Following its thumbs down rating in the 2018 Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) audit, VicForests has embarked on a 'targeted program  to address issues raised in the report and prepare for a further evaluation against FSC Controlled Wood standard in 2020' - its FSC2020 project.

As part of its campaign to achieve FSC accreditation VF embarked on a well resourced stakeholder consultation around two main documents, one on Harvesting and Regeneration Systems and the other on High Conservation Value Management Systems.The first public version of these papers was released in February 2019. 

RFPG responsed in late April regarding the HRS document and regarding the HCV strategy and again in late June. It our June 30 submission to the second round of consultation around these papers RFPG highlighted VF's responsibility for landscape level assessment and protection and urged assessment methodologies which take a deep view of ecosystem health as well as protecting endangered species.

The third iteration of these strategy papers emerged in mid-August 2019. This round included its revised High Conservation Values (HCV) strategy, its Harvesting and Regeneration strategy (HRS) and the report of an assessment of HCVs in state forests in eastern Victoria.

We are currently developing our response to these supposedly ‘final’ documents with a view to demonstrating their deep flaws to the FSC auditors, SCS Global, whose work will soon commence.

This page published originally 30 June 2019, revised 27 Aug 2019, and revised again 16 Sept 2019.