Category: Conservation & Environment

Posted on

Environmental Footprints v Real Progress

On the left is the meteor crater near Winslow, Arizona.  Nature can make big footprints on its own.

I read an interesting article re environmental footprints.    The author makes a good point that has long concerned me.   The idea of an environmental (or carbon) footprint strongly implies that humans are fundamentally bad and that the best we can do limit the damage we create.  Environmentalism has become a religion for some people and this “footprint” idea is the equivalent of original sin.   Unfortunately, in this new religion there is no way to salvation.   It is a pernicious & narcissistic viewpoint, in that it paralyses action.   Those espousing it get to feel superior and in their narrow minds the notion that people are just a blight on the environment removes the responsibility any proactive duties. 

Humans are in nature; humans are of nature and humans are part of nature.  This is THE truth, not merely a truth and we should just acknowledge it because  the silly pretense that we can make a clear separation between man and nature is destructive to both the environment and the humans that live in it.   On the other hand, if we recognize the reality of the situation, we can make things better all around.

Below is a secondary growth forest near the Milwaukee airport

Ignoring environmental progress is irresponsible and all those ticking doomsday clocks are dishonest.   Making good choices requires an accurate assessment of conditions, not one that is too optimistic, but also not one that is unjustifiably gloomy.  The American environment is cleaner now than it was ten years ago.  It is a lot cleaner than it was a generation ago and it will be cleaner still in the future.   It is fashionable to focus on the failures and ignore the massive success.   This is an example of the pseudo-religious aspects of environmentalism.

Below is a traditional Navajo lodge.  Pre-industrial life was no picnic … maybe it was – all the time.

No matter how much some peculiar people claim to speak for or to Animals, trees, rocks etc, they are speaking to and as humans.   The earth is not sentient.  If it were, it would be hopelessly cruel.  There was no life on earth at all for most of the planet’s existence and after that life suffered several mass extinctions well before the advent of humans.   The dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic era. The Paleozoic extinction wiped out 90% of the species on earth and there were many others.  And none of them mattered because there was nobody around who knew or cared.  The current health of the earth matters a lot to us but all the judgments depend on human emotions and intelligence.   There will come a time when the earth no longer supports human life.   The earth will be no better or worse off.   Nature doesn’t have a plan.  Natural communities are complex and beautiful to US.  They matter to US.  I love nature but I know that my love is unrequited.   

Below is Austin St in Milwaukee.  The ash trees were planted in the middle of the 1970s.

Below same street in 1949.  The little trees are elms that died in the early 1970s, so this is now the second growth.  The guys standing there, BTW, are my father and my grandpa Haase.

That is what leads me to blasphemy against the environmental religion that I am about to voice.   Man can improve on nature.  I am not saying that we usually do.  There are plenty of examples of human greed and rapaciousness.    But sustainable development is indeed possible.   We can simultaneously make conditions better for humans and do so in an environmentally responsible way.   The good news is that the bad news is wrong.

Tree farming is an excellent example of a human activity that produces useful products while sustaining and improving the environment.   It wasn’t always like that.  Timbering used to be very destructive and it still is in many parts of the world.  But here in Virginia, it is now sustainable and if fact improves the environment in terms of making the water cleaner, removing pollution from the air and providing wildlife habitat.   This is a tremendously hopeful development.   What is possible in forestry is possible in other industries.

Below is a Colorado pasture, very beautiful, sustainable & natural looking but very much the result of human intervention and domestic animals.

In the long run, we cannot address our environmental challenges by turning down thermostats, doing w/o things we need or by not allowing economic development.  And we certainly cannot make progress if we stupidly deny that progress is possible.   We have to be smarter and we can be.   A working forest in Virginia today is nearly twice as productive as it was 100 years ago in terms of the wood it produces per year, but it goes much beyond that.  It is also better for the soil than it was, better for the wildlife, kinder to the water resources and in the course of production more attractive.  It is a win all around, by everything we can measure.   We can use forest land to absorb municipal waste in an environmentally sustainable fashion.  

Below is Albert Einstein statue at National Academy of Sciences. 

Does it really make any sense to talk about “footprints?”   That assumes a one-way relationship, which is just not reflective of reality.  All of us consume wealth & resources but most of us also create them.  Humans come into the world with mouths to feed and various needs to meet.   But they also come with hands to work and – more importantly – brains to think.   Sometimes they figure out how to make things better.

Above is my forest with five-year-old pines.

Posted on

The Joy of Virginia Forest Land

People own lots of things but we form special relationships with the land we own.   Wound up in land is the concept of connection of our ancestors’ to the earth and our legacy for future.   There is no surprise that people have deep feelings for land that has been in their families for generations, but it is astonishing how fast the same connections form with adopted land.

I have loved forests and wanted to have my own part of one for as long as I can remember.   But buying a forest is not something most people do.   Most forest owners inherit them.   I would have to borrow the money to buy my forest so I couldn’t afford to do it as a mere indulgence, so I started to study on the economics of forestry.   I was surprised and encouraged to learn that forestry was an excellent, if illiquid, investment.    According to Forbes magazine, timber investments from 1990 – 2007 timber produced a compounded annual return of 12.88%.    You just cannot beat that if you have the time and the inclination to wait for nature to take its course. 

