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Measuring Success in Iraq (Banana index)

Two separate groups of people came to see me about measuring progress in our area of operation and gave me an opportunity to pontificate in my very best style.  I am doing my best to deploy all my skill and experience on how to assess and measure.  I am delving way back to my MBA days when I studied marketing research, but Iraq presents a researcher with almost the perfect storm of confusion.  I am not sure how to measure progress in Iraq and I am not sure that information is knowable even in theory.

One of the guys who came to visit was a practicing anthropologist.  I didn’t know they had that kind of career path, but it makes sense.  Anthropologists study relationships between people, institutions, traditions and society.  The skills of an anthropologist are more appropriate in Iraq than those of a public pollster.   I don’t believe the usual polling methods can produce valid results in a place like Iraq. Figuring out the situation here is more an art than a science, more anecdotal than analytical. My study of marketing research methods gave me a good feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of statistical studies. 

Graphically Misleading

The most misleading sort of study is the pseudo-scientific one, with lots of numbers and graphs w/o valid grounding in reality.  Such things are usually based on a kind of snowballing of the power of a few guesses.  A few people make estimates that are locally valid for decision making but not scientific.  For example, “How much traffic is there on the road?”  “Lots.” You could make a decision based on that, but it is a soft estimate.  Somebody aggregates these guesses and gives them numerical weight.  As the aggregations get farther from the original sources, they get less and less related to reality BUT more and more impressive in terms of certainty of numbers and presentation.  

In my traffic example, if you aggregate traffic information from downtown Manhattan and rural Wyoming, you might conclude that traffic is a moderate concern in both places and you could produce graphs and charts to support your position. I learned a long time ago that if you want to enhance the power of your own gut estimate, you should put it into writing and if possible draw a chart or a graph. I know this works, but I also know that it is primarily a presentation ploy.  Even in the best cases, it is used to simplify information and make it easier to understand.  In the process, we trade some degree of accurate detail for presentation. Anyway, I think we are demanding more of the information we have than it has to teach us and much of our precision is unjustified. 

Spock Trap

I remember in the old Star Trek when Spock would say something like “impact in 10.5 seconds.”  How stupid is that?  That is why I prefer Picard. By the time he says 10.5, the number has changed.  It is unjustified precision, but it is easy to fall into the Spock trap.  It is attractive and makes you seem intelligent.  BTW – my own experience in using deceptive numbers is that you are much better off using precise odd numbers.  For instance, 97 is a more credible number than 100 or 90.  (Remember that Ivory Soap was 99 and 44/100ths percent pure, not 100 %.)My feeling about the part of Iraq that I know best, the places I have actually set foot and looked at with my own eyes, is that things are much better now than they were when I arrived six months ago.   I use the word “feeling” because that is what I have.  I have observed that people seem friendlier.  Markets are fuller.  There seems to be less fear.  Local people were once afraid to talk to us or work with us.  Not any more.  It just feels better.

Dreadful Conditions

I am convinced that conditions here are better than our measurements will be ever able to detect.  Iraqis have a long history with oppression.  Smart people learned to hide their prosperity from predatory authorities.  If Saddam’s henchmen found out you had something good, you might not be able to keep it.  We also saw the age-old desire to hide assets from the tax collectors.  As a result of all this, people have become accustomed to lying to anybody asking questions and trying to make conditions seem as dreadful as possible. 

Sing the Body Electric

A good example of a statistic we cannot use – but we do – is electricity.  Iraqis get some hours of electricity from the grid.  This power is essentially free, since the authorities have generally lost the capacity to meter and charge for it.  Naturally, everybody wants as much of this free power as they can get and when the power comes on they plug in everything they own.  It makes demand appear much higher and shortfalls more acute. If asked, people complain bitterly about the lack of power.  BUT if you fly over Anbar or drive thorough a city at night, you see plenty of lights even when there is ostensibly no power.   The fact is that many communities and even individuals have generators.  They prefer not to use these generators because it means that electricity is no longer free.  However, when they say that they do not have electricity, they really mean that they do not have FREE electricity.

Demand for electricity in Iraq is growing at around 12% a year, as people buy more things like refrigerators, microwaves and DVD players.  Supply can never catch up with demand as long as electricity is de-facto free.   I am convinced that if/when the authorities figure out how to meter and charge for it, the “problem” of electricity will be mostly solved, or more correctly it will stop being a problem and become an expense.

