News and updates from the
Institute for Sustainable Forestry
New Forestry News
ISF Updates:
Looking
to the Future
Events:
May 20th
ISF Spring Walkabout
Websites:
Richard Gienger
The history of "forestry" and its impacts through the millennia, or through the last 200 years, or the last 50 years is pretty dismal. It's generally been a cycle of forest removal with 'devil take the hindmost' in the race to the next 'ripe' forested area. Logged areas have been generally left to the vagaries of land speculation, stripped of any remaining value with regeneration left to chance., There has been an overwhelming lack of cultural commitment to stewardship that ensures healthy forests will last for generations. Fires, overuse, climate change, and erosion have permanently removed much of the world's former forestland.
A short history of sustainable management
From time to time there have been attempts to change 'civilization's'
destructive relationship to forests and people of the forests. Various
places in Europe over the last several hundred years have instituted different
forms of 'scientific' forestry directed toward long-term sustainable forests.
In the early 1940s, in the United States the American Tree Farm System
was founded. The Tree Farm system focused on small forestland owners committing
to standards of stewardship which continue to evolve.
For the last thirty or so years, especially in the Pacific Northwest, a wide range of forest landowners, forestry professionals, and forest activists have come together in various places and times to try and make headway towards a sustainable forest stewardship that will be economically, biologically, and socially viable for future generations. These efforts have led to "certification" programs such as Smartwood and the Forest Stewardship Council. Here, locally, the establishment of Wild Iris Forestry and the founding of the Institute of Sustainable Forestry were manifestations of this movement for economic, biological, and social change in our relationship with forestlands.
Environmental responses to abuse
In order for real and significant change to happen there are a number
of complex and difficult layers to make our way through. One ongoing problem
has been that the resources and consciousness of the environmental or
conservation community have been almost entirely focused on protecting
remnant old growth forests and natural special areas that remain after
a century or more of extreme damage. This is a good and necessary effort.
The problem is this has resulted in some areas totally protected on the
one hand and the balance of forestland generally subjected to short-sighted
industrial models of forestry on the other. Significant energy and expense
have gone into achieving adequate regulation of these industrial models
-- and some things have improved: streams are no longer used for roads,
skid trails, and landings. Unfortunately, we have not yet met standards
of sustainability that will actually restore forestland health and produce
high quality timber -- and be socially responsible. "Balancing growth
and cut" to produce wood fiber and calling it sustainable forestry
makes a mockery of a sustainable forestry that actually results in the
restoration of diverse and mature forests.
Future Forests: New models
While efforts to adequately regulate industrial forestry will continue,
there is a certain 'ceiling' or resistance there that will never satisfy
our need for long-term 'right-relationships' with forestlands. We need
to establish new models that fit with our aspirations. The environmental
and conservation oriented organizations and people need to reevaluate
priorities. We need to work together with rural communities to establish
and acquire large areas of forestland where the needs of the forest and
the needs of the people of the area and the region are integrated. This
is beginning to happen. The Conservation Fund and the Nature Conservancy
partnered with the California Wildlife Conservation Board and California
Coastal Conservancy in acquiring 24,000 cut-over acres in the Garcia River
Watershed for forest stewardship in perpetuity -- a 'working forest' with
easements to protect vital wildlife, cultural, watershed and fisheries
values. Their draft Management Plan is being reviewed.
Other partnerships are being advanced and proposed as I write. The Conservation Fund and the Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc. (RFFI) hope to acquire large areas of the Salmon Creek Watershed (coastal Mendocino County South of the Albion River) and of the nearby Big River Watershed for the same forest stewardship purposes. Large areas of depleted forestlands are up for sale in California and across the continent. Close to home we find large tracts of Pacific Lumber (PL)/Maxxam up for sale -- if not the whole of Pacific Lumber/Scopac's holdings. One of the great fears in all of this divestiture of forestland is that the forestland will be developed, converted to residential use and removed from an essential forestland base. It appears that developers bought several of the smaller PL parcels
Streamlining Bureaucracy
Escalating land values in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties and in similar
areas all over the county are attracting developer interest and offers.
The economic pressures on small forest landholders and ranchers with forested
lands are immense. World markets with devalued and imported ('cheap')
timber and timber products make the situation much worse. To many, the
cost of regulation is thought to the 'culprit'. While regulation may often
be a significant cost, rising property values for development and lowered
timber value due to cheap imports seem to be heavier factors.
Regardless of the 'blame game', efforts to try and get relief and incentives for small forestland owners have been going on for over a decade in California. The Nonindustrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) was added to the Forest Practice Act in the early 1990s. It gave landowners with 2500 acres of less of timberland the opportunity to have a management plan in place -- potentially in perpetuity -- if they use all-aged management for sustainable forestry and comply with the rules in place when the plan was approved (with certain caveats including but not limited to listed species and archaeological sites). Under the NTMP timber harvesting is simply implemented through Notices of Operations.
In 1999, then the director of California Department Forestry, Dr. Andrea Tuttle appointed a Forest Stewardship Working Group. The working group came up with four possible options for relief and incentives for small forestland owners. These four options included a number of concepts that people and agencies are trying to apply in a number of venues today. These concepts include, but are not limited to: 'preconsultation' with permitting agencies, road management plans, interagency cooperation in helping to achieve consensus cumulative impact evaluation and response, a simple process to ensure greater growth than yield until optimum productivity is attained and maintained, and simple and regular monitoring and reporting processes. The theory was, in general, that by utilizing these concepts the various agencies would, in compliance with their respective laws and regulations, streamline and reduce the expense of the regulatory process. The theory is yet to be realized, but several pilot projects are close to implementation -- one of them hopefully in the Mattole River Watershed.
New Legislation: Regulatory reform for non-industrial landowners
One small, but positive, step for landowner relief and incentive is currently
in SB 1342 in the California legislature. Authored by Senator Wesley Chesbro,
and springing forth from a Buckeye Forest Project Workshop, the bill would
increase the base period for all-aged (or 'uneven-aged') silviculture
THPs from three to five years, retaining the current option of two one
year extensions. This would encourage silvicultural stewardship found
in NTMPs, giving such THP submitters more leeway to comply with rules,
potentially reduce temporal impacts, and more time to respond to market
conditions. Predictably there is industry opposition demanding among other
things, that the 2 year THP extension be applied to clearcut THPs as well.
Surprisingly the Forestland Owners of California (FLOC or FLC) currently
oppose it on similar grounds -- sort of bizarre.
Another bill, authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl, SB 1310 creates some sustained yield reform and increases NTMPs to 10,000 acres. This increase in NTMP acreage has been a long-time desire of small forestland owners, but they are balking at this legislation due to the inclusion of some of the concepts described above (e.g.: road management plan, verifiable sustained yield, and periodic reporting.)
Moving Forward
ISF’s Future Forests working session at the Eureka Ag Center last
fall helped to spark a county-wide conversation. Foresters, land trusts,
watershed groups, landowners, and environmental advocates came together
to define common ground and develop effective, informed strategies to
support, protect, restore and even purchase working forests for truly
sustainable management on the North Coast.
Look for the announcement of a regional get together of watershed groups, land trusts, professionals, and interested parties to further the acquisition and implementation of community forests on the forested coast of California.
This regional get-together builds on ISF’s Future Forests working
session to raise these issues and build collaborative strategies at a
broader regional level.
Forest
Fragmentation
Greg Blomstrom
Ecosystem
Services
John Rogers
Protecting
Working Forests
Richard Geinger
Forestry
and Fire Safety
Cybelle Immit / John Rogers
Working
Forest Bonds
An ISF proposal
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