Category: Conservation & Environment

This is my last entry re my tree farm convention.   I know I have put out a lot about that, but there was a lot to say.

Below is a forwarder at work.   It is owner operated, so the guy has to work hard.  That vehicle costs $250,000, but allows one man to do the work of dozens.

On our field day to the Beaver Creek Tree Farm I saw lots of interesting aspects of forestry.   I noticed the differences between forestry in the Northeast and in the South.    The South is ahead of other regions in the practice of silvaculture and marketing total life cycle of wood.  

Below is the owner-operator explaining the economics of his business.  He started working on his own land, but soon found that he could make money working on other people’s land too.  It helped him defray the cost of the equipment.

I think that is because the Northeast was TOO blessed by nature and the Federal government.   Most of the timber harvested in the NW came from Federal lands until the spotted owl controversy.   Logging in the region was much more reminiscent of the traditional logging of the 19^th Century than of the type of tree farming we do now.    In many ways, the old practices were more like hunter gatherers, whereas tree farming of today is more like settled agriculture.

Below the guy up above told us that he has trouble finding people with the skills to run his equipment, but mentioned that kids who play a lot of video games are good candidates.   The skills they learn playing games is transferable to the 3D work in the forests.  This is an actual forestry video game at the Museum of Forestry in Portland.

The South has a good climate and ecological situation for growing trees, especially pine trees,  but it took more work and planning to make the land productive.   Most of the South’s forests are growing on former farm fields where the soil was exhausted by over cropping of cotton or tobacco.   Many were converted to forests around the time of the great depression and we are on our third generation. Our soils do not have the “A” level of top soil in most cases.   We are rebuilding our soils, but it will take another generation or more to restore something like there was before the abuse.   On the plus side, most of the Southern forests are on rolling hills or flat areas.  It is very easy to run mechanized forestry operations in the South and many of the techniques and machines themselves were developed for Southern forests or with Southern forests in mind.  The South also has lots of saw mills to process the wood.   The South is truly America’s wood basket, supplying around 58% of the total wood used in the U.S.

Below – mechanized forestry can be done in the NW too.

Logging in the Northwest is sometimes more heroic because they have to work in difficult mountain conditions.   For example, they often have to use cables to pull logs up hills for loading.   On Southern tree farms it is often possible for the wood to be loaded directly onto trucks.   Most Southern tree farms are also closer to paved roads. 

Below is the Willamette (pronounced wɨˈlæmɨt) River in Portland.  Mt Hood is in the background but hard to see.

The economy of forest production is better in the South than the Northwest as that region’s earlier advantage in access to standing Federal-owned timber has disappeared.   Trees grow fast in both regions.   My guess is that a natural forest would grow faster in the NW, but tree farms are more productive in the South because of better developed silvaculture techniques and topography that is easier to work with.   I don’t know for sure, but it also seemed to me that Oregon had more onerous regulations than Virginia.   But all that aside, forestry is more similar in the regions than different and as forestry in the Northwest shifts from publicly owned forests to private tree farms, the similarities will grow.   Forests in the Northwest are beautiful and the Douglas fir & its relatives are majestic.   The trees tend to be bigger there than in the South, and I would like to spend more time learning about the ecology of the NW forests, but I enjoy the forests wherever they are.  They all have their particular beauty. 

The pictures are from Little Beaver Creek Tree Farm in western Oregon.  Below are new trees planted in back of “heritage trees” left for cover, wildlife & beauty.

Lobbyists have a bad reputation and there sure are some high profile crooks, but no democray can properly work w/o lobbyists and the bigger the government the more you need lobbyist.

Most people know more about their own business than others know about it.  That just makes sense.  That doesn’t mean that others do not have strong opinions and many are enthusastic about spending other people’s money and creating regulations that prevent them from using their property.  Forestry is a strong example.

About 60% of America’s productive forests are family owned, but most people don’t know that.  They think that government or big business runs the show and they are eager to control what they consider a common resource.    It is possible to be both ignorant and passionate and this state of affairs describes much of the urban-based environmental movement.    (As Yeats wrote nearly ninety years ago, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.  That remains true.)

