2006 Forest Audit

The 2006 audit is the fourth independent environmental audit of timber production on public land undertaken in Victoria.

In total, 45 coupes in the Latrobe, North and Tambo Operational Areas (OAs) and the Otways and Mid Murray Forest Management Areas (FMAs) were assessed of which:

• 33 were coupes audited after completion of harvesting
• 9 were active coupes audited before completion of harvesting
• 3 were road line coupes, totalling up to 5.4 kilometres of roads.

Of these 45 coupes, six were also coupes from within State forest that are part of Melbourne's water supply catchments.

In addition, an office-based assessment of the steps taken to regenerate 25 coupes harvested in the 2002–03 financial year was undertaken; and harvesting rates within the Thompson, Tarago, Bunyip and Yarra Tributaries water supply catchments were assessed against nominated limits set by the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE).

The 2006 Environmental Audit of Timber Production on Public Land report is available along with the audit methodology used.

• Download the complete environmental audit (Adobe PDF file, 3317KB or 3.3MB).

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Coupe assessment

The auditor selected 45 coupes, representing about ten per cent of coupes harvested in the 2005–06 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 timber release plan, and
• forest management plans.

In undertaking the audit, evidence is collected both in the field and in the office to enable assessment against the audit criteria. The audit team review documentation, interview DSE and VicForests officers, undertake field measurements and observe physical aspects in the coupes. The field assessment is designed to occur at regular times during the year, generally between April and June.

In documenting the audit results, 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 where instances of non-compliance were found that could lead to a direct environmental impact.

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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 methodology used in 2006 is based on that developed by the auditor in first audit in 2003 and in subsequent annual audits.

For the 2006 audit the following aspects of the methodology were reviewed:

• the audit workbook
• the regeneration assessment workbook and methodology
• applicability and consistency of the Environmental Impact Assesment (EIA) Tool
• the assessment of areas harvested within Melbourne’s forested water supply catchments against harvest limits.

The following background information is available:

• the methodology for the 2006 Environmental Audit of Timber Production on Public Land (Adobe PDF file, 251KB) that contains the auditor's workbook and description of assessments taken during the audit
• the environmental impact assessment method and review is detailed in Appendix H of the 2006 Forest Audit report. (Adobe PDF File, 3317KB or 3.3MB)
• the workbook (Adobe PDF file, 37KB) used by the auditor to assess compliance with the regeneration elements of the Code of Forest Practice.

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