An "old saw" is a hackneyed or tired bit of wisdom that seems true but is really quite useless. One such old saw is the claim that we are destroying "old-growth forests" as a justification for policies of one sort or another.

Last week the green-building coordinator at the Department of Ecology, Rachael Jamison, used this justification to argue for using Forest Stewardship Council certified timber in green buildings. FSC was created by environmental activists to encourage companies to use more restrictive standards when harvesting. She says green buildings that use FSC can "stimulate the growth of a new market within Washington's timber industry."

Chief among the reasons to use FSC certified wood is, in her words, that harvests following its rules "Do not contribute to the destruction of old-growth forests." Whenever I see this claim, it is very clear to me that the person making the claim knows very little about forestry in Washington.

The understandable reason people express concern about old growth is that there is very little left. The creatures that rely on old growth forests have difficulty adapting to other types of forest habitat.

But applying the simple rules of supply and demand also says that when something is scarce, like old growth timber, it is also very expensive. A builder looking to use old growth for construction would be needlessly increasing their costs with little, if any, benefit in quality. In fact, there isn't a single major mill in Washington state that can even handle the large logs that come from such forests anymore.

I wanted to demonstrate how expensive it would be to use old growth as compared to standard timber. Currently, timber is selling at about $250 per thousand board feet. When I went to find out how much it would cost to use old growth, however, I hit a wall. I called two people who routinely sell timber in Washington state and neither of them even knew where I could get such information. We simply don't harvest old growth in Washington under FSC rules or any  other set of rules.

This isn't the first time we've taken Rachael Jamison to task for inaccurate claims. Relying on tired, old saws about old growth harvesting to justify policies demonstrates that they don't know much about the area they are looking to regulate and policies justified on that basis are likely to be costly and ineffective.