Smartwood

[gary]

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/news/newsreleases/2009/0309-sfaudit.htm
Another site I get on is having a big debate over this. Some say it is good,others say it is not good because Greenpeace supports it. myself I don't know whether it is good or bad. I thought I would ask about it here because you are the experts on this stuff.

[Ironwood]

I will say as a Pa. resident and casual forest "observer", I do think that the state forests are at least not degradated like I see some private lands. There are stands to the east of me (about 20 miles) that I frequently drive thru and they seem to be in stable and a "not plundered state". When the Forest Service does bid out "cuts",  I think their approach has been very "hands on" in terms of administering and supervising. At least this is my assumption as I see, and hear no major complaints from ALL stake holders. I live in an area where there are a fair number of large stands of state land.


Ironwood

[Ron Wenrich]

I'm not a big supporter of land certification.  If you want to certify management, why not certify the managers?  The land is irrelevant, in most cases. 

I have yet to see any economical reason for certification.  It was supposed to give us a leg up in marketing lumber from state lands.  It was certified and can carry the Smartwood label.  But, when I ask lumber buyers if they have had any inquiries about certified lumber, I have yet to find one that has.  Apparently there isn't much demand.  From a landowner's standpoint, that is what makes or breaks a program.  Whether it pays for itself or not.

But, the state forests are a little different animal.  They are paid for with public funds, and managed with public funds.  Wouldn't it make sense to have an outside source certify that the state does a good job?  I think it does, and the certifying of the wood is just an added benefit.  It doesn't pay anything, but its still an added benefit.

As far as Greenpeace supporting it, so what?  They have a right to support whatever they want.  It doesn't mean that everything they support is demonic.  They probably support free speech.  Guess what, so do I.  And some of the public supports Greenpeace, and we get back to those public funds.  You have to remove some of the political gibberish and know that some folks just have an agenda.

For the most part, people look at a product and if they like it and the price, they buy it.  Having a Smartwood stamp may be a bonus, but I don't think it sways too many purchasing opinions one way or the other. 

If Smartwood was pushing that all lumber sold had to be certified, then I would have a problem.  So far, its a free market.

[SwampDonkey]

Well from my stand point, it's hard to tell whether certification has any market benefits since most every province has forest under certification. So, really no benefit to market once everyone gets certified. Just provides a way to justify the certification bodies and create their jobs. The certifiers were out and about doing audits this very summer on the company we were spacing/brushing for. This was on crown lands, which are all certified. Certification seems to be more on the pulp and paper side and really hasn't been targeted yet on saw mills. I guess since the production of pulp goes hand in hand with saw timber production. At least in these parts, anything that isn't saw stock goes into pulp and hog fuel. I've noticed that once a company closes a pulp mill they are done. But, if they close a sawmill and have pulp mills going they are still solvent. Seems to work that way in these parts. They can basically put those sawlogs (and they do  : ) into the mince meat grinder. If they audit on value added, chipping is value added.  :D

[Tom]

I'm just glad that those poor, undereducated Foresters in Pa. found a philanthropic group in the great city of New York that would approve of their meager efforts.  Let's see. Michigan can get the approval of Chicago, Oklahoma the approval of Dallas, Houston has New mexico covered and Arizona is lucky to have the smart folks of Los Angeles.  Yep..... there's enough big city folks to cover it.  It's a good thing too, what with the dearth of knowledge found in the wilds of the country.   Now, if they can just get those brilliant, new-age Urbanites of the Sierra Club to lend their approval to the USDA backed Forestry Industry of the North West,  we'll have it covered.  That'll be great.  We can go back to growin cabbage again, without fear of corrupting something.  Isn't college great?!?!

[madhatte]

One of the problems often overlooked when discussing various "green" certifications is chain-of-custody. 

Example:  I work in a FSC-Certified "green" forest.  This exempts us from inspection by the state, but comes at the costs of the certification itself, FSC audits, and restrictions on who we can sell timber to.  OK, so we sell a unit.  Fallers come in and do their jobs, yarding and skidding commences.  Logs are loaded onto a truck and hauled to a FSC-certified mill.  When the finished product shows up at Home Depot, it's certified "green", right?

Not necessarily.  If anywhere along the line the "green" chain-of-custody is broken, the finished product cannot be certified "green".  The weak link can be as flimsy as the log truck driver -- who only has custody of the product long enough to get it out of the woods and dropped off at the mill -- or as substantial as a mill abandoning FSC certification as cost-ineffective if they feel that're not realizing the profit from selling "green". 