Most people who invest in forestry do so through REITs and TIMOs.   That option didn’t appeal to me.   That makes forestry just another investment.   My logic was the reverse.  I was looking for a lifestyle choice, not a mere investment vehicle.   I wanted to own a forest and I needed to justify it as an investment, not the other way around.   And I wanted my forest that I could stand on and manage.    After investigating the economics, I decided that I felt secure enough in my judgment on this matter to base my retirement savings on growing trees rather on a capricious stock market. 

Of course finding the right forest is harder to do than buying stocks or mutual funds.   I needed to find a place close enough to my house that I could visit but far enough from Northern Virginia that I could afford the land.   My research took me to Southside Virginia on the Piedmont south of Richmond.  This is the land of the loblolly pine.   The soils of the region were denuded by generations of cotton and tobacco farming and the land has been returning to forest for more than a century.   The decline of the tobacco industry, which pushed people off the land and the distance from growing cities kept land prices lower.   

Successful forestry on one tract of land requires successful forestry in the neighborhood.  Wood is heavy and hard to transport.   Unless you have enough forested acres in a roughly 60-100 mile radius to sustain a forestry industry and mills, you really cannot grow trees profitably.   The forests of Southside Virginia meet this need.   I knew this was where I would find my forests. 

I called a rural real estate broker called Rick Rawlings in Lawrenceville.   He didn’t think I was serious when I called him and probably didn’t change his mind when I showed up at his office in Lawrenceville.   He wanted to steer me to small tracts of land suitable to building a getaway cabin.    I told him that I didn’t care for such things.   I wanted a place for forestry – real forestry.    He told me that he had some tracts that were 100+ acres, but they were isolated and it would cost me a fortune to bring in things like electricity.  “You would never be able to build,” he warned.   He smiled when I told him that is exactly what I wanted. 

He showed me several tracts of well developed timberland and then told me about a recent clear cut.   It was 178 acres of clearcut plus 2, but there was good site preparation and I could see the tops of the little pines poking above the weeds & old brush.   I also liked the streams and the mature hardwoods left near them.   That was my first tract. 

The first thing an absentee landowner needs to do is get to know the neighbors and make some local allies.   They are the ones who can protect your land … or not.   Fortunately, the land had a hunt club already associated with it and they were happy just to keep on with the previous relationship.   The hunt club maintains the gates and the no trespassing signs.   Their presence on the land also discourages squatters or some clowns planting drugs, which can be significant problems.    In this rural area, everybody knows everybody else and they all knew about me.    I had to overcome a bit of a stereotype when I drove up with my Honda Civic Hybrid, but when they figured out that I knew about the trees and wanted them to keep on hunting, everything was okay.   A couple of the guys took me around and showed me the various thinning and timber operations they were working on.    When I got stuck in the mud, the local farmer came and pulled me out with his tractor.   I was really interested in hearing their stories about the land and their experiences.   

I also joined the Virginia Forestry Association and got the communication director job for the tree farm project.   My job mostly consists of writing an article for the Virginia Forests magazine four times a year and I get to interview and write the story of the tree farmer of the year.   I learned a lot from these things.   Forestry is kind of an art form.   Local conditions make a big difference and by local I mean difference of a few yards or a change in the slope of a hill.   The more successful tree farms you see, the better feel you get for understanding your own.    I have never met or even heard about a tree farmer who didn’t love his forest, and everybody you meet is eager to talk about their particular places.   I know I am.

I don’t depend on my forest for current income, so I have the luxury of experimentation.   I have done pre-commercial thinning and biosolids application.   I am reasonably certain that these things will make the forest grow faster, be a better place for wildlife and just look better, but I am not sure it will actually be worth the outlay in terms of actual income.

Anyway, I have been happy with my forestry investment choice.  You cannot rush the trees, so I sometimes wish I had got into the business sooner and been further along.   But I then I remember that I couldn’t.  Besides the obvious lack of money (or more correctly credit), I didn’t have enough understanding of the forestry business.   Liking trees is not sufficient.    I also do not think I could have done this deal in the pre-internet world.  It is amazing what you can find on the Internet and all the research you can you do.   For example, Southern Regional Forestry Extension has online courses.   You can download these on ITunes. 

Posted on

Beech Woods & Humid Forests

In Wisconsin, beech trees are native only within the fog distance of Lake Michigan, so you find them in Grant Park along the lake but not a couple miles inland.   They are common in the Middle Atlantic States and in Central Europe.  It is hard to tell the European beech from the American.  The European comes in more horticultural varieties, so if you see one at the nursery it is probably a European beech.

Beech trees are shade tolerant.  They show up only near the end of natural succession and you find them in old well-established sites with rich and well developed soils.    When you see lots of beech trees, you know that the place has not been disturbed very much for a long time.   I am very fond of the beech trees along the stream beds.    This is my hardwood legacy forest.  You can see from the picture below that the young trees are beech.  They are the ones with the brown leaves. This is a good time to see them.  They stand out, since they characteristically keep their dead leaves until pushed off by the new ones in spring.   

Nobody will cut this forest as long as I am alive.  Right now we have some big beech trees, along with oaks, red maples, tulip poplars & ash.  In a generation the beech will be more dominant.  The big tulip trees will start die out.  The little pines you see in the picture above are volunteers.  They need to grow in the sun and none of them will reach maturity. The oaks will not regenerate in the shady forest but they live for centuries and will be around for a long time yet.   Beech and oak are both mast producers and provide good wildlife food.   The understory already has a lot of holly.  More will fill in.  