Fear v Greed

There are some sorts of statistics that I think we might be able to use IF we could assess them.  One is the risk premium that contractors and others demand.  Six months ago we had to pay relatively more for services because people thought it was risky to deal with us (i.e. they were afraid the insurgents would target them in retaliation). They charged us more to compensate.  Now the prices we are paying for our projects are dropping.  Of course that could be because we are getting better at knowing local conditions and negotiating better deals.   I think that if I could figure out a reliable way to estimate the risk premium, I would have a very good measure of improvement.  It is a kind of greed v fear measurement.

Banana Index

One of my own assessment methods is a “banana index”.  I observe fruits in the market especially bananas.  No bananas are grown locally.  They all have to be imported from somewhere else.  It is very hard to get a banana to market exactly at the right time.  They will usually be either green or brown.  A banana stays yellow for only a short time and if it is mishandled it gets easily bruised.   If you see lots of good quality bananas in the market, you know that the distribution system is working reasonably well and that good are moving expeditiously through the marketplace. Anyway, I shared my methods with the researchers. They are just rules of thumb, but if you call them heuristics they sound almost scientific. 

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Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, How Was the Play?

In a previous post I described how my promotion ended up costing me thousands of dollars in overtime pay and that because of my promotion into the Senior Foreign Service I would make LESS money in 2008 than I would had I stayed an FS01.  I took consolation in the fact the SFS is eligible for performance pay bonuses.   I figured that my service in Iraq leading a PRT would probably deserve some of that.  Wrong again. 

The Senate approves promotions into the SFS.  Usually they do this in November but this year the Senate acted slower than usual and didn’t get around to it until January.  As a result of the late promotion, the State Department in its wisdom and following its rules that probably have never applied before did not include the normal pay raise in my promotion raise, so I lost a little money.  But it got worse. Because the promotions came too late, I am not eligible for performance pay.

In other words, everything I have done in Iraq counts for nothing as far as the Foreign Service performance is concerned.  I don’t want to complain.  I did not come to  Iraq for the career.  But it is just one thing after another.  Like most people, I appreciate recognition from my employer and I find it annoying that some of my most significant contributions as an FSO are like the tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it.  Beyond that a significant part of SFS compensation is devoted to performance pay.  It is supposed to encourage and reward good work.  Not being eligible for this while serving in Iraq seems a little out of place.

And there is still another permutation in this nefarious spiral.  SFS does not get the automatic annual pay raises like other Federal employees.  Our raises are based on performance and those not recommended for performance pay are not eligible for the pay raises, which means in 2009 I will have taken a de-facto pay cut by whatever the rate of inflation is this year – all this because I got promoted last year.   I love the honor of it, but price is getting higher.

 “It feels sort like the fellow they run out of town on a rail. If it wasn’t for the honor of it, I’d just as soon walk,” to quote Abraham Lincoln.

Adding insult to injury, they sent that elegantly worded letter to the wrong place and it came back to them address unknown.  I got a cryptic email asking for my home address.  A few days later it arrived in Virginia. 

Dear Mr. Matel,

With the President’s attestation of Senate confirmation, let me extend, on behalf of the Director General, warm congratulations on your promotion into the Senior Foreign Service. 

I want to make sure you are aware that you will not be eligible for senior performance pay consideration by the 2008 selection boards, as fewer than 120 days – the threshold established by regulation – will have elapsed between the January 6 effective date of your promotion and the April 15 end of the 2007-2008 rating period. 

I have long maintained that I serve the task not the master and I will certainly not let my frustration with FS personnel interfere with my responsibly to my country and my colleagues. This blog note will be the extent of my expression of anger and all of you are doing me the favor of listening to my ranting.Thank you. Tomorrow I will be back on task, but for the rest of this evening I am p*ssed off.

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No Man is a Prophet in His Own Village

Our trip to Hadithah was cut short when we ran into a wall of dust coming in the other direction.  We were lucky.  A convoy of trucks coming out of Al Asad held us up.  The delay meant that we were not far outside camp when word came in about the approaching dust clouds and we could go back.  Being dusted down in Hadithah is less pleasant in terms of bunking and preparations (i.e. we would not have our toothbrushes etc). 

