The real cost of wood

Yes, lumber costs are soaring, but wood has always come at a price

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There is much discussion about the rising cost of lumber these days. In some areas of the US, prices have doubled or even tripled in the last year. Wood stocks are low, owing to an increase in demand for things like new construction. And the pandemic has disrupted distribution.

It's basic supply-and-demand economics with a global disaster throwing a wrench in things.

Current lumber costs aside, I often think about the high price we've been paying for wood all along. Since prehistory, humans have used timber. Nothing works better to shelter our bodies, cook our food, and fashion our spears. But with a burgeoning population, the demand for lumber has never been higher. The result: very few tracts of old-growth native forests are left anywhere on Earth.

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Forests and forest creatures suffer first, of course. But so too do the people who immediately depend on them. I witnessed this loss - both environmental and cultural - firsthand while on an expedition to the Solomon Islands in 2009.

After completing my doctorate, I went to work for Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, from 2008 to 2011. There, I studied tropical plants as a research botanist. The position also allowed me to go in search of plants abroad.

The trip to the Solomons was one I had worked towards my entire career. And I jumped at the chance. This two-month-long solo field research trip was successful, scientifically speaking. And it was a crash course in adventure travel for me, which I lived for back then. But the real takeaway was learning how resource exploitation affects people and cultures.

The images of decimated lands and betrayed people still haunt me today.

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Illegal logging was going on in the Solomon Islands when I went there a decade ago. But over a century before, it had begun. European logging companies were the first to consume these rich forests. Soon after came Asian interests that did the same.

Today, unsustainable logging practices continue, but there is far less to be had. No more than 2-3% of intact native forests remain in this vast archipelago of more than 900 islands. And the thriving cultures that once used these forests are in a debilitating decline.

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I saw this degradation everywhere while there. But none more so than on Vangunu Island in the Solomons' Western Province. Here, on this remote island, reachable only by boat, I came face-to-face with an illegal mining camp.

It was the roughest place I have ever visited.

The camp was mostly tin-roofed shacks and muddy streets. A rough and tumble kind of place, it reeked of smoke and diesel fumes. No women and certainly no children were present, only dirty, scowling men. Some of the men worked - dragging massive logs out of the hills with tractors. A few repaired equipment and others ran mills. But there were several idle men too and one visibly drunk man in the street. No one seemed to care; they only stared at my small party of local guides and me.

After some negotiation and a sizable bribe, we earned access to the path leading into the forest. We walked it for what seemed like hours through the decimated lowlands. The blazing tropical sun beat down on us as we traipsed through the unshaded devastation.

Only weeks before, this land had been a beautiful lowland paradise. Now, it looked like a bombed-out war-scape from Apocolypse Now. Tree stumps and mangled underbrush were all that remained. Many small fires burned all around.

It was hellish in every way.

After my trip, I researched the area and found current satellite images of the island. The destroyed forests and logging camp were all visible. So too was a broad plume of red-brown mud, filling the ocean near the operation. Deforestation destroys not only the land but also the sea.

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The Solomon Islanders, by all counts, have been duped. When foreign loggers come in, they promise riches to villages that give up their forest rights. Indeed, short-term gains are had. Strangers arrive, and handsome sums of money exchange hands. Soon there are things to buy and sell with all that "real money." Ephemeral economies develop, and for a time, things seem better.

Predictably though, the forests dry up, and the loggers leave. The villages' money is gone as well - spent in haste, not knowing that it was a finite resource, much like the trees. Now, nothing remains except the barren hillsides and destroyed waters. And, of course, the broken people who once called this place paradise.

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It was hard for me to see this play out in real life. When we observe environmental disasters on television, it sterilizes them. We don't smell, taste, and feel the destruction like one does in person. The foul air tainted by fires and fumes; the dreadful heat, once cooled by forests, now gone; the sour waters spoiled by runoff.

On TV, one doesn't have to look into the eyes of people destroyed by deforestation either. But I did on that trip. And I saw victims—hollow-eyed victims - people who had just been raped. There are visible holes in these people's souls.

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But there is hope too. While these logging camps still exist, there is a solid movement to resist and protect. Many Solomon Islanders are on a crusade to save their lands and sea. On nearby Kolombangara Island, for example, a sustainable forestry system is in place.

Kolombangara Forest Products Ltd. (KFPL) manages three-quarters of the more or less circular island of Kolombangara. The British-owned Lever Brothers logged out the accessible timber there by the late 1960s. But in the 1990s, KFPL began to manage remaining stands and maintain wilderness areas on Kolombangara.

KFPL was one of the first tropical forest projects certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). This third-party entity advances sustainably managed forestry worldwide. Currently, KFPL foresters are promoting extensive habitat conservation on Kolombangara with guidance from FSC. They welcomed me with open arms because research efforts help justify the ongoing certification of their operation.

Much of Kolombangra still has old-growth forest, owing to the island's rugged terrain - and now thanks to KFPL. Four forested swaths that were inaccessible drainages serve as wildlife corridors. And managed timber stands integrate understory elements, making them wildlife havens too. On my trip there, I was honored to hike into this island's remote crater. There I witnessed the beauty and surreal comfort the intact forests bring.

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I think about that trip often when I am sourcing and buying wood. It is so easy to forget the environmental toll our choices take. I'd love it if hardwood harvested on Vangunu went someplace noble - like fine furniture. At least then, it could be appreciated. If not for its life, at least its beauty.

But the wood likely didn't end up as such. Instead, much of it was for regular old building timber. Even worse, I imagine some went into shipping palettes. And worse still - chipped up and pressed into formaldehyde-laden particleboard.

It's a global nightmare playing out on a local scale, one island at a time.

But the real toll, as mentioned, is on the people. Even after seeing it myself, it's hard to imagine how devasting this has been on those small villages. A whole way of life obliterated by a false promise and a sharp saw. With nothing left and nowhere to go, these people sit and wait for something better to come.

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Yes, wood has always come at a price.