Category: Conservation & Environment

Posted on

Lobbying (Again)

Went up to Capitol Hill to meet with staffers for Virginia’s Senators and Members of Congress.  We met Republicans and Democrats, all of whom were broadly supportive of tree farming and the principles of sustainable forestry.  It is an easy sell because we are representing fundamentally good practices and the great idea of sustainability.

Lobbying
It was interesting to make this foray into lobbying.  I was teamed for all appointments with Paul Howe, who represents Virginia Forestry Association and on some also with Benita Ring, Virginia State Forester.  Since I was “the Virginia landowner” I got to do much of the talking. Paul stepped in with details of actual legislation and Bettina talked about important concerns such as funding to fight wildfire and landscape wide programs.

The American Forest Foundation gave me a list of what they considered priorities for landowners.  I could choose which ones to emphasize and how to do it. I could also add in concerns that I thought important, which I did when I started off by talking about our new Virginia Tree Farm Foundation, launched last week.  My biggest challenge was repeating essentially the same short presentation five times in the same day.  I did vary it a little in to go with what I perceived as the concerns of the audiences, but I tried hard not to just change it to make it more interesting for me.  I didn’t speak from a written test, but had top-line sentences written in my little green book.  I will elaborate a little here to describe what I said and add a little of what I recall from what Paul and Bettina said, but I don’t claim that I will be doing justice to their complete positions.

After the usual introductions, I started each presentation with a discussion of the new Virginia Tree Farm Foundation.  We went over basic facts and promised to send along more detailed information. I am paraphrasing below.

The spiel
We have come to talk about sustainable forestry in Virginia and specifically about the Virginia Tree Farm System.  The American Tree Farm System (ATFS) was founded in 1941.  The first twelve Virginia tree farms were certified in 1947.  Virginia tree farmers have been growing wood sustainably ever since.  Today there is more timber growing in Virginia than there was in 1947 and we can continue doing this.  Virginia today have 1304 tree farmers.  We recently reduced the total number as we cleaned up our lists.  We intend to increase the numbers again.

The new Tree Farm Foundation
Let me start off with some news. We have formed a new Virginia Forestry Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) corporation to encompass the Virginia Tree Farm Committee and do more.  I cannot fill out too many details now, since we just did it last week and still have to work out exactly how it will work.  We envision the Foundation to raise money and determine policy for tree farm, but also as a network organization that will bring together tree farmers and various stakeholders such loggers, mill workers and hunters, as well as young people who we want to help understand the nature of sustainable forestry.   We would like to invite Senator/Representative to take advantage of our network for information and contacts.
We would talk about this depending on the questions asked and then move on.

Certification for forest land
As I said, Tree Farm was America’s and I think the world’s first system of forest certification, but it is not the only one.  In the 1990s others were created, including the Forest Stewardship Council (FCS) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).  I have studied forest certification and have concluded that their on-the-ground effects are very similar.  They all are good.  FCS is more of an international organization and it is appropriate in places like Papua or Indonesia, since it includes provisions for protections of indigenous rights.  SFI is more common in North America.  Tree Farm is certified with FSI and I am morally certain that we are doing a good job in protecting our habitats, water, soil and ecological diversity.

Including all certification, not just FSC
Last year, the EPA recommended that government purchase certified timber and specified only FSC wood.  We think this is absurd. More than 70 percent of all certified forests in the United States are certified under the SFI or ATFS. This means the wood products that come from most certified, sustainable forests in the U.S.-including most Virginia forests are not included.

I would ask that the Senator or Representative consider this and address this with EPA. All agreed.

Timber Innovations Act
Next we talked about the Timber Innovation Act.  This would provide research into improving and using timber products, especially innovative new products such as cross laminated timber. I told them what I believe, that this is as near a perfect bill as anyone could conceive. It has no aspects of compulsion.  We do not advocate that anyone be forced to use wood.  Wood will not replace steel or concrete, but it has many advantages and this would create options.  I explained that new techniques and sustainability concerns make timber the material of the future. It costs 10-15% less to construct a building out of cross laminated timber compared with a glass and steel building. Beyond that, they can be 30-50% faster to build. They require fewer deliveries and it is much easier for plumbers and electricians to make cuts to install their pipes and wires. A wood building also weighs less, so it requires less of a foundation and can be built on some sites unavailable to heavier structures. There is more.  Wood is the most benign building material from a total lifecycle ecological perspective.
 