My feeling is that the process needs to be standardized and streamlined so that there are neither loopholes to abuse nor custody issues to show up as bad surprises.  I don't think it'll be too long before that happens, but in the meantime, I worry.

[beenthere]

Just something about getting everybody in "lock step" that bothers me. Smacks of some countries that have tried this in the past, and either we conform or pay the consequences. Just doesn't sound good.
I see a lot of manipulation through "voluntary" programs to get land owners to manage their forests (initially just don't graze and don't burn), that over the years has become molded into programs where professional s(foresters) have to hired to write up "many-page" detailed management programs that may cover the trees, the land, the water, the wildlife, the fauna, and the insects. I see others controlling my forest in the very near future.
In the meantime, the assessment of the forest land has been jacked way up to put the fear into the forest landowner that he could lose his membership in the forest management program and have to pay back taxes as penalty.
That seems to be a sneaky way of taking land.

[madhatte]

"Don't burn"?  Ain't playin'.  Ours is a fire-dependent ecology.  No fire = no forest. 

Meanwhile

Voluntary programs are intended to exceed all local and national requirements.  In WA, if FPA req's are met, EPA/ESA/etc req's are met by default.  Voluntary programs encourage the landowner to go above and beyond these legal req's in order to protect the land for other-than-financial reasons.  At this time, FSC certification does NOT come with any fines, real or inferred, for failing to comply.  Local law may differ, but, as a rule, voluntary programs exceed all local req's in every way. 

[SwampDonkey]

Forestry companies here in NB have adopted the least restrictive of certifications. Can't really blame them. What it looks like to me from what I see on crown lands is the government has found a way to lay off some of their compliance staff in favour of a system of 3rd party audits. That way they can close up and amalgamate more ranger offices and you never see them in the woods. I was in the woods 6 months brush cutting and I never saw one on sight and only twice did I see a company brow beater on a job site. Also happened to be the year they were being audited for compliance with certification.

[John Mc]

I had heard that some of the certification agencies were considering changes to their "chain of custody" rules (or may have already made these changes?). Either FSC or SFI (or both?) were talking about not tracking the actual green certified wood, but just tracking the amount of green certified wood. That is, if a sawmill bought X board feet of certified white oak, then they could sell x board feet of white oak... it didn't matter if it was the same piece of wood or not. Does anyone know if this change actually happened or not?

On the one hand, it seems like a way to lessen the administrative cost of dealing with this. On the other hand, if I were an end user who actually cared about this, I'd probably want to know that the hardwood flooring I just put in my new McMansion was actually the certified stuff, not just whatever was working it's way through the mill at the time.

[Samuel]

As this topic is basically what I get paid to stay on top of us for our company, I am somewhat passionate about it and if you area easily offended, I will apologize right now.  Anyhow...

There are a number of Forest Certification schemes available out there but the big 3 are in order of superiority (not my opinion, based on pure facts):
1.  Forest Stewardship Council Forest Management
2. Canadian Standards Association Z-809 Sustainable Forest management
3. Sustainable Forest Initiative

Depending on where customers are located, depends intirely on the recognized certifications.  A lot of American paper companies prefer CSA and SFI because their greatest market share is in the US, and SFI is a US based scheme.  SFI and CSA have both signed agreements to recognize each other in the fibre flow to enable each to be used as a certified product.  FSC is a stand alone and has done the superior job in marketing and as such, is the most recognized label now world wide.  Does that mean that companies with FSC have the best Forest management practices- no.  FSC is about 15% based on Forest Management and the remainder on Social Forestry and involving all forest users to have a say into the process.  Is this bad.  Well technically no, however it takes it to another level that bogs the process down when one quack has a super sensitive opinion on a matter, or a first nations group refuses to meet with a forest company, that would be held against the certification process.  It does not mean that the company could not get certified, it just means that it would consume a lot of their time, dealing with these issues.

This is not to say SFI and CSA do not have a public input process, as they do.  We are currently certified under CSA, and have a public advisory committee that has an unbelievable amount of pull as far as I am concerned with a  number of forest management decisions- but not taken to the extreme that FSC requires.

Will we be getting FSC Certified?  The answer our shareholders are scared to hear, but in my professional opinion, the short answer is yes.  In 5 years it will be extremely tough to sell a bale of pulp to any of our customers with out this certification label.  Will it make the pulp any better?  No.  Have we noticed any economical benefits since becoming CSA certified?  Well the number one benefit would be that we still have customers, because they demanded it.  But most importantly, to have CSA certification, you first must implement and certify an ISO 14K Environmental Management System.  Since implementation, we have streamlined and improved many of our in-house processes and have recognized a significant gain as a result of the required continual improvement process that drives the  management system.  We as a company have less difficulty dealing with the government regulators as they are now aware that our internal process is much  more stringent than any regulatory inflictions they have and as such, we are not held up waiting for approvals etc.