Below is a forest harvest.  You can see the different generations of trees.   In the middle are sixty year old trees.  Those trees are the result of a clearcut done a generation ago and you can see how the forest has come back strong and in good health.  Behind them is a planting of trees around ten years old.  The clearcut was done recently and will be replanted next year.  Douglas fir has to be managed with clearcut, since the young trees of this species require full light.  This kind of forestry was abused in the past and that colors people’s perceptions today.  Things have changed, but perceptions have not and the use of clearcut in forestry is misunderstood by the general public.  Well managed forests grow faster and are less prey to bugs, blowdowns and fires.

BTW – the guys doing the cutting work for Pihl forestry.  They were featured on the History Channel show called “Ax Men.”

Forest owners are more interested in taking care of their forests than following the politics of forestry.    Yet very often the biggest risk to their trees and their freedom to make decisions about what is best comes not from bark beetles or ice storms but from Washington or their state capitals.   There is a fairly constant assault on our rights usually from well meaning people often led by committed radicals who dislike the very idea of private property. 

Take a very simple example – rabbits.   Any gardener knows that rabbits are not uncommon or endangered.  However, there are some places where they are less common.   In the State of Maine, for example, cottontails are in decline as the cut-over lands where they thrived are growing into mature forests.    Is this a problem?  It could be if the government gets involved.   The simple fact is that all animals and plants have a natural range and each natural range has a limit.   If you go to Florida you find lots of alligators.   In Wisconsin you don’t find any outside the zoo.   Someplace between Wisconsin and Florida is the edge of the alligators’ natural habitat.  Along that line, alligators are rare.   You could say that they are locally endangered.   Should the government specifically regulate and protect alligators at this line?  Of course not.   Natural ranges naturally expand and contract.  Everyplace in America lies on the edge of some plant or animal range, so everyplace in America has some locally endangered plants or animals.  You can see the potential for unscrupulous individuals to call for more regulation.   Throw in some cute pictures and you can get laws passed to stop “timber barons” like me and my friends from harvesting their trees. 

Above is a ponderosa pine planation that replaced a fir forest.  The douglas fir blew down in a wind storm in 1996.  Foresters discovered that the trees had root rot and that it was still there, kind of like mold in your house.  Root rot spreads through the living roots of the fir.  The only way to get rid of it is to plant species that will not get it.  The pines are not immune, but they can resist better than the fir.   The fir forest would regenerate naturally and be blown down again and again because of the rot, which would spread.  The fir forest would be chronically harmed by the root rot for a long time, maybe for centuries until a forest fir destroyed it.  One of the benefits of a well managed forest is to find and fix these kinds of problems.

The pines are a subspecies of the ponderosa pine that specifically grows west of the Cascades.   The ponderosa pines that are common on the eastern side or in the rockies do not grow well in the pacific coast regions.

I am glad that my lobbyist keeps track of these sorts of things for me.  I have other things to do.  I cannot spend the time and I do not have the skills to keep track of all the sneaky attempts control my land.  

I am thankful for some lobbyists to protect me from politicians & activists.

I attended the recent National Tree Farmer Convention in Portland Oregon.  There were many fine presentations (and I will write more about them) and we got the chance to see first hand how forestry is done in the Pacific Northwest during a field day at the Little Beaver Creek Tree Farm.  It was very interesting to see how forestry is done another part of the country.  We work in different ecological, political and economic environments, but forestry is similar wherever you go and we can always learn a lot from talking to each other and sharing experiences. 

Forest certification was the subject of several presentations.  This is not a new topic.  It has been a central part of tree farming since the creation of the American Tree Farm System sixty-seven years ago, but new developments in forest certification will help tree farmers in Virginia.   Until recently, the biggest advantages for owners as part of the tree farm system came from the advice and assistance they could receive to better grow their trees while protecting water resources, soils and wildlife.  Having the familiar tree farm sign in from of your property indicating that your tree farm was up to standards was a source of justifiable pride, but the other aspects of membership had greater practical value.  Times are changing.  As consumers all across the globe become more aware of the impact of forestry on the environment, buyers in the U.S. and especially internationally are increasingly looking for and demanding wood that comes forests where the owners practice sustainable forestry.  

Below is Mt Hood from our hotel.  Portland is a pleasant city with beautiful surroundings.

Tree farmers have been doing that since the American Tree Farm System was founded in 1941; certification is a way to prove and demonstrate that high standard to others.  It is likely that in the near future that wood for certified forests will command a price premium.   Representatives of firms trading internationally tell us that it is already an advantage to sell certified wood in places like Europe.   Beyond that, certification will help tree farmers gain position in emerging markets concerning such things as green buildings, bioenergy and potential carbon trading programs.   No carbon trading will be possible unless a forest is certified, for example.  

