Supply Of Logs Research Articles

An econometric study of Oregon's log and lumber markets: Estimation of price elasticities using two approaches

Estimation of price elasticities for regional and state-level timber and lumber markets is essential for conducting market-level analyses of how new policies or different types of market shocks might impact, or have impacted, the market outcomes and the economic returns experienced by market participants, such as landowners and lumber mills. By using two standard estimation approaches, 2SLS and VECM, we estimate the price elasticities from a system of simultaneous equations representing the log and lumber markets in Oregon. In contrast to previous studies, we estimate the elasticity coefficients by treating the markets for the two outputs as a whole system, meaning that both product prices are endogenous. Our empirical results show that the point estimates for price elasticities from the two approaches are reasonably similar. However, there are also differences, especially in the case of the price elasticity of lumber demand. Additionally, most of the price elasticity estimates from the 2SLS are statistically not significant with our data, whereas the VECM estimates are all statistically significant. At a general level, our results show that the demand and supply of logs and lumber in Oregon are both price inelastic, which partly helps to explain the considerable degree of variation typically witnessed in prices in both log and lumber markets.

Conservation by corruption: The hidden yet regulated economy in Nepal's community forest timber sector

Through the case of commercial timber production in Nepal's community forests, we uncover and explain how effective anti-corruption and harvest regulation have produced a kind of ‘allowed’ corruption that promotes forest conservation. An ethnographic study in four community forests and in-depth interviews of nearly 200 actors along the Sal (Shorea robusta) timber commodity chain showed that all actors participated in a highly organised form of collusive corruption. Anti-corruption officials call this practice “corruption without illegality” because it does not involve unauthorised harvest in community forests. Instead, it suppresses producer prices through legally required but rigged timber auctions that generate windfall profits, which sawmill owners share with upstream actors to ensure a steady supply of raw logs. Local-level timber brokers connect community forest user groups to sawmill owners. They also operate as stealth conveyers of unofficial payments to forestry officials and other upstream actors because they can camouflage such cash flows as transaction costs. Anti-corruption authorities enforce formal timber harvesting rules, which deters forestry officials from getting involved in overharvesting schemes. However, these same rules, plus some legal posturing, allow forestry officials to extract rents from legally harvested logs at minimum risk. This is hardly a coincidence because it enables the central administration to regulate difficult-to-control field-level forestry officials' behaviour without curtailing their access to informal incomes. Forest user groups lose out, but they could increase their timber income substantially by exercising their powers to decide whether or not to harvest timber. Elevating timber auction floor prices through state intervention is also feasible.

Plantation forestry in Malaysia: an evaluation of its successes and failures since the 1970

With reducing supply of logs from the sustainably managed natural forest to meet the processing demand of the large wood products industry in Malaysia, plantation forestry has been gaining importance since the early 1970s. Despite the government’s efforts through the provision of financial support and incentives, investments in plantation forestry has been slow. The promising start of the large-scale forest plantation programs in the early 1970s, followed by the 1980s and then the latest program in early 2000, appear to have been a mixed bag of failures and limited success. The rather below-par performance of the forest plantations has been attributed to several factors, such as insufficient good planting stock, poor species-site matching, poor soil quality, pest and diseases and the overall poor silvicultural and management regime laid out for forest plantations. Further, plantation forestry appears to be dominated by larger companies, while small and medium companies, have limited financial resources to overcome the prevailing challenges faced. Despite the poor performance until to date, the adoption of intensive research based silvicultural and management regime for the plantation forests, which are maturing in the next years, will hopefully produce better results and serve as the sunrise for plantation forestry in Malaysia.