So we spent the morning riding in MRAPs on a road that went nowhere, but the day was not a complete loss.  Colonel Malay decided to stop off in Baghdadi, the first village outside Al Asad, and do a foot/candy patrol.  Generous people back home send lots of candy and other little gifts to the Marines at Camp Ripper.   They get a lot more than anybody can reasonably eat (unless their goal is to weigh 300 lbs) and they share this bounty with the local kids when they go on patrol.

I talked to the local shopkeeper in Baghdadi who told me business was bad.  Costs were high and profit margins low.  He didn’t have much in his shop to sell anyway.  A bunch of guys gathered around to complain about the lack of jobs.  They wondered if the U.S. could pressure the Iraqi government into creating some local jobs and/or if there were any good jobs to be had on Al Asad.   I was a little disappointed by what they were telling me.  It was not the lack of jobs, which is a legitimate problem, but the kinds of jobs they seemed to want.  Everybody wanted to work for the government.  The idea that private businesses could/would/should create jobs seems not to have occurred to them and did not resonate at all when I brought it up. 

Of course I understand that I did not meet a representative sample and that guys hanging around on the street in the middle of the day are probably not the most active and ambitious people in town.  Everybody was reasonably well dressed.  The shopkeeper wore traditional Iraqi garb, but the young men were dressed in western style trousers and relatively clean shirts emblazoned with the names of Brazilian or European soccer teams. One man dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants insisted on talking to me separately.  He said that he was a trained teacher and qualified to teach math and science. Yet he had been unable to get a job teaching because successful applicants either needed to bribe or know somebody.  He said that he could get a job with the IA, but preferred to work in his own field and asked that CF look into corruption in hiring at local schools.

There were many small businesses open on the street.  A quick glance around revealed three “gas stations”, each consisting of several plastic tanks of gas standing in the sun.  It doesn’t seem particularly safe or efficient, but it is a form of commerce.  We noticed that there was significantly more gas available for sale now than in the past and the plastic tanks were sitting on 55 gallon drums of fuel.  Selling gas here makes sense since we were on a main road along the Euphrates and there was consistent traffic passing by.  There was also a mechanic shop and a few more shops selling groceries. Fields near the river were green and growing.  They were planted with onions, lettuce, tomatoes and spring wheat and somebody had laid a few water pipes to irrigate fields a bit farther away from the riverbank.  A boy herded flocks of sheep though the fields.   It is clear that irrigated fields were once more extensive in the area than they are today.  The Euphrates is fast flowing at this point.  We saw ruins where waterwheels had once harnessed the power of the river probably to pump water to more distant places, but we didn’t see any working wheels anywhere along this stretch of the river.  Water wheels may be a lost art locally.  A diesel engine is less reliable and more expensive to run, but it is easier to set up and work.

Dennis has previous experience talking to local citizens about farming.  Farmers complain that nobody wants to be a farmer anymore because the work is too hard.  You can’t get good help these days.  Everybody wants to work for the government, they complain.  Our short reconnaissance and the comments of the idle young men seemed to confirm this anecdotal evidence. As usual, kids came out looking for candy.  Some could ask for candy, pens or sunglasses in English.  Some people came out of their houses to look at us or wave.  The mood was good.

A couple of guys came up who identified themselves as administrators from the high school and elementary school.  They both seemed to understand some English.  We nevertheless spoke through Franco the interpreter.  The two men complained that their school building had been taken over and used as a CF checkpoint.  I promised that I would mention the problem to the RCT.  These guys seemed intelligent and involved in their community.  They said that they had fixed up buildings themselves to serve as temporary schools, but hoped that we would do the right thing and give them back their building.  When I shook hands with them I noticed that – unlike those of the earlier group of young men – these guys had hard and strong hands.  I don’t know what kind of work they have been doing, but it is something that requires consistent hand labor.  Maybe they are indeed working to refurbish their houses to serve as schools.

They also complained about salaries and about Baghdad not giving anything to Anbar.  They said that each time money moves some leaks out of the pipeline.  Some leaks in Baghdad; a little more leaks in Ramadi and Hit.  By the time it gets to Baghdadi there is not much left.   Iraq is a rich country, they told me, but you wouldn’t know it to look around.  They indicated that they had more confidence in U.S. forces than in either their local government or the national government.  They were nonplussed when I suggested that there should be an Iraqi solution but asked that we intervene with the Maliki government to make changes.

