The US affiliate of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC-US) released the latest version of its Controlled Wood National Risk Assessment (NRA) for the United States just before the Christmas holidays, we wasted no time in calling attention to it with our brief posting on December 16.  This document is very important to the whole FSC program, for reasons that we have discussed at length before, and surely will again.  As is typical with FSC, the NRA document had been in the works for a very long...

Everyone involved in the FSC Controlled Wood program here in the United States has been eagerly and impatiently waiting for FSC-US staff to release their latest version of the Controlled Wood National Risk Assessment (NRA) for the USA.  Tonight at 5:30pm ET it finally saw the light of day.   We promise detailed analysis, review, and commentary in the near future.  But we did not want to wait before sharing it here.  It is of first and immediate importance that this document be widely read...

A colleague and regular reader (AH) sent us an interesting link this week.  We think it is worth sharing and reflecting on.  It seems to offer another, creative and promising look at simplifying the confusing world of wood product certification.   STIP - which stands for Sustainable Timber In Product - is a program sponsored by the independent Netherlands timber research institute Stichting Hout Research (SHR).  They recently introduced a new business certification mark designed to bridge the...

We were pleased in October, when the FSC 2017 General Assembly reached a sensible decision to avoid further trouble and  “Do No Harm” on the contentious and complex topic of Controlled Wood.    This decision, however, did nothing to solve the real problems that this program continues to struggle with to this date. The practical problems of the Controlled Wood program have been piling up recently, as we approach the implementation deadline for FSC-STD-40-005 v.3-1.  This deadline, like so many...

This brief post is to share some good news, and to offer well-deserved congratulations to some of our hard working colleagues who do the real work that makes forest sustainability programs possible. Last month, at the Annual Conference of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) program, the Maine SFI Implementation Committee (SIC) was recognized with an Achievement Award for their exceptional outreach and education programs. Maine holds the distinction as the most heavily forested state in...

MixedWood continues to follow and participate in a number of engaged discussions on several topics at the FSC 2017 General Assembly (GA) in Vancouver this week.  We continue to be impressed with the quality of cross-chamber, collaborative policy and decision making.  Lots of enthusiastic and talented people are doing a great deal of speaking and listening.  A lot of learning is going on along with slow progress towards some challenging policy conclusions. This post will offer some short...