Mountain, Big Horn

In the heart of the Rocky Mountains there is one flooring product that has stood the test of time. Circle sawn flooring was used by the first homesteaders that pioneered the Wild West. These planks were cut on a historic circular saw mill and installed as rough sawn flooring. In the spirit of the Wild Frontier we’re bringing back the Western architecture of circle sawn flooring.

Our Mountain Collection is an authentic representation of 100 year old foot worn circle sawn plank flooring. Due to it’s tight growth rings and dense fiber, Rocky Mountain Douglas Fir was the species of choice in the pioneer days.  Known for it’s durabilty and strength, Rocky Mountain Douglas Fir flooring has a track record of over 150 years.

Mountain Collection Specs:

• Kiln dried to 6-8% moisture content
• Widths –  5 1/4″ and 7″
• Thickness – 3/4″
• Tongue and groove, and end matched (tongue and groove on the ends)
• Hand rubbed oil finish
• Pre-finished with our low VOC water based protective top coat
• Delivery available anywhere in the continental U.S.
• Grown and Made in Montana

Mountain, Glacier

Mountain, Yellowstone

Mountain, Antique

Old world, traditional, authentic, and artisan quality. Those are just a few of the terms our customers have used to describe our true hand scraped flooring.

Just about every pre-finished “hand scraped” wood flooring on the market is NOT scraped by hand, instead it’s done by a machine. At Sustainable Lumber Company we produce our flooring like a fine wine. Just like good wine our hand scraped flooring is bold, rich, and full of character. Every board is scraped with nothing other than a hand tool and countless hours of hard work. You can’t rush perfection; just like a fine wine, good things take time.

Like all our products you can rest assured every board is grown and made in the U.S.A. Compare our hand scraped flooring with others on the market and the choice is easy. Authentic hand scraped flooring grown and made in the U.S.A. or machine scraped flooring made in a foreign country.

Give us a call, when your project is complete we guarantee you’ll be glad you did.

Just another reason to buy local

Source: The Telegraph

WASHINGTON — U.S. consumers who purchase hardwood floors and furniture products made with illegally cut Russian timber unwittingly may be damaging the last remaining habitat of the endangered and noble Amur tiger.

These conclusions are spelled out in a detailed report being released Tuesday by the World Wildlife Fund. McClatchy obtained exclusively the U.S. edition of the troubling report.

The study reveals how loggers in eastern Russia, misusing permits for thinning out diseased trees or just flat-out breaking the law by logging on protected lands, are taking down old-growth Mongolian oak trees and other species that are key to the tiger’s survival. Environmental groups estimate that there are about 450 Amur tigers left in the wild.

The Russian eastern provinces of Khaborovsky and Primorsky border China, and Chinese flooring and furniture manufacturers, who compete with U.S. loggers, furniture makers and flooring manufacturers, are using the illegal wood in products exported to the United States and Europe, the WWF said

This practice threatens the Amur tiger, sometimes called the Siberian tiger, because the Mongolian oak trees, many of them centuries old, play a particularly important role in the food chain on which the tiger depends.

The Mongolian oak drops acorns that are foraged by deer and wild boar on which the tiger preys. With the trees rapidly disappearing, so too is the food source for the animals eaten by the tiger. Additionally, new roads being built by loggers are also leading to poaching of both the rare tiger and its prey.

“U.S. consumers can unwittingly be contributing to this,” Linda Walker, the WWF’s manager of the global forest and trade network in North America, said in an interview.

Other wood species illegally felled and sent to China include Manchurian ash and Manchurian linden. All are remarkably similar to wood grown in the United States and exported to China for use in finished products that are sent back to the United States.

“There is no one expert in the world who can tell from the appearance of the wood that this is a different species,” said Nikolay Shmatkov, the Moscow-based coordinator for forest policy projects in Russia for the WWF.

WWF officials monitoring the logging in the far eastern provinces have been threatened by companies engaged in the illicit trade, he said.

The WWF and other environmental groups are angry that publicly available export data in Russia show that from 2004 to 2011, oak timber exports from Russia to China were anywhere from two to four times the legally allowed levels. Shmatkov estimated from 2007 to 2008 alone, Russian loggers exceeded legal limits in the tiger’s habitat by a stunning 52.9 million cubic feet.

The issue could become a trade irritant with Russia. The practice appears to run afoul of 2008 amendments to the Lacey Act, the sweeping nature stewardship legislation first enacted in 1900. The 2008 amendments require that American companies or individual importers of forest products to ensure that the wood was obtained legally in the country of origin.

