Victoria - The Forest Practices Board will audit the forest planning and practices of Tanizul Timber Ltd. in Tree Farm Licence 42. The operating area for this licence is 56 kilometres northwest of Fort St. James, along the north end of Stuart Lake.

This is a limited-scope audit that will look at construction, maintenance and deactivation of roads, timber harvesting and 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 determine government and forest company compliance with the Forest Practices Code. The Tanizul Tree Farm Licence was selected randomly, not on the basis of location or level of performance.

The five-member audit team of forestry, engineering and audit professionals will be in the licence area next week to do office and field examinations of the area's timber harvest areas and hundreds of kilometres of 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 will undertake nine compliance audits in 2000. To date, the board has audited 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 BC'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.