The Australian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is to start auditing timber harvests in the East Gippsland region of the state of Victoria for the first time.
The EPA said it is important that an independent organisation collected the information as it can check the timber companies are following the code of practice.
The East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement was Australia’s first , signed on February 3 1997.
Under the RFA, nearly half the region’s 1.2 million hectares of woodland is set aside from logging in a “comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) reserve system”. The RFA is claimed to protect at least 15 % of biodiversity, 60 % of old growth forest and 90% of high quality wilderness.