The changes mean that U.S. companies are now responsible for compliance with laws in exporting countries, and they are liable for wrongdoing by suppliers or middlemen. It’s not enough to know that the product is coming from China. Importers must now know where Chinese companies with whom they do business are getting their wood products.

The Lacey Act was the subject of headlines last year when iconic guitar maker Gibson was charged with violations for wood it was importing, and the act briefly became a rallying cry for tea party politicians who cited it as government overreach. Gibson and the federal government entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in August, with the company paying a $350,000 fine and pledging to improve its oversight of its wood imports.

“Fully enforcing this U.S. law by investigating highly risky Russian hardwood imports and prosecuting proven violations will send a clear message that the largest consumer of wood products is closing its doors to illegal wood and all its devastating consequences,” said Sascha von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an environmental group that uncovered many of the problems with Gibson’s use of rare hardwoods.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the Lacey Act amendments have leveled the playing field for some U.S. timber companies. The State Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture both have extensive outreach programs abroad designed to draw attention to compliance with the amended Lacey Act. Shmatkov was on Capitol Hill on Monday to raise awareness about the problem with Russian logging.

Can consumers avoid being accidental contributors to the problem? The WWF’s Walker said consumers should try to do business with companies that tout products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. However, few Russian companies actually have such certification.

“Consumers can purchase FSC-certified flooring or furniture. That is the easiest way to ensure that purchases are not contributing to the degradation of the Russian Far East’s last tiger habitat,” the WWF report said.

Source: Prince George Citizen

The map of the mountain pine beetle’s destruction is so big it can’t be contained in one province but the map of the beetle’s genetic makeup is so small it fits inside the molecules of an insect the size of a grain of rice.

That genetic makeup has now been revealed by a team of scientists.

UNBC professor Dr. Dezene Huber, the Canada Research Chair in Forest Entomology and Chemical Ecology, was one of these genome cartographers going where no scientists had gone before. This is only the second beetle of its kind to have its DNA mapped out of the more than 400,000 species of beetles in the world.

It was a Prince George beetle that made history.

“The main sequencing was done using one male individual collected near Prince George [on the] Kay Kay Forest Service Road,” said Huber.

What the mapping of this beetle’s genome means, though, is not directly clear for the forest industry. It certainly, said Huber, does not unlock some secret antidote to the pine beetle epidemic that has gone over the Rocky Mountains, transferred from lodgepole pines to also eating into jack pines just as voraciously, and now threatens the entire continental boreal forest ecosystem clear through to the Atlantic.

“There are no silver bullets in biology,” he said. “And there definitely are no silver bullets in forestry. Prior to having these genomic data, we were able to make very substantial but sometimes somewhat slow process to understanding the biology of this insect from a genetic point of view. Now that we have the sequence it allows us to accelerate our research.”

Many other research projects are already underway involving the mountain pine beetle and much more could be triggered now that this genome map exists, Huber explained, and it will also accelerate DNA mapping as its own category of science.

The amount of work involved in this research was massive. Huber was joined in this project by 18 other scientists from multiple universities and other facilities. He described the process as “somewhat akin to assembling a complete set of encyclopedias from a bunch of bits and pieces.”

They were keenly interested in many other tree pests as well – it seems every species of tree has its own set of parasites and predators – but the onerous work involved meant they were best to focus on the most important one before distracting resources.

“And all of the data are freely available on the internet, so now many other researchers in Canada and the USA and elsewhere can use them to look at new and interesting questions about this insect and related bark beetle species,” Huber said.

The decay of the dead pine is unleashing a century of stored up carbon, he pointed out, but using the wood from the dead pines helps offset the estimated 990 megatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020, so harvesting and silviculture must be aggressive, strategic, and planned carefully for its spinoff effects.

“And it needs to be remembered that while the infestation was dramatic, the mountain pine beetle is an important and natural part of western North American pine ecosystems. In their wake they leave behind habitat for all sorts of other creatures,” he added. “And the infestation serves to influence what the forest will look like in the future. So anything that we do to manage for economic, ecological, or climate purposes needs to be done with care and attention to potential shifts in outcomes that we may cause.”

We just finished up this beautiful beetle kill pine table for a donation to Missoula Catholic Schools. This table will be available to bid on during their annual fund raiser.

Turned out pretty sweet.

Source: U.S. Forest Service

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified before a House subcommittee today on the economic value generated by the nation’s forests during a time of increased fire activity, encroaching development, pests and disease.