The optimal export tax for a primary commodity in a vertical market

AbstractThe conventional formula for the optimal export tax (derived from a partial equilibrium model that ignores importers’ welfare) is extended to include the deadweight loss to the domestic economy associated with the tax. Applying the extended formula to the tax Russia imposes on its exports of logs, results suggest ignoring the marketing channel causes the optimal export tax for a primary commodity to be understated. The degree of understatement increases as the supply of logs and processing/marketing inputs become less price elastic, and as buyer and seller power in the downstream (lumber) industry increases. For plausible values of model parameters, however, the degree of understatement is modest, less than 19%.

An analysis of selected traits of typical supply of oak logs and a comparison of the efficiency of their processing into flooring

An analysis of selected traits of typical supply of oak logs and a comparison of efficiency of their processing into flooring. The research was performed on typical supply of oak wood logs of WC02 class, diameter from 29 to 34 cm, measured in the middle of its length (full log length 2.3 m). Wood came from Bobolice forest district, Lubowo forest subdistrict. This type of raw wood is used in standard machining processes (sawing) of multi-layer flooring face layer (top layer, lamella). The application of X-ray computed tomography allows to perform full valuation of raw material quality. The introduction of partially chip-less machining technology leads to significant savings in wood in comparison with standard machining (sawing).

Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market by Meng Zhang

Reviewed by: Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market by Meng Zhang Hong Jiang (bio) Meng Zhang. Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. 280 pp. Paperback $30.00, isbn-10 0295748877, isbn-13 978-0295748870. Published in the series "Culture, Place and Nature" by the University of Washington Press, Meng Zhang's book Timber and Forestry in Qing China is praised in the foreword by the series editor as offering "such a vivid account of regenerative and production forestry in the modern period" (p. xi). The author adopts a people-centered approach to timber trade in the Qing dynasty, highlighting the experiences of tree growers, loggers, transporters, and merchants through an enduring timber-trade network, with a commodity chain spanning eastern and southwestern China. Zhang offers the first detailed portrait of the shared ownership of trees, market networks of merchants and sellers, financial arrangements, and dispute resolution in timber production and trade in Qing China. The study contributes original insights relevant today in market conditions and institutional mechanisms required in order to sustain forestry, a resource that has a long economic cycle. At a time when the market has been seen as a main culprit for resource degeneration, Zhang's study offers an important opportunity for us to reconsider the market-resource relationship. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese history, economic and environmental history, Chinese geography, resource management, sustainable forestry, market-environment relationships, and related topics. The book includes five main chapters, plus an introduction and an epilogue. The introduction chapter introduces major themes, major players, as well as the book's main contributions to the literature. By offering analyses and evidence of sustainable timber management and trade in the Qing period, Zhang challenges some prevailing views of long-range unsustainability of resources in Chinese history. She terms her approach "people-centered," in that she focuses on people and institutions in the timber resource and trade network, and details how they managed to sustain the regeneration of timber forestry for market needs. The trees of the book's focus are the China fir(Cunninghamia lanceolata) and the mawei pine (Pinus massoniana), fast-growing trees planted and logged for use as timber. Chapter 1 surveys the history of timber policy from the Tang period (618-907). It is important to note that by the start of the Song period (960-1279), forests in the lowlands of the Yangzi delta (a.k.a. Jiangnan) had already been cleared for agriculture, and fir silviculture followed, where timber was seen as similar to a crop, taxed by the state and managed for the market. In the Ming period (1368-1644), the inland Southwest mountains were breached for their old-growth timber, first for the imperial court, then by merchants for the [End Page 162] market. Timber market integrating Jiangnan and the Southwest (Hunan and Guizhou) was already forming. By the Qing period (1644-1911), not only had interregional timber trade further developed along the upper and lower reaches of the Yangzi River, the state also shifted timber needs for the court to the market. Timber trade in the Southwest further expanded after the pacification of the Miao revolt at the Hunan-Guizhou border in 1736, integrating with timber provision in the old South (Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Fujian) with the aid of water transportation. It is worth noting: The Southwest timber became especially attractive for its supply of higher grade and larger logs. The Qing state left the timber trade largely to the private initiatives of people and institutions operating in the market. Chapter 2 delves into the details of the interregional timber market in the Qing era, with the timber flowing from the Southwest upper reaches to the lower Yangzi region, the Jiangnan, with the main consumption area centered on Nanjing. Timber demand in Jiangnan grew significantly during the eighteenth century, and Hunan in the Southwest became a major source of timber, while supplies from Jiangxi in the old South were declining. Timber merchants from Jiangnan sought timber resources in the Southwest, integrating Hunan and Guizhou into the timber trade. Hankou in the middle Yangzi area emerged...

