I wonder if there's a way to tag trees to stop this. Like, spray the protected wood with some harmless-but-detectable dose of a radioisotope so you can tell which wood is which.

shotgun rfid?

That would only be useful until the mill, at which point the tags would be either destroyed, or limited to specific pieces and removed from the rest

Not a bad idea! There would have to be a system for determining lumber that was previously illegal to cut but has since become legal. Maturity of the tree or land ownership changed, etc.

Or if there’s a way to ruin the wood for woodworking without killing the tree itself. It seems like you would need to do something really clever. Inject it with capsaicin?

Tree spiking is one example of this. It's so common as to be illegal in the United States [1]. Unfortunately, without strict worker protections, it's conceivable that workers would be the ones to pay for their employers' (or their upstream suppliers') illegal actions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking

It's not just conceivable, it is real.

Workers in the mill are the ones who will die or suffer significant trauma when the blade hits the spike.

Eh, with one confirmed injury, I'm comfortable calling it "conceivable". The testimony of the injured worker in that case even reflects the fact that a spiked tree does not guarantee injury or death to the operator -- indeed, first there seems to be substantial damage to the machinery, and only then, a risk to the operator [1]:

> Alexander later filed a lawsuit against Louisiana-Pacific claiming that the band saw had been weakened from previous strikes with nails, but that he was forced to work with the saw or face dismissal.

the counterattack: spray all the trees with the stuff.

Unfortunately, their sites are not very friendly to privacy oriented browsers.

I'm always torn between building things out of wood vs. other materials.

I hate cutting down trees. But at the same time wood seems like a way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere into things that will last a very, very long time. It seems like I could build carbon-negative furniture out of wood, as opposed to carbon-positive furniture out of other materials. As long as those trees are re-planted. I want assurance that when I buy lumber it's regenerative.

If you buy pine or oak or cedar you can be pretty darn sure it is regenerative. That's how the industry is able to exist: they cut the same fields of trees every 15-30 years.

If you're concerned, you can always plant a tree or two somewhere for every project you do that uses wood. There are lots of places that let you plant trees even outside your own property.