The American Tree Farm System (ATFS) is the oldest and largest forest certification program in the United States, but even a respected and well-known organization like ours can use friends and we recently got some more when it was announced in August that ATFS was endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).   This is important because PEFC is recognized internationally.  This means the ATFS wood meets an accepted international standard and will find greater acceptance in world markets. Only around 10% of the wood sold globally is from certified forests, but this is growing rapidly.  PEFC is by far the largest certification network, currently comprising thirty-five independent national forest certification programs with 510 million certified acres in the various programs.  Among the countries with PEFC certified forests are such places as Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain Brazil and Malaysia.  

ATFS is the acknowledged certification system for small American forest owners and will work to ensure that standards are and remain appropriate for this constituency – people like you and me.  The partnership with PEFC will not change the way tree farmers interact with ATFS on a day-to-day basis.   Individual owners will still have their point of contact with state tree farm committees.  State committees in turn will be certified by tree farm regions 

No building material is more environmentally friendly than wood, considering competing materials such as plastics, metal or concrete.  Wood is biodegradable and completely renewable.   Beyond that, good forestry can do more to address the problems of water purity, soil protection, biodiversity and climate change than almost any other activity practiced over large areas of the world.  In other words, forests and wood products are part of the solution to many environmental challenges.  It is time that forest producers got credit for the good they do.  Most people do not know that the majority of timberland in the U.S. is privately owned and managed by owners like us, concerned with the future of our land.  Certification is a way to explain what we do to a wider world.

Above – wood from nearby tree farms arrives at the mill.   

Saw mills have changed.   Machines, computers and robots have replaced the army of unskilled workers and the dirty and dangerous jobs are mostly gone.  The ArborTech saw mill near Blackstone, Virginia runs three shifts with only eighty workers.   I was interested in looking at the plant, since it processes loblolly pine (which I grow) and gets its timber within a sixty mile radius of the plant.  Both my timber tracks are within that zone.

Below – The giant hook loads the logs.  The initial processing can handle a log every 2-3 seconds.

The plant is run by a couple of partners who established it in Nottoway County in 2001.  They chose the location on the northern edge of the great loblolly pine forests.  There is lots of renewable wood resource available to the south and good markets to the north. 

Below – They switched from oil to sawdust, produced as a by-product of the mill.  You can see from the smokestack that it makes almost no pollution and it is carbon neutral.

Loblolly pine grows fast and is strong enough for structural timber.   Southern pine (which includes loblolly, slash and longleaf pine), also called yellow pine, satisfies around 58% of America’s timber needs.   We can grow this resource, sustainably, essentially forever.  I am glad to have an efficient mill near my property.  Below are some pictures and explanatory texts.

Below the computer decides where to saw to get the most straight wood.

Below is the guy running the computer to do that sawing.

Below – the boards move out just after they are cut.  The warehouse is very tidy and clean.

Below – the boards are cut with this bandsaw.  The computer keeps it sharp.

Modern industry is so different from what I remember.   It is much cleaner and automated. Despite all the talk about the decline of American industry, American industrial production is actually higher than it was twenty years ago.  But industrial employment has plumeted.  When you go to a modern plant, you can see why.   A lot of product is coming out of the plant, but there are not many people working there.  Industry will be like agriculture.  In the past almost everybody had to work on the farms.  Today less than 2% of the workforce does.  Yet they produce enough to feed us and much of the rest of the world.  Productivity means fewer jobs to produce more stuff.  That is good, but it sometimes hurts.

Above is Boyton, Va, about 30 miles west of my tree farm.  It is a very charming place, but not growing very much.  It once sat on the main lines of communication.  Not anymore.  

I am hoping to buy another piece of forest land down in Brunswick County.  This would be 114 acres, about 90 acres in 12-year-old loblolly pine, the balance in stream management zones with natural regeneration hardwood stands from 1940.   This part of the state is Virginia’s “wood basket”.   The population has dropped over the years and collapse of the tobacco industry has pushed lots of worn out or marginal lands into trees.   That is why land is relatively cheap.  The soils are good for growing pine trees but not so good for other things.   In addition, the soils can absorb significant amounts of biosolids w/o creating a pollution problem.   This region should produce wood.  It is what it is good at doing. 