I am not leaving this forest completely alone.  When this land was part of somebody’s farm, they high graded (i.e. took out the biggest trees and left the little ones).    This degraded the quality of the stock and there are some old but small trees that are just sucking up resources.   Other trees were damaged by ice storms past.   I am cutting out the runts and the damaged trees to make more room for the robust young ones.    A well managed forest just looks untouched.

Above is spring of this year.

Posted on

Hunting

We couldn’t hunt because we didn’t have licenses.  Technically, we could have hunted on our own land, but we weren’t really ready anyway.  I am a terrible shot. We just went along instead with the other hunters.   Technically, we couldn’t even go along with anybody toting a gun except that the guy we went with was a “disabled hunter.”  Ostensibly, we were there to help him.  If he shot a deer we would carry it out of the woods to the truck.   No deer jumped by, so our hunter didn’t get one, but we had a good talk.

Below is Alex at the new farm. 

There are several types of deer hunting in Virginia with different weapons and different practices.   Bow hunting is mostly a solitary pursuit.   The hunter usually waits in a tree stand until the deer comes by.  You get one shot and there is not much range, so bow hunting requires a lot of patience and preparation.  The hunt is the culmination of a year-long study of the deer ecology and habits.   Similar preparation is necessary for black powder.  In both these cases, the older technologies require more effort and understanding.  Those who hunt with these tools usually just like being in the woods more than hunting.

Below are my 13-year-old loblolly pines along with Alex to show the point of comparison.

The guy we went with knew the woods and the animals very well.  He had been stalking these woods as fields for more than a half century and his family has been doing it for centuries.  As a boy, he told us, his family had to hunt to put food on the table.  Years ago, deer were not as common as they are today, so they had to know the land better back then.  He showed us how the bucks paw up the along a path.  They lay scent there to attract does and scare off other bucks. Solitary hunters can call the bucks.  Very often the deer are nearby, but out of sight.  If you imitate the buck snort, the dominant local buck comes running to drive off his rival.  This is a fatal mistake.  But we didn’t try to lure any bucks; we were not doing that kind of hunting.

We did a third kind of hunting common in the south.  They send hunting dogs into the woods.  The dogs chase the deer out to where hunters are waiting at strategic points along the roads and paths.   We heard the hounds howling, but neither dogs nor deer came our way.  We heard the shots from other hunters.  One got a nine point buck in the first minutes of the hunt.   Our guide explained to us how the dogs communicated with each other.  One kind of howl mean “I’m lost,” he said.  The other dogs respond and the lost dog rejoins the group.  The dogs follow the deer by scent, not sight until they are right close, so on a windy day the dogs are actually following some yards to the side of the deer. 

Some hunters just like to train the dogs and some of the dog handlers don’t even participate in the actual hunt.  They just take care of the dogs.  I see them running the dogs during the summer.  I don’t know for sure, but the dogs seem to be having a great time too.  I suppose running freely and jumping is what dogs do in their dreams. Two summers ago when I was working on the farm I heard some plantive shouts.  I thought someone had been hurt and went to investigate.  I met a guy in the brambles looking for his lost dog.   The dogs almost always can find their way home.  Besides, the dogs usually have tracking devices on their collars, but the dog lovers worry nevertheless.  The dog wasn’t so dumb.  He had already found his way back to the truck and was waiting there.

Below – hunting dogs waiting for transport.

The hunting is mostly a social event.   About thirty guys take part.    My main reason to go down to the forest was to talk with the Reedy Creek Hunt Club re buying about five acres of my land.  They want it for a clubhouse.   I am willing to sell it to them.   I worry a little re that my new forest because it is along the electrical lines easement, which makes it easily accessible.  The hunters’ presence near my trees will help protect them from dumping or vandalism.    

Since Alex and I were down there anyway, we stopped off at our other forest too, where ran into members of the McAden Hunt Club at the gate.  They are the hunt club that uses and takes care of our land on SR 623.  They were in a good mood because one of the kids got a nice looking deer.   Successful hunts are more likely these days, since there has been such a population explosion among the deer.  It was deer day all over Brunswick County.  We heard the dogs and saw the guys with the bright orange hats at the gas stations and convenience stores.  The Second Amendment is a big deal in Southern Virginia.

Many of the hunt club members are farmers and for them hunting is almost a necessity.  They told us re the damage the large deer numbers can do.   They can eat up whole fields of beans.   They also eat peanuts.  I never would have guessed.  They cannot really eat enough of the peanuts to make a difference, but when they make the harvest difficult when they paw up the plants.

Changing the subject a little, I have a small problem with one of my streams.  It is draining under the road, but no longer going through the culvert pipe.  I cannot see exactly where it sinks in, but it come out underneath the rocks on the other side.    I suppose a sink hole will develop.  There must have been a truly bodacious storm in the last couple of weeks.   There were sticks and debris five feet above the usual water level and east bank was severely undercut.   I wouldn’t usually care much, but my only surviving bald cypress is on top of the bank, so Alex and I shored it up with some rip-rap and sticks.    I don’t know what to do about that potential sink hole.   Maybe it will be self limiting as the dirt falls into it.  I built up some rocks on the far side to avoid erosion, although it has not been a problem so far and the water is coming out clear and clean.  One of the hunters told me that many years ago his had put down a bed of broken concrete to stabilize the road so they could drive across.  My guess is that the water if flowing through that. 