Improving consistency in hierarchical tactical and operational planning using Robust Optimization

Many companies use optimization models to support their tactical planning production decisions. These tactical plans typically cover a horizon of several months. However, later on, when making daily or weekly operational decisions, inconsistencies may appear between the tactical and operational plans, due to various uncertainties and data aggregation. At the tactical level, planners attempt to take into account the potential cost of those inconsistencies, but that is not always easy. A 2-stage model under uncertainty might provide a solution, through the recourse, but this leads to harder problems and requires distributional information that is not always available. Hence, in our work we propose to use the methodology of Robust Optimization, based on uncertainty sets, at the tactical level to improve the consistency between the two planning problems. We illustrate our approach on a specific problem for sawmill operations in the forest industry, where at the tactical level the supply of logs is decided. At the operational level, the sawmill must plan the detailed operations, including which cutting patterns to use, based on the actual supply of logs, which might differ from what was initially planned. We show computational results on data from an actual company and provide some specific estimates of probabilities of consistency, for two approaches: ellipsoidal and polyhedral, or budgeted, uncertainty. Our results indicate that Robust Optimization is a viable methodology to improve consistency and it could be relevant in other problems where consistency between the tactical plan and the subsequent operational decisions is desirable.

Wie können der Wald und die Holzindustrie vermehrt am «Holzbauboom» teilhaben? (Essay)

How can forestry and the timber industry participate more in the timber construction boom? (Essay) While timber construction continues to gain market share, forestry and the timber industry have only been able to benefit to a limited extent from their good starting position. Harvest of sawlogs is stagnating and the number of sawmills has been decreasing for years. This is mainly due to the lack of competitiveness of Swiss forestry and timber industry compared to their European competitors who have lower production costs. On the other hand, the timber industry has been able to make significant gains in the production of semi-finished products, especially glued laminated wood. In order to maintain or even increase the quantities processed in the future, various factors are necessary, such as good availability of raw materials, strong market structures, the ability to make profitable use of wood by-products, a favourable Swiss franc/euro exchange rate and rising demand for Swiss wood. The timber industry is adjusting its structures to deal with an increased supply of large size logs and, as a result of climate change, a broader range of tree species. Sufficient availability of softwood remains important. Financial resources for adapting forests to climate change should be used to promote climate-stable AND economically viable tree species. The timber industry is sceptical about the current efforts of forestry to have standing timber counted as a “forest sink” and to market this function. Instead, it proposes a joint national climate project, based on wood consumption, that focuses on the storage and substitution effects of domestic wood.

Habitat preferences of Ceruchus chrysomelinus, an endangered relict beetle of the natural Central European montane forests

Abstract Montane forests represent the majority of natural forests remaining in Europe. Their quality can be indicated by the occurrence of saproxylic invertebrates. Information on the habitat requirements of threatened species inhabiting such forests is a necessary prerequisite for qualified management decisions. Ceruchus chrysomelinus (Lucanidae) is an endangered relict species of European montane forests, but its ecology has been poorly studied to date. Hence, the habitat requirements of the species were analysed using fallen log sampling at four localities in the Hrubý Jeseník Mts., Czech Republic. The main factors affecting the beetle's occurrence were decay stage, rot type, diameter, and humidity of the log. We found that C. chrysomelinus developed in humid, medium‐to‐strongly decayed logs, with brown rot penetrated deep into the wood. Spatial analysis showed random distribution of logs colonised by C. chrysomelinus, which is likely a result of the continual long‐term presence of the species at the localities. C. chrysomelinus can thrive only in forests with a continuously sufficient supply of logs with specific features. Since the majority of European forests suffer from diminished spatio‐temporal heterogeneity, populations of C. chrysomelinus need to be supported by repetitive felling and leaving suitable trees (within a radius of tens to a hundred metres from colonised logs). In well‐preserved natural forests, just leaving them unmanaged might be an appropriate conservation strategy. C. chrysomelinus is one of the relicts indicating European natural forests; successful conservation of its habitat may then open an umbrella for many other saproxylic organisms.

