Carter Holt Harvey has begun a process to purchase the timber manufacturing operations and timber distribution business of the Weyerhaeuser Australia Group.

This includes the interest in Green Triangle Forest Products held by a fund advised by Global Forest Partners.
The offer includes:

• Pine Solutions Australia
• GreenTriangle Forest Products Manufacturing
• Weyerhaeuser Company

Weyerhaeuser is also reportedly in discussions regarding the sale of its 50% interest of the Green Triangle Forest Products timberlands business to a timber investment fund advised by Global Forest Partners. These timberlands are comprised of about 20,000 ha of plantation pine forest.

Hamilton, Ohio-based Smart Papers will run its paper mill on 100% renewable energy, breaking ground on a co-generation biomass facility at its manufacturing center in Hamilton, according to an online report from Clean Technology.

The $30 million power plant was expected to be complete by spring 2009. “The production of these papers will leave the lightest environmental footprint of any premium coated or uncoated printing paper produced in North America,” Smart Papers Chariman Tim Needham was reported as saying. The40 MW co-generation system is set to generate electricity and steam to operate the mill. The system is made up of four turbines, two condensers, a cooling tower and auxiliary equipment from Morris Township, Honeywell International. Biomass fuel would be primarily yard waste as well as industrial wood and fiber waste. “We see our approach as the smart choice,” President and COO Dan Maheu said. “We will be a more efficient manufacturer, fiscally and environmentally responsible, and energy independent. This will benefit our business, our customers, our employees and the environment.” By late 2010, Smart Papers said it expects to also start supplying renewable energy from the new plant to the grid, according to the report. The company said its manufacturing centre was a zero process waste discharge facility, where all products are process chlorine free, elemental chlorine free and acid free. All the company’s pulp is certified as sustainable by third-party organisations, including the Forest Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, and the Canadian Standards Association.

The 8th International BBE-conference for Wood Energy from the 09th-10th of September 2008 on the fairground Augsburg is the central platform of the wood energy sector and has established itself as the most important meeting point for actors in the wood energy sector.

Respectively 300 participants during the last years show the importance of the conference. This year it will be discussed about the amendment of the renewable energy resources act and the establishment of a new support instrument for the heat sector. Best-Practice experiences of the utilisation of bioenergy will be demonstrated by representatives of electric utilities, municipal persons in charge and engineers. Environmental aspects of wood energy will be discussed just as fast growing wood plantations as a new way of mobilizing wood resources. The exact program and a registration form you will find under: http://www.bioenergie.de/Holzenergie2008/index_e.htm

Farmers, foresters and biomass producers can apply for up to £200,000 each under a new round of grants opened today by Environment Minister Phil Woolas.

The Bio-energy Infrastructure Scheme will support the biomass industry in England by helping those supplying biomass fuel for use in heat and electricity generation. Phil Woolas said: “We have to rethink our energy mix. We know biomass has the potential to considerably reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and cut our carbon emissions. UK producers are setting the standard and have shown production can be sustainable and our investment will support their commitment to this emerging industry. “The fund will inject cash at the point of production. By investing in the biomass industry we are helping farmers, foresters and other producers to diversify and become part of the environmental industry sector which is currently worth more than £25 billion and growing.”
All projects must be based in England and must supply the biomass to end-users in Great Britain. Grants are available for up to a maximum of £200,000 per producer group or business. The deadline for applications is August 5, 2008 for applications from businesses and September 5, 2008 from producer groups.

A newly FSC certified company in the USA is recycling old raft logs – so called boomsticks – into a host of fine lumber products. The company expects to sell much of its product line to developers and builders involved in the environmentally sensitive US construction industry. Columbia Riverwood received FSC chain of custody certification in April 2008. The company’s FSC recycled products will maximise building material points under the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program.

The Oregon based company acquired over 1 million board ft of floating boomsticks. Over 50 years ago, boomsticks were selected from some of the highest quality logs in order to tow huge log rafts up and down powerful rivers. For decades the river has been covering all but the tops of these logs, preserving the wood.

Each boomstick is lifted out of the river, loaded onto a log truck and transported to an FSC certified sawmill in Mehama, Oregon. Years of accumulated grit in the outer inch of each log requires the use of a large circular saw blade. Once that outer grit layer is removed, the beauty of old growth timber is reclaimed into flooring, window and door stock, beams, moulding and one-of-a-kind blocks for woodturners.