Posted on

CO2 & Forests

Carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and stronger, so presumably higher levels of CO2 in the air as a result of burning fossil fuels would make forests grow faster.   I was particularly interested in an experiment done at Duke University where they dosed a loblolly pine plantation with elevated levels of CO2.     Duke is not far from my forests and they were experimenting with the same species as I have on similar soils in a similar environment. 

Below are pines at a Virginia Tech experimental plot testing biosolids at the Peidmont station near Blackstone, VA.  The trees were not actively managed before the biosolid experiments.

The studies showed that the pines did indeed grow faster and stronger.  They were also less prone to damage during ice storms, which is a factor that limits loblolly growth farther north.  The forest did relatively better during dry years.   The hypothesis is that the limiting factors in the growth of the pines are nutrients such as nitrogen, which is in deficit on much of the pine land in the Southeast.   In dry years, however, the trees don’t bump up against those factors since they are growing more slowly because water is the limiting factor.  When rain is plentiful they are reach the limits of the site’s nutrients and the extra CO2 isn’t much of a benefit.

Everybody knows that forest soils in region are deficient in N and P as well as trace minerals.   Pine forests often sit on land that was used for cotton, corn or tobacco.  These crops depleted the soils, which were old soils anyway.  Building the soils is one of our tasks. 

It seems to me that we have a solution to this problem if we just fertilize better.   This is something we might want to do anyway.   I think this is a place for biosolids.    I really don’t understand why we cannot balance these things better.   I read about the problems of disposing bulk wastes and sewage from municipalities and commercial farms.   In Virginia and NC, we have a lot of chicken and hog operations.   They produce too much crap; our soils could use it and the trees would grow better and faster.  I am going to try to figure out why this is not being done more widely.  I suspect it is misguided regulation coupled with plain inertia.

Below is one of my failures, or maybe a single success.  I planted twenty bald cypress.  As far as I can tell, only one survived.  I want to get back into the swamp when the ground freezes this winter to check on the overall progress.  I was in Iraq last winter, so I missed that opportunity then.  The tree you can see in the picture is thriving.   The others not.  I don’t know what I did wrong.   My guess is that there was too much competition.  There are a lot of box elders that overgrew them.  This one is near the road, so I can get at the brush regularly.  BTW – the bald cypress is the green one on the left. 

Anyway, the Dept of Energy, which was funding the Duke studies, is pulling the plug on them.   You can find information re at links here, here & here.    It was that news that made me think about this subject.   I am a little unhappy about this outcome, although I am not sure how much more could be gained anyway.    There are too many variables.  You would have to try to fertilize some, make sure others had lots of water etc. and by the time you figured it out the results would probably be OBE’D.  Good forestry practices and superior genetics will make the forests grow a lot faster anyway.    Experiments are difficult in forestry because of the variable conditions and the very long times involved.   It is usually easier to compare and contrast different places and practices over larger areas and work with landowners.

Below are 13-year-old loblolly pines on my new land.  They are planted close together, which shaded out other trees.  You can see there are only a few stray hardwoods.  But these trees are too close.  I want to thin them out maybe in 2010.  That is a little early, but the stand is growing well and I think the opening will help.

Virginia Tech does a good job of outreach to forest owners, which helps them understand the forests of Virginia in a very practical way.    For example, they are studying biosolids application on a tree farm near Blackstone and they invite landowners and anybody else interested to look at the results.  It was a biosolids demonstration in 2007 that directly led me to apply biosolids on my land.    They also send around student teams to check on forest pests etc.   All this outreach makes the whole Commonwealth of Virginia their laboratory.

I know this is a bit of a subject change, but I have to add that any CO2 solution requires higher prices for carbon-based fuels.  The bad news is that oil prices are coming down.  We need to tax them back up.  I have been writing about this for years now.  Please follow this link and let me know what you think.  

Of course, maybe all this will go for nought.  It has been darn cold around here for the past weeks and I read in the paper today that not only was this October one of the colder on record, but there has been no global warming for the last ten years.   Statistics are like that, however.  There is the story re the man whose head is in the freezer and feet in the fire but on average he is comfortable.

Posted on

Marking Boundaries, Managing Wildlife

Below – boundary trees are often the biggest trees.

I don’t really do much useful around the farms, but I enjoy being there and I have assigned myself tasks.   One of my repeating tasks is marking boundaries.    I squirt new paint on the markers each year.  It was a challenge the first time just to find them.   Most of the markers are on old trees.  Boundary trees tend to be the biggest ones because neither side can cut them down.  Beyond that, surveyors tended to choose long-lived species such as white oaks.   The most interesting markers are old signs.   My property was owned by Union Camp and there are metal signs telling people that.   In some cases the trees have grown almost completely around the signs.    On two sides I have the remains of a barb wire fence.  In the old days the fence divided two pastures.  It is very old and the trees have grown around the wires in many places.   The wires are mostly down, but they still provide a straight line to follow.  The southern boundary is Genito Creek … or it WAS the creek.   In 1962 the creek changed course and cut a new channel through my property.    The line is now the old creek bed.  There are no clear markers there.  The eastern border is also moved.  It used to be the road, but around 1970 they moved the road, so now I have around 100 yards on the far side of the road too.  This strands a couple acres, but I am glad to have both sides.   Nobody can build anything I don’t like along my road.   The plat map has precise longitude and latitude that these days you can find with GPS.   In fact, you can find everything with GPS.    I like the precision but I enjoy the exploration more.   

