More and more hardwood timbers used in furniture, construction, and boat building are being ‘grown in the USA’ — which will only grow now and into the future, with Australia, India, Vietnam and the European Union amongst a raft of markets leaning on America Hardwoods for their quality, consistency and availability. That is according to Rod Wiles, Regional Director for the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) in Africa, the Middle East, India and Oceania, who said the US species “really plug into big production cycles” and are “an enormous resource for the world.”
However, despite using more American Hardwoods, “the forest area is increasing all the time,” Mr Wiles told Wood Central in the latest podcast episode. “This is (partly) due to increased urbanisation; the trees grow back as people move from the countryside into the cities.” Pointing to states like Pennsylvania, which in the 19th century was wholly clear-felled of trees, “these states have, in the space of seventy years, now recovered with rich, dense and healthy forests.”
“Ultimately, “this happens when you walk away and leave the forest alone…it grows back. On top of that, we harvest much less than what is growing,” Mr Wiles said, adding that an interactive map is available through the American Hardwood website listing species down to individual counties. For example, “we know it takes .57 seconds for a cubic metre of Red oak to regrow in the forest…this means that the oak used to make a chair will regrow in less than a second.”
Tracing timber back to its tree roots.
According to Mr Wiles, less than 1% of American Hardwoods entering timber supply chains is illegal. “There is no organised timber trafficking in America,” he stressed in the interview before revealing that AHEC commissioned a third-party to complete individual risk assessments from the thirty-three main hardwood-producing states. “That will plug into a compliance system we are developing to satisfy the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) .”
“We will also be able to drill down to the individual counties in individual states,” he said. In effect, “we will be able to say that the timber came from one of around fourteen hundred counties.”
Having spent more than 25 years working for AHEC, Mr Wiles is still amazed by the size and scale of the American Hardwood forests. “When we talk about the forest, it depends on where you are in the forest. We are not talking about a single forest; a lot of it is non-contiguous. When you fly over the Upper Midwest (like Ohio), you are looking at a patchwork of farmland with little blocks of forests dispersed within it – this is not the case in states like Pennsylvania, which is 70% covered in forests.”
“The first time I went to the United States (back in 1999), I was astonished to see how huge the forests truly are,” Mr Wiles said. “Even today, you can see the remnants of buildings that stood 150 years ago around mature stands of timber and productive forests.”
- To learn more about Rod Wiles and AHEC, the global face of the US hardwood industry for over thirty years, click here to watch Wood Central’s podcast in full.