“Based on diameter and ring count, our boomsticks range in age from 150 to 350 years old and stood over 200 ft tall before being felled 50 to 70 years ago. Some of the ring counts (more that 30 to the inch) simply can’t be found on the market today,” said Erick Haglund, Columbia Riverwood’s President. “It’s a real thrill to generate an old growth product through recycling.”

Innovatek reports in Friday Offcuts that this week the Australian forestry industry has been united in its opposition to an announcement made by CSIRO. After Ensis, the joint venture research grouping between CSIRO in Australia and its equivalent in New Zealand, Scion was wound up earlier this year – after only two years of operation mind you – the CSIRO Forest Biosciences group has now also been “cut off at the knees”. A reduction in this year’s Federal Budget has seen funding of A$63.4 million over four years been cut from CSIRO’s budget. The result has been an announcement that CSIRO is going to close its Forestry Division, CSIRO Forest Biosciences. Its staff and projects will be moved into three separate groups. What’s this mean? No longer has Australia’s principal research provider – nor the industry – going to have a dedicated and focussed research grouping for forestry.

So what’s been the reaction? Its been united and its been vocal. IFA National President, Dr Peter Volker said that successive governments and CSIRO itself have tinkered with the Forestry Division over the past two decades. He thought the the latest cut would be the “death knell” for a co-ordinated approach to forestry research in Australia. Timber Queensland’s CEO Rod McInnes said that the cuts would impact on the growth of Queensland’s timber industry and that he was concerned about the resulting lack of focus. A3P has called on both CSIRO and the responsible Minister, Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, to work out a way of providing an ongoing focal point for forest and wood product industry research within CSIRO. What about CSIRO? What’s been the reaction to the criticism?

CSIRO’s chief executive Dr Geoff Garrett said that because of the size of the cuts and in light of the significant reductions already made by CSIRO over the past five years that there would be an adverse impact on research. The CSIRO staff association went even further. Understandably, it expressed major concerns over the planned cuts. President of the Association Dr Michael Borgas said that the “CSIRO leadership team has seriously mismanaged the situation by allowing the cuts to impact directly on the scientific work of the agency and that the decision was lazy, knee-jerk management”. Make no bones about it, with the lack of a single focussed group dedicated to forestry, the CSIRO decision is going to have a major impact on future forestry research in Australia. Only last week IFI reported just how much the industry was worth to the economy, see story on this website. The forestry and forest products industries in Australia is worth A$19 billion annually, and it directly employs more than 120,000 people across the country! The result of the cutbacks and changed structure of course is going to be a lack of focus, a lack of coordination and a likely lack of buy-in from industry to future research initiatives. Finally, there is the very real concern that forest researchers have had a gutsful of the continual changes and will decide that they’re going to leave for greener pastures.

Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) and the Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) announced that the major timber company has more than doubled the amount of certified rainforest it operates in the Congo Basin, creating the largest ever tract of contiguous certified tropical forest in the world, a total of 750,000 ha. To meet the standards for obtaining the approval from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), CIB drew on the expertise of staff at the TFT, a Geneva-based nonprofit international charity that seeks to work with industry to transform trade in timber into a force for forest conservation.

TFT was instrumental in helping CIB meet the needs of the Pygmy communities in the Congo Basin, noted Robert Hunink, Executive Vice President of the DLH Group, and President of the Supervisory Board of CIB. “The TFT, along with other partners, provided us with technical guidance and access to new technologies, including a handheld mapping device that has made it possible for the Pygmy communities to communicate to us the specific forest resources that they hold sacred. Such activities, backed by the commitment and dedication of CIB’s management and staff, have been essential in our efforts to obtain certification.

“Under often challenging circumstances, our CIB colleagues and their partners, have achieved what many in the industry have long thought impossible, while maintaining the exceptionally high FSC standard throughout a series of robust audits.”

CIB, a subsidiary of the Danish DLH group, was awarded its most recent FSC certificate for lands the company operates in the Pokola rainforest in Congo-Brazzaville. This region represents the second of CIB’s four forest areas to be certified by the FSC, which first recognised the timber company in 2006, when it certified 297,000 ha of CIB land in the Kabo rainforest. Together the certified area now covers almost 750,000 ha of natural tropical forest managed by CIB in the northern part of Congo-Brazzaville, a region that is home to thousands of indigenous peoples, as well as the forest elephant and communities of gorillas and chimpanzees.