Below – The tree swallowed the barb wire fence.

Below My trees are growing very well and I expect that the thinning and biosolids will make them grow even better.   The property was clear cut in 2003 and replanted the next spring.   The site index is good.

I met the guys from the Reedy Creek Hunt club.  They seem a nice bunch of guys.   They told me that my new property has been in forest since as long as anybody can remember.   They knew a lot about the local forestry business  and I was glad to share their expertise.  

There is no shortage of deer in the area.   In fact, deer have become pests, destroying crops and becoming road hazards.   The hunters shoot as many as they can, but it doesn’t make a dent on the herd.  They speculated, however, that the deer may be a nuisance also because they have to search for food farther from the forests.   We agreed that the club would plant some food plots on the eight acres below the power lines that cross my new property.    High protein diet would not necessarily increase the size of the herd, but it might keep them closer to home and make the herd healthier.  That is the theory, at least. 

Above & below are some of our healthy trees. I am 6’1”, so you can see the comparison with the trees.  I didn’t know trees grew that fast.  Back in 2005 when I first got the place, none of them were even knee high.

Some still hunt individually, especially those who hunt with bows or black powder but hunting in this part of Virginia is a usually a communal affair.   They send dogs into the woods to drive out the deer.  Theoretically they coordinate to get the deer.   Evidently many still get away.   They move fast and the guys assured me that it is a lot harder than it sounds.  

We talked about the various other sorts of animals the live around Brunswick County.   I was not happy to learn that bears are becoming common again.   I have not seen any bear tracks yet on my land.  Good.  I prefer to avoid encounters with any animals that can do me serious harm.  As few as ten years ago there weren’t any in Virginia except in the mountains and in the areas of the Great Dismal Swamp.   I heard from a different source that a guy near Brodnax killed a bear last year, a big bear … with a bow and arrow.  I am not sure I would shoot at a bear with a bow.   A near miss would just make him mad and you might not get a second shot.  Hunting for bear is still restricted to bow and black powder.    Of course there is the usual menagerie of animals, such as beaver, turkey, bobcats and recently coyotes.   I understand that beavers have been trying to dam up one of the streams on the new property.    You just can’t get away from them.    They are kind of cute but they breed like rodents, I suppose because they are.

Above is the place where the club plans to plant some food plots.

Above – my new property came with appliances.  The hunt club guys tell me that they have been there a long time.   It is a Sears Kenmore washer and range.   Despite years of exposure to the elements, they are in decent condition.  I guess Sears built to last.

Posted on

Kill Animals & Cut Trees to Protect Nature

Continuing my thoughts from the Greenpeace posting below, when I tell people about my forest, they often praise me for protecting nature. Their enthusiasm cools when I explain that I am indeed protecting nature by killing some animals and cutting some trees. You just cannot rely on nature to take care of itself anymore. Preservation is not desirable everywhere if you want to protect nature.

Below – the clearcut on my forest land two years later.   The weeds and debris were higher than the trees and sometimes I worried whether of not I actually had a forest at all or just a weed patch.

Humans live in this world and have forever altered it. What if all humans disappeared tomorrow? What would nature “return” to? Where my trees grow, I think it would eventually be a fight between invasive paradise trees and kudzu vines. I don’t know if the wild boar would move in and tear up all the roots, but I figure that we probably would soon get many of those introduced bugs that kill beech, oak and ash trees. Eventually some sort of new balance would result. Would the paradise tree/kudzu ecosystem be superior to the pine, oak, beech & poplar and sweet gum I maintain?

Humans are not leaving this world any time soon, so my scenario above is just imaginary. Managing the land is even more important in the world we really live in.

Below – the clearcut on my land five years later

Humans must and will use resources taken from the earth. We can do that for a long time if we manage it right. A wise analysis indicates that some places should be preserved. We should not cut down all the redwoods, nor should we make the Grand Canyon into a gravel pit. But in order to be able to preserve some things, we need to use others wisely.

My land is beautiful rolling green piedmont cut into three parts by clear running streams. It is jumping with wildlife. Beavers sometimes have built little ponds. I love my land and feel responsible for it, but I am under no illusions that THIS particular land needs to be preserved untouched.  It is special only to me.  This was one of the early parts of our country to be colonized by English settlers.  For a couple centuries what is now my land was growing crops such as corn, cotton and tobacco, which depleted the soil.  About a century ago, the owners just gave up trying to grow ordinary crops and let it go.  Soon loblolly pines covered the land. Those pines were harvested in the 1930s.  They grew back and were harvested again in 1959, replanted with trees trees selected for their genetic qualities.  These were harvested in 2003 and replanted with really superior trees, some of which are now around twelve feet high. (We never cut about 30 acres of mixed hardwood near the streams to preserve water quality.)

Below is a clearcut thirteen years later.  This is on our new tree farm that we got this summer.

