A Florida Forest Service report required by 2012 legislation found that the state’s forests overall are sustainable but there are some counties where some types of trees are being harvested faster than they are being grown.
The report was required by HB 7117, a comprehensive energy bill, amid concerns that proposed new biomass energy plants could increase costs for existing sawmills, pulp mills and others in the forest products industry.
“The study indicates that most counties in Florida have highly sustainable forests that meet or exceed the demands of our forest products industry,” Agriculture Commissioner Adam H. Putnam said in a press release issued this week.
However, some environmentalists and a University of Florida ecology professor say the definition of sustainable was too narrowly focused on wood supplies and didn’t consider a variety of other issues including effects on wildlife habitat, forests and wetlands from cutting down trees or the effect on climate change from wood burning.
Scot Quaranda, campaign manager of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental group based in Asheville, N.C. focused on Southern forest issues, said the report shows that there is too much harvesting pressure on forests in some counties in northwest and northeast Florida. The study, he said, indicates there is “no room for expansion with industrial scale forest biomass and pellet industries.”
From The Florida Current: https://www.thefloridacurrent.com/article.cfm?id=34373416