Are you still with me?  Another question or statement was that certified products are not being demanded.  In the lumber industry, it is not quite as widespread as in the pulp industry but I know full well that with recent fiber procurement policy changes in such companies like Home Depot and Rona (here in Canada), they have plans to implement a large % of product to carry the FSC logo.  Believe it or not, consumers are driving this process.  There is a small mill here within our operating area that has had numerous offers from Ikea to send a rep over to from Sweden to implement an FSC management system and they would secure a long term contract with them.

As far as customers paying a premium for FSC certified material, it is difficult to to get a public statement from them indicating that they would, but most do.   There is one paper mill in Oregon that is paying a $5 per tonne premium for certified material, which would go a long way in eating some of the cost of implementing FSC.

Chain of Custody is another part of the entire certification process that sometimes gets overlooked, but without a recognized system in place, you are unable to claim and certified product.  An example of this is we have both the PEFC and FSC CoC systems in place.  The PEFC tracks our certified CSA material from our operations and/or residual sawmill suppliers and the FSC one is uniquely different.  There is actually a system within a system with this one.  Basically first of all, you do not need to have any FSC certified area to obtain this certification, but what it says that when you do have it, that the wood or fibre you supply to customers, meets the criteria of the FSC Controlled Wood standard, and that with the Coc system, you can track the wood back to the stump.  This system is complicated somewhat, but if you want to know more about it, let me know and I will email you a pwer point that I have put together to train our staff and use to how potential clients (in my consulting company) that are interested in obtaining one.

So to sum this all up- am I a believer in 3rd party certification that allows companies to tell the world that they are doing what they say they are doing- absolutely.  Does it make them a better company for doing so, or their product any better?  Not necessarily.  Would I hire Smartwood to conduct a 3rd party assessment on our organization?  Not a chance.   But that is another discussion in its own.

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions if you have any.

[Samuel]

Forestry companies here in NB have adopted the least restrictive of certifications. Can't really blame them. What it looks like to me from what I see on crown lands is the government has found a way to lay off some of their compliance staff in favour of a system of 3rd party audits. That way they can close up and amalgamate more ranger offices and you never see them in the woods. I was in the woods 6 months brush cutting and I never saw one on sight and only twice did I see a company brow beater on a job site. Also happened to be the year they were being audited for compliance with certification.

Hey Swamp-

As a past Forest Officer in both Alberta and BC I can speak a bit from experience on this statement.  I agree with you entirely that provincial jurisdictions are putting more and more onus on the companies themselves, due to staffing levels and budget cuts.  When I was setting up an inspection plan for a company, the certification schemes  that they held did not play into the picture at all.  Governments are making tough choices with what services to cut, and unfortunately, forestry compliance in one of them that seem to suffer.  With that said, with the remainder that is left to conduct inspections, they have to prioritize projects, logging shows, etc and base it on risk.  So comparing a pre-commercial thinning project to a logging show would be on opposite ends of the spectrum for me when it comes to risk.  I know that it would also come down to sites, experience ect. but initially, without these considerations, really how much devastation can brush saws cause compared to feller bunchers and skidders?

Not to downplay at all what you are doing as I know full well that brush saws can end up making a block NSR, however the liklihood is very slim I would think (although it has happened on one of my projects in BC I was looking after for MoF).

[madhatte]

Samuel -- thank you for clearing up some of the murk between the different certifying bodies and their processes.  I only understand FSC.  The others I am aware of but not familiar with. 

[Samuel]

No problem.  If you have any specific questions, feel free to message or email me directly.

[SwampDonkey]

The contractors here do all the work and bare all the risk. They measure and mark out the lot from maps made from distorted photos. The actual area could be off by 5 ha when marked on the ground. The contractor does all the quality and submits all this to the company. They don't pay 1/2 what it costs to mark out. I think they give $6/ha and it costs $20-25/ha. They are sometimes quite fussy about 2 meters, and sometimes a deduction isn't a deduction or vise versa. So the contractor bears that costs of adding in or taking out an insignificant sized area, often times smaller than the 0.04 ha limit set by DNR. Often the rates don't reflect the density and terrain out there by quite a bit sometimes. Some blocks have lots of plots land in trails and roadside plantation (areas burned and replanted). We can get those thrown out, if we find them and take down the plot number.