We would discuss this depending on the questions from our interlocutors.  Everyone was interested and supportive.

At this point, I was mostly done.  I shared some photos of my tree farms and invited everyone to ask for more information and contacts.
 
Bettina would then talk about stewardship programs and wildfires.  Wildfires are much in the news.  We need to address the problem.  Currently more than half of the U.S. forestry budget can go to fighting fires. This takes money from other worthy programs, including doing things that can prevent fires in the future.  A better organized system would improve results.

At this point we were mostly done, at least we had exhausted the attention span of our hosts, so we would finish.  Tonight, and tomorrow I have the tedious but immensely important task of writing up thank you cards and follow-up emails.
 
We have made the breakthrough and now we need to finish the job.  I was pleased with the interim results.  I enjoy this sort of thing.  It is a lot like my old work in the Foreign Service. I have real passion for the forestry.  I think that this helps my credibility that I am a true believer and I am living what I believe.

Posted on

Lobbying – American Forest Foundation Fly-in

See note on day 2
Went to the prep sessions for the American Forest Foundation “Fly-In,” where small forest owners like me come from around the U.S. to lobby our Federal representatives. Tomorrow, I have appointments with staffers from Barbara Comstock, Robert Goodlatte, Rob Wittman, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner and my own representative Gerry Connolly. It was nice that the sessions were held at the Holiday Inn – Capitol, the old USIA Building. Like coming home.

We discussed the major issues affecting forestry. I have the option of choosing which ones I want to emphasize.

Not in order of importance, the first issue is the Energy Bill and how it treats biomass. The EPA may treat the burning of biomass the way it treats fossil fuels. This is silly, since biomass is essentially carbon neutral. The growing trees absorb carbon and it is released when the biomass is burned. It is not like this would stay around anyway, since the biomass would release carbon when it decays and if left as slash might even burn in a forest fire.
That brings us to the second and maybe most urgent problem, wildfires. Each year wildfires get more expensive. There are lots fo reasons for this, including more homes built in forested areas, land use changes and climate change. But a big one concerns management. The Forest Service is now using 50% of its budget to fight fires. This leaves less for other programs. and ironically less for activities to prevent fires.

One that I find annoying personally is a proposed EPA standard for Federal purchasing that would require the use of Forest Stewardship Council wood. Tree Farm wood, my wood and that of the majority of small American landowners, is not included in this standard. Ours is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. I have looked into it. If you are concerned about forests, water, soils and wildlife, there is no significant difference in the standards. Certification by FSC is more expensive and included details unrelated to actual forest health. Anyway, it is a political issue that should have no place in a discussion of forest health. That is what I will tell the staffers and that is what I believe with moral certainty.
Some forest owners are interested in the estate tax. I am not very passionate about this, although I can understand the issue. Currently $5 million is exempted from tax. This seems a lot, but recent IRS rulings are making taxable value higher than it should be. A piece of land owned by several family members may be difficult to sell and so have a lower market value. IRS is treating this like a single owner, which may result in taxes owed.

The problem with taxing forest land is that it is an illiquid asset. You cannot just take off some of it. Heirs might be forced to sell the land, or part of it, just to pay the taxes. Maybe we don’t feel sorry for rich heirs, but consider the effects on forest fragmentation, which we should care about. Forest and farm owners are often land rich but cash poor. It is often a public policy interest that their land remain in farm and forest.

I doubt that I will push this particular factor very hard.

A subject I am interested in is the Timber Innovation Act, that would provide research into using wood in new ways, things like tall buildings using cross laminated timber (I have written about this before). This is a good use of resources. It does not require that builders use wood, but it provides more options and shares techniques & technologies. I have linked to my note about the use of cross laminated timber.

Finally, is a relatively simple one. This is the 75th Anniversary of the American Tree Farm System and we would like a resolution honoring that.

Anyway, my lobbying day starts at 8am tomorrow. It should be fun. I have studied innovative use of wood, forest health & wildfires, so I will talk about those. I will also share with the staffers news about the new Tree Farm Foundation.

