Outdoor Furniture Materials What Our Adirondack Furniture Is Made Of... Archie’s Island Furniture is committed to environmental sustainability of the timbers used in our products. To that end, on a recent trip to Malaysia to inspect product sourcing, I visited the forest from which my Merpau timbers are sourced to see firsthand the timbering process and the impacts on native forests from timber extraction. I was extremely impressed by the sensible long term forest harvesting plan, the high standards of timber extraction and rigorous oversight employed by Malaysian Government. In January I visited one of many government owned forests on peninsular Malaysia. The forest I visited was 250,000 acres located in the northeast section of the country. The forest is sectioned into 8,000 acre parcels that are subject to harvesting on a 30 year rotating cycle – so that the parcel I saw is being harvested in 2006 and then lays fallow for regeneration for 30 years until 2036 when it will be available to be harvested again. In this way and in ways I describe below, they insure sustainability of their forest resources for ecological and economic purposes. The 8,000 acre parcel is further subdivided into individual hectares and then licenses are granted to private companies to harvest these sub-parcels in keeping with strict government mandated harvesting standards. In a given hectare parcel, the government will allow up to 10 trees to be harvested from the hectare and actually tags the individual trees that they allow to be taken. The private company is responsible for cutting and maintaining the roads to access the trees in a fashion to minimize disruption to the forest and minimize sedimentation runoff. As a harvested tree is taken from the forest the contractor must surrender the harvest tag to government inspection stations at the access points to the forest to insure that the proper trees are being brought to market. On my most recent trip into the forest this past Winter, I asked to be taken to see a tree that had been tagged by the government and, as such, was eligible to be harvested. My trip to the forest took place at the end of the rainy season which starts October and ends in January. The forests are effectively closed during the rainy season since it is too wet to access the forests by vehicle. From the entrance to the forest, we drove in a 4-wheel vehicle for about ˝ an hour into the forest on a newly repaired road –the road must be maintained annually after each rainy season. After the drive we got out and started walking on the section of the road that had not yet been repaired and was impassable by vehicle. We walked uphill for about another ˝ an hour until we arrived at the first tree that was tagged. The reason I mention this is that during the entire time, we were passing tree after tree of all different species and sizes that would have been perfectly adequate for various purposes but were not allowed to be touched. It was really quite awe-inspiring to pass through all of these trees that were being preserved. One of the greatest threats to the rainforests is clear cutting – often to transform the land to agricultural purposes. This is not happening in Malaysia. The forests are being utilized as an economic resource but in a way that is sustainable and is also sustaining the biodiversity of plant and animal species in a natural environment. (On our walk up the road we saw wild elephant prints in the road.)