We are all good cutters, so there isn't any trouble with quality. Heck, I know as much or more about it than the brow beaters. Makes you laugh sometimes.  I don't mind tell'n them when their wrong. Especially when I know their densities are fudged on some blocks, because I've done thousands of density and quality plots in my day and I know what 35,000 stems/ha looks like. :D

The boys in the Christmas mountains had to call a meeting with DNR because they were in very high stem counts and the rate was too low.

[Samuel]

Sounds familiar, but the DNR guys aren't much brighter likely.

[jim king]

It sound to me like democracy , freedom and free enterprise are not doing to well up there.

[madhatte]

It sound to me like democracy , freedom and free enterprise are not doing to well up there.

I see it as quite the opposite.  If the buyer sees "green" as "value added", who am I to argue? 

[jim king]

I cannot speak for North America but here in South America the FSC and all similar types of those higher class of folks have proven to be more destructive to the forest and the people than any beetle infestation.

I had no idea that FSC was only 15% interested in forestry.  They had  a totally different story when some local representatives gave the pitch here .   Without question they have done a masterful marketing job of putting fear into the industry that if producers don't have the proper stamps or paper  on the wood or wood products  the world will collapse.  The pitch here was that if you don´t get certified you will not be able to sell your wood and the price will drop.    They were right on target with that forcast,  the worlds  economic problems dried up demand and lowered prices. 

The poor consumers that don´t know pussy willow from pi$$ elm fall for it all.
Is there a problem with the foresters and deforestation in North America that this additional layer of bureaucracy is really needed ??    I don´t get the feeling that the foresters up there are inept.   Do the people that are supposedly supervising the foresters have a better education and more experience than the foresters ??   Are they next going to want woodlot owners to be certified before they cut firewood or a couple of timber logs on their own property ??   The answer is YES, thats what they pushed thru here and now it is going against them and being reversed .

What is the justification for this supervision of an industry that has less scandals that the groups that want to supervise it ?  The FSC is quite clever in that they collect money and apparently have third parties claiming to do the work and the FSC can wash their hands of everything but continue with their God like advertising.   Who are they responsible to  ??

I know everything they publish about their work and the facts about logging in Peru are lies so I would suspect that there is the same problem in other areas .  One of these groups was trying to get a GPS on every dugout  canoe bringing in wood so they could verify the chain of custody   ¿¿¿   

We have a chain of custody "LAW" forced on Peru and pu$$hed thru congress by the EcoIndustry people like the WWF and others with your taxpayer money donated by USAID that is so absurd that even the government realizes it must be changed.  The tide is changing here and more sane minds are starting to prevail.  The laws are being changed to be sensible once again.  We had a meeting last week with the Minister of Agriculture that is now in charge of national forestry and a commission of industry people including mill people and loggers are a part of the making of the new law.  The last law was made in the States and Europe by experts that had not a clue about forestry or the industry.

It is very sad that these groups in their holy robes covering the wolf can pull the wool over so many people eyes.   

Who has actually benefited from these groups other than themselves ?

If interested here is some your taxpayer money very stupidly spent and this is just a sample.  I would suspect that if these groups were charged with fraud and misrepresentation they would be convicted in any court in the world.

The Nature Conservancy in the Caribbean - The Nature Conservancy ...
With a $10 million multi-year grant from USAID funding the expansion, the program
will seek to engage industries in sustainable practices, conserve ...
www.nature.org/wherewework/caribbean/press/press4179.html - 22k

In Peru it is now over  $35 million to the white hat boys. Another $25 million committed this month.

As part of President Bush's effort to conserve tropical forests around the world and fight illegal logging, the United States yesterday signed debt-for-nature swap agreements with Peru and three U.S.-based international conservation organizations that will generate $10.6 million for forest conservation activities in Peru over the next 12 years. The agreements were authorized under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA).
Under the agreements, the United States, through the Department of the Treasury, is providing $5.5 million to cancel a portion of Peru's debt. U.S. Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund are jointly contributing $1.1 million. In return, the Government of Peru will fund tropical forest conservation activities through local non-governmental organizations in Peru.

[/quote]

This type of scandal amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars to these groups  FOR WHAT  ????????? ???     Now someone should ask for a certification of what they have done and where your money went.  They could show nothing but a beautiful web site full of lies and 1/4 truths.

If anyone wonders why I get like this it is my mothers fault.  She told me not to like the snake oil guys in white suits asking for money that have a solution for everything.

I don´t know why I like you guys so much when you keep sending your hard earned tax money down here to promote slash and burn.
8) 8) 8)

[jim king]

I suppose most of you thought I died on this theme and some wished I did but here is a good one I forgot.

