What does forest management plan, or ‘FMP’, mean to you? Surely forests have managed themselves quite well for the past 400 million years?
Well, in the context of carbon farming, a forest management plan explains how you’ll run your project to comply with the ACCU Scheme’s Plantation Forestry Methodology.
FMPs need to include:
- A permanence plan, explaining how you’ll keep your plantation alive and compliant for the 25 or 100 year permanence period to protect the carbon sequestered by your project
- Records and evidence of all the management actions undertaken for the current rotation and planned actions for the remainder of your project
- Details of any changes to the management regime since the previous reporting period
- Information about any growth interruptions (natural or otherwise) that have occurred
- Details about how your project is modelled in the Australian Government’s FullCAM tool (check out our FullCAM explainer here)
Throughout the project, you’ll need to update the FMP:
- Before each offsets report
- If you’re planning to change the management regime
- When you’ve implemented a management action
- When a disturbance event (e.g. a fire or drought) has occurred
Plantation projects registered under Schedules 2, 3 and 4 have additional FMP requirements, which you can read in detail here.
The FMP must be reviewed and signed off by a ‘qualified and independent person’ – you can search for a local Registered Forestry Professional at the Forestry Australia website.
When your FMP will need to be submitted depends on the Schedule under which your project is registered:
Source: Clean Energy Regulator
The CFF has assisted many plantation operators and landholders to develop forest management plans for their projects. For help with your project, or to find out whether a plantation project would work for your property, contact us today.