Kontribusi Sektor Kehutanan Terhadap Pembangunan Daerah Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan (Pendekatan Perhitungan PDRB Hijau)

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis kontribusi sektor kehutanan terhadap pembangunan daerah provinsi Kalimantan Selatan tahun 2012 – 2016 dengan menggunakan pendekatan perhitungan PDRB Hijau. Penelitian menggunakan metode diskriptif dengan pengolahan data secara kuantitatif terhadap data sekunder yang didukung data primer melalui perhitungan nilai unit rent, deplesi, degradasi dan penyusutan dari kegiatan pemanenan kayu bulat pada hutan alam dan hutan tanaman. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan nilai unit rent, deplesi, degradasi dan penyusutan per satuan produksi pada hutan alam relatif jauh lebih besar dibanding hutan tanaman. Nilai tersebut sekitar 81 % pada hutan alam dan 19 % pada hutan tanaman, sehingga diperlukan intensifikasi pengelolaan hutan tanaman untuk penyediaan kayu bulat sekaligus sebagai upaya mengurangi tekanan terhadap hutan alam di Kalimantan Selatan. Kontribusi hijau sektor kehutanan terhadap pembangunan daerah lebih kecil atau berkurang dibanding kontribusi sektor kehutanan dalam perhitungan PDRB konvensional, yang berarti provinsi Kalimantan Selatan telah mengorbankan aset (modal alami) dari penyusutan sumber daya hutan yang belum diperhitungkan sebagai nilai tambah sektor kehutanan dalam perhitungan PDRB konvensional. Besar nilai penerimaan sektor kehutanan sebagai nilai kompensasi dan insentif dari nilai penyusutan sumber daya hutan dan lingkungan relatif sangat kecil dibanding nilai yang diperlukan untuk pencegahan dan pemulihannya. Kontribusi (nilai tambah) riil sektor kehutanan terhadap pembangunan daerah provinsi Kalimantan Selatan dengan memasukkan nilai penyusutan sumber daya hutan sekitar 119 % dari PDRB yang tercantum dalam PDRB konvensional. Kata Kunci : PDRB Hijau, Sektor Kehutanan, Pemanenan Kayu Bulat, Hutan Alam, Hutan Tanaman

PELAYARAN RAKYAT DALAM PERSPEKTIF SISTEM LOGISTIK NASIONAL

The State of Indonesia is a country which is according to cultural history and in the days of the kingdom is a maritime country. The country of Indonesia with the largest islands covers the largest sea, the largest island, and the second longest beach in the world. On this basis, Indonesia currently has a modern port as well as a port for people's voyages. People's voyages are generally identical to traditional wooden boats operated by natural sailors with simple management (Law No. 17/2008 on the voyage of articles 15, paragraphs 1 and 2). The demands of global business are causing people's shipping today to be marginalized.Some problems in the voyage of the people include the procurement of the shipping fleet is hampered by the difficult supply of logs, so it needs to look for other alternatives. Another problem is the guarantee of safety and good service from the voyage of the people The government plans to build the People's Port. This port will be built with a good security system. The sailing of people with the zone of its own. People's voyages are still needed, because remote areas that are not crossed by large auto ships are still dependent on small ships such as KLM or PLM. In addition, there is a dock that can not be enclosed by iron vessels or shallow harbors. The voyage of the people can overcome it, thus helping national transpotation.Indonesia as the largest archipelago country still requires the voyage of the people as one mode of inter island transportation. The Government is committed to memordenisasi and improve the safety and security of people's shipping by still considering local wisdom. Another problem is the guarantee of safety and good service from the voyage of the people.

