Thursday, 01 August 2002
Anderson-Tully Company
This issue’s Partner Profile features Anderson-Tully Company (ATCO), FSC certificate holder since 2000. ATCO holds one FSC forest management certificate and five chain-of-custody certificates for the production of lumber, timber, engineered wood, and veneer.
ATCO, based in Vicksburg, Mississippi, owns and manages 327,000 acres of forestland in seven states along the Mississippi River, from Illinois to Mississippi. The FSC-accredited certifier SmartWood, a program of the Rainforest Alliance, performed the certification. Founded in 1889 as a fruit and vegetable crate manufacturing company, ATCO has grown to three manufacturing sites that produce in excess of 90,000 million board feet of lumber and up to 475,000 tons of pulp annually. The Mississippi’s periodic flooding has created fertile growing soils, providing for a mosaic of age classes, tree sizes, and stand sizes, allowing ATCO to harvest more than 65 species of wood.
In an effort last year to contribute to local wildlife heritage, ATCO made arrangements to sell two biologically important parcels of land to The Nature Conservancy, who will manage the properties until state and federal agencies can purchase them.
The conservancy recently purchased “Stumpy Point", 1,450 acres of bottomland hardwood forest located adjacent to St. Francis National Forest in Arkansas. The property, hailed for its sizable frontage on the Mississippi and St. Francis Rivers, provides habitat for osprey, Mississippi kite, prothonotary and Swainson’s warblers, American alligator, and bald eagle. In April 2001, the conservancy signed a letter of intent to buy 11,500 acres of land that for 45 years the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has leased from ATCO. The area is popular with local and out-of-state outdoor enthusiasts.
By continuing to bring major forest operations like ATCO into the FSC system, our certifiers SmartWood and SCS are helping build FSC’s strong presence in the U.S. For more information visit www.andersontully.com and www.smartwood.org.