All wooden picture frames are not created equal. Some come from well-managed forests. Others come from forests that have been liquidated, planted with nonnative species and sprayed with chemicals.

Here, in the midst of the holiday gift-giving season, we all have an opportunity to help our forests by buying products that come from well-managed forests.

How can you tell which is which?

One way is to look for the Forest Stewardship Council label. Call the Natural Resources Council of Maine or go to our Web site at www.nrcm.org for a list of retailers in Maine that carry products with the certified Forest Stewardship Council label showing that the products come from well-managed- forests. Ask for certified products when you shop at these stores. If they don’t have any in stock, encourage them to get them.

At the same time, go to your own local lumber, hardware and stationery stores that are not on the list and ask them to begin stocking products with the Forest Stewardship Council label. Many of them may not have heard of it.

The Forest Stewardship Council is an independent, nonprofit that oversees the evaluation of forests worldwide. It measures forestlands against a set of tough standards and requires public disclosure of just what is happening on the ground in the woods where the trees are harvested. If products carry the Forest Stewardship Council label, you can feel confident that they were produced from commercially managed forestlands that are among the best in their class.

And it’s not just picture frames that are Forest Stewardship Council certified. Increasingly, Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood is being used to produce consumer goods like guitars, tables, chairs, garden furniture and window boxes as well as paper. Certified wood is also available for home-improvement projects like kitchen cabinets and flooring.

When you look for products made from certified well-managed forests, it is important not to be mislead by a “lookalike” program funded by the forest products industry.

Recently the forest products industry ran ads in many Maine newspapers touting the number of acres that have been “audited.” In doing so, they lumped lands that have passed a truly independent test certified by the Forest Stewardship Council with lands that have merely gone through an industry controlled “no one can fail” exercise.

Unfortunately, they mixed apples and oranges. In Maine, roughly 1.5 million acres have been certified as well-managed by the Forest Stewardship Council, including lands managed by Seven Islands Land Co., J.D. Irving, Two Trees Forestry and Mid Maine Forestry. These lands are the shiny red apples any teacher would be proud of.

The rest of the lands the industry touted as “audited” have only gone through an industry-controlled exercise that has vague and open-ended standards and no independent report to the public. It’s an exercise everyone passes and no one can fail. At the same time, the Maine Forest Service estimates that harvest levels are exceeding growth levels on the large ownerships in Maine by 37 percent. How reliable can the industry program be if it gives its stamp of approval to lands where harvest levels exceed growth levels by 37 percent? Not only are the lands in the industry-controlled program as different from lands certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as oranges are from apples, they may be rotten oranges.

Using the Forest Stewardship Council label as a guide when you are buying products is an important way you can use your consumer power to help Maine’s forests. The more people ask for products with the Forest Stewardship Council label, the more likely stores are to sell it. And the more stores that are looking for Forest Stewardship Council products to sell, the more landowners will get their lands certified. The more lands that become certified in Maine, the better the quality of forest management will be.

And better forest management in Maine benefits workers who will know that there will continue to be wood to harvest and jobs in the future. Better forest management benefits wildlife whose habitat will be protected. Better forest management protects the fish and the quality of the water in our lakes, rivers and streams. And better forest management makes Maine’s North Woods a place we all enjoy going to camp, fish and hike – instead of the moonscape we see too often now.

If we all ask, maybe next year, every lumber and hardware store in Maine will carry Forest Stewardship Council labeled products and every large landowner will get its land certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as well-managed. That would be a wonderful additional thing to celebrate during this season of celebrations.

Catherine B. Johnson is North Woods Project director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine.