PBS Documentary Explores Origins/Rationale of Important Endowment Partner

This weekend, November 18 and 19, PBS will premiere the Ken Burns documentary, “The Dust Bowl.”  The film brings alive the devastating drought that followed “the Great Plow-Up,” the result of a frenzied boom in wheat production across America’s Heartland.  

The program is of particular interest to the Endowment since it explores the origin and rationale for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).   The alignment of the Endowment’s goals with the work that the NRCS does has led to numerous partnerships on issues including water conservation, conservation easements, and stemming African American land loss through improved sustainable forestry practices. 

NRCS Roots in the Dust Bowl

NRCS was founded in the 1930s as the USDA Soil Conservation Service in response to the Dust Bowl environmental tragedy.  Today, the agency is leading the government’s efforts to support private farmers, ranchers and landowners to conserve our natural resources by applying conservation practices on millions of acres of agricultural and forest lands. The goal is sound conservation solutions that keep soils healthy, water and air clean, wildlife abundant and food plentiful

We expect in “The Dust Bowl” Ken Burns will remind us about how critical  the very few inches of top soil are to sustaining life and how vulnerable they are to human abuse and natural calamity.  As the globe seems to experience increased weather extremes, we are reminded of the importance of the mission of NRCS to help us ALL be good stewards of the land.

Chief Dave White Leaves a Legacy
We are also reminded of the importance of good leadership in government and salute the visionary work of Dave White, Chief of NRCS, who this week announced his retirement.   Under Chief White’s leadership, the agency initiated more than a dozen landscape-scale initiatives for wildlife and ecosystem conservation.  His work marks another chapter in a legacy that has seen significant advances in conservation all while the nation’s population has continued to grow.

We tip our hat to Ken Burns for documenting an important part of our nation’s history and to public-sector stewards like Dave White for their service.

Happy Birthday...To Us!

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) started as part of a vision by members of the respective trade delegations from Canada and the United States as a side outcome of the Softwood Lumber Agreement 2006 (SLA) between the two countries.

Just over a week ago we had the privilege of providing a report to the Softwood Lumber Committee -- another creation of the SLA -- that includes representatives from both governments who meet at least annually to review progress under the agreement.  While four organizations were granted one-time funds as part of the SLA, the Endowment was one of only two newly created institutions that resulted directly from the agreement.

Six Years, Seven Initiatives...
The Endowment, comprised of a thirteen-person independent Board of Directors and its lean staff of five with headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, hit the ground with speed and enthusiasm for the challenge.  Our goal:  to advance healthy working forests across the U.S. and to aid rural communities that depend upon the health, vitality, and productivity of those forests.  The first six years, marked less by our official charter (September 26) and more by assembling of the Board and retention of our first staff member (November 1), has flown by.

While we are still a young organization and clearly still learning, we are proud of the foundations that have been established in those first six years.  Among them:

• A strong, creative, resilient Board;
• A nimble and productive staff;
• A roof of our own;
• Emerging and maturing work across seven relevant initiatives;
• Asset creation
• Growing Markets for traditional products;
• Exploring and growing markets for non-traditional products;
• Forest retention;
• Forest health;
• Forest investment zones;
• Woody biomass; and,
• A growing list of outstanding collaborative partners.

The Challenge Ahead
One of the things that the Endowment's Board and staff does at each gathering is to review our mission as rooted in the SLA 2006 and affirm an admonition set-forth in one of the side-letters to that agreement -- that all we do shall "ultimately benefit the North American forest industry."

Among our values are to be transparent, focused, and to not fall prey to trying to be all things to all people by instead attempting to do a few things well and "do what others can't or won't."

We know we have a long way to go, but we are committed to doing all within our power to make sure that those who had the spark of an idea of what the Endowment could be will be able to say, "Well done!"

Carlton N. Owen

Fire Season:  The Real Costs of Fires (Part 3)

The 2012 wildfire season in the U.S. is largely a fading memory.  That is unless you live or work in one of the forests that fell victim to one of the worst fire seasons in years.  In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at those men and women who help protect our forests and how a changing climate is driving losses at an ever escalating pace. 

What Does a Forest Fire Cost?
The USDA Forest Service, the nation's lead on forest fires, spends approximately $2 billion (that's BILLION) annually on forest fire suppression. Total costs are approaching one-half of the agency's entire budget.  But, that's just part of the story.

In a 2010 report entitled "The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.," the writers reference research that suggests that the real cost of a fire is two-to-thirty times the cost of suppression.  So, using this year as an example, the true cost of wildfire losses in the U.S. was somewhere between $4 and $60 billion!

What's Included in Those Costs?
In addition to suppression to account for the total costs of a forest fire one must take into account the direct loss of forest value, the costs of rehabilitation (planting is just a tiny part), structural property losses and things like loss of wilderness values, impacts to water, and increases in health care costs such as treatment of asthma.  Before you jump to the conclusion that such costs are just imaginary, one recent fire near Denver, Colorado, carried with it $150 million in direct costs to cleanup damage to the city's water supply.  Clean water is in the words of the credit card commerical, "priceless."

Using these figures as guides we can see that the modest costs of "fireproofing our forests" with forest restoration/thinning efforts and use of controlled burns yields a very high return.  That said, it is often difficult to get convince society to invest money to avoid a problem.  Yet, once that problem has occurred, we have no choice and we just find a way to pay for the fix. 

As the old Fram oil filter commercial said, "You can pay me now or pay me later."  The costs to America's forests and all associated with them are just too precious to wait for the inevitable.

Carlton N. Owen