CIB has been working towards FSC certification throughout its entire concession since 2004, partnering with TFT for technical advice and guidance on sustainable forest management. The partnership between TFT, CIB and others has largely focused on the development of new techniques for consultation, conflict resolution and benefit sharing with the indigenous people that live throughout the forest concession.

“I think the CIB approach is a living breathing example that timber production does not have to be synonymous with the destruction of tropical forests,” said Scott Poynton, TFT’s Executive Director. “What we hope to demonstrate with our work in the Congo and elsewhere is that there are rewards for companies that do things the right way. Now it is up to consumer markets to respond to this increase in availability of FSC products and chose sustainably produced wood product over those from dubious origins.”

One of the innovative techniques developed during this partnership, focused on participatory mapping. Using icon-based, Global Positioning System (GPS) units designed for non-literate people, the semi-nomadic Pygmies living within the forest concession walk through their forest and locate resources or areas of significance. For instance, at a large Sapelli tree prized for its edible caterpillars, or an important collecting area for medicinal plants, they simply select the appropriate icon and the GPS records the location. This data forms the basis for resource maps, which bridge the communication gap between the people in the forest and the forest company and enable a fair negotiation.

“Through working with CIB, we have had the chance to develop and implement innovative techniques for sustainable forest management, and the outcome, as we see with the awarding of CIB’s 2nd FSC certificate, is positive – these techniques really work. But CIB is just the start. Forest destruction in the Congo Basin continues at an alarming rate and we need to find new mechanisms for scaling up,” Poynton said.

In order to ensure this trend continues, TFT is launching the Centre of Social Excellence (CSE) for the Forests of the Congo Basin – a new project within TFT’s Climate Tree initiative, designed to address issues related to deforestation and its implication for the communities of local and indigenous people who live in the world’s second largest area of contiguous tropical forest.

The Centre of Social Excellence will focus on improving the understanding and linkages between forestry companies and indigenous communities, thereby encouraging dialogue and sustainable forestry management practices. The CSE initiative offers a unique one-year program for recent graduates of central African universities to develop expertise with innovative techniques for practicing sustainable forest management in the Congo Basin. As forests in the Congo Basin are home to communities and indigenous people, responsible forest companies must integrate techniques that incorporate the views and rights of indigenous people living in and around forest concessions to achieve the recognition of FSC certification for sustainable forest management. The €1.6 million project has been granted key support from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

The CSE will offer recent graduates of central African universities, among them anthropologists, economists and sociologists, an opportunity to become experts in forest management. Studying a broad range of social, ethnographic and forestry management topics including TFT-developed participative mapping techniques, the one-year program will be taught both in the classroom and during practical field-based training. The young professionals will apply their knowledge and skills throughout the forests of central Africa.

“Through this programme, TFT will support the development and expansion of expertise among professionals working in central Africa and wishing to practice sustainable forestry,” Poynton said. “The new Centre of Social Excellence planned to be based in Congo-Brazzaville, will make sure that TFT’s positive impact for people and forests can continue to expand, and that companies such as CIB will always have experts to turn to when they want to do the right thing.”

The Congo Basin is a 1.8 million km² tropical forest that sprawls across six countries and is the world’s biggest tropical forest outside of the Amazon. The region that contains the world’s 2nd largest (after the Amazon) contiguous expanse of tropical rainforest loses about 4 Mha each year due to the effects of poverty, population increase, illegal logging, mining, poor forest management and conversion of forest land to agriculture. Conserving the forests of Congo Basin, by reducing the rampant deforestation, is an essential component of mitigating climate change.

Currently an estimated 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation.

Congo Basin forests support over 400 mammal species, 1,300 bird species, 336 amphibian species, 400 reptile species and 20,000 inventoried plant species of which approximately 8,000 are endemic. The forests are the only home of many great ape species such as the Eastern and Western gorillas, the Bonobo and the Central and Eastern Chimpanzee. These species are being targeted by the burgeoning bush meat trade while accelerating deforestation poses a threat to the functioning of the forest ecosystem as a whole. The forests are also home to thousands of indigenous semi-nomadic forest dwelling people e.g. the Mbendjele Pygmy communities of northern Congo, whose rich knowledge of the forests is disappearing as uncontrolled exploitation displaces them from their forest home.

TFT is working in the Congo Basin (specifically in Cameroon, Republic of Congo and Gabon) on projects covering over 2 Mha. Through encouraging sustainable forest management, TFT promotes an economically viable alternative to deforestation.