The financial benefits of forest certification: Case studies of acacia growers and a furniture company in Central Vietnam

The demand for forest products is growing and plantation forests are supplying an increasing proportion of wood to industry. There are also increasing market requirements to demonstrate the sustainability of timber supply. Vietnam has some 3.9Mha of plantation forests, 44% of which is on short-rotations managed by smallholders. More than 80 percent of the harvested volume from the plantation forests is used for woodchip production to serve domestic and international markets. The Vietnam Government has goals to increase the domestic supply of suitable wood for furniture production to international markets by increasing the supply of larger logs grown in plantations and the supply of certified wood to industry. However, it is not clear that these objectives will necessarily benefit growers and processors. This study compared financial returns from certified and non-certified forest products for: (1) growers with 10-year rotation acacia plantations; and (2) a furniture processing business (battens for chair and table) in Quang Tri Province, Central Vietnam. The data were collected from smallholder tree growers and a sawmilling company, triangulated with and supplemented by formal and informal interviews with other stakeholders. Currently, much of the cost of certification is met by external aid donors. Results showed that net returns from both certified and non-certified timber products are positive for both actors and are higher from certified timber production than non-certified timber production. When the full costs of certification are included, the benefits to growers of certification are much reduced and potentially negative unless the fixed costs can be spread over a large group of growers. A minimum of group with 3000ha may be required to make certification cost effective. In recent years, the price difference between the certified and non-certified logs is narrowing and this may discourage farmers from attaining certification. For the sawmiller, the benefit of certified timber production is greater. It would be in their interests to increase prices paid to growers for certified logs. Government policy measures to support certification should include consideration of who bears the cost, support for aggregation of smallholder growers and improved communication in timber supply chains.

Scheduling production for a sawmill: A robust optimization approach

Optimization models are increasingly being used for planning natural resources operations. However, the inherent uncertainty present in natural resources makes it difficult to directly apply their results. In particular, production scheduling for sawmills presents several challenges since the supply of logs and the finished product orders are often unknown at scheduling time. In this paper we consider the problem of scheduling production under uncertainty in a sawmill, where the deterministic model proposed by Maturana et al. (2010) was extended to account for uncertainties in product demand and availability of raw materials. The robust optimization methodology of Bertsimas and Sim (2004) and Bertsimas and Thiele (2006) was applied to develop three robust models: one that considers only uncertainty in the product demand, the second considers only uncertainty in the raw material supply, and the third considers both uncertainties simultaneously. For each of these models we carried out an experiment to evaluate the robustness of the solutions and the effect of the conservatism level on the solutions. This allowed us to determine the impact of both sources of uncertainty separately, and the combined effect on the production schedules. In each experiment we defined several levels of variability for the uncertain parameters, and for each of them, we changed the level of conservatism through the manipulation of budgets of uncertainty. We analyzed the behavior of the robust solutions and their average performance with respect to uncertainty using Monte Carlo simulation. This analysis allowed us to provide several managerial insights that could help schedulers choose the appropriate level of conservatism with respect to each source of uncertainty according to their preferences.