Talking to the House Committee on Agriculture’s Subcommittee on Conservation, Energy and Forestry, Tidwell noted that forest restoration work, water, wildfire suppression, research, recreation, minerals, special uses and support of state and private forests all contribute tremendous value to rural America.

Forest Restoration

Tidwell described the health of America’s forests, with millions of acres damaged by drought and insects and overloaded with dry fuel primed for catastrophic wildfires. He emphasized the importance of forest restoration work by the Forest Service and forest products industry, which helps prevent damaging fire while creating thousands of jobs in rural America.

“The Forest Service recognizes the need for a strong forest industry to help accomplish forest restoration work,” said Tidwell. “The best opportunity for reducing the cost of these restoration treatments is through timber harvests and stewardship contracting.”

In the past two decades, there has been a rapid escalation of severe fire behavior and higher fire suppression costs. Nationwide, there are currently 72,400 communities at risk. In fiscal year 2012, the Forest Service spent more than $1.4 billion on wildfire suppression.

Through implementation of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program – which relies heavily on stewardship contracting, the Forest Service will create or maintain 1,550 jobs while making national forests more resilient to these wildfire threats.

However, he also noted that Forest Service work cannot alone repair the health of the nation’s forests. The forest products industry’s 900,000-member workforce is a critical part of the solution.

With an uptick in the housing market, the higher demand and prices for timber will enable the Forest Service to complete more restoration treatments, especially under stewardship contracts. In fiscal year 2012, approximately 25 percent of all timber volume sold was under stewardship contracts.

Water

Water is a vitally important natural resource flowing from America’s forests, which provides great economic benefit to many rural and urban communities. Forests provide clean drinking water to more than 180 million people, and watersheds on national forests and grasslands are the source of 20 percent of the nation’s drinking water supply. Many major urban centers, like Denver, Portland, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, depend on national forests for their water.

National forests and grasslands contain more than 200,000 miles of fish-bearing streams – streams that support nationally renowned recreational fisheries and local jobs.

Wildland Fire

Many states have recently experienced their largest or most destructive fires in history. On average, wildfires burn twice as many acres each year as compared to 40 years ago. Tidwell reported that as the fire seasons grow longer and fires increase, there will be increased impacts to local and state economies:

• In the absence of treatment, fuels continue to accumulate, setting the stage for future fires to be more extreme.
• Where we are able to treat fuels and vegetation, we are able to reduce fire impacts. A review of wildfires that burned into treated fuels showed that, of almost 1,200 cases studied, 93 percent of the fuel treatments were effective in changing fire behavior and/or helping with suppression.
• The pace of our fuel management activities has not kept pace with the trends that drive fuel accumulation.
• Human settlement patterns greatly compound the fire management problem.
• Severe fire can lead to reduced habitat for endangered and threatened species such as spotted owls, sage grouse and cold water fish species.
• The increased presence of wildfire is already having costly and serious impacts on public health with increased levels of smoke.

Recreation

Over the past few years, the national forests and grasslands have hosted an average of nearly 166 million visits per year. Recreation visits contribute about $13 billion to the U.S. economy each year. The direct visitor spending, combined with the ripple effects in the nearby economies, sustains more than 200,000 full and part-time jobs.

Minerals, Oil and Gas

At any given time, the Forest Service administers operations on approximately 160,000 mining claims and manages approximately 2,600 mineral material sale contracts. The value of energy and minerals production from these operations on Forest Service lands typically exceeds $6.5 billion per year.
Returns to the Treasury from lease rentals, royalties on production, bonus bids and mineral material sales on national forests and grasslands typically range from $650 million to $850 million annually.

Special Uses

Tidwell testified that the Forest Service manages approximately 74,000 special use authorizations, allowing for the use of Forest Service managed lands for numerous purposes to benefit the public, including energy transmission and communications infrastructure, renewable energy-related uses, public service facilities such as ski areas, resorts and marinas.

State and Private Forestry

The Forest Service manages many programs that first work to protect our state and private forests in the face of increasing development and other threats.
The Forest Stewardship Program is delivered directly to landowners through state forest agency partners and a vast network of forestry technical assistance providers, forestry consultants, state forestry agencies, and non-profit partners. Currently, about 20 million acres of private forest land are being sustainably managed under this stewardship program nationally.

The Forest Health Protection Program is helping states, landowners, communities and tribes combat insect pest, disease and invasive plant infestations that, if left unchecked, can have severe local and regional economic impacts.