Forest2Market.com reports that loggers in the US South have seen profits hemorrhage due to the rising cost of diesel. High fuel costs have pushed a number of loggers, already hit hard by the housing slump, out of business and, without state aid, many more could follow says the Mississippi Loggers Association (MLA).

In an open letter sent to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the MLA requested “immediate relief” from the state that would help stem the loss of thousands of jobs in the logging industry. According to the MLA, the logging industry contributes more than $14 billion per year to the state economy and directly employs more than 52,000 people. The association proposes four measures that will determine the “survival” of the Mississippi logging industry: ¨ A state fuel tax waiver for off-road and on-road diesel during the remainder of 2008 ¨ An increase in highway weight limits to 88,000 lb ¨ A sales tax waiver for equipment and truck supplies and parts ¨ A waiver of landowner severance taxes collected at mills ¨ A waiver of landowner long-term capital taxes.

Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2008 has been released by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The 2008 report was prepared by the Montreal Process Implementation Group for Australia (MIG) on behalf of the Australian, state and territory governments. It can be viewed on adl.brs.gov.au. A3P CEO Neil Fisher said, “The report is a comprehensive document that fulfils a commitment under the National Forest Policy Statement by providing the public with detailed information on the state of Australia’s forests.”The report highlights that turnover of Australia’s forest product industries increased in real terms by about 10% to more than A$19 billion between 2000-01 and 2005-06. The trade deficit in timber products increased from A$1.7 billion in 2001-02 to A$1.9 billion in 2006-07. Other key findings of the report include:

•The area of plantations increased from 1.63 Mha to 1.82 Mha (over the period of the reporting)
•Plantations now produce two-thirds of the country’s log supply
•While the area of softwood plantations has been stable for several years, the area of hardwood plantations has increased substantially, from 503,000 ha in 2000 to 807,000 ha in 2006
•Hardwoods make up 45% of plantation grown pulp logs; softwoods provide 55% of the plantation pulp log supply and 98% of sawlogs
•Based on current plantings, total wood production from softwood plantations is nearing its maximum potential and is expected to plateau by 2010, while total production from hardwood plantations will increase substantially, to over 14 million m3/y by 2010
•The volume of recovered paper exported increased by 250% to nearly 1.1 Mt, mainly due to increased demand in China

However, not all the news is good as the country is suffering a critical shortage of foresters. The Institute of Foresters of Australia (IFA) staged a Tertiary Forestry Education Summit at the Australian National University in Canberra on May 20. The Institute held the Summit to bring together key stakeholders to address the critical shortage of professional foresters caused by the lack of students enrolling for tertiary forestry education courses. Representatives – over 70 people – from the forestry industry, governments, academia, students, forestry organisations and IFA members attended. Members of the IFA and University providers of tertiary forestry education had observed a diminishing number of students entering tertiary forestry education courses despite high demand for professional foresters in the industry and government agencies. Forestry requires a high level of specialisation and diversity among course providers. Unfortunately current University funding models in Australia have made it extremely difficult for anyone University to provide this, without adequate student numbers. It is estimated that an intake of about 50 to 80 students will be required each year to justify the continued existence of forestry courses at Australian Universities and to supply the demand.

The world’s oldest known living tree, a conifer that first took root at the end of the last Ice Age, has been discovered in Sweden, according to an online National Geographic report.

The visible portion of the (4 m ‘Christmas tree’ isn’t ancient, but its root system has been growing for 9,550 years, according to a research team led by Leif Kullman, professor at Umeå University’s Department of Ecology and Environmental Science in Sweden.
Discovered in 2004, the lone Norway spruce – of the species traditionally used to decorate European homes during Christmas – represents the planet’s longest-lived identified plant, Kullman said.
The researchers found the shrubby mountain survivor at an altitude of 910 m in Dalarna Province.

The tree’s incredible longevity is largely due to its ability to clone itself, Kullman said. The spruce’s stems or trunks have a lifespan of around 600 years, “but as soon as a stem dies, a new one emerges from the same root stock,” Kullman explained. “So the tree has a very long life expectancy.” Bristlecone pines in the western United States are generally recognized as the world’s oldest continuously standing trees, the National Geographic report continued. The most ancient recorded, from California’s White Mountains, is dated to around 5,000 years ago. Bristlecone pines are aged by counting tree rings, which form annually within their trunks. But in the case of the Norway spruce, ancient remnants of its roots were radiocarbon dated. The study team also identified other ancient spruces in Sweden that were between 5,000 and 6,000 years old.