Can’t Say it Better Myself

I got these recent studies about the effectiveness of good forest management.  I usually don’t just do cut and paste, but I wanted to publish these from foreign landowners association.

New Forest Products Lab Report Confirms FLA Position

                           One of the tag lines on our new web site, and one that FLA CEO Scott Jones uses often in his presentations is, “In order to sustain forests, we must sustain the people who own them”. Another is “healthy markets make healthy forests”.

Both of these facts were confirmed loud and clear in a recent Forest Products Laboratory report, Sustainable Development in the Forest Products Industry. Researchers state that “The historical data we examined in this study support the hypothesis that an economically vibrant industrial forest products sector has been key to forest policies and forestry practices that support sustainable timber supply and demand”.

Based on their observations, the authors further conclude that the future direction of forest products technology can have a large influence on sustainability of forests and forest management.

“If future technology and wood demands generate sufficiently high values for timber as a raw material, then historical experience suggests that forests and forest management will thrive; if the value of timber is cheapened, however, through low-value use or insufficient forest product technology development, then forests may face significant challenges regarding their future sustainability.”

The full report can be accessed at the following link  www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documents/newsline/newsline-2011-3


            New Bio-energy Report Confirms Working Forests Better Than Carbon Neutral

A new report from Dovetail Partners concludes “A comprehensive review of research conducted over the past decade reveals convergence in findings that sustainably managed forests can be ‘better than carbon neutral,’ yielding a range of useful products, including energy, while at the same time providing significant carbon storage and emission reduction benefits.”

The report states that “Over 847 billion cubic feet of timber have been harvested from U.S. forests in the past sixty years. This harvest volume is equivalent to a pile of wood measuring 2 miles x 2 miles x 7,600 feet high. Put another way, this is enough wood to create a square foot stack that would reach to the moon and back 334 times! During this same time period, the volume of wood within America’s forests increased by more than 50 percent.”

This and other interesting data prove that long-term sustainability is being achieved. This “must read” report from Dovetail Partners can be viewed at: http://www.dovetailinc.org/content/dovetail-partners-releases-new-report-bioenergy