Non-Steady State Moisture Diffusion Flow in Homogenous Pineapple Leaves Particleboard

Non steady state diffusion flow is unstable movement of moisture in a material which changes with respect to time. Diffusion coefficient describes the rate at which water moves from the interior to the surface of the materials. Absorption and desorption are the variables that are used to determine the diffusion coefficient. Understanding of the water absorption and desorption is important since it affects the mechanical properties of materials such as strength and durability properties. Water absorption and desorption of the materials or products intended for drying are important for the design and operation of dryers such as kiln drying and other processing system. Nowadays, the processing of solid wood into finish product is decreasing due to increase in the cost of solid wood and insufficient supply of quality logs. Agricultural waste such as pineapple leaves is one of the potential raw materials that can be used in particleboards manufacturing. Pineapple leaves particleboards were produced and the diffusion of coefficient of water absorption, percentage thickness swelling and percentage thickness shrinking were determined. Diffusion coefficient was determined based on the absorption and desorption rate. The particleboards manufacturing followed BS EN 326 and testing of samples was in accordance with BS EN 317. The difference in thickness of particleboard has great influence on physical properties. In this study the particleboard made of 1 cm has the lowest water absorption compared with 2 cm particle board and has highest thickness shrinking.

Improving tree selection for partial cutting through joint probability modelling of tree vigor and quality

Tree classification systems are generally designed to predict the supply of high-quality logs for the wood processing industries and to mark defective trees for removal with the aim of improving both the vigor and quality of future stands. Although these two objectives are generally inversely related, their joint consideration could enable the development of robust criteria for improved tree selection in partial cuttings of northern hardwood stands by targeting low-vigor (LV) trees of high quality (HQ). In this study, we used a copula approach to model the joint probability distribution of trees characterized by both vigor and quality, which accounts for the statistical dependence between the different classes of both classification systems. The relationships between the probability of occurrence of a tree in each joint category and tree diameter at breast height (DBH) were quite similar among the three studied species: yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britt.), sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), and American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.). In particular, the probability of occurrence of LV–HQ trees was characterized by a parabolic curve with a maximum value attained at the mid-DBH range, whereas that of LV and low-quality (LQ) trees increased with increasing DBH. This suggests that instead of harvesting large and mostly LV–LQ trees, partial cutting should target smaller LV–HQ trees, so that the volume of harvested HQ trees would increase without compromising the silvicultural objective of improving the vigor of future stands.

Processing and utilization of coconut wood in Kerala

The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L.) is the “tree of life” and known as “porcupine wood”. All parts of the coconut wood can be manufactured into commercial products. The wood is hard and durable; volumetric shrinkages are mostly smaller. The tree is non-branching and free of knots and can be used as decorative wood. No distinguishable separation between sapwood and heartwood. The logs are cut into 4–6 m length depending on height and soundness of the tree. Most efficient and least expensive system of log extraction is the use of agricultural tractor with a towing bar fitted to the hydraulic lift arms. Loading may be done by manually and by cross hauling with a skidding tractor or with a hydraulic front-end loader. Timber should be graded as hard, intermediate or soft corresponding to high, medium and low densities. Coconut wood is used in construction, furniture, high-value products, charcoal, chemicals, pulp and paper. Coconut wood utilization can supplement the supply of raw materials for the wood industry and provide low-cost and durable construction materials for housing programmes in the state and for export. Due to the low price of coconut wood, it becomes popular among the middle and low-income groups, and used as a substitute for commercially known wood species to overcome the inadequate supply of logs and help to conserve the remaining forests in Kerala.

Images of Enemy and Self in the Age of Jefferson: The Barbary Conflict in Popular Literary Depiction