Posted on

You didn’t build that – the logic of vines

“You didn’t build that” is a accusation sometimes made against the successful and it is correct as far as it goes, which is not too far. But I was thinking about successful strategies in general when I was attacking vines in my woods.

If you count up all the hours I spend working in my woods, probably the most total hours are spent fighting vines. After the first thinning, I will be able to use other means, but now it is up to me. It is fairly labor intensive and I never will win. I don’t mind doing it because it is decent exercise and I get to be in the woods by myself with the quiet to think. And I was thinking about vines.

Vines are semi-parasitic and opportunistic. They tend to show up most where there has been a disruption. They do not bother to build an infrastructure like a tree does. They just climb up and/or lay on top. At best they are mostly harmless, but usually they cause some trouble for the tree, especially if the proliferate.

I can just find and cut the source of the vine and just let them die back and fall off, but I often pull them down. It is the exercise part. Some people in the gym pull on ropes. This is like that. It is interesting to see how far a vine goes. Some of the grape vines can lay across a half dozen trees. When you pull, lots of dead branches and needles fall. It is fun to watch. None are so heavy as to hurt if they hit me. One reason I am fighting the vines now is that they form fire ladders. The vines catch dead wood and needles, forming near perfect kindling to take a fire on the ground into the crowns. This condition also precludes the use of fire as a management tool until after the first thinning or I knock down most of the vines.
Being a vine is not a bad strategy. You can get as high as the trees w/o putting down much of an investment.

There are vine-like strategies in our economy as well as our ecology. Food trucks jump to mind. They don’t spend money on chairs, garbage removal, dining rooms etc. Like the vine, they can impose those costs on others.

New network organizations often follow a vine strategy. Think of Uber or AirBnB. Like vines, they just crawl up existing structures, taking no responsibility to build much of anything beyond the connection. The connection is indeed value added, presuming somebody else builds the frame.

This will be a big challenge to our economy. It is already. It impacts the income differential. It used to be that to build a business you needed to build something physical and hire people. Today a few people can run a massive operation with almost no investment in plant, equipment or people. They are like vines.

Vines are a part of nature and a useful one, as long as there are not too many. When we see whole forests covered in invasive vines, such as Chinese wisteria or kudzu, we know things have gotten out of hand. It is dangerous if we get a kudzu economy.

My photo is from yesterday. I try to walk a more or less straight line into the woods, cutting and pulling down vines as I go. You can see some of the pulled down vines in the picture. I am trying to do a grid pattern and I use market paint to keep track. I am actually making decent progress through persistence if not speed. Not all trees get attacked by vines, but when you find one, you usually find lots and different species. They seem to grow up in places where hardwoods have come in among the pine. Most of the vines do best when they can climb lower branches. The pines provide fewer opportunities at this stage. But I do not think that the hardwoods are causing the problem, at least not entirely. The hardwoods likely have colonized the parts of the woods less dominated by the pines, there is a little more sun and more disturbance, so what brings the hardwoods also brings the vines. It is correlation not causation.

Posted on

Farms visit

I am aware that reports of my farm visits are repetitive. I post them for my own diary entry equivalent. Anyway, if you read this far and want to continue, thanks.

Got three pieces of bad news. First, and really bad, is that flooding associated with Hurricane Matthew destroyed most of the seedlings that the State of North Carolina was growing. There will be a severe shortage for the 2016-17 planting season. This affects Virginia, since we are so close, but also because the North Carolina folks actually grow Virginia’s longleaf pine.

Second, I learned that the helicopter that they use to spray our pines crashed. I heard it fell some sixty feet and was totally wrecked. The good news is that the pilot was not hurt.

Last was a lesser disappointment. I ran into the guys at the hunt club. They were not having much luck, seems the dogs were having trouble following the scent because of the wind. One of the hunters said that the hunting dogs have a new PC designation. They are now called “deer mobility facilitators.”