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The Fobbit

Above shows accommodations down range.  These are nice ones, but the snoring can be intense.

Camp Ripper is a forward operating base – a FOB.  A FOB has some of the comforts of home, including a good chow hall, toilets that flush and cans with electricity instead of tents.  You also have access to laundry and shower facilities.   FOBs are comfortable and some people never – or very rarely – leave the FOB.  They are called Fobbits.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but my guess is that around half of the guys in Iraq are Fobbits.  I am a semi-Fobbit.   I spend most of my time on the FOB, i.e. I endeavor whenever possible to return at night to the comfort of my own can.  However, I do regularly travel away from the Shire and sometimes get stuck at some outpost or tent city where conditions are less comfortable.  

Fobbit is a term of some derision among non-fobbits.   Some people love the FOB and there are others who evidently like to be out in the deserts eating MREs.  I prefer the semi-fobbit life.  I go out when my job requires it and do so eagerly and happily.   I always enjoy getting away from Al Asad and most of the blog-posts I write are about those experiences.  However, it doesn’t take long for me to satisfy my sense of adventure and I like to get back to the cans of home. 

I am getting too old for this.  Most other places are either too hot or too cold and I sometimes worry – irrationally – about scorpions, camel spiders and snakes.  (I say irrationally because I have seen only one scorpion and no snakes, but I know they are laying in wait – stingers and fangs poised.)Besides, you usually have to sleep among people who snore loudly.   I also have the sense of guilt since I know that I snore too and am inflicting this on my colleagues.  Of course we all have earplugs.  Better to be in your own can.

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Hanging Around Like a Fart in an MRAP

Riding in an MRAP is never fun.  You feel every bump.  One of my colleagues literally hit the ceiling on one bumpy road.  After that I started to be more careful about the seatbelts.  In addition, they are top heavy and prone to roll over.   A few of my colleagues rolled down the hill near Hadithah Dam.  Four times they rolled over.  One guy broke his ankle and another cracked a vertebra and a rib, but nobody was seriously hurt.  The turret gunner followed his training perfectly.  He hunkered down, hung on and walked away with barely a scratch.  The gunners are in the most danger and they are often the ones thrown out and crushed.  The saving grace of the MRAP is that they are practically indestructible.  The same things that make them unpleasant make them robust.  It is the dreadnought of land vehicles – and probably as heavy as the original seagoing varieties..

Yesterday we had a particularly uncomfortable ride. We were packed into the MRAP heading toward an engagement, bouncing along with each pothole when somebody started to fart.  There were five suspects (I leave myself out because I know it wasn’t me), but nobody would admit it. Once was bad enough, but whoever it was silently broke wind several times.  Talk about bad manners.  There is not much circulation in an MRAP anyway, so odors of all sorts tend to linger, but then it got worse when the air conditioning broke down.  There we were, tightly packed in an atmosphere of dust and warm methane.  It makes you appreciate the Humvee, which is more cramped but less close or even the helicopter which has those 80 MPH winds constantly blowing through the open gun windows.

None of the modes of transportation, BTW, provides anything in the way of lumbar support.   The body armor provides a useful place to rest your chin, but puts a lot more strain on your lower back.  It hurts like mad.   I have addressed that problem with one of those u-shaped neck pillows.  I got a nice one made of temperpedic material, which I jam up against my lower back.  It really works.   I don’t leave home w/o it.  Some of the Marines say that sort of pillow is an old man’s accessory and they are probably right but when I get out of the vehicles I don’t feel like I fell off the back of a pickup truck.  The ridicule is transitory; back pain persists. 

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Water in the Desert

This bleak landscape holds more promise than it seems.

“Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. …”

Securing the route that both oil and commerce must take from Bayji to the population and refining centers in Hadithah is a major strategic goal.   In support of that goal, ePRT Western Anbar is looking for ways to support commerce and prosperity along the route, by encouraging small merchants to set up kiosks, perhaps with the support of a microfinance loan, and helping local pastoralists and farmers make a living nearby.  The challenge is that the land along way makes Death Valley look like a garden.   Development depends on water and there is not much of it available anywhere near the road, railroad or pipelines – until a few days ago.Dennis identified possible water bearing formations in Pliocene formations along the route during a helicopter reconnaissance and then followed up with a Marine patrol and a backhoe.  They struck water in three of the four areas he identified.  In one case, they found enough gushing water at a depth of about three meters to support a small community.  

This water is sustainable with wise use and replenished from natural rainfall in the area, i.e. it is not “fossil” water (as in parts of the Ogallala Aquifer, for example) that will be drained out by use.   Dennis and engineers at the RCT have already developed plans for a pond system that would take advantage of the terrain and some modern dry land farming techniques to create permanent oases around these tentative water holes. 

Below – the water is muddy at first, but left stand it clears and the flow was strong.

The technique involves “pitting,” which is a series of hundreds of small holes produced upstream from the place where a pond will be constructed.  These pits slow the runoff and allow it to soak into the ground, replenishing the aquifer.  Normally, the local desert soils shed water like a Wal-Mart parking lot.  The runoff puddles up in low places, without significant percolation and generally bakes off in the sun leaving salty pans and doing nobody any good.

We estimate that a properly constructed series of ponds featuring pitting and silt ponds to moderate rapid runoff and erosion could provide year round sources of water for local agriculture and other uses.   The only caveat is that the presence of reliable water sources on public land could stimulate increased sheep populations that could stress the limited resources available in this arid and poor environment.   This could be a classic “tragedy of the commons” where all producers try to maximize their own consumption of what becomes a dwindling and overtaxed resource base.  This however, is a challenge at any level of development.   The Iraqi landscaped suffered for years cut off from new developments during the dark years of Saddam Hussein.  Access to fresh, clean water is a growing problem worldwide and it is an especially acute situation in an arid country such as Iraq.  These inexpensive and effective projects will help address the issue in Western Al Anbar.

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Service & the Ivy League Marines

Below are kids waving at our convoys.  The kids come running out when we drive by.  Sometimes we worry that they will run out in front of the vehicles, but they seem to know better.  I hope that our work here will make their country better in the future than it was in the past.

The lieutenant told me that before joining the Marine Corps he had been a financial manager for Princeton University’s endowment fund.  He was a Princeton graduate with a high paying job, but he thought that serving with the Marines in Iraq was a more important thing to do right now. 

We have relatively few Ivy League graduates around here.  Although I am taking into account only what I see and do not have actual statistics, most of the Marine officers seem to come from State Universities.  I asked the lieutenant about this and he agreed that his Princeton classmates tended not to join the military or serve in government in general – this despite Princeton’s ostensible position as a training ground for government officials.

Princeton had a high profile fight a couple years back about its Woodrow Wilson School.  The university received a big donation to help the Wilson School develop programs to train future civil servants, but very few Wilson School graduates actually took government jobs.  The donor’s family wanted to rescind the grant.  Princeton won the court case and kept the money but the Wilson School is still turning out lots more investment bankers and international business leaders than civil servants.  Government jobs just cannot compete on salaries and bureaucracies are be difficult places for impatient high achievers.

Below – Marine officers often make very good diplomats

Service, however, can be very fulfilling.  We have a real community & and sense of mission here in Iraq that it is hard to find other places.  I won’t miss Iraq when I am finished here, but I will miss my colleagues and that feeling of community.  I thought about that a couple days ago when I drove one of my team members to our airport.  On my way back to Camp Ripper, I passed a bus stop and asked if anybody needed a ride down.  This seemed natural.  Others have done that for me, but I don’t think I would do that back home and even if I did, I don’t think many people would accept my offer.

My new friend from Princeton and I also talked about the obvious – that we liked to do something good for our country.  I always liked that aspect of FS work.  Even a mundane task is more fulfilling when you keep that in mind. 

Service does need not entail working for the government or serving in the military.  I think the old idea of a calling is valid.  You should do what you are good at doing and do it well – serving the task, not the master.    That can make any job noble.  I fondly remember Bogdan, our driver in Krakow.  His job was simple but he took such pride in doing his job and doing it right that everyone respected him.  He also observed the people and events around him and I learned a lot from talking with him during our long drives around southern Poland.

