The Forestry Forum

Here is a website that gives new briefs on log and lumber exports, etc. from around the world:

http://www.hardwoodmarkets.com/site/news/

It seems that Russia is becoming one of the world's leading hardwood log exporter with 10.3 million cubic meters or 1.74 billion board feet (Scribner-short log, 10" DIB- 168.9 bf/cubic meter) for the first 9 months of 2005. With a total reported value of $500 million dollars, that comes out to about $287 per thousand in US dollars. Also, if you include the unreported or stolen logs into the picture (+33%) and add 25% for the last 3 months of 2005 you come up with close to 3 billion board feet of log exports in 2005

Using data from this same website, the US exported 1.82 million cubic meters of hardwood logs for the first 9 months of 2005 with a reported value of $447 million. So, we are exporting larger and higher quality logs than Russia which speaks to the quality of our forest resource.