Good wood for lifetime members

Ryan Temple of Sustainable Northwest Wood (https://www.snwwood.com/The-New-PDX-the-journey-for-Sustainable-Northwest-Wood)
Written by Zander Evans
When the Guild wanted to provide plaques for our lifetime members, we knew just any old wood wouldn’t do. We needed wood from a well-managed forest. We needed to support sustainable industry. Sustainable Northwest Wood (SNW Wood) was an obvious choice.
At the recent Northwest Innovative Forestry Summit, Ryan Temple, founder and president of SNW Wood said, “Sure we can get you some nice, local wood for plaques.” Making the connection between customers and sustainable wood is exactly what SNW Wood has been doing for 15 years. Their goal is to make it easy to find local, sustainable, and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood products. In this way, they are a bridge between responsible sourcing and the built environment. Sustainability is at the core of SNW Wood and connects their efforts to protect and restore ecosystems, to salvage and upcycle wood from the waste stream, and to create economic opportunities when supplying the wood products our community needs. One example is a signature program for SNW Wood, which uses western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) from restoration thinnings. In the past, ranchers cut the trees and burned juniper as they restored the native grasslands, but today SNW Wood and other dedicated groups are nurturing markets to ensure that this beautiful wood is put to use. In general, the junipers that are cut and milled are the smaller, younger trees that have sprouted since fire suppression while the older, grander trees are left. In addition to providing naturally rot- and decay-resistant wood for decks, garden beds, and beautiful interior applications, the program provides jobs in rural communities. SNW Wood is part of Sustainable Northwest, a long time Guild partner. They work closely with other companies familiar to the Guild community such as Roseburg and Collins.

A 5 foot diameter grand fir in the Wild Thyme Forest (httpwww.wildthymefarm.com)
While we didn’t track individual logs, SNW Wood gets most of the big leaf maple like the pieces used for the lifetime member plaques from Northwest Hardwoods in Chehalis, Washington. It is all FSC mix credit certified from a diversity of landowners in southwest Washington. These are mostly small family forest owners and many of them are part of Northwest Natural Resource Group’s group FSC chain of custody.
One family forest that has sent truckloads of big leaf maple to Northwest Hardwoods is Wild Thyme Farm near Oakville, Washington. John Henrikson is part of the family that manages Wild Thyme Farm and also attended the Northwest Innovative Forestry Summit. His philosophy will make sense to Guild members across the country:
“Wild forest management involves maintaining our forest in the most natural and vigorous condition possible. Natural forestry allows high quality trees to grow to maturity. Timber is harvested from suppressed, damaged and downed trees. The ultimate objective is an ecosystem dominated by big trees with structural and biological diversity, while providing steady income from high quality, selectively harvested timber – attuned to nature’s own culling process.”

An example of the Guild Lifetime Member plaques.
The forest had been patch clear-cutting until the Henrikson’s acquired the parcel in 1987. Now it contains over 2 million board feet of timber in red alder, Douglas-fir, big leaf maple, western red cedar, western hemlock and grand fir. Wild Thyme estimates that over 100 years, their FSC-based management will result in 6,500 tons more carbon stored in their forests compared to conventional commercial harvesting. Wild Thyme is gearing up production and value-added processing so they will be able to provide maple and other species directly going forward (John also notes they are renovating their website so check back for an update on their management plan and lumber business).
All the connections and stewardship embodied within the bigleaf maple plaques make them a truly fitting marker of lifetime membership in the Guild. We honor the contributions our lifetime members make today, and for the future of forests, and appreciate SNW Wood’s products that help us express that to you!