While forests are dynamic eco-systems in which species composition will shift over time, regular forest inventories undertaken by the federal government demonstrate that there is rapid growth in the volume of nearly all commercial hardwoods in U.S. forests. This growth is also well distributed throughout the United States.

According to the latest statistical update by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): 

Between 1953 and 2017 the volume of U.S. hardwood growing stock increased from 5.2 billion m3 to 12.0 billion m3, a gain of over 130%. U.S. hardwood forests are aging and more trees are being allowed to grow to size before being harvested. The volume of hardwood trees with diameters 48cm or greater increased nearly four-fold from 0.73 billion m3 in 1953 to 2.8 billion m3 in 2017. The proportion of hardwood trees in this mature age class increased from 14% in 1953 to 24% in 2017. The total area of hardwood and mixed hardwood and softwood forest types in the U.S. increased from 99 million hectares in 1953 to 117 million hectares in 2017, an average of 280,000 hectares per year – that’s equivalent to adding an area the size of a soccer pitch every 90 seconds throughout the entire 64 year period.

The rapid expansion of U.S. hardwood forest owes much to the fact that it is predominantly owned by a large number of private individuals and families whose primary motivation is usually not timber production or economics.

Of the total hardwood harvest in 2016, 89% came from privately owned lands and only 11% from public lands. In the Eastern States, which accounted for 98% of all U.S. hardwood harvested in 2016, there are 9.75 million forest owners, each with an average of 15 hectares. Only 5% of private forest area is owned by corporations and the average size of corporate holdings is only 133 hectares.

American Hardwood Assured (AHA) addresses the challenge of verifying the legal and deforestation-free status of wood sourced from large numbers of small private family forests. These forests are typically managed at low intensity and provide significant environmental and rural-development benefits, while producing high-quality hardwoods suitable for long-lived, carbon-storing products.

However, conventional certification systems are often too burdensome for small forest owners, and the aggregation of small, diverse timber consignments makes compliance with regulations such as the EUDR, UKTR, ILPA and Lacey Act complex.

AHA proposes a scalable, low-cost assurance system that combines forest monitoring, wood provenance technology, jurisdictional risk assessment and straightforward proof-of-provenance procedures. This approach aims to provide robust assurance of legal and deforestation-free sourcing without placing excessive administrative burdens on individual forest owners.