This land has produced wood for hundreds of homes and will produce wood for thousands more. Every stick of wood harvested from this land means we do not have to cut an old forest somewhere else. To make the trees grow faster, we apply biosolids (processed sewerage). This is where it goes when you flush the toilet. It has to go somewhere. You can dump it or bury it where it will be pollution or you can apply it to fields or forest land where it will be fertilizer for the next generation of trees.

It would be immoral for me to take this land out of production, to preserve it. My higher duty is to conserve and protect it. Conservation is harder work than preservation.

Consider the animals that live on the land. There is no shortage of deer, beaver or wild turkeys.  I have seen signs of coyotes and bobcats.  I am glad that the local hunters shoot and trap some of them.  Each hunter gets deer during each season, gun, bow, black powder.  They eat the meat and use the hides, and this pays the property taxes. They cannot seem to shoot enough deer or trap enough beaver to put a dent in their populations.

Using the current methods, I believe the land will continue to produce wood, wildlife, clean air and clear water almost forever. The land LOOKS unattractive for about three years after a clear cut, although the deer love it and it is a time of great abundance for raptors such as hawks and eagles. After three years the mix of brush and Christmas tree like forest is once again beautiful.

So remember, if you want to preserve special places, you need to use some others and if you want to protect nature, you need to cut some trees, spread some sewage and kill some animals.

Above is a wall in the middle of a woods in Wisconsin near the Milwaukee Airport.  Nature returned.  You would not know it had ever been gone until you come up on the wall that indicates settled agriculture in the past. Some people would call this a virgin forest, but they would be wrong.  You see a lot of that in New England.   I visited Robert Frost’s farm and remembered his poem “Mending Wall.”  I have included it below.  These days, however, there is no need to mend wall.  It is the same forest on both sides.  And the walls are mostly down.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Posted on

Greenpeace

I ran into a couple Greenpeace activists near the Balston Metro.   They wanted me to sign up for their organization to fight global warming and specifically save the boreal forests, evidently threatened by the likes of Kimberly-Clark.   I think I may have confused them. 

I told them that I respected their passion but I didn’t like their organization because I thought they were usually more of a PR organization than an environmental one.     I didn’t disagree that global warming and forest destruction were serious problems.  If fact, before they stopped me I was listening to the new Thomas Freidman book Hot, Flat & Crowded re the green revolution on my I-Pod.   The woman told me that the boreal forests produced 30% of the world’s oxygen.    Of course this is inaccurate.  A mature forest is essentially carbon neutral, as CO2 from respiration and decay more or less balances oxygen fixed by photosynthesis.  It has to be that way.  Think about what would happen if natural system just kept sucking up CO2 before humans burned fossil fuels.  All the carbon would come to be tied up in wood and leaves and nothing would grow.    However, I told them, I would be happy to put the boreal forests generally off limits because they are nice to look at and the fiber from them is competes with Southern forestry.  There are lots of reasons to protect boreal forests, but that 30% oxygen argument is just bogus.   

I asked them if they wanted to maintain forests and healthy wildlife communities on American land.   Of course they did.  So I discussed the economics of forestry and open land and how organizations such as Greenpeace often worked against their own stated interests by advocating regulations that make it so difficult for landowners to make a living from the land so they sell off to developers.    I also explained that good forestry practices protect soils near watercourses, which also provide wildlife corridors through plantation forests.  

The woman was interested and wanted to hear more, but her partner said, “We shouldn’t talk to this guy anymore.”  He evidently feared the contagion; they both wandered off. 

These young people exhibit admirable passion and Greenpeace is a first class marketing organization.   The scary part is that environmentalism has been subverted to public relations and sincere people are often taken in by it.    I have been interested in the environment as long as I can remember and I worry that the politics of environmentalism too often trumps its nature protection.  I am not alone in this.  Greenpeace founder, Patrick Moore, has come around to supporting nuclear power and good forestry practices because they the best alternatives for protecting the environment.    James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis and as crunchy an environmentalist you can find thinks that nuclear energy is necessary to “save the earth”.   Many of their erstwhile colleagues are not amused.    

We have to move into a more environmentally friendly equilibrium.   This certainly requires some regulation and rule making.  Rules and regulations work well when you are attacking a big, easily identified source.  I use the work attacking purposefully.   That has the feel of a struggle, us v them, good guys v bad guys.   This is the battlefield activists like.   But we have done the rough work.   We now are addressing the more complex finer points, ones that are harder to find and maybe ones that are not even recognized.  Doing this requires the unleashing of human innovation, initiatives and inventiveness.  For this you need to give people and firms incentives and information.   Command and control will not produce the result you want.    

Those cute Greenpeace activists in their quasi-environmental clothes with their quasi-environmental ideas will have to look for other solutions.   It is satisfying to kick the asses of the villains, but our task is to get entrepreneurs involved in finding environmental solutions with government helping create infrastructure to facilitate the work.    It will mean some conservation and higher energy prices, but we cannot conserve our way out of the problem.  We also cannot legislate solutions; we have to invent them.   The government cannot pick winners because the information needed to make those decisions is not yet available.   The futurists and planners always get it wrong.   Nobody foresaw the details of the information technologies we have today.   Society and the people making choices informed by their own specific knowledge and preferences makes decisions that surprise and are better than those of a small group of planners, no matter how smart.  We should unleash those same processes that gave us the wonderful and very inexpensive computer I am using to write and you are using to read as well as the Internet that connects them. 

