By Rob McCarthy
I love working in the wood business because it utilizes a renewable resource created by God. A resource that blesses this country, my community, my family and me personally. Wood is incredibly interconnected with the life cycle of the natural environment.
This interconnection relies on responsible management, which involves healthy tree harvesting practices that keep our forests young and viable. The beauty of this kind of management is that it transforms trees as a natural resource into a valuable, beautiful, and useful product: Wood!
Forest management also directly and indirectly supports thousands of jobs and produces billions of dollars in revenue for America. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in this industry for decades.
From the Ground Up
Fresh out of high school, I left the city for the mountains of Northwestern Pennsylvania and a selective tree harvesting job on a friend’s family farm. My friends and I could sell the harvested logs to a local sawmill to support our operation, as long as we worked sustainably and with horses. An experienced forester marked mature trees for removal; ones that needed harvesting to give younger trees more sunlight, nutrients, and moisture.
Everything was carefully managed with minimal damage to the environment and other trees. What a blessing it was to start in this business literally from “the ground up” or should I say ” or should I say “the tree trunk up”?
I fell in love with the work and with the mountains of Pennsylvania, and stayed there for 12 years. When the logging job was over, I progressed to working in the local sawmill. In my small community, there were very few options outside of the wood industry for jobs, which is still the case in many rural areas of America.
At the sawmill, I worked my way up, learning the entire process of turning logs into lumber. This hands-on experience taught me the value of hard work, common sense, teamwork, and a sense of accomplishment. I was helping to produce something people needed.
Sustainability and Stewardship
At this point, I began to recognize the value of stewardship. The U.S. Forest Service says our hardwood forests are growing at 2.38 times the rate of harvest and naturally reseed themselves. At that rate, the forests would never run out, meaning trees truly are America’s only renewable resource.
Throughout my career, sustainability has always been a priority because of wood’s value, but with the emergence of the global focus on the environment, sustainability suddenly became critical.
Consider the importance of the amount of carbon versus oxygen in our atmosphere. Through research, I saw the vital relationship between living things: How God created marine, animal, and human life to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon, while at the same time covering the Earth and the seas with vegetation that inhales carbon and exhales oxygen. Healthy forests are nature’s best air filters!
Did you know carbon molecules make up 40 percent of wood fibers? These molecules are stored in the wood that is turned into lumber and will stay out of the atmosphere for the life of the product.
You can still go to Mount Vernon and see George Washington’s homestead filled with wood products such as flooring, cabinets, and furniture that have been in use for over 250 years. (You might even see his wooden false teeth!)
Carbon is trapped in the wood product as long as it’s in use, not active in the atmosphere, and wood products can last a long time when cared for.
In the Forest
Did you also know that when a tree reaches maturity, it begins dying, inhaling less carbon and exhaling less oxygen? Ultimately it dies, but not until it has captured the sunlight, nutrients, and rain necessary for younger trees to grow, thus stunting their growth. At some point, an old tree makes room for younger trees by falling to the ground. But many times, it’s too late: The younger trees have withered and died.
Dead trees can become fire hazards. It’s not true that cutting a tree is bad for the environment. Fires caused by lightning strikes in areas full of dead trees are nature’s way of rejuvenating forests. The problem with this rejuvenation is that it immediately releases trapped carbons into the atmosphere. This is why on the West Coast they can no longer see the sun for three to four months of the year. They have eradicated the sustainable wood harvesting and manufacturing businesses that once supported their communities.
Wouldn’t you rather choose the other alternative to rejuvenation? I’m referring to sustainable logging, the work that took a young man out into the woods; the one that taught him the value of hard work, common sense, teamwork, family and community; along with the responsibility of stewardship; the one that provides thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue to communities throughout America?
According to the Ohio Department of National Resources, the yearly revenue from the state’s hardwood industry is $300 billion. I’m talking about our only renewable resource and the sustainable industry that supports it. And this is why you should use wood in your home.
