Sustainable Forestry Practices

Sustainable Forestry Practices

We've spent nearly a century developing ways to make sure we'll never run out of wood—now and in the future. In 1941, we started North America's first tree farm. Almost 40 years ago, we developed high-yield forestry to help grow more on the land. Today we're finding new ways to provide forest products and protect forest habitats. We believe that wood and paper products should come from sustainably managed forests. To that end, we apply our sustainable forestry standard to every acre we manage.

Forest Certification

Weyerhaeuser supports third-party certification of forestry practices. Our approach relies on two types of standards: one for environmental management systems, the other for specific practices associated with growing and harvesting trees. For the first, we align our environmental management systems with the internationally accepted standard known as ISO 14001. For the second, in North America we rely on national standards: the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® and the Canadian Standards Association's Sustainable Forest Management standard. . In Uruguay and China, we will certify to appropriate national standards based on availability and customer need. In addition to certification, all forestlands we own are managed to the requirements of Weyerhaeuser's internal sustainable forestry standard, which ensures a consistently high level of stewardship. We invested in this companywide approach to ensure a reliable supply of products from responsible sources and to protect the company's preferred position with key customers.

Weyerhaeuser supports mutual recognition among credible certification standards to help facilitate the expansion of certification systems worldwide.

Find out more about forest certification and certification standards.

Forest Renewal

This year, like every year, we will plant more than 100 million seedlings to replenish forests that provide products people use every day. New seedlings are usually planted during the next planting season after harvest. In Canada, we use less intensive methods, fertilizing less often and relying more on seed trees and natural root sprouting to reforest. These methods are better suited to local conditions and climate.

Tropical Forests

We recognize that deforestation and loss of biodiversity remain a serious problem at the global level. In the Southern Hemisphere, our operations are limited to plantations, and we do not harvest natural forests. Our mills in the Southern Hemisphere use wood fiber from only our own plantations or other plantations nearby. For example, we buy the raw material for our Lyptus® premium hardwood, which is produced by our joint-venture sawmill in Brazil, from plantations located on the eastern coast, far from the Amazon rainforest. These plantations, owned by others, are interspersed among indigenous forests so that one-third of the area is kept in native vegetation, helping maintain elements of the natural ecosystem.

For more, see our Current Issues statement on Tropical Forests.