Spring 2008
volume 17 No. 1
Editorial
Timber industry needs best management practices
by William L. Hoover for the Journal & Courier, Lafayette, Ind., Dec. 10, 2007
Globalization has arguably impacted every sector of Indiana’s economy. The impacts involve both costs and benefits. Indiana’s timber economy has benefited from increased markets for logs, lumber and veneer. Currently, the depressed housing market has reduced the domestic demand for many woodbased products, including hardwood lumber and veneer. But strong export markets have upheld the demand and price for white oak and black walnut products and have been a major factor leading to long-run real price increases for timber. Globalization is now impacting the Indiana forestry practice on the cost side. Many overseas buyers want assurances that our wood products are harvested from sustainably managed forests, and logged to minimize environmental impacts. This assurance takes the form of certification of compliance with internationally recognized standards.
Indiana’s State Forester has recognized the need to meet global standards and has received certification for the 147,000 acres of state-owned lands managed by the Indiana Division of Forestry. He is also seeking certification for the 500,000 acres of private forestland enrolled in the Classified Forest and Wildlands Program, also managed by the Indiana Division of Forestry.
Forest certification has become a cost of doing business in the global marketplace. The expectation that certification would increase the market price of timber has not been realized. It won’t be. There is currently a discussion about the need for mandatory standards for timber harvesting focusing on water quality. Indiana has had voluntary best management practices since 1986. The
proposed change is to make the implementation of these mandatory and to require formal training of all parties involved in the timber marketing and harvesting process. This would apply to all timber harvested in Indiana, both public and private land.A framework for possible legislation was drafted by a task force of representatives of the logging and lumber industries, foresters and staff members of the Indiana Division of Forestry. The proposal is meeting resistance, however. Many foresters and loggers correctly point out that the major source of silt in Indiana’s streams and rivers is generated by row crop agriculture. They fail to accept the premise that forestry operations are and should be held to a higher standard due to the unique ability of forestland to yield the highest quality water of any source. High-quality water is integral to what constitutes forests in terms of the environmental and the emotional benefits experienced by forest visitors. The forest certification process is relatively new and adjusting to the realities of the marketplace. Likewise, the implementation of mandatory best management practices in Indiana would be fraught with growing pains, borne primarily by the implementing agency, the Indiana Division of Forestry. The Indiana legislature has the responsibility of deciding whether the long-run benefits exceed the costs of mandatory BMP’s for timber harvests. The marketplace has clearly signaled the need for mandatory BMP’s in Indiana.
JHoover, a professor of forestry at Purdue University, was a member of the task force that drafted the original language for the proposed mandatory best management practices.