Summer 2002 Volume II, Number 2
How Much Wood are We Using and Where does it Come From?
Findings from the New Timber Resources Report
By James King
It used to be that farmers cleared their own fields and used the felled wood to build farmhouses. Suburbanites no longer clear their own garden plots, and the wood for their houses comes from many different places. As local economies become global, it's easy to lose sight of where our wood and fiber come from and how our consumption of wood products affects local, regional, and global forest sustainability.
Some maintain that the United States has attained timber sustainability, pointing to studies showing that we harvest less wood biomass in a year than forests accumulate through growth. But a new report, presented at the Forest Productivity Integrated Program workshop in Ames, Iowa, May 29-30, suggests that analyzing removals vs . growth isn't the only way to look at the program. In the report, titled The Status of Timber Resources in the North Central United States, NC researchers compared the amount of wood consumed by people living in the North Central U.S. with the amount of timberland, timber growth, and timber harvest in the region. They found that although the region has 14 percent of the Nation's timber-land, we grow only 10 percent of the Nation's wood, and we harvest and process only 7 percent of the Nation's wood. However, we consume 17 percent of the Nation's wood.
That's 73 cubic feet of wood including 740 pounds of paper products per year, per person. And despite programs to recycle and curb waste, overall U.S. consumption of wood is likely to grow. The USDA Forest Service 2001 RPA Assessment of Forest and Range Lands. (FS-687) estimates that by 2050 U.S. wood consumption will rise by 40percent due to increasing population. The result is that the United States is a net importer of wood, primarily from Canada. "That raises the question of what it really means to be sustainable," says Steve Shifley, a research forester at NC's Central Hardwood Ecosystems unit in Columbia, Missouri.
The report aims to help answer the question of what it means to be sustainable, giving citizens and planners a refreshingly new framework to consider production in the context of regional consumption and regional time United States In the past few years, attempts to achieve sustainability have resulted in cutbacks in harvests in the West and parts of the Midwest. At the same time, pressure to meet U.S. consumers' demands for forest products was transferred elsewhere. Much of that demand was absorbed by southern forests, prompting the U.S. Forest Service to conduct the Southern Forest Resource Assessment, which indicated that those forests are in fact handling the increased pressure relatively well.
But the demand has also been transferred to other countries "Much of the increase is coming from northern Quebec, where indigenous people have made land claims and feel they are being disenfranchised by increased logging in the woods. It's not just the environmental impact, it's also the social impact, and the effect on local and indigenous peopIe “ought to be a part of the consideration” said Douglas W. MacClerry, Assistant Director for Planning in the Forest Service's Washington Office.
Shifley hopes the new report will help people realize the importance of balancing wood consumption with timber growth and processing in the North Central Region. "We all have an impact on forests through consumption, and we all have a responsibility for forest sustainability," says Shifley. "There are many ways we can shift the balance of forest growth and consumption in the North Central Region. We can consume wisely, we can increase timber production, and we can think more seriously about what the region's 73 million acres of timberland could contribute to meet our consumptive demand. It's al labout finding balance and understanding our own regional opportunities and responsibilities relative to national and global issues of sustainability. "Such studies are indeed good starting points, agrees MacClerry. I think regional assessments are useful, but to be really useful they need to look at how our present consumption patterns relate to what we were doing in the past - are we becoming less and less self-sufficient? And what are the implications of the increased imports?"
This new report is indeed only the first step as North Central's Forest Productivity team considers the best ways to sustain forests in the region. "This report set the groundwork by organizing the research and defining the pressing problems," Shifley said. "Now that we know the scope of the issue, the question is: Where do we start if we want to become both more sustainable and better balanced?" This team, which has proven the power of seeing the world through new eyes, may just surprise us with its answer.
North Central Research Station News, Spring 2002