Forest Certification Scheme 

Various independent FSC-accredited certification bodies in more than 30 countries.

PIT Tagging (RFID) GPS units, GIS software

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Forest

To promote sustainable forest management by forest certification. Forest certification is the process of inspecting particular forests or woodland to see if they are being managed according to an agreed set of strict ecological, economic and social criteria or standards. Certification requires careful documentation and record keeping, including files related to stock inventories and inspections, transport documentation, and retail and distribution records. To develop tools to add to these extensive databases and to manage these records more effectively.

A component of forest certification is product or chain-of-custody (CoC) verification. CoC is the process through which the source of a timber product is verified. In order to qualify for the FSC trademark, timber products must be traceable from the forest through all the steps in the production process until they reach the end user. The FSC provides producers with international labelling standards to facilitate this process. In the past wood labelling involved painting or chiselling company information and ID numbers onto a tree, or on one or both ends of a log. Such labels are commonly used in conjunction with paper records on tree or log species, dimensions and volume. Two developments have been made:
• Bar-coded label – the data can be instantly read by a handheld scanner, stored electronically and transferred to a computer for analyses of stock inventories.
• Radio frequency identification labels (RFID) - transceivers that receive and transmit data by radio signals. A handheld scanner can instruct any RFID label to transmit its data through a coded signal. The scanner may then be plugged into a computer and the data downloaded for further analysis.

GPS is also used in forest inventories to delineate the boundaries of forested areas and to determine field locations, but can also be used to track shipments of logs and timber products and to provide estimated delivery times.

FSC has set up a hotline to answer questions by phone and has created a number of web-based forums so that stakeholders can more easily exchange information, regarding the Council’s policies, consultations and other issues related to forest management.

By using RFID systems for log tracking the data signals can be read rapidly, remotely and under difficult conditions. Labels can store a large amount of data with a high level of security – they are difficult to counterfeit or tamper with. The tags come in a variety of forms, including plastic ‘smart’ cards and tiny injectable transponders.

Radio frequencies vary from country to country, so there are currently no internationally standardised RFID technologies. RFID labels are still too expensive for labelling individual logs and processed bundles of wood.

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