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How Do You Compare To Home Depot?

Each year, in its annual report to its shareholders, the Home Depot publishes selected financial and operating highlights. Scott Daulton of Rossmann MacDonald & Benetti, Inc., Sacramdnto, Ca., a full service CPA firm specializing in the lumber and building materials industry, extracted a few of these highlights from the 1995 report for you to compare with those of your own

Clinton To Cut Tree Plan

The Clinton Administration has vowed to make drastic, unprecedented changes in national forest policy that would seriously affect total sale volume and federal progmm revenue.

During a June 6 "Environment Day" meeting with national environmental leaders at the White House, the Administration said it would ban the removal of any green trees, even infected ones, in salvage sales, and outlaw any roadless entry under the salvage provisions of the Recissions Law.

Prohibiting green tree salvage would jeopardize forest health by keeping foresters from getting ahead of insect and disease epidemics and could also create unsafe working conditions in the forests. Banning roadless entry goes against forest and fue management plans, also restraining sensible, needed forest health management.

Borate Treatment Okayed

The mayor of Honolulu, Hi., has approved the continued use of Hi-Bor treated wood, upholding standards set by the local building department.

Late last year, Conrad Wood Preserving Co., North Bend, Or., a distributor of Chemonite products, filed suit in federal court against the Honolulu Building Departrnent and its director, Randall Fujiki, for increasing the minimum treatment levels of HiBor without a public hearing.

Conrad sought an injunction against the continued use of Hi-Bor treated structural lumber, contending the new conditions put the public at risk of termite attack. U.S. district judge Alan Kay denied the request (seeThe Merchant, February, p.3l).

Judge Extends Southwest Ban

A nine-month ban on commercial logging in 11 Southwestern national forests has been extended by a federal judge who accuses the U.S. Forest Service of not taking adequate measures to ensure the survival of Mexican spotted owls.

Threatening to hold Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas in contempt, which could lead to fines and jail time, Phoenix, Az.-based U.S. District Judge Carl Muecke, also blasted Southwest Regional Forester Charles Cartwright, whose Albuquerque, N.M., office oversees the 11 national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Muecke says the Forest Service is refusing to properly evaluate the effect of its timber-cutting plans on the remaining stands of large, old trees in virgin forests that are the heart of the owl's habitat.

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Although the Forest Service in Albuquerque said it will comply with Muecke's decision, the judge says the office has refused to properly evaluate the effect of its logging plans on the owl habitat. He said a recent draft biological opinion by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also fails to properly ensure the bird's survival.

The injunction is expected to last at least through the summer.

Hardwood Veteran Looks Back

( C ontinue d from prev ious p a g e ) ones who are still around have put in new equipment."

But Wilson says it's not so much the basics of buying and selling hardwood lumber that have changed, just the tools. "It's funny what stands out in my mind," he says, reflecting on the 1920s trucks with solid, pre-pneumatic tires and shipments loaded, instead of with forklifts, by hand or using hoists and cranes.