Potlatch passes environmental muster – becomes the first public company in the nation to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council

Potlatch Corp. passed a rigorous environmental audit of its Idaho forestlands, becoming the first public company in the nation to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The certification is sort of like an environmental ‘‘Good Housekeeping” seal of approval.

By Becky Kramer

Staff writer

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking-news-story.asp?submitDate=2004420192221

‘‘It assures consumers that they’re not buying lumber made from old growth,” said Paula Del Giudice, director of National Wildlife Federation’s Seattle o
ffice. ‘‘It means that Potlatch is helping preserve habitat for other species.”

The certification applies to 670,000 acres of Potlatch forestland stretching from Idaho’s Clearwater basin to the region surrounding the St. Joe River. In addition to producing trees for harvest, the land is home to wolves, elk and other species.

‘‘They have some of the best trout habitat in the state of Idaho,” said Leon Albright, a trustee for Trout Unlimited.

Results of the audit were announced Tuesday at a press conference at the Davenport Hotel. With potted fir trees in the background, Potlatch Chairman Penn Siegel posed for photos with representatives of major environmental groups. The World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club back the Forest

Stewardship Council’s standards.

Roger Dower, president of the Forest Stewardship Council in Washington, D.C., played up the moment.

‘‘Potlatch employees from the executive suite to the forest manager

should be proud of what they accomplished today,” he said. The company demonstrated that a healthy balance sheet and environmental protection aren’t mutually exclusive, he said. The nonprofit FSC developed after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The organization encourages timber owners to manage their land more like a natural forest, providing habitat for wildlife and rare plant species. Companies who pass the audit can sell wood products with an FSC seal of approval. Dower said he hopes other publicly traded companies will follow Potlatch’s example.

Most U.S. timber companies, however, certify their wood under a competing program developed by the American Forest and Paper Association. Each side claims to have stricter standards.

Potlatch’s FSC certification will help foresters compare how the two systems play out on a large tract of private land in the West. Results of the FSC audit, and the earlier industry certification undertaken by Potlatch, are posted at http://www.pinchot.org.

In the FSC process, Potlatch underwent a year-long audit of its Idaho forest lands. Auditors scrutinized the company’s pesticide use, measured sediment in streams and counted how many standing dead trees loggers left for woodpeckers. The auditors gave Potlatch good marks for its current management. They also encouraged company foresters to do more to preserve unique areas, such as remnant stands of old cedar that escaped the 1910 fires. To keep the certification,

Potlatch will pay out $20,000 for annual audits.

The company has a sizeable stake in good forest management, Siegel said. Trees are also the company’s most valuable asset. Some analysts estimate the value of Potlatch’s timberlands in Idaho, Minnesota and Arkansas at more than $1 billion. The audits also help build Potlatch’s credibility, he said.

‘‘We’ve long recognized that our ability to operate is in part due to public’s good will … and expectation that we manage our lands responsibly,” he said.

Siegel said he hopes the FSC label will help open up new markets for the company. Last year, Home Depot sold about $350 million worth of FSC-certified wood products. Some government contracts now require FSC wood for building projects. But it’s too early to tell how the certification will affect the company’s bottom line, Siegel said.

‘‘We’re kind of taking it on faith,” he said. ‘‘Even if we thought there were no benefits in the marketplace … we would do it because we think it’s the right thing to do.”

At the moment, it’s unclear whether customers are willing to pay more for certified wood products. Oregon State University sent a graduate student to Home Depot in 2002 to survey consumers. When the price rose by more than 2 percent, most customers stopped buying FSCcertified plywood and bought cheaper plywood. Still, Potlatch’s move is ‘‘shrewd and strategic,” said Al Sample, president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, which helped recruit Potlatch for the FSC audit. The

certification system is still quite young, Sample said. Demand for FSC products appears to be growing, and Potlatch will be at the forefront of the movement, he said.

‘‘To me, it’s kind of like the organic food movement,” Del Giudice said. ‘‘It started small, and now you have whole stores devoted to organic foods.”