From the Duluth News Tribune, by John Myers
A northern Minnesota loggers' cooperative has gained an environmental stamp of approval by becoming the first such group to become certified for sustainable forestry.
The 11-member Forest Management Systems cooperative, based in Aurora, announced Wednesday that it has received certification from the SmartWood program.
The co-op appears to be the first such loggers' group in the nation to gain umbrella certification. Only one other independent Minnesota logger is formally certified, officials said Wednesday.
Until now, the lack of formally certified loggers has been a missing link in the effort to keep a sustainable mark on wood from the forest to the mill.
Giants such as Home Depot, McDonald's and Time Warner Inc. are requiring their paper and wood products to be certified sustainable. To gain the designation, special practices must be used at every step in the process from the forest to the consumer. Companies such as L.L. Bean say their customers want catalogs published on paper made from trees grown and cut in a sustainable manner.
Time Warner has ordered that 80 percent of its paper be produced with certified sustainable wood by Jan. 1. That has sent the mills that supply Time Warner scrambling to find trees from forests that are certified, as well as loggers that are certified -- including UPM Kymmene's Blandin Mill in Grand Rapids, the Stora Enso mill in Duluth and the International Paper mill in Little Falls.
"Time Warner has essentially told its suppliers that they have to be certified by the end of the year. If they can't get that certified product in Minnesota, they'll get it in Maine or somewhere else," said Don Arnosti, director of the Community Forest Resource Center of the TwinCities-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Certification "is a big deal, not just for Minnesota's environment, but to keep a viable industry here."
Supporters say sustainable certification ultimately helps ensure forests are managed and trees harvested in a way that's softer on the land -- that encourages a diversity of tree, plant, bird and animal species, improves water quality and leaves more older trees standing.
SmartWood is approved by the internationally recognized Forest Stewardship Council that sets global standards for ecologically sound forestry.
"We're doing things sustainably, we're an environmentally conscious group, and we hope to set a new standard in logging," Cari Johnson, a forester who worked with the cooperative on the certification process, said in announcing the certification. "We're hoping in the future it will help supply the local mills with much-needed certified wood."
In addition to certified loggers, forests in two counties in Minnesota -- Aitkin and Cass -- already are SmartWood certified. Itasca County is in the process of SmartWood certification, and Lake County is moving in that direction, Arnosti said.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is working toward a similar level of Forest Stewardship Council-approved certification while also certifying the state's 4.7 million acres of forest under a separate, timber industry-supported program called Sustainable Forest Initiative. The DNR expects both certifications later this year. Other counties, including St. Louis, are certified under Sustainable Forest Initiative.
Fred Souba Jr., a Wisconsin-based vice president of U.S. wood supply for Stora Enso, said the sustainable "chain-of-custody" certification that tracks wood from harvest sites to the mill will become more common as more northern forests become certified.
"We at Stora think that's going to be more and more important as more certified land comes on line, such as Minnesota's state forests," he said.
Jerry Birchem, a member of the loggers' co-op from Aurora, said the certification label will help increase trust between private landowners and loggers, assuring the landowners they are getting a fair price and accurate assessment of the wood harvested.
"It's the same as financial auditing -- you want to see it tracked all along the line. This is ecological auditing," Arnosti said. "Some loggers and foresters and landowners in Minnesota can honestly claim they were already doing this before certification. But some of them weren't. This is a way to make sure it happens."
David Wallin, executive director of the cooperative, noted that co-op members are working toward certification under the Master Logger program. That will allow the loggers to cut trees from small tracts of private land that aren't formally certified, but still label the wood as certified for mills.
Despite the attention paid to public land issues, "most of the timber that goes to the mills comes off private land, so keeping that certification from those small tracts is critical," Wallin said. "We're only going to see increased demand for certified forest products, so it really makes sense from a business standpoint for us to do this."
