What is certification?
Certification means that the management of the Woodland Trust's woods is regularly checked by independent inspectors. They check that we are looking after our woods to a certain minimum standard. This means we can say our woods are well and sustainably managed.
The ‘gold standard’ for managing woodlands sustainably and the only scheme endorsed by us, Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends of the Earth is that of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). All our woodlands have been certified as sustainably managed by the FSC since 1999. In fact, we were the first large landowner in the UK to have all our woods certified.
That our woods are certified as sustainably or well-managed is easy for us to say but what lies behind such a statement and how does this impact on what we do and how we go about managing our woods?
What does an FSC audit entail?
Every year, the Soil Association, which is a recognised name amongst many discerning consumers, quite literally inspect (or audit) a sample of our woods.
How long do they take?
The field (wood!) visits for a typical audit would take about a week to complete during which a wide cross section of woods are visited. The sample is completely random so we don’t know where they will go - over the course of the week they could take in the smallest planting site to nationally important Nature Reserves, woods with strong community involvement and/or busy harvesting sites.
The auditors may decide to spend a whole day with one particular woodland officer whose local knowledge is invaluable in demonstrating that we as an organisation are aware and take account of locally and nationally important issues, such as demand for access, rare or threatened species, our own internal policies and that we comply with all legal requirements, such as felling licences and health & safety legislation.
What do we have to show?
In practice, with a new woodland creation site we would have to demonstrate that the design of the planting or natural regeneration takes into account locally important environmental, historical and cultural features, such as watercourses and popular viewpoints. If planted we would have to provide evidence of where the seedlings came from with a preference for local seed sources. The young trees should be protected in some form from browsing or grazing damage and if herbicides are necessary, that only those approved products on our very restricted list are used. They will look for written evidence that our sites are regularly monitored for any 'key features' identified for the site, tree health and regular site safety inspections to ensure the visiting public stay safe.
In a mature woodland, especially a site such as a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), the audits become much more challenging as there are usually many more aspects the woodland officer needs to consider.
We have a management plan in place for each of our 1,000+ woods and the auditors will check these plans to ensure that what we say will happen over the first five years and over the following 15 years is in agreement with what they are seeing on the ground and that these plans are regularly reviewed in light of experience or new survey data.
If a harvesting operation is underway such as in the restoration of a Planted Ancient Woodland Site (PAWS), they will want to ensure that the job is covered by a legal contract specifying any restrictions in the timing of work (eg during bird nesting season) or in some cases daily working times near urban areas (eg for timber lorry movements) to minimise noise disturbance or impacting on the local school run! If trees are being felled, they will verify that no over cutting is taking place, something the woodland officers have to demonstrate via their on-going contract monitoring records.
Occasionally, they delve into great detail such as checking that chainsaw operators are using biodegradable chain soil (one of our standard conditions), have spillage kits readily accessible if machinery is used, check that the fuelling sites are suitably located and that the operators are well trained for the task and wearing the appropriate safety equipment. For any significant works, our woodland officers always prepare a site specific environmental impact assessment and this will be checked too.
These audits are very intense and stressful times for our woodland officers but it is with great credit to their combined efforts that we have had many squeaky clean results for several years running, something most other certified woodland owners cannot boast about.