Save Our Cypress

Sept. 13th 2007 - Baton Rouge, The Advocate: Wal-Mart is to be commended for its courageous decision to stop buying and selling cypress mulch made in Louisiana (“Store drops state’s mulch,” Sept. 6).

But readers will be understandably confused by the predictions of economic disaster made by Mr. Buck Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association.

In the past, he and other mulch promoters have insisted that cypress mulch is a small, unimportant part of the total production cycle, a mere byproduct, and that its production is too insignificant to be of any concern. Now he claims that Wal-Mart’s decision will cause an entire mill to close.

But his reaction actually reinforces the concerns that a growing number of Louisiana citizens have about the conversion of our cypress swamps to mulch.

A growing market at the national and regional retail levels for mulch demands an ever-growing volume of the product, and we have already seen the result: more swamps being logged strictly for mulch. Mere assertions by the LFA that whatever they do is sustainable are not sufficient.

The LFA’s vision for the future of Louisiana’s cypress swamps — bagged as mulch at your local big-box store — is not one that most of the state’s citizens share. Nor do most landowners.

Sadly, the LFA’s insistence on its misleading agenda has helped deny landowners other opportunities for benefiting from their lands through innovative alternative programs.