Throughout the world forest products have been used for centuries. Ancient stories record many woodcutters going about their solitary business and Jesus was known to be a carpenter in an area with few tees. Apart from timber woodcutters probably produced charcoal as fuel, and this is of course still one of the most useful forest products.

In countries where forests are prolific house are often built exclusively from timber. Where trees are scarce mud or stones are used for house walls but in small stone huts built on mountain sides timber is still necessary and carried up steep mountain passes to be used as roof trusses.

Timber growing lush in equatorial forests has been left largely undisturbed until recently. However, northern countries have used timber in a sustained manner for centuries. In the reign of Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1 in England forests of oak were decimated in order to build great navies. Massive trees were hauled by horsepower to coastal shipyards to serve as masts for sailing ships.

Perhaps the most important forest product is the oxygen given out by trees. That is essential for sustaining animal life on the planet and the health of the atmosphere. There is concern that logging activities, particularly in the great Amazon and African forests will lead to deforestation but this is really a problem only if logging is carried out indiscriminately.

Fewer people get excited about the environmental damage done by artificial forestation Plantations of pine and eucalypts have been planted over great swathes of countryside in countries where these trees are aliens. They kill all the indigenous life in the ground beneath them and threaten the water supplies of whole countries. Quite probably artificial forestation does more damage than deforestation. However, this is where the materials needed for wood pulp and paper are produced.

The use of wood pulp for the manufacture of paper is a relatively new industry which can be traced back only as far as the 1860s. Before then paper was made on a smaller scale in other ways. After the Second World War northern supplies of timber began to dwindle and large tracts of land were planted to pine and gum trees in southern countries.

The poles are stripped and transported by road or rail to pulping plants. Chemical, mechanical or thermal processes are used to reduce the poles into pulp which can be exported in pulp form or processed locally into various qualities of paper.

Of all the many forest products wood pulp is perhaps the most important product from artificial forests. In addition to the strong demand from paper manufacturers there is potential for use as a bio-fuel. This would be regarded as a sustainable resource which is environmentally more acceptable and less damaging than fossil fuels. Long straight eucalypt poles have many uses as tall electricity poles and in the building and transportation industries as planks for pallets.

In modern societies forest products are prevalent in almost every aspect of daily life. As new uses are found for them they will continue as essential materials in modern economies. However, sight should not be lost of the importance of oxygen from living trees as a vital ingredient in daily life.

Customers depend on a large range of forest products for many uses. Pulp and paper products are currently produced from managed tree farms in many locations.