Forest Stewardship
The Hickman Family Knows that Wood is Good
From the time than Harry Hickman began logging in the 1930s until today, the Hickman family has cared and respected our hardwood forests as a valuable renewable resource worth protecting. People don’t always realize that we are more about growing trees than cutting them down. Wood is Good!
In 1999 Hickman Lumber was the first sawmill in Pennsylvania to become FSC certified through SmartWood.
Our FSC certification did not change how we have been managing our forests, however it did increase the amount of documentation of the management program. Our FSC Certification has allowed us to sell flooring across the country for various LEED Certified Green Buildings and environmentally concerned homeowners. It also has helped grow our timber management program by providing confidence to landowners that we will manage their land with the care and respect we use for our own forests.
NOTE: Smartwood was the 3rd party company auditing for FSC in 1999. This later became Rainforest Alliance, today the certification is done with NEPCon.
We do not clear-cut and replant our forests; we manage them to assist natural regeneration.
Most of our timber properties are on a 10-20-year harvest cycle to create and maintain an uneven aged management plan. The idea is to have various generations of trees growing throughout the forest.
We tend to our forests like you’d tend to your garden. Pulling out the weeds and harvesting the trees when they are ripe. With single tree selection management, we will harvest a mature tree which will open the forest canopy allowing sunlight to reach the forest floor. This will naturally allow nearby saplings to grow and new regeneration to sprout in its place.
This holistic management method is good for the long-term investment of the timber stand, growing large straight trees to harvest high-quality lumber. It is also important for wildlife by providing a diverse ecosystem throughout the woods.
Wood is Good Because it’s Renewable!
Wood flooring from Allegheny Mountain takes it up to another level of green. 100% FSC Certified and 100% tree utilization from the forest to the floor.
- Allegheny Mountain Hardwood Flooring is 100% FSC Certified
- We are growing 3 times more trees than we harvest
- Wood is sourced within 100 miles of Emlenton, PA.
- We have plenty of trees in Pennsylvania.
- A UN report from 2010 actually states that “…there is growing concern that the US hardwood resource is now being severely underutilized”.
- This is troublesome because if the demand for North American timber decreases, the value decreases and landowners are more likely to convert land from forests to farms or development.
- 100% of the Tree Is Utilized in the production from the forest to the floor.
- Tree tops left in the forest to protect saplings from deer
- Bark is used by landscaping companies
- Wood chips are made into FSC certified paper
- Sawdust from the sawmill are used as the fuel to run the boiler for the dry kilns
- Scraps of flooring are used to heat homes of employees
- Sawdust from flooring plant is used to make pellets for wood burners
- Studies Comparing wood to other flooring surfaces show wood as having the lowest environmental impacts and best results for low green house gas emissions.
Allegheny Mountain Wood Flooring is Carbon Negative!
- Trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere their whole life. When a tree is harvested that carbon is stored in the tree. If the tree burns or dies and rots that carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
- That tree stores more carbon in the wood than it takes to manufacture that tree into a wood floor.
Allegheny Mountain Wood Flooring can last 100 + years in a home storing carbon from the previous century. This longevity of the wood floor will also minimize landfill products like carpet, laminate, or low-quality engineered flooring that cannot be refinished, and will all need thrown out and replaced after a few years.