My first photo shows the view along SR 623. We own both sides of the road, although only about 50 yards on the right. The road used to be the property boundary, but they moved it 1960. Next two photos are the longleaf pine. You can see them better now that the grass is browned out. After that is the loblolly on the Freeman place. My friend and neighbor Scott Powell bush hogged the path in the middle, so I could walk into the wood much easier. The last photo is the end of the day on the CP place. I spent most of my day cutting vines. There are lots of them. I enjoy cutting and pulling them down. I have been using my hand tools most of the time. The power tools are faster, but they make noise.

Posted on

Virginia Tree Farm Foundation

Attended my last Virginia Tree Farm Committee in Richmond today. The Committee is no more, but it is not gone. Rather it has evolved into the Virginia Tree Farm Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) entity able to raise money and possessing a wider panoply of advocacy tools. I am now a charter member of the board. We currently have only six members, seven when you count the ex-officio member from the Virginia Department of Forestry. We need to organize ourselves and get others involved.

My tasks will mostly involve outreach and fundraising, as well as participating in public events. It sounds a lot like my public affairs work in my previous incarnation. I guess there is a pattern to every life and we try to do what we do well.

This is a real blue sky proposition. The board must define its role and I can define my own within very broad parameters. Ecology is my passion and I am delighted to have a vocation to go with it. I do not underestimate the challenge. I know that if I do nothing, nothing will happen, i.e. I cannot wait for somebody to tell me what to do.

The general goal is to improve the state of forestry in Virginia, to grow forest products profitably while maintaining and improving the quality of the soil and water, habitat for wildlife and places of beauty and tranquility for humans. We build on a very good base and we have lots of allies. This is good.

To move forward on this, I envision my part as network building and connecting. Lots of people are involved with tree farming and we share the common aspirations discussed above. We can help each other systemically in a kind of human ecology. The connections change the nature of the reality and the combination is greater than the sum of the parts.
I always make grandiose plans and I never achieve all my goals. I understand that it is easy to make fun of my enthusiasm. This makes me sad, but not for long. I think we need to think big even if we achieve small. We get farther that way and a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, after all.

My advantage is that I am unaffiliated. As a gentleman of leisure, I answer to nobody, expect nothing can do things w/o conflict of interest, real, imaginary or implied. But within our network, we have lots of affiliated people who can help make the connections and supply the expertise we need. I think this is an auspicious combination.

I am now reading, rereading, thinking and rethinking about aspirational networking. What are we part of and how can we work with others to produce something really worthwhile?

Posted on

Planting longleaf on the precise, exact edge of the natural range

The natural range for the longleaf pine starts in Texas and Florida and goes to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, but it ends in the north and west in Brunswick County, Virginia. I have been studying the map and it looks like the natural range of longleaf ends precisely in the middle of my property in Freeman, where we planted longleaf pine.

Therefore, I believe, or at least will assert, that my land forms the northwest terminus of the natural longleaf range. Next time I go to the farm, I will paint a bright line to mark the border. Perhaps it will become a minor tourist attraction, one of those things worth seeing but not going to see.

Posted on

Favorite pine landscapes

Also on Facebook
I had planned to aggressively thin 80 acres of 1996 loblolly and under plant with longleaf, but the talks I listened to today were not encouraging. The main problem seems to be that loblolly are prolific seed producers and in what essentially remains a loblolly forest, the longleaf cannot compete. I have managed to keep my five acres of longleaf reasonably clear of loblolly by whacking literally hundreds of loblolly, but I will be unable to do that on 80 acres. It is hard enough to keep up with the five.

Another of the talks was about using herbicides to help establish longleaf. Herbicides have evolved and now some can be used very precisely to affect only particular plants. When you cannot burn regularly, herbicides can provide a serviceable alternative.

You need be careful, however. The beauty of the longleaf ecology is in the TOTAL system, not only the trees. It is important to maintain and enhance the herbaceous plants, grasses, wildflowers and forbs. There is a little trade-off. The ecosystem approach will produce slightly less wood, so profit margins are a bit lower. Beyond that, it takes more work and greater care to ensure diversity. It is easier just to knock out everything except the trees but that is just not right. I alluded to that in my earlier post about raking pine straw. If you are going to manage a forest, you want to manage a forest in all its diversity and not just a bunch of sticks and needles.

The diverse forest also supports lots of wildlife, game and non-game species.

