The good news this week was that Maine lands simultaneously earned certification from two major audits, a national first. Equally good – and potentially more far-reaching – news is expected in a month, when the results of the two auditing standards are judged against each other. The comparison should give standards a means to improve while quieting a long-running debate over which standard is the more rigorous.

Maine’s success in earning certification from the independent Forest Stewardship Council and the industry-created Sustainable Forestry Initiative shouldn’t be underestimated. Not only was the state required to show that its lands were well-managed, it had to demonstrate that it had sufficient legislative direction, policies and paper trail to support the work being done in the field. And unlike private industry, it could not quietly back out of audits once they had begun. The audits had been announced beforehand and environmental groups were watching closely; lands managed by the Department of Conservation either passed or the department would look foolish. They passed with conditions, but passed nonetheless.

The event makes Maine a national leader in forest certification, with a half dozen large landowners having SFI certification and Seven Islands and Irving meeting the FSC standards. What these companies need and deserve now are retailers and customers willing to choose certified wood over uncertified. The next step in the state process should help by clarifying the difference between the two certifications. The Doris Duke Foundation provided a grant to the well-regarded Pinchot Institute to carry out both the audits and a follow-up comparison, a kind of reverse audit in which the differences between the standards are examined.

This is important because the trend in forestry regulation clearly is toward certification, which depends heavily on the public trusting the certifiers. The Maine comparison will follow similar work done last year by The Home Depot, FSC and SFI, which showed, generally, FSC to be the more rigorous in such areas as ecological function, chemical use, biological diversity and social impacts. SFI placed greater emphasis on logger training and funding research. On the key issues of requiring an independent, third party to certify the results and to ensure that the results are available to the public, FSC proved to be the superior system, often because it required standards rather than merely allowing for them, as SFI did.

The Pinchot report should add site-specific comparisons that would help the audits detect weaknesses and suggest ways to improve. Ultimately, highly similar standards will be required to keep public confusion to a minimum. For progress there, keep an eye on the report due next month.