Sustainable Forestry in the United States
Since 1901, Weyerhaeuser has owned and managed private forests for sustainable production of wood while protecting the environment. Today, we manage more than six million acres in the United States, all on private land.
Our timberland is located in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. In some locations, we are now planting our third generation of trees. Most of our U.S. timberland is intensively managed for timber production, but more than 700,000 acres are conserved for environmental, historical, recreational, or cultural reasons. Intensive management means that we:
- Plant seedlings bred for timber production
- Fertilize the soil where needed, usually not more than two to five times over a 25- to 40-year growing cycle
- Prevent competing vegetation from crowding young trees in their first few growing seasons
- Thin trees in many areas during their growth cycle
- Replant after harvest within the first available planting season
Intensive management also involves intentional protection of the environment. We routinely:
- Provide a diversity of habitats for wildlife
- Protect threatened and endangered species
- Protect water quality, water bodies, and riparian zones
- Protect soil stability and long-term soil productivity
- Use methods that retain organic matter and soil nutrients
- Identify special ecological, geologic, cultural, and historical sites and manage them—often in partnership with conservation groups—to protect their unique features
Learn more about our efforts to protect special sites and threatened and endangered species.
Our U.S. timberlands are independently certified as meeting the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® standard. All have environmental management systems aligned with the ISO 14001 standard.