It has become fashionable to discuss “ecological services.” This puts an estimate of the dollar value of an ecosystem. For example. a forest protects soil and water resources and provides recreation. All these things would cost money to duplicate. In the case of water, those costs would be very high indeed. I use the “ecological services” argument and consider it valid. But it is not the end. In the final analysis, there is no final analysis. A diverse, sustainable and thriving ecology is an end in itself. It has its own value and it not merely a means of creating value in other things.

The thing I love about forests is their complexity. I know that I can never understand more than only a little and that my brief moment of stewardship is the proverbial dust in the wind. I appreciate it precisely because it is complex and impossible to control in detail.
My trees will still be there, I hope at least, long after I am gone. And the ecological system that they nurture will be there long after they are gone. It is really very wonderful and goes well beyond the ecological services it supplies today and tomorrow.

My first picture is an old one that I have used before. I took it in 2009. It shows the kind of open woods attractive to lots of wildlife and specifically bobwhite quail. Next are ponderosa pines I saw in New Mexico and finally pines in the Sand Hills in Carolina. You can see the kind of thing I am looking encourage. Pine savannas are very pleasant and productive ecology.

Posted on

Virginia longleaf

Also in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/john.matel/posts/10211094185892165
Looking through some old photos, I found the one on top from spring 2012. You can see the little longleaf pines. Most of the bigger green clumps are not trees, just other plants. The second photos is a close-up of one of the pines. The last two photos are familiar, since I posted them a couple weeks ago. They show the same places last month. So they have been in the ground a little more than four years, but five growing seasons.

Longleaf have not been common in Brunswick County for many years, so our trees are sort of a test. My trees are northern variety, but not Virginia native longleaf. It would be nice to have “real” Virginia trees, but being “native” is overrated. The environment is similar on both sides of the border. USDA hardiness zone 7b encompasses Southside Virginia and North Carolina more or less to the Neuse River. Trees grown from seed sourced from that part of NC are indistinguishable from Virginia natives. Anyway, if they grow well the next generation will be Virginia native.

Posted on

Routine forestry

Went down to the farms on the way back from Georgia. I spend a few morning hours hacking down anything in the longleaf patch that was not longleaf. I was reminded of the Aldo Leopold essay, “With Axe in hand,” where he wrote about the need to take responsibility for what is on your land. A conservationist is the one who thinks about what he is doing.

I do not use an axe, as a matter of fact. I have a kind of machete called “woodman’s friend,” but it does the same work. I have to cut down the loblolly and the hardwoods to let the longleaf become established and it is a value choice. My photos show a particular instance. It looks like a single tree at first, but a close looks shows a loblolly growing inches from a longleaf. Generally, I love the loblolly, but in this case I had to cut it down. You can see the choice int the first and second photo.

My third photo shows the official dividing line at the end of the longleaf natural range. As I wrote in previous note, since nobody has done it yet, I am declaring that my property is the edge. You can see it clearly in the last two photos. One one side is clearly longleaf and the other side not, so it must be true.

My last photo is a bald cypress I planted ten years ago. This tree is well outside its natural range, maybe the edge of the new range.

Inspected the place we clear cut last year. It is now fall, so I can see what is coming under. We planted 21,000 seedlings in March and April, almost 500 per acre. It looks like there will be a lot more. The lobolly have seeded in. The reason we planted, as opposed to natural regeneration, is that I think that the new seedlings will be genetically faster and better. I guess this will be a good test case. Presumably, I will be able to tell in five years.

My first photo shows the lobolly that have grown in the last few months. Next shows how much they have filled in in the landing zone. Picture #3 is some of the older loblolly, maybe the seed sources. The last two photos are shortleaf pine. These are also beautiful trees. They grow slower than lobolly and in many ways behave more like a hardwood species. They are the most widespread of all southern pine species, but are always associated and never dominant.

Posted on

Putting fire in the woods

Facebook page
Putting fire into pine woods is important to maintain the ecological balance among the fire dependent species, but lots of landowners are afraid to use it and/or lack the tools. So the SC authorities have created a rolling supply room. It has the things you need to conduct a prescribed fire. Non-professionals can rent it for only $50 a day.

An interesting adaptation is to us cat litter in the containers that might have flammable materials. It absorbs leaks as it would cat pee.
Save