The work you do is too important to be something you just do eight hours a day for the money.  I pity the fools who think their jobs are meaningless.  Like everything else, the jobs we do have the meaning we give them.  I know that is easier with some jobs than others, but then I think of Bogdan. 

People used to search for “a calling”, the thing they were supposed to do in order to better serve God.  Whether or not you accept the religious aspect of this, the idea that you should strive to do the work you should do, to be of service – however you define it – to something beyond yourself is a valid idea.  I think it is one of the most important keys to fulfillment and happiness.  We need to live a total life and work is only one part, but it is a big part and we should get that right.

There is a big distinction between pleasure seeking and meaning seeking behaviors.  Too much emphasis on pleasure seeking leads to unhappiness.  Most good things are hard to get and require significant sacrifice.  I will get off the soap box now.

Above is a view of Hadithah from one of the sheik’s houses. Desertscapes just are not my thing.  I think this is pretty, but still too baren for me.

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Home on the Range

You can see we do not get to shoot very far.  We shot a bit farther back with the rifles, but not much.  We only get to shoot if someone is really close.

I have never been a good shot & I have at least a partial explanation.  I am a right handed but left eye dominant.  When I shot the M-4 rifle with my left hand, I actually could hit the target because I could actually see it through the scope.

The Marines took our ePRT to the gun range today to learn how to use their standard pistols and rifles.  Of course, we were not issued weapons and never will be.  Our ePRT members are not warriors.  However, in this kind of environment it is not a bad idea to be familiar with the sorts of weapons that are common around here.

We learned how to lock, load and shoot at the very basic level.  Of course, some of our ePRT members are very familiar with guns and for them it was review.  As I said, when I shot left handed, I could do all right.  The M-4 rifle has a good scope with a little arrow.  If you know the rough distance, you can aim along the arrow and it is easy to get the shots into the general area you are trying to hit.  Just keeping the rifle even is harder than it seems in the movies, however.  

We shot single shots and in burst of two or three.  For the bursts of three it is hard to keep the weapon stable, again, not as easy as it seems in the movies.  We were standing in what the Marines told us was the hardest stance.  You are more stable when you are sitting or laying on the ground and/or you have something to brace.  I had a lot of fun with this.  I shot more times today than I have in my entire life up to today.  Of course, that is not saying much, since I have never been much of a gun guy.

The pistol was easier to handle but it was harder for me to hit the targets. At one point, we had to shoot down metal targets (below).  I couldn’t hit any of them.  The Marines can more or less just knock them down.  Our “training” was not meant to prepare us for the Wyatt Earp type gunfights.  Only in very desperate situations would we even touch a weapon and contemplate the odd angry shot. At close range, we shot fifteen rounds into the target quick as we could.  I managed to hold the pistol steady enough to create a pattern that would have stopped even the most committed terrorist or crack head.  

I am confident that I will never have occasion to use the skills I learned today.  I am sure the Marines will work hard to keep it that way.  They were very polite and nice to me, but they saw my performance.  I shutter to think of how bad it would have to be if I was the last line of defense.  Anyway, I have absolute confidence in the Marines.

I have never seen them in actual combat, but I have seen how they react to potential danger.  They face it down w/o hesitation.  I think of those horror movies where the bad guy attacks the hapless people who scurry around in confusion.  The Marines would just dispatch the miscreant.  This is a good contrast between courage and fear.  It is not true that the Marines can always prevail, but they always go with courage and that just feels better. 

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Tree Farming & the Virginia Countryside

Below is my tree farm draft article for the next issue of “Virginia Forests”.   It has nothing to do with Iraq, but is part of my other life, as communications director for Virginia Tree Farm Project at the Virginia Forestry Association.  I needed to write a short article for them and I just finished it.  The picture is from my forest.  It is one of the spots I like to sit and watch the water run.  We don’t cut trees in the stream management zones, which account for around 30 acres on the farm.  The picture was taken in January 2005, but it is not that different now except at this season the buds are popping and the wildflower are out.  BTW – the pictures are just mine and I just like to look at them.  They will not be part of the “Virginia Forests” publication.

