NASF signed onto a coalition letter in support of $30 million in appropriations for the Forest Service’s Wood Innovation Grant Program (WIG).
“WIG provides competitive grants to projects that expand wood products and wood energy markets to support forest management and deliver economic and environmental benefits to communities. Projects funded by WIG typically demonstrate, research, or develop innovative uses of wood products, such as mass timber.”
Mass timber can change the conversation around landscape-scale forest restoration efforts. Mass timber usage creates additional market demand for multiple wood products, which in turn helps keep forests as forests, and makes a greater percentage of forest-types economical. That can, in some regions, lead to better cost recovery on restoration projects, such as those that are a focus of the Forest Service to reduce the risk of wildfires. Mass timber products are also a solution to lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment by storing carbon while also displacing emissions from conventional carbon-intensive building materials. Using mass timber can reduce the embodied carbon pollution of construction by 25 – 45% or more, especially when sourced from sustainably managed forests.