Through satellite monitoring, Georgia-Pacific protects more than 6 million acres of endangered forests

The program started in 2008 and is currently protecting more than 6 million acres of mapped forest in 19 states; this extension is equivalent to about 4.4 million football fields.

Initially the GP staff visited each strip of land that was on the program, by traveling thousands of miles to see all of these locations and making sure they were getting the best possible picture of what was really out there. However, due to the size of the program, it was impossible to see each track more than once a year. Now, with the new satellite technology, they can check them whenever they want.

Their geographic information system has an algorithm that detects each change that occurs, so they get a map that contains the contours of the areas that have been changed and can also compare the before and after to see what the vegetation was so as to alert their foresters about a harvest taking place.

If they see that a trail has been cut and that it has not reached GP’s factories, they open an investigation process to identify where the fiber actually went.

Georgia-Pacific is the only forest products company that has a program like this, becoming a leader in protecting endangered forests.