Forest Research and Development

Forest Service research helps maintain the clean water important to communities by providing watershed management tools and educational programs. Additionally, Forest Service researchers put science in the hands of managers, decision makers, policy makers, homeowners and communities in the form of user-friendly software and data, and real-time support of trained analysts on active wildfires.

The Forest Service is also expanding the use of wood and a sustainable and environment-friendly material. These new materials range from nano-sized particles that can be used in developing light weight and strong car bodies or a green substitute for petroleum based plastics and films, to new construction materials and techniques for multiple story buildings.

Now until gone we’re liquidating every slab in stock. $150.00 each

Specs:

• Beetle Kill Ponderosa Pine
• Kiln Dried to 6-8%
• Sanded on both faces
• Random widths and random lengths available

By appointment only 406.235.1020

We’re very excited to announce our newest distributor. T&G Flooring located in Denver, CO prides themselves on educating their clients on the appropriate floor covering that individually suits specific lifestyles. Purchasing a hardwood floor is typically one of the most emotional decisions in a building project. Picking the right hardwood floor to fit your lifestyle, taste, and personality is a decision that should never be impulsive. Hardwood flooring is more than just a floor covering, it’s a showpiece.

Take your time, do your research, and choose a hardwood floor that will be the center piece in your home. Never compromise quality, the flooring you choose should last the lifetime of your home. Thoroughly read the warranties offered on hardwood flooring, more times than not you’ll be disappointed at what they actually cover.

Products made in the U.S.A. are typically held to a higher standard; again do your research and more often than not they will last significantly longer than imported products.

For more information in the Colorado area please contact Chris Keale at T&G Flooring 303.293.8600

Source: Treehugger

Michael Green is known to TreeHuggers as the author of The Case for Tall Wood Buildings. However when he spoke at the Wood Solutions Fair in Toronto it became clear that he is perhaps the material’s greatest proselytizer , both in his speaking and in his body of work. He makes an audacious claim:

Wood is the most technologically advanced material that we can build with.

I asked Green to speak about this in a little more detail in a brief, noisy interview. He notes that architects are stuck in a glass and steel mindset, and that man-made materials are nowhere near as good as what Mother Nature has made. He wonders why sticking solar panels on the roof of a concrete or steel building is considered green when the actual building is made of materials that are not. Green says that the culture of concrete peaked with Le Corbusier in 1929 and steel with Mies Van Der Rohe in 1950; now is the time for wood.

The Earth grows our food; The earth can grow our homes. It’s an ethical change that we have to go through.

He is right; there are millions of hectares of wood in North America dying right now from the onslaught of the Mountain Pine Beetle; it is almost unethical to use anything else. But innovation in architecture is incredibly slow; the building codes are not performance based, so change takes years, and we have to “change society’s perception of what is possible.”

Michael Green’s work certainly is a testament to wood; this atrium in the North Vancouver City Hall is a clever use of large panels of laminated strand lumber that is normally cut up for lintels and beams. Green tells Wood Solutions:

Engineered structural timber materials with many applications have emerged from the realisation that we can chop wood up and glue it back together; that we can use the fibre, which is the basis of wood, to its best advantage. For example, we used jumbo sheets of LSL (laminated strand lumber), which is made from compressed timber waste, to construct a large building very quickly. This was the North Vancouver City Hall project, where we cross laminated three sheets measuring 12 by four metres to create a beautiful wood structure that is also exposed as its ceiling.

Also dear to my heart is Green’s attitude about learning from the past.

More broadly in our architectural practice, we started to look around at existing timber structures and ask, “How can we learn from the past?” For example, at the turn of the 20th Century the timber barn on the Vanderbilt family farm in Vermont was the single largest volume space in the United States. The 37-metre high wooden Church of Transfiguration in Russia that was built in the 17th Century is still standing. When we started renovating a 100-year old building in Vancouver’s Chinatown we discovered that all the walls were made with ‘mass timber’, which was common practice at that time. We saw that we could learn from other cultures about their building practices and traditions to improve our own work. We also discovered that we build with wood now pretty much the same way as we did 500 years ago.

As for Green’s 30 storey wood towers, he says that he picked that number for its impact; had he said ten storeys, people might not have paid attention. Many thought he was nuts, but now major American architectural firms are in serious discussions with him about building wood towers for offices and residential projects. We are going to be hearing a lot more about tall wood, and a lot more about Michael Green.