I forgot this one. Here is a disclaimer from the FSC. It simply says that just because they have collected money for certifying wood that is not legal please don´t throw them in jail for due cause under the "Lacey Act".

It is quite apparant that this disclaimer is to deflect any legal action by the US Government against the FSC for receiving money for falsifying the certification of wood in conflict with the "Lacey Act".  GREAT GROUP


FSC and the Lacey Act: the $500,000 questionTags: Worldwide, Controlled wood, Mixed sources labelling, Legality, All certifiers

In May 2008, the US government enacted a revision to the Lacey Act, a hundred year-old piece of legislation that renders it illegal to trade in goods in the US which are from illegal sources, which now makes the Act applicable to the timber trade. Whilst timber traders are no doubt hoping that use of FSC certified wood is going to keep them out of prison, they may be in for a nasty shock.
This year's revision to the Act came about through a long lobbying campaign by US environmental groups, who were also joined by the US wood industry and labour organisations in seeking to exclude illegally acquired wood from outside the US. Under the new Act, there will be a scale of penalties applied to those caught trading in illegal wood products. These range from a $0.5 million fine, up to five years in prison, and forfeiture of goods for those proven to have been "knowingly" trading in illegal woods products and failing to practice "due care" in seeking to avoid doing so; through to simple forfeiture of goods for those found to be trading in illegal woods "unknowingly" and despite having practiced "due care".

Quote:

This raises an important question in relation to the FSC, which could determine whether company bosses go to prison and have their assets seized; does the trading of illegally sourced woods, which are nevertheless FSC certified, represent the practice of "due care" or perhaps conversely of "knowingly" trading illegally sourced woods?
Many wood and paper traders will no doubt assume that FSC products are at least legal. The FSC's Pinciples and Criteria do include a stipulation that the forestry operation should comply with all relevant laws. However, for the last two years, FSC-Watch has repeatedly exposed that this requirement is not consistently complied with. 

FSC-Watch believes that, given the long and now well-known track record of FSC certificates being issued (by, amongst others, the Rainforest Alliance, one of the promoters of the new Act) to companies that are operating illegally, the purchase of FSC certified wood products could not be seen as an indicator of a trader having exercised "due care". In some cases, where specific certificates have been shown - by FSC-Watch amongst others - to have been issued to law-breakers, US traders might even find themselves charged with "knowingly" trading illegal (but FSC certified) wood, and going to prison as a result.

The problem is likely to be especially acute in relation to FSC Mixed Sources labelled FSC wood. As FSC-Watch has been showing for at least two years, and on which there is now clear evidence and general agreement amongst even timber industry members of the FSC, the 'Controlled Wood' policy, which 'regulates' the non-certified content in 'Mixed Sources' certified wood, is effectively useless in terms of ensuring exclusion of wood from undesirable sources, including those that are illegal. The trade in Mixed Sources FSC certified wood products containing illegally-sourced components might therefore be deemed by courts to be an indication of non-application of "due care".
Of particular interest to US courts might be the fact that the Norwegian government has already made a well-publicised decision not to rely on FSC certification as a means of ensuring government procurement of legal-only timber, noting that "Today there is no international or national certification that can guarantee in a reliable manner that imported wood is legally and sustainably logged".
FSC-Watch will continue to do its best :D

(on an entirely voluntary basis)

:D to inform traders of FSC certificates that have been issued to illegal operations. However, we cannot guarantee that we have identified more than a small fraction of such cases; we welcome information from any source that can help us to expose other problem certificates.
The US wood industry might feel that, given the severity of the punishments for contravention of the Lacey Act, a good investment would be a comprehensive research programme into the legality of FSC-certified sources. Given that the FSC has so far shown itself to be powerless in cancelling such certificates, an independent database could be established showing where FSC certificates are being applied to questionable or outright illegal operations, and which traders would then know to avoid.
As ever, the scrapping of FSC's so-called Controlled Wood standard, and major revisions to the 'Mixed Sources' labelling policy, would be a great help in efforts to stamp out the trade in illegal products, and might save the US wood trade a lot of fines or even prison sentences.
A very useful briefing on the Lacy Act published by the Environmental Investigation Agency is available here (pdf file: 3.2 Mb)

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[madhatte]

Had an odd moment today.  Got some paperwork done somewhere, and tossed it in the truck on my way from somewhere to somewhere else.  Hours later, I caught a glimpse of the forgotten paperwork.  What caught my eye was the FSC stamp.  I'm willing to accept that I'm sort of hyper-attuned, but I'm not willing to accept that the FSC stamp doesn't MEAN something.  It's up to us in the Forestry business to determine just what it means.