What Do Bee Boxes, Hunting Permits, Riparian Buffers, And Habitat Management Units Have In Common?

As part of Weyerhaeuser’s Sustainability Roadmap, the company committed to recognizing the ecosystem services provided by its timberlands. To help the company and its stakeholders understand the full range of values in its timberlands, employees developed a plan to measure and report against a comprehensive set of 18 ecosystem services provided by the more than 20 million acres of timberlands managed or owned globally. 

Adopting the terminology used by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the group separated ecosystem services into four categories: provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services and cultural services. Each of these describes different types of benefits nature provides to people.

Beginning in 2012, these services were measured and reported on in the company’s recently published on-line Sustainability Report. Ecosystem services shared in the report range from tons of greenery sold for noble fir boughs and wreaths and number of bee boxes leased from forest lands to square meters of riparian buffers per mile of perennial stream length and acres of mid-successional habitat provided by managed forests.

A few highlights:

• 19,543 bee box leases
• 99% of harvested area replanted within two years
• 3.5 million acres of timberland included in formal habitat management agreements
• 61,174 hunting permits issued

Read the full report for more information about all 18 ecosystem services.