Certified Wood from Seven Islands Forests

It is now possible for environmentally concerned architects and builders to specify and buy framing lumber, white cedar shingles, and hardwood flooring that have been independently certified to be from well-managed forests. The Seven Islands Land Company, headquartered in Bangor, Maine, has just received chain-of-custody certification for several different wood products produced from the company’s wood. Seven Islands manages approximately 1 million acres of forest in northern and western Maine for the Pingree heirs, who have owned the land for over 150 years.

The forest operations were certified by Scientific Certification Systems, Inc. (SCS), an independent, third-party certification company based in Oakland, California. As with other forest operations SCS has certified (Menominee Indian Reservation forests in Wisconsin and Collins Pine in California), SCS focuses its review on three areas: sustainability of the timber resource; maintenance of the forest ecosystem; and socio-economic benefits provided to the local and regional community. Seven Islands’ scores in these three categories, on a 0-100 scale, were as follows: