Bamboo Revolution Begins Growing Bamboo for Timber Harvest

Bamboo Revolution has taken the first crucial steps towards creating a timber bamboo industry based in Oregon. Last fall, the company transplanted live Moso bamboo plants to Oregon from Louisiana.

Over the past two years, Bamboo Revolution built a relationship with Andy Ringle of Avery Island, La., home of Tabasco® pepper sauce. His family holds a lease on one of the oldest timber bamboo groves in America. Planted in 1910 by former Tabasco president E. A. McIlhenny, in cooperation with the USDA, this grove represented, at the time, an initial step toward the establishment of a bamboo industry in this country. However, with McIlhenny's death in 1949 this potential remained largely unrealized, and many of the bamboo groves that McIlhenny planted on Avery Island were left unmanaged and fell into neglect.