On January 30, 2009, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI), Inc. Inc. released the first revised draft of the SFI® 2010-2014 Standard.
SFI third-party certification supports responsible forestry practices across North America through a standard based on principles that promote sustainable forest management, including measures to protect water quality, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, species at risk, and forests with exceptional conservation value. To be certified, forest operations must be audited against the current SFI Standard, which is developed through an open public process every five years. This is the third full review – it began in June 2008 and will lead to the SFI 2010-2014 Standard, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2010.
This draft was created based on the input from the first open public comment period in 2008. Upon the release of the revised draft Standard, SFI Inc. is launching a second, 30-day open public comment period. Anyone who wishes to provide comments and suggestions on the Standard is urged to do so. SFI Inc. has elected to use a web-based survey to collect and compile the comments.
The deadline for submitting comments is March 2, 2009.
At the bottom of this email is a link to the survey and a password that allows you to access the survey. These are unique to you and allow you to save your work and re-enter the survey at anytime. If you share this information, then you no longer have sole access to the survey with that information. It is important that you coordinate with others within your organization to avoid duplication of efforts. If you commented on the SFI 2005-2009 Standard during the first comment period in 2008, your login information has not changed.
To facilitate your review, you can download changes to the draft standard in any of the following formats: the PDF of the new draft SFI 2010-2014 Standard, the PDF of the strikeout version with changes to the SFI 2005-2009 Standard (this document shows the changes made to the Standard in track changes based on public comments), and the PDF of the summary of changes to the SFI Standard. The easiest way to comment would be to formulate your comments ahead of time, and then log into the survey, choose the sections you would like to comment on, and then input your comments into the appropriate fields of the online survey. Full instructions for submitting comments are in the PDF of the survey. All respondents are strongly urged to use the web-based format. Paper submissions will also be accepted as long as they are organized in the same manner as the online survey.
In addition to the open public comment period, SFI Inc. is hosting seven regional workshops; open to all stakeholders, to provide input and comments on the new draft Standard. The workshop schedule is:
February 18 in Sacramento, CaliforniaFebruary 19 in Vancouver, British ColumbiaMarch 3 in Minneapolis, MinnesotaMarch 26 in Charleston, South CarolinaApril 2 in Little Rock, ArkansasApril 7 in Portland, MaineApril 16 in Montreal, Quebec
Please visit our website: www.sfiprogram.org for more information.
