Forest Resources Association

The Forest Resources Association, long known as the American Pulpwood Association, represents the interests of more than 100 companies that harvest and produce pulpwood in the United States. FRA, which is based in Rockville, Maryland, operates in six regions, each one defined by a forest type: Northeast, Appalachian, Southeast, Lake States, South Central and Western.

The Evergreen Foundation relationship with FRA is an old one, rooted in our mutual interest in promoting science-based forestry and advanced harvesting systems that can be used to harvest and process pulpwood safely, efficiently and with less environmental impact. Pulpwood is, of course, the raw material from which most forms of paper and packaging material are made.

FRA members helped fund one of the most informative issues of Evergreen Magazine we’ve ever published, “The Bountiful Harvest: Securing America’s Forest Future,” Fall 2001, click here.

Like all forestry associations, FRA has struggled with some of the more provocative environmental issues facing our nation’s forest products manufacturers – in recent years none more so that increasing public interest in biomass energy. Pulpwood manufacturers have long included woody biomass in their own fiber supply chain. Frankly, they’re not crazy about sharing the supply with new competitors, but FRA has managed to navigate the issue with its own recent statement of principles concerning the USDA Farm Service Agency’s Biomass Crop Assistance Program.  

Basically, the FRA statement encourages development of underutilized biomass and the planting of forests that might well be reserved for the use of biomass producers. It also asks that the market not be distorted by government subsidies that would give biomass producers an unfair competitive advantage over pulpwood producers.  

FRA publishes an electronic newsletter that we think is one of the most interesting in the entire forest industry complex. In this section you will find news, scientific reports and other information we glean from the association’s newsletter.

Jim Petersen, Evergreen

Click here to read FRA newsletters