Double certified

The announcement last week by Gov. Angus King that Maine will not only certify but double certify its 500,000 acres of public land won’t mean much to most people. But to those embroiled in a long and seemingly endless debate about forestry certification systems, it is a welcome and much-needed decision.

The two certification systems are the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), an industry-created model, and the criteria under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an independent overseeing group. The similarity of the abbreviations has ensured that all but the closest students of forestry have confused the two models, making the debate over which is the more rigorous and which will lead to improved forestry all the more confused.

Most landowners who get one type of certification to ensure, for instance, that they are cutting sustainably, respecting wildlife and benefiting the local economy and not likely to pay to have similar measurements taken through another system. One exception to this is Seven Islands, which is often the exception in forestry issues. Generally, however, the lack of comparison and, therefore, consensus on certification has meant that states looking for an effective way to protect forests, both public and private, have hesitated to require the process.

Gov. King last week appropriately likened certifying agencies to Underwriters Laboratories – the independent, not-for-profit product safety testing and certification organization that has placed some 16 billion UL marks on products worldwide. Just as the state does not need to test the safety of toasters in Maine homes but can rely on the broad trust the public places in UL to do the job, so too can forestry certification systems develop public trust in watching over the forests.

A half dozen other states have expressed interest in double certifying their lands for much the same reason Maine is, but this state will be the first to do so and has been helped by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, which is providing a $200,000 grant to pay for the study of Maine’s land. The level of interest from other states and the willingness of a private foundation to pay for these studies suggests how important a thorough comparison of these competing systems will be. One possible outcome is that both will be modified and improved by the work done here.

That, of course, means that the debate over whether FSC or SFI is the better way to certify will go on and on. At least, however, will have its hands on a lot better information than it had before as it considers ways to encourage all landowners to become certified.