Timber firms challenged to ‘green up’

[ Oregon ] Conservation groups are moving beyond the courtroom into the marketplace to pressure two of the nation’s largest timber companies to green up their acts on private forest lands and challenge the timber industry’s sustainable forestry standard. In separate actions, Seattle Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Council of Maine are challenging green labels held by Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek Timber Co., that certify their forests are managed in environmentally sustainable ways. The complaints were filed this month with the Sustainable Forestry Board in Arlington, Va., which oversees the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a green label developed by the timber industry, but now independent, covering 90 percent of the private industrial forests in the country. Both complaints question the validity of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative standard. Environmental groups prefer the Forest Stewardship Council standard, based in Bonn, Germany, which was launched in 1993 after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro failed to come up with one.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes www.southernsustainableforests.org