In 1801 Thomas Jefferson deployed American’s infant navy to the Mediterranean in the nation’s first projection of military power abroad in reaction to decades of piracy emanating from the regencies of North Africa.1 The flotilla’s efforts eventually included a naval blockade against the port city of Tripoli as well as an overland Marine campaign in support of a coup attempt against a Barbary sovereign. While the military campaign is often relegated to little more than a colourful historical footnote of American foreign relations, the intellectual milieu surrounding domestic perceptions of the Barbary threat offers revealing insights into the complex interplay of war, diplomacy and literary culture. During the period of American involvement in the Barbary, literary representations were a primary means by which citizens were introduced to this largely unknown adversary, communicated through an ample supply of travel logs, captivity narratives, theatrical presentations, historical studies, poetry and works of popular fiction. These depictions of Barbary culture drew on several persistent sources of knowledge; inherited presumptions of European philosophy, powerful subtexts of republican political ideology and a vast reservoir of domestic experience with Native American tribes serving as a basis for cultural comparison. These disparate notions melded together to form a uniquely Americanised strain of inherited old world orientalism, preoccupied with domestic ideological concerns over matters of political virtue, religion and state, gender equality, free commerce, private property, and persistent a paranoia over the risks of backsliding into the grips of monarchical despotism. In prelude to conflict, popular literature served two important functions for the reading public, first as telescope, second as mirror. The literary telescope offered distant glimpses revealing the face of the adversary and providing an intellectual context for the crafting of diplomacy and war. At the same time the

Sustainable Forest Management Practices and West Malaysian Log Market

The global demand for timber products will continue to grow in line with increasing population and economic development especially in many developing countries. Simultaneously, forest ecosystem plays important roles in the environmental services such as carbon sequestration, recreational, water catchments, wildlife reserve and soil protection. Therefore, Malaysia is committed in implementing Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). The forest are harvested in a sustainable manner by adopting the method of reduce impact logging practices. This resulted to diminishing supply of logs to downstream timber industry. The West Malaysian log supply is in deficit since 1995. This has significant impact on major timber products. They have moved from resources surplus to one of deficit in Malaysia. Therefore, it is interesting to know the behaviour of West Malaysian log market with the implementation of SFM policy. The results indicate that full adoption of SFM could lead to substantial reduction of supply. Furthermore, a sustained price increase in the long run does not seem to have significant impact on the demand side. In conclusion, the ongoing adaptation of West Malaysian forestry to the standards of the SFM certification programs could have substantial effects only on the log supply. This will probably influence the scheme of forest plantation establishment in sustaining the West Malaysian forest sector.

Demand and Supply of Wood for Drum Making in Central Uganda

SUMMARY Drum making is an important economic activity in Mpigi district, central Uganda. Scarcity of the desired tree species for drum making has raised concern about the future of the business. A study was carried out to assess the demand and supply of wood for making drums and ascertain whether the supply of logs from the wild is sustainable. Drum makers in 28 stalls were interviewed to collect information on the volume of wood required for making drums. Thirty sample plots were established in Degeya, Lufuka and Mpanga forests to determine the potential supply of logs. A combined Huber and Newton's formulae and Von Mantel's method were used to compute the volume of wood that could be obtained from the forests. The wood used in drum making is in critical supply and the annual demand exceeds supply by 610 m3. Harvesting of the tree species desired for drum making from the forests is not sustainable. On-farm cultivation of the trees by the local communities is recommended in order to supply logs for drum m...

Portable sawmills in a high-value rainforest cabinet timber industry in North Queensland

This paper examines the role and use of portable sawmills in north Queensland. Using a semi-structured questionnaire and personal interviews, the opinions of 18 operators of portable and fixed-site sawmills were canvassed on a number of issues including main problems faced by the local industry, current sources of timber, sawn timber recovery rates of their operations, willingness to purchase new milling and other equipment, opinions about why (or if) portable sawmills can sell timber at a lower cost than fixed-site mills, and destinations of sawn timber milled. The most critical issues faced by sawmillers were the lack of resource security and competing products, in particular competition from imported tropical timbers from neighbouring island countries including Papua New Guinea. Most sawmillers in north Queensland currently obtain logs mainly from private landholdings and are hesitant to invest in new equipment due to concerns about future log supplies. This paper also explores the current and potential role of portable sawmills in the regional small-scale forestry industry. An examination of policy issues suggests that there may be a need for new legislation to cover employees, sawn timber consumers and sawmillers themselves. The future role of portable sawmills may require a co-operative approach that emphasizes low volume value-adding, due to the decreasing supply of logs in North Queensland.