Forestry is not labor intensive as it once was.  It also does not need much in the way of infrastructure.   A particular stand of trees will only need the road about once every fifteen years.   This allows for lower maintenance and road construction costs.  It also means that a forestry area will support a lower population density.   The population will not grow and in some cases will actually decline.

Left – most southern towns have their reb statue.  This one is in Boyton in front of the courthouse.

Politicians hate this.  For one thing, it means fewer constituents and population decline (or lack of robust growth) somehow seems like a failure or at least a problem.   They often get the state to make local investments.  Everyplace, no matter how unlikely or isolated, tries to sell itself as a future tech hub.    Most of the time, these sorts of development projects fail, but they are successful just long enough to keep people trying.  It is sort of like slot machine pay off.

A smarter policy is to let regions do what they do best.    People in forest country can engage in forestry.   Given the capital intensive nature of today’s forestry, there is scope for some people to have good and high paying jobs – put not many of them.   A policy that tries to fix population on the land is silly, expensive and counterproductive.     Leave the high tech to Silicon Valley, or even the Research Triangle, which is not very far away in North Carolina.

The compassionate ask, “what about the people?”  We should ask that question right back at them.    How is it compassionate to hold people near the places they were born, where most of them cannot find good jobs and where all sorts of infrastructure is stretched to help them?   If people count, it might be better to help them move to Richmond or Raleigh, which are a little over 100 miles in opposite directions, or maybe someplace else entirely. 

Sometimes people would not have to move very far.   I already mentioned the Reseach Triangle. Southside Virginia also has some thriving regions.  South Hill is growing because of its place astride of big highways.   In addition the manmade lakes, like Lake Gaston, on the Roanoke River are magnets for people seeking leisure activity.   But there is no sense in freezing the population patterns of any particular point in history.   The land that is now my tree farm once supported a couple of large farming families.    The last ones left more than seventy years ago.  One of the places we made a wildlife feed plot and planted clover was the site of one of the homes.    Today my forestry contributes to the support of dozens of people spread around the area, but it doesn’t specifically support anybody, not even me, and certainly does not require anybody to actually live on the land and be there every day.

Nothing is forever.     Some places decline; others thrive.   The land remains, but people can move.   People should move to enjoy better opportunities.   

On the news the other day I saw a story about rebuilding New Orleans.   There was much gnashing of teeth because a couple years after Hurricane Katrina many areas remains unreconstructed.  As I understand it, the areas that are above sea level, such as the French Quarter, are already mostly rebuilt.    The low lying regions are the ones still depopulated and not rebuilt.   Good.   Some of these lowlands are best covered in wetland forests.  They should never have been developed in the first place and they certainly should not be redeveloped now that nature has reclaimed them.   Some places will gain population and some will lose.   There is plenty of land on higher ground.    Why be so stupid as to rebuild over and over in places that just don’t make sense?  This is especially true if you take into account probably effects of global warming.  It will be very expensive to rebuild these areas and it will be a colossal waste of money, as higher sea levels will inevitably cause they to be unlivable and soon.

Above is a stream management zone the often floods.  Notice how well the vegetation grows.  In the middle, if you look hard, you can see the baldcypress.  It is just leafing out.

On well managed forest land, we have stream management zones.   These are wetlands where we don’t cut because they protect water quality and soils.    They are also good for wildlife.  On my land, these areas account for around 20% of the total, so at least that much land is taken out of production.   These places flood, but it doesn’t much matter.    And when they do experience high water, they help slow the flood further downstream and let water soak in gradually.  

Building booms near seashores or along rivers have made us hostages to weather.   That is the major reason the costs of storm related losses keep on going up.  A flood along a stream management zone causes no trouble.  It may even be helpful in getting water to the roots of trees.     That same water in a developed region will cause millions of dollars of damage.   The news media will shortly be around to blame global warming or the current administration.  The actual culprit is the building on the flood prone land.   Losses will continue to grow to the extent we do that.   The government actually encourages stupid building practices by making low cost flood insurance available.   We should just say no. 

We should not treat every place equally.    Some places we should use intensely; others we should use extensively and some we should just leave alone.    This goes for natural and human communities.  However, these well might be different places at different times.   Government’s role should be to ease and facilitate transitions, not stand in the way of change or enable dumb behavior, but maybe that is too much to ask.