2007 Forest Audit

The 2007 audit is the fifth independent environmental audit of timber production on public land in Victoria.  Forty three coupes in the Central, Snowy and Cann River (OAs) and the Horsham and Midlands Forest Management Areas (FMAs) were audited in the field:

• 29 coupes after harvesting
• 12 active coupes audited during harvest
• 3 road line coupes, totalling 4.8 kilometres
• 2 from within Melbourne’s water supply catchments
• 2 domestic firewood coupes.

Two additional coupes were unable to be audited due to high winds and flooding in these areas at the time of audit.

The audit report shows an average coupe score of 94 per cent, which has risen from 87 per cent achieved in the first audit in 2003. The auditor observed a high level of compliance in a range of focus areas and a number of positive practices in the field. 

An office based audit of the regeneration of 25 additional coupes and harvesting rates within the Thompson, Tarago, Bunyip and Yarra Tributaries water supply catchments were also undertaken. The auditor found that documentation relating to regeneration processes was 81 per cent compliant, with 12 coupes (48 per cent) fully compliant.
The auditor made recommendations concerning the methodology for identification of rainforest, standards to be applied in domestic firewood coupes and procedures concerning regeneration.

The 2007 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, 3470 KB or 3.47 MB).

Coupe assessment

The auditor selected 45 coupes, representing about 10 per cent of coupes harvested in the 2006–07 season.

The audit criteria are based on the requirements contained within the Code of Forest Practices for Timber Production (Revision No. 2 November 1996). Other documents referred to by the code, and which were also assessed, included:

• DSE’s Statewide management procedures and utilisation procedures
• VicForest’s utilisation procedures
• forest coupe plan
• relevant sections of the wood utilisation plan and timber release plan, and
• forest management plans.

Field audits include data from field measurements, observed physical aspects in the coupes site interviews from forest managers and assessment of records.  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 is 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 2007 was based on that developed by the auditor for the first audit in 2003 and used in subsequent annual audits.

For the 2007 audit the following aspects of the methodology were reviewed:

• the audit workbook
• the regeneration assessment workbook
• 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 2007 Environmental Audit of Timber Production on Public Land (Adobe PDF file, 486KB) that contains the auditor's workbook and description of assessments taken during the audit.
• the environmental impact assessment method is unchanged from that used in the 2006 audit program and is detailed in Appendix H of the 2006 Forest Audit report. (Adobe PDF file, 3317KB or 3.3MB)
• the workbook (Adobe PDF file, 52KB) used by the auditor to assess compliance with the regeneration elements of the Code of Forest Practice.

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