The Siberian Timber Debate

Whether we should import raw logs from Siberian forests has sparked a hot debate among environmentalists and the wood products industry. Russia is hoping to boost its weak economy by exporting raw logs from Siberia’s vast forests. Some U.S. wood products companies see this as a way to make up for the loss in availability of timber from National Forests in the Pacific Northwest. The quality of the wood, principally Siberian Larch, is superb, though structurally unrated. The old-growth trees have extremely close grain, and trees two feet in diameter are often hundreds of years old.

Environmentalists and some forestry experts argue that clearcutting the extremely slow-growing conifers would devastate Siberia’s taiga ecosystem, and importing raw logs from Siberia runs the risk of introducing pests to our temperate forests that could cause billions of dollars in damage. In a worst-case situation, a disease comparable to the Chestnut blight (an imported pest that entirely wiped out this very important eastern tree species at the turn of the century) could devastate one or more of our conifers. In addition, the methods used for ridding logs of pests can be environmentally damaging. The most common fumigant, methyl bromide, is a significant ozone depleter that is scheduled for phase-out by the year 2002.