New program allows rain forest lumber

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NORFOLK (AP) -- Workers have unloaded about 1,000 tons of Indonesian lumber in the first delivery to the United States of wood certified under a program that supporters say will encourage environmentally friendly harvesting of rain forest trees.

The nearly 2 million pounds of reddish meranti wood unloaded at the Norfolk International Terminals last week bore white labels identifying the wood as "RIL verified." The labels certify that the wood was harvested by "reduced-impact logging" through a program created by a coalition of rain forest preservationists, government agencies and businesses.

Leading the RIL certification program is the Alexandria-based Tropical Forest Foundation, which started the program in the Amazon River basin in Brazil. The project is monitored by an independent auditing agency called SmartWood, a certification program of the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit environmental group based in New York City.

The wood that arrived Tuesday was moved to a warehouse operated by Penrod Co., a Virginia Beach importer of metal and wood. Penrod co-owner and executive vice president Carl Gade is president of the Tropical Forest Foundation's board.

Mr. Gade told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper that the company's 350,000-square-foot warehouse imports about 5 percent of its volume from Indonesia, a small amount because of the environmental and legal problems associated with it.

The pilot program in Indonesia began about a year ago in a forest in West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, near the Malaysian border. It promotes legal logging by rewarding loggers for cutting trees in only certain areas, taking only trees of a certain age and species, and removing no more trees than permitted.

Trees are tagged, and auditors track them from stump to shipping point. Program officials also train local workers in the least-damaging methods of building roads, cutting trees and moving them through the forest.

Some environmental groups, such as the Rainforest Action Network, have argued against any import of lumber from Indonesia. That nation's policies do not protect the land rights of the forests' indigenous populations nor do they stop rampant corruption, making any certification program untenable, Brant Olson, network spokesman, told the Virginian-Pilot.

However, Tropical Forest Foundation Executive Director O. Keister Evans said the program offers immediate benefits.

"The objective was to really do something, get on the ground and teach good forest management," he said. "It's not only more environmentally sound, it's more economically sound. It saves time, labor, fuel."

Besides the foundation, program sponsors include the U.S. Agency for International Development, the USDA Forest Service, construction-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. and do-it-yourself retailer Home Depot Inc.

The Tropical Forest Foundation was set up in 1991 by the International Wood Products Association, a lumber and wood products industry group. The foundation's board includes a number of current and former IWPA board members as well as current and retired executives from several wood products companies, including Georgia-Pacific Corp., Crown Hardwood Veneer Corp., Plywood Tropics USA Inc. and Stihl Inc.

The board also includes executives of the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups, as well as forest-products research programs at several universities.