habitat trees)
• introduction of the regeneration audit workbook to allow for an office-based audit of the steps taken to regenerate 25 coupes completed in the 2000–01 financial year.

The following background information is available:

• the methodology for the 2005 Environmental Audit of Timber Production on Public Land (Adobe PDF File, 363KB) that contains the auditor's workbook and description of assessments taken during the audit
• the environmental impact assessment tool (Adobe PDF File, 50KB), used to rate the impact on a non-compliance with the code on the environment
• the workbook (Adobe PDF File, 118KB) used by the auditor to assess compliance with the regeneration elements of the Code of Forest Practice.

The methodology used to determine compliance with nominated harvesting rates in State forest catchments that supply water to Melbourne is detailed in appendix J of the 2005 Forest Audit report (Adobe PDF File, 4843KB or 4.8MB).

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