Retailers’ growing demand for chain-of-custody certified products has succeeded in driving a stake in the U.S. wood supply chain. In so doing, it has collided with a fundamental reality: the U.S. is unique in the global forestry sector with over 10 million small private landowners—“Family Forest Owners”—controlling close to 58% of the timberland acreage and representing 61% of the harvest.
How can state forestry agencies contribute to wood supply chain operation?
FRA and the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) organized a Forum at FRA’s September Board meeting to enable some give-and-take on how well state forestry agencies are able to connect with the challenges mills and loggers face in wood supply management.
How Did We Get to this Point, And What’s Next?
On September 6, 2006, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center filed a lawsuit, NEDC v. Brown, alleging that the defendants’ failure to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Permit (NPDES) for logging roads constructed on Oregon’s Tillamook State Forest constituted a violation of the Clean Water Act. The six defendants—the Oregon State Forester, the Oregon Board of Forestry, and four timber purchasers—obtained a dismissal of the complaint from the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon six months later. Oregon Forest Industries Council, American Forest & Paper Association and Tillamook County had intervened in the case to assist in the defense.
William B. Stuart & Laura A. Grace - Department of Forestry Mississippi State University
The Logging Cost Index is a 20-year long study gathering the actual costs and productivity of a stable set of logging contractors in the Eastern United States, begun at Virginia Tech and now housed at Mississippi State, with support from the Wood Supply Research Institute.
FRA and our partner, the Arkansas Timber Producers Association, are well into production of the third In-Woods Expo, a three-day world-class logging and forestry demo on a Weyerhaeuser forest near Hot Springs, Arkansas. Reserve the dates now: May 19-21 (Thursday through Saturday) to attend the largest live logging demo in the United States.