Victoria - The Forest Practices Board will audit the forest planning and practices of Forest Licence A20017, held by Weldwood of Canada Ltd. The operating area for this licence is located in the Williams Lake timber supply area, between 150 Mile House and McCleese Lake and bordered on the east by Likely and Horsefly.

This is a limited scope audit that will examine construction, maintenance and deactivation of roads as well as timber harvesting activities 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 Weldwood licence was chosen randomly, not on the basis of location or level of performance.

The five-member audit team will be in the licence area over the next several weeks to perform office and field examinations of the area's timber harvest areas and hundred's of kilometers of logging roads.

Once the field work has been completed, the audit team will provide a report on the findings to the members of the Forest Practices Board. Any party that may be adversely affected by the audit findings must be given an opportunity to respond before the board prepares its final report and recommendations and releases it to the public and the government.

The board will undertake nine compliance audits in 2000. To date, the board has completed 25 audits of 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.