Pioneer Press
By Jennifer Bjorhus
A major environmental group has taken its dispute with Weyerhaeuser Co. to the Internet, launching a Web site Tuesday that accuses the lumber giant of being the No. 1 destroyer of virgin forests in North America.
"American purchasers should be aware of the extent to which our last remaining old growth forests are being logged to serve U.S. demand," said Brant Olson with the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, which built the site www.BuyGoodWood.com.
Weyerhaeuser rebutted the environmental group's assertions.
"We're committed to providing quality products through environmentally responsible, sustainable forestry and manufacturing practices everywhere we operate," Weyerhaeuser spokesman Frank Mendizabal said.
Weyerhaeuser, a $20 billion forest products company headquartered in Washington state, has four plants in Minnesota. They include two plants that its subsidiary Trus Joist runs in Deerwood and Brainerd to produce engineered wood products used in houses, windows and doors, and two corrugated box plants in Austin and White Bear Lake.
The raw material for the plant in Deerwood comes from the open market in Minnesota, from private landowners or from state- and county-run properties where logs are cut, according to Trus Joist spokeswoman Robin Kelley. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates that only about 4 percent of the state's timberland is still old-growth.
Weyerhaeuser doesn't operate any commercial forests in Minnesota. Its logging elsewhere, however, is a problem, according to the Rainforest group.
The group accuses Weyerhaeuser of continuing to log ancient forests, clear-cutting large areas of forest and converting natural forests to barren industrial tree plantations. It also says Weyerhaeuser doesn't have a global policy to protect endangered forests, such as being certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent group headquartered in Germany that is trying to establish global environmental standards for forestry practices.
The group said Weyerhaeuser cuts 10 million cubic meters of virgin boreal forest in Canada each year, mostly to serve the U.S. market, and cuts at least 3 million more cubic meters of old growth in British Columbia.
The company insists it practices sustainable forestry under heavy regulation. Mendizabal said company officials have been meeting with Rainforest Action Network since last year, primarily about the company's harvesting in Canada, and that the new campaign grew out of those discussions.
Mendizabal said Weyerhaeuser doesn't harvest any old growth trees in the U.S. although it does in Canada under government license, mostly in British Columbia. The company practices some clear-cutting but it is regulated and does it sustainably, he said. And all of the company's tree farms are certified as sustainably managed by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, an industry-backed U.S. regulatory body that has different standards than the Forest Stewardship Council, Mendizabal said.
Olson called the Sustainable Forestry Initiative biased. The Forest Stewardship Council is independent, has more stringent standards and is much more aggressive in monitoring harvests, he said.