Sorry, but Greenpeace is so 1970.  They did some good things back then, but we have moved beyond that sort of thing in most ways.   BTW – Greenpeace founder has moved to the next step.   See his site at Greensprit.com. 

Posted on

Old Foresters & Green Infrastructure

Below is a log rolling demonstration at our forestry field day.

You can guess the average age of a group if you know their first names.    I looked at the name tags and saw Thelma, two Florences, Roxie, Glenda and Bernice among the first few women that walked past.   Men were named Walt, Arnold, Howard and Lester among a couple Johns and Williams.  How old do you think they were?   At the tender age of 53, I was one of the younger land owners at the tree farmer convention.  It makes sense that most forest owners are old.    You either have to save up money for a while to buy a forest or inherit one.    Tree farmer tend to live healthy lifestyles so they live a long time.   We walked many miles up and down hills on our field day and the old folks kept going the whole time.   One of the speakers mentioned that 25% of all forest owners are more than 75 years old AND this geriatric assemblage owns more than 50% of the total forested land.   I have nothing against that.  I hope to be in that group someday, but it does present some challenges.

Below – they used to cut the big trees with these two-man saws.  It could take days to finish the job.

The most urgent is one I mentioned in other posts.   As the old folks at home take the road to glory, they leave their forest land to their kids who may not appreciate forestry as much.   They may convert their immobile inheritance to flowing cash and this will probably lead to the conversion of forest to other uses.

Some people feel bad when they see a timber harvest, but if the land remains in forestry it will soon be covered again with trees.  It may stay that way for 40-60 years or more and the clearcut will provide a great environment for wildlife until the trees come in.   If it is converted to other uses, however, the forest and rich habitat may be lost for years or forever.    A Wal-Mart parking lot, apartment block or highway may persist for a long time.   It makes sense for people interested in green space to make it worthwhile for landowners to keep their land in forests instead of going the development route.  But development is very seductive. 

Below – they stood on these springboards to make the cut.   Sometimes they had to go up six or eight feet to avoid the thicker part of the logs.  Notice the size of the saw as comparison.

At the convention we were shown figures on the relative value of land kept in forestry versus converted to development.    There is almost no place in the U.S. where the value of forestry consistently exceeds the opportunity cost of development.   In some places, such as the Idaho panhandle near Coeur d’Alene, the opportunity cost for development exceeds the land’s forestry value by a factor of six to one.   Forests and farms provide ecological services that are immensely valuable but usually not valued in money terms.   The stream that crosses my forest land exits cleaner than it was when it entered.  What is the value of this clean water?  Our fields and trees support wildlife, mitigate climate change, and provide beauty for everybody who sees them.    Landowners are paid for the wood, crops, livestock of minerals their lands produce, but the value of the unpaid services may exceed these values.  Of course, development is not as easy as maintaining the forest status quo, but the incentive es clearly go in the wrong direction.

What can be done?   A lot depends on economics.   If profits from wood and pulp are good, there is more incentive to keep the land covered in trees.   Many people who want to maintain green space often inadvertently work against their own goal when they regulate forestry activities into unprofitability.    An easily overlooked aspect of forestry is the price of pulp used in paper and fiberboard.   If prices for pulp are very low forest owners, who might have high net worth but cash flow problems, might not be able or willing to afford to do thinning.  This leads to lower timber prices and creates greater danger of fires and bugs.   

Below is a portable saw mill. 

There is also a kind of a herd effect.   Raw timber is bulky and heavy.  If the timber has to travel too far to get to a saw mill, it becomes cost prohibitive to do forestry.   From the other side, saw mills need a steady supply of timber.   If they cannot secure such a supply, they go bankrupt.   If enough mills go out of business, you reach a tipping point where neither forestry nor saw mills are profitable in a given region.   At that point, landowners look for other options. Goodbye pines and oaks, hello fast foods and parking lots.

Preservation is not really an option for most of our land area and it would not be a preferred option even if it was possible.    Some remarkable things, such as giant redwoods or the Grand Canyon should be preserved.  Conservation & sustainably wise use is a better options for most others.  A working, living landscape is better; a countryside where people live in, understand and appreciate the nature all around them is the way people should live and what we should encourage.

There is an interesting study of green infrastructure at this link.

Posted on

Trading Carbon Credits

Below – sprouts on the loblolly pines recently thinned.  Lobolly is one of the few pines that can sprout from a cut stump.

We will get some form of carbon tax and/or carbon trading no matter who becomes president next year.   This prospect makes carbon trading a hot topic among forest owners.  Forests naturally soak up carbon dioxide and well managed forests do a better job than others.

The best and most elegant solution to problem of CO2 emissions is a simple carbon tax.   A carbon tax is the way of minimum government interference in the economy and will provide the maximum benefit because it does not try to pick technologies, techniques, winners or losers.   A carbon tax changes  the energy equation but lets people decide on the various solutions they thing are best.  This is the reason why we won’t get this solution.  Politicians hate these kinds of things.   It solves the problem and takes away an issue from them.  It also is too simple, so they have little or no scope to provide special privileges or breaks to their supporters.   

