Hardwood Flooring February March 2018

acknowledging that this is a national issue, not one confined to the western states. He remains optimistic that federal forest reform legislation will get enacted in 2018. Pat and I committed to working aggressively with his lobbying team and our champions in the House and Senate to help make that outcome a reality. We also discussed the emergence of cross-laminated timber (CLT) as a highly desirable building material and the opportunities for hardwood products to be developed and included in this sector of the industry. Chief Tooke was well- versed on the issue and is supportive of efforts to enact the Timber Innovation Act, which will provide more research and development dollars toward developing wood products in taller buildings. The bottom line is the new Chief is very familiar with our products and our industry, and we are looking forward to working with him to advance policies that both benefit our sector and the rural communities that surround our forestlands. It was a refreshing conversation and one that we look forward to continuing on behalf of the entire industry. Dana Cole is Executive Director at the Hardwood Federation, a Washington D.C.-based hardwood industry trade association that represents thousands of hardwood businesses in every state in the U.S. and acts as the industry’s advocacy voice on Capitol Hill. She can be reached at dana.cole@hardwoodfederation.com.

A key talking point of our meeting with Chief Tooke was that the Hardwood Federation seeks to bring a national face to the symbiotic relationship between federal forest fire suppression funding and the need for federal forest management reform. Although the public perception may be that devastating wildfires are a strictly western U.S. concern, the eastern half of the country is also impacted. Not only do fires occur east of the Mississippi, insect infestation and

Photo courtesy of Paul Johnson

A blazing wildfire burns in the night in Missouri.

disease are having an increasingly negative impact on the eastern forest system, including federal forests. The fact that forest fire suppression efforts now take up more than half of the USFS budget exacerbates these problems and pushes solutions off to “another day.” Chief Tooke strongly agreed,

the magazine of the national wood flooring association

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