With a Little Help from AI, American Hardwood Industry Stands Ready to Tackle EUDR
By Ben Stanley
After a long journey towards implementation, the controversial European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will become law on December 30, 2026, for large operators in the EU, and on June 30, 2027, for smaller operators.
When it finally does, the likes of White Oak, Red Oak, Ash, and Walnut from the US will continue flowing into the European market without major hold-ups, thanks largely to the latest tweaks made to the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC)’s free compliance platform.
“I’m very confident in saying that we are 100 percent EUDR compliant,” AHEC International Program Manager Tripp Pryor told HMR/Fastmarkets about the American Hardwood Assured (AHA) platform.
While AHA has been in development for five years, the last year saw AHEC make additional changes to ensure full compliance with the European Commission’s (EC) specifications around geo-coordinates and harvest sourcing.
The AHA uses satellite mapping to track forest change and detect deforestation under EUDR definitions. Using the platform, exporters and importers of American hardwoods can select the counties from which they source logs, and eventually lumber, and obtain the site GPS data required. The data is delivered in the GeoJSON format used by the EC’s TRACES compliance system.
Recent tweaks have incorporated preparatory AI to upload US Forest Service data and identify individual harvest sites within counties. “This is a natural fit for using an AI system,” Pryor said.
The upshot is AHA can now provide specific coordinates within counties, ensuring ease of use for both American exporters and European importers, while protecting the privacy of landowners. In many respects, AHA far exceeds EUDR requirements. Pryor gave the example of satellite resolution. The EUDR calls for satellite resolution down to 100 meters, while AHA provides resolution down to 10 meters.
“This puts us way ahead of the EUDR and what the requirements are at that end,” Pryor said.
When it comes to the issue of deforestation, the felling of American hardwood trees is not a problem. In 2025, the AHA platform assessed 2,615 counties across 37 hardwood producing states in the US. Of those, 2,578 counties (98.6%) were found to present negligible risk of deforestation, 24 (0.9%) had some small unspecified risk, and 13 (0.5%) had a specified risk.
The clear reality is that American hardwood production derives from well-managed forests that are not overly impacted by harvests. Most in the hardwood business believe the industry has the opposite problem, with too few trees being removed.
Pryor said that AHA has a “very strict threshold” on its deforestation risk assessment, twice as stringent as what the EUDR requires. “We already know that, on any real scale, deforestation isn’t happening for hardwoods in the United States,” Pryor said.
The EUDR has faced a drawn-out process to reach formal implementation. Originally planned to be passed into law in late 2024, it was postponed a year due to readiness and technical concerns. Late last year, issues with TRACES forced it to be pushed back another 12 months.
Among changes to the EUDR under a simplification process that was undertaken earlier this year, US exporters are now exempt from formal risk assessments and mitigation steps that were previously expected.
In June, the United Kingdom announced plans to introduce new due diligence legislation for combating deforestation. Likely to be enacted in 2027, it is understood to be modeled after the EUDR, meaning the AHA will stand ready for use in one of the American hardwood industry’s largest national export markets.
Pryor said feedback from American exporters and European importers about the latest iteration of AHA has been good. “We’ll see what additional challenges pop up in the New Year,” he said. “I’m sure there will be legal challenges to the EUDR, but we are adaptable. We’re very confident about AHA when it comes to whatever form of EUDR folks have to deal with.”