Remember the ethanol debacle?   It was a great example of how government can make an experiment with a good idea into a monster than raises food prices worldwide, creates environmental stress all the while costing the taxpayers and consumers money.   Expect a lot more of these sorts of things in the next few years.    Sorry for the digression.

Below – thinned loblolly pine five-years old

The next best thing to a simple carbon tax is a cap and trade system that sets the rules and then gets out of the way.   Ideally the government would auction off the carbon rights and let those who wanted to use them figure out the distribution.   Of course nothing is so simple.  You have to define both carbon producers and carbon sinks (takes CO2 out of the air).  This is complicated because the carbon cycle is one of the biggest natural processes on earth.   Billions of tons of carbon are cycled through the atmosphere every day and only a very small percentage is influenced by human activities.  We don’t want to allow people to get benefits or penalties just for being near a particular natural process.  On the other hand, human choices can significantly affect how much carbon natural processes take out or put in.  Nowhere is this truer than in forestry.   

Forest destruction in places like Indonesia and Brazil put more CO2 in the air than all our transportation.  On the other hand, growing forests in North America have pulled that amount out.  This is a big deal, but hard to measure and assessment is complicated even more by the nature of nature.   An old, established forest is near equilibrium, i.e. as much CO2 is put into the air from decay and respiration as is taken out by photosynthesis.   (This is the way it has to be.  The natural carbon account must balance.   W/o CO2 plants cannot grow and life on earth is impossible.  More CO2 makes plants grow better and healthier.  CO2 is not a type of pollution in the sense we usually think of these things.)  Destruction of an established forest puts carbon in the air and the establishment of a new forest takes it out.   We don’t want to encourage people to destroy an established forest in order to establish a new one to get credit for the CO2 it would remove. 

I have to admit that I am not really sure about this whole carbon sink idea.  In the long run forests would be carbon neutral, since carbon absorbed by leaves, needles and wood would be released when those things decomposed.   Growing more trees and bigger trees is good from many angles and it would buy us some time, maybe centuries, in limiting greenhouse gasses, but most of what goes into the forest will come out again.

Of course, maybe all we need is time.  A fix that holds for more than 100 years could be called a long-term solution.  By that time we can hope and expect other technologies to be available. 

Below – a wildlife food plot with thinned pines and mature hardwoods in background

How Carbon Credits Work for Forestry

The market for carbon is one just developing and forestry is even at an earlier stage than some others, since forest sinks were specifically excluded from Kyoto.   This was/is a serious oversight (although it was not really an oversight but rather a political ploy, IMO, aimed at the U.S.) which is being addressed.  This is how it would probably work.  

You have to start with a certified forest, so that you can measure the carbon input and carbon output AND a third party can audit it.   The landowner must provide proof of ownership, including timber rights, location maps, acreage and management plan.   An audit establishes a baseline of all the carbon that is currently stored above ground in stems and branches as well as below ground in roots and soils.  The landowner signs a contract, usually for fifteen years, where he  agrees to abide by practices that will enhance the  forest’s absorption of CO2 so that at the end of the contract there is more carbon stored in the forest at the end of the contract.    He is really selling the difference between the baseline carbon levels and the ending levels. Carbon is sold by the ton. 

These trades take place on the Chicago Carbon Exchange.   Carbon trading is still VOLUNTARY.  Buyers are firms interested in good public relations and individuals, many celebrities, who want to shrink their carbon footprints.  A mandated cap & trade program would enhance this trading and probably raise prices. 

Individual landowners cannot participate in the program, since they would be selling too little carbon to make a profitable sale.  Instead they would have to work through an aggregator, who would collect carbon contracts from many landowners and sell them as a unit.   Of course, at every step of the way various people like aggregators and brokers are taking their slice, so landowners should not look at the carbon price and think they will get anything like the posted amounts.

Each year the landowner would be paid for the estimated carbon sequestration, with 20% withheld as insurance against a catastrophe that might destroy the forest.  The contract would account for planned forestry operations.  For example, it would be discounted for a thinning operation near the end of the contract.    Of course, a well timed thinning INCREASES total carbon sequestration in the medium and long run, so that is also estimated if done earlier in the contract.   At the end of the term there is a reckoning.  A final audit determines how much carbon has been soaked up.   If it is as estimated the landowner gets the 20% that had been withheld.  If there is less than estimated, the landowner doesn’t get the whole amount and if there is more he gets a bonus.

Some landowners see this as free money.  They get paid for what they would have done anyway.  This is not entirely true.  As with any contract, you have to be c careful.   The carbon contract acts as a type of easement.   It complicates your ability to sell the land unencumbered as well as defacto tying up your ability freely to develop the land during the period of the contract.    Still and all, it looks like a good way to pump some money into rural land, compensate landowners for some of those green infrastructure benefits they provide and maybe tip the balance in favor of forestry and against conversion to other uses or development.

I don’t have a contract on my land.  I am waiting until I understand the process better.   There is no rush.  IMO, the price of carbon will go up.  I have mixed feeling about the idea of selling credits.  It seems a lot like selling indulgences in the medieval church.    The carbon credits produced on my land will allow people like Madonna or Al Gore to jet around the world without feeling guilty about the burden they place on the environment.   But they will do that anyway.   Putting money back into the land is a good idea, no matter the source.  

Virginia Tech produced a good background on carbon trading and I have added this one.