SCA admits felling mistakes in FSC-certified forests

SCA says it will dedicate more resources to planning in its felling operations after a Swedish conservation group claimed the company had violated the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management standard in four areas.

SCA said it had evaluated the four forest tracts flagged up by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and confirmed that “mistakes have occurred and that is not acceptable”.

But the company said the mistakes were compensated to a great degree by the setting aside of adjacent forests and by active measures, such as nature conservation burning.

“We will immediately increase our resources for nature conservation planning and we will give priority to areas that will be subject to felling during the coming year,” SCA said in a statement.

“FSC’s forest management standard coincides fully with our own nature conservation objectives and it is our ambition to fulfill them, not only most of the time, but everywhere and on all occasions.”

SCA introduced an action programme after an environmental audit in 2007 in which it was criticised for lacking nature consideration