Victoria - The Forest Practices Board will audit the forest planning and practices on Forest Licence A16827 held by West Fraser Mills Ltd.

The operating areas for this licence are in the northern and southern parts of the Morice timber supply area, which surround Houston, B.C. The licence is co-managed by West Fraser and the Houston Forest Products Co., which is a joint venture between West Fraser and Weldwood of Canada Ltd.

This is a limited-scope audit that will look at construction, maintenance and deactivation of roads; timber harvesting; and associated operational planning in order to determine levels of compliance with the Forest Practices Code.

The Forest Practices Board is required to carry out periodic independent audits to see if government and forest companies are complying with the Forest Practices Code. This licence was chosen randomly, not on the basis of location or level of performance. The six-member audit team of forestry, engineering and audit professionals will be in the Morice Forest District during the next three weeks to do office and field examinations of the licence's timber harvest areas and logging roads.

Once the field work is done, the audit team will report its findings to the members of the Forest Practices Board. Any party that may be adversely affected by the audit findings must be given a chance to respond before the board prepares its final report and recommendations for release to the public and the government.

The board is undertaking 10 compliance audits this year. To date, the board has completed audits of 25 forest companies and Ministry of Forests small business forest enterprise programs. Ten were clean audits, meaning the forest planning and practices met code requirements in all significant respects. Fifteen were qualified audits, meaning that there was some significant non-compliance with the code. Most non-compliance was related to logging practices near streams and the construction, maintenance and deactivation of logging roads.

The Forest Practices Board is B.C.'s independent watchdog for sound forest practices. The board reports to the public and to government about compliance with the Forest Practices Code and the achievement of its intent.