Forestry Tasmania makes good progress on FSC certificationFriday 11 Mar 2016 Forestry Tasmania has released its FSC Forest Management audit report confirming the organisation is meeting more than 90% of the indicators required for FSC certification. Forestry Tasmania’s CEO Steve Whiteley welcomed the positive progress report and said the organisation was well on the way to addressing the remaining issues.“FSC Forest Management certification is a complex process with more than 200 separate indicators, and while we have certainly made good progress in meeting the requirements, we recognise we still have some more work to do. We remain strongly committed to achieving FSC certification and our people should be commended for their ongoing work and focus to implement the changes necessary to achieve it.” Mr Whiteley said Forestry Tasmania’s Board had recognised the significant public interest in Forestry Tasmania’s FSC certification journey and had therefore taken the progressive step of releasing the full audit report. FSC audit reports are typically only made publicly available once certification is achieved, however in the interests of openness and transparency we want our stakeholders to be fully informed about the process we are undertaking”. As anticipated, the media led this week with the story “Forestry Tasmania fails to gain crucial certification to aid overseas marketing” going on in the coverage to point out that “ Auditors have found Forestry Tasmania (FT) has failed on 10 key criteria in its attempt to gain crucial Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification”. While Forestry Tasmania has not achieved certification in its first attempt, FSC Australia CEO Adam Beaumont said the state-owned forest manager had now been provided with a detailed roadmap for improvement. “It’s rare that forest managers the size and complexity of Forestry Tasmania achieve full forest management certification on their first attempt. This is reflected in the length of the process to date” Beaumont said. “But by putting their operations under the microscope of independent auditors they now know what’s required to meet the standard. This is really a great example of the FSC system at work.” “Forestry Tasmania should be commended for their commitment to improving their forestry practices in line with the FSC’s rigorous standards, while other natural and plantation forest managers around Australia are yet to even begin their FSC journey” said Mr Beaumont. In Australia, 14 forest managers have successfully achieved voluntary full FSC certification. Vic Forests and the WA Forest Products Commission are the only other state-owned forest managers that have publicly committed to pursue FSC certification. |
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