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Findings: Bridges

Findings: Bridges Rules governing watercourse crossings were the most poorly adhered to area of the Standard Logging Agreements, Plans, or the Code of Practice. Only major waterways had any significant attempts made for sturdy bridge construction. Even these were poorly designed and uniformly collapsed soon after the log extraction process had been completed from any of the surveyed logging coupes.

The Standard Logging Agreement states:

"All bridges along main roads and access roads to villages shall be timber decked. Either a stockpile of suitable logs stacked to air-dry, or a stand of trees of the durable species shall be left adjacent to each bridge for future maintenance."
(SLA, Clause 13)

In no instance was this observed in the study area. No log stockpiles were located near these major bridge structures. Most, if not all, Vitex coffasus (a common bridge timber in the study area) of appropriate size in close proximity to the bridges had been utilised in bridge and culvert construction and many of these logs were seen in the flood debris downstream of the bridges from previous bridge collapses or other flood damage.

All failed bridge structures (areas where logging had been completed within the previous two months) will require total reconstruction. This should not be the case in areas managed for sustainable forest management. These bridges should remain intact and be readily brought back into service for subsequent harvesting operations. This is far from the case with the bridges built on Isabel by ITC.