If you’re looking for a hardwood lumber supplier, there are several areas you need to consider. While price and quality may be at the forefront of your priority list, environmental and legal concerns should also play a part in the supplier selection process. A responsible hardwood lumber supplier will be able to ensure 2 important attributes: legal origin of its lumber and environmentally friendly foresting practices.
Legal Issues
In recent years, the U.S. has increased the legal responsibility level of all members of the wood products supply chain. The Lacey Act now prohibits commerce in illegally sourced plants, including wood products. Business must now utilize “due diligence” in order to avoid violating this law. Such caution is always easy to exercise, since each state, foreign power, or governing authority has its own laws which determine the legality of harvesting timber within its jurisdiction. If lumber is harvested illegally (an initial violation of the Lacey Act), anyone who purchases, exports, transports, sells, or imports wood products made from the “tainted” logs is also in violation.
One reason illegal logging is of such concern is inherent in the terrible effects of deforestation, which results in habitat destruction and climate change. Another reason is that the black-market lumber industry undermines the legal harvesting and trading of forest products. An outgrowth of poverty and corruption, the illegal logging industry jeopardizes sustainable forestry efforts.
Environmental Concerns
North America’s well-honed public policies, governance that includes monitoring and enforcement, and the availability of legal support make illegal logging on our continent virtually impossible. Instead, sustainable forest management has become the norm.
This working definition of sustainable forest management (SFM) has been adopted by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO): “The stewardship and use of forests and forest land in a way and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic, and social functions, at local, national, and global levels and does not cause damage to other ecosystems.” The goal of SFM practices is to achieve a balance between the preservation of healthy, diverse forestry and meeting of increasing consumer demands for hardwood lumber and other forest products and benefits.
According to the once-a-decade assessment performed by the U.S. Renewable Resources Planning Act, not only are U.S. hardwood forests steadily growing, but forest management practices are continually promoting the continuation of healthy, diverse forests. According to the 2000 Assessment, over the second half of the twentieth century, harvesting levels in the U.S. have remained below the level of new growth, while the number of hardwoods standing has doubled.
A responsible hardwood lumber supplier will be able to account for the legal and environmental factors in the the origin of the lumber that they sell. The lumber professionals at J. Gibson McIlvain have done their research and can assure their customers that the wood they sell comes from the most compliant sources found across the globe. They personally visit each of their suppliers to ensure that the lumber they stock has been harvested legally and in a sustainable manner. For more information on industry leader McIlvain Company, visit their website today.
It is really good news to me that the hardwood forests are growing. Three cheers for good timber management practices! I believe that the environment is our most important core resource. All industry builds off of what we get from the earth. This is why it is important to me to manage how we use resources like timber.
I thought it was interesting to learn that there are so many legal responsibilities of lumber suppliers in the united states. The article says that a responsible lumber supplier should be able to account for legal and environmental factors from the source of their lumber. I’ll be sure to look for a responsible lumber source this summer when my wife and I start our project together of building a deck.
Thanks for the reminder that it’s important to also look into the kinds of forest management involved in the production of the lumber that I will be using. I plan to look for a good supplier soon because I’m interested in getting a vacation cabin built soon. Being able to find lumber of high quality will be essential for that.