The American countryside is threatened by development and urban sprawl as never before.  The very concept of “rural” is increasingly strained as urban style communities and urban lifestyles reach to even the most remote parts of Virginia.  This can be positive as new people bring fresh perspectives and new incomes breathe life into declining communities.  But these shifts fundamentally change the character of the countryside.  When significant numbers of owners and rural residents themselves no longer have their livelihoods significantly tied to the surrounding land, their perspectives are different. 

This change happens in a variety of ways, some obvious others subtle.  The most obvious is when someone from outside the local community buys a tract forest land.  This has been happening for a long time, but the trend is accelerating.  A wholesale change in ownership patterns took place over the past decade as forest and paper firms sold off large tracks of forest land to private individuals, investors and timber investment trusts. 

The more subtle change in emphasis can take place due to inheritance or just changes in lifestyle.  Relationships and feelings about the land change when long time resident farmers or forest owners begin to earn more or even most of their incomes from non-agricultural or non-forestry sources.  Of course, children who inherit family farms often have an emotional tie to the land, but may lack practical ties or skill sets that keep them managing the land in same way.

This picture is from near the same spot as above, but during July.

A key attribute of a traditional family forest, or those owned by paper and forest product firms for that matter, is/was that these were working lands, used in multiple ways to include profit generating activities such as forestry, hunting and non-timber agriculture.   When land changes hands, the new owners may indeed leave a forest intact.  In fact, they may have purchased the land specifically to “preserve” what they believe is the local ecology.  But preservation or changes in land management fundamentally alter its nature and that of the surrounding community by perhaps not engaging in those activities that traditionally linked the human and the natural communities.  The idea of humans are active participants in the natural environment wisely and sustainably using natural resources is the basis of conservation but it is an idea that can be misunderstood.

The American Tree Farm System (ATFS) is adapting in response to the changes in ownership patterns, motivations and needs of our constituents. As it has done since 1941, ATFS is working to improve forest management through education and advice.  Today there are 87,000 certified Tree Farms covering 29 million acres.   Obviously certifications and inspections remain the backbone of the tree farm system, but increasingly education and outreach will take on greater significance.  New tree farmers and new types of tree farmers will need to understand the nature of a working forest and its place in a sustained and healthy environment.   Here are the boys in the pine plantation last year.  We will have to do some pre-commercial thinning this summer so that the little trees can have room to grow & stay healthy.

Some of the education will represent a change in emphasis from how to sustain a multiple use forest to why they should want to do that.   ATFS has often explained to owners how to manage their forests to produce timber while at the same time caring for clean water, providing recreational opportunities and creating great habitats for wildlife.   It was taken as a given that owners wanted to produce timber and gain some income from the investment in their land.  Many new owners may be less enthusiastic about making sure their land profitably produces timber at all.   They may have bought the land as a home site or in order to create a preserve of some sort where forestry or hunting are not priorities. ATFS will increasingly need to explain why it is important to keep timber lands producing timber and why they need to be managed to do this.

Well managed forests producing wood, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities are a great American tradition well worth keeping.  Each generation of forest owners must learn or relearn the lessons of good forestry.  As the demographics of forest ownership change, education becomes more important.  ATFS understands this and is ready to provide the information and education that will keep Virginia a place of beautiful, well-managed and productive forests for years to come.

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Bright Light Curses the Darkness

The profound darkness disturbed me when I got to Al Asad.   At first I didn’t like it, as I stumbled around looking for my can in the blackness, but after awhile I got used to it.  I liked the moonlight and the stars.  I developed a muscle memory that got me easily home in the dark and walking home in the dark became a nice way to unwind at the end of the day. 

Now they have installed a big light that pierces the darkness and shines in my eyes, making it hard to see the moon and the stars.  Beyond that, the less you can actually see of Al Asad, the prettier you can imagine it to be.  The stark chemical light against concrete barriers is not pleasant.

It is surprising how well you can learn to see in low light.  I recall skiing at night in Norway and how that had a special magic.   Al Asad is not like that, but I have learned to enjoy some aspects of the Iraqi night.  Funny how things grow on you.  At first you may dislike it; after awhile you accept it and then miss it when it is taken away.  Walking home in the dark, I noticed the phases of the moon and the contours of the clouds dimly illuminated in the moonlight.  On several occassions there was a haloed moon. Of course, I could see and enjoy the stars.  This was good.