Opening Remarks to the Canada/U.S. Forest Health Summit - Carlton N. Owen - June 28, 2012

I am humbled to be opening this first-ever Canada/U.S. Forest Health Summit and to be a part of this important event with each of you.
 

In terms of notoriety this event may not garner the attention that the 1^st American Forestry Congress did when convened in 1882 in Cincinnati and later that same year in Montreal.  Historians report that it helped galvanize the fledgling forestry community.  That shouldn’t have been too difficult on the U.S. sides as there was only one professional forester in the entire country at the time.

Neither does it rise to the level of interest nor attendance as did last week’s RIO +20 Earth Summit.  Yet, we have high expectations given the people engaged and the stakes at hand.

I know this will be a disappointment to those of you who are used to sessions of this import being conducted bilingually.  My first trip to Canada – Quebec City in the mid-70s -- was my first times to have the privilege of hearing an international leader speak in person.  Prime Minister Brian Mulroney provided the keynote.  For a young forester from rural Mississippi, it was awe inspiring to hear him speak first in sparkling English then to switch flawlessly to flowing French.  As I was moved by the spirit of his second language it dawned on me that he really wasn’t that much ahead of me.   I too am bilingual -- my first language is fluent “southern;” and I speak broken English.

Canada and the U.S. have much in common.  We know the oft-repeated facts about the longest undefended border between any two countries and that 400,000 people and nearly $1.5 billion in trade crosses daily. 

I will not go into the history of my own organization, the first-ever charitable foundation resulting from a trade dispute between our two governments and our respective industries.

Instead I want to focus on a few lesser known facts.  Such as the facts that while our land areas are nearly equal in size, Canada hosts a quarter more forest acres (or hectares).  In honor of the 100^th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede (also being celebrated at the Embassy today), I note that while our population is nearly ten fold that of our neighbor to the north, we are home to nearly 25 times as many horses, mules and asses – something that probably isn’t a surprise to some, but recall, I’m speaking about livestock here.

When taken together our combined area in tree cover represents a swath of rich forests exceeded only by one other country on earth.

In Eric Rutkow’s book American Canopy, from which I’ve borrowed liberally for these remarks, we are reminded that our shared lands are home to:

          The world’s biggest trees – giant sequoias

          The world’s tallest trees – coastal redwoods;

          The world’s oldest trees – bristlecone pines; and

          The biggest single organism on earth – a stand of quaking aspens

He also notes that historian Brooke Hindle observed, we are a “society pervasively conditioned by wood.” 

President Obama in issuing a challenge that rolled out his America’s Great Outdoors Initiative just a few months ago noted the importance of forest and open space conservation.  It is so important that even in the midst of a great war that literally pitted brother against brother, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation known as “The Yosemite and Big Tree Grant” led to what is today Yosemite National Park.  Ken Burns noted that this morphed into America’s “grand experiment” with National Parks and, I would add, National Forests.

Wood built our respective cities while the advent of cheap pulp from wood in the late 1800’s drove the price of paper down to the point that books, newspapers, and other printed media fired literacy across the populace.

Sterling Morton, the Secretary of the Nebraska Territory a tireless advocate for the first Arbor Day in the then state of Nebraska, noted that “Arbor Day is like no other holiday.  Each of those reposes upon the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future.  It contemplates, not the good and the beautiful of past generations, but it sketches, outlines, establishes the beautiful for the ages yet to come.”

A statement in a 1914 report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Blight Commission noted that, “It seems necessary to call sharp attention to the real lesson to be learned form the chestnut blight epidemic –
the necessity of more scientific research upon problems of this character; to be undertaken early enough to be of some value in comprehending, if not controlling, the situation.”

America’s past is replete with Presidents who loved trees and forests.  Note this comment.  “By all accounts, a tree lover of the highest order, a man who spent his free time, in his own words, ‘driving around planting lots of trees’.”  You’ve probably already guessed that it was Roosevelt … the man who for many years listed his profession as “tree-grower” rather than lawyer.  What you might not have guessed is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not his cousin Teddy for whom we owe so much for his foresight to protect wide swaths of American forests.

In an Earth Day talk, future Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson II after seeing a photo of Earth taken by Apollo 8, noted, “We have reached for the moon and beyond, and looking back through space we have been confronted by the insignificance of the planet that sustains us.”  Political lines disappear in space.

We have made much progress in the Century past that saw forests go from things to be cleared to precious resources to be protected.  Yet, climate change threatens to undermine in a few short years what it took a Century of human progress to advance.  Wildfire is reaching levels not seen in a hundred years and tree mortality rates have doubled.

In the survey of collaborative works on forests and forestry going on between our two countries done in prep for this summit perhaps the most telling aspect is just how much cooperation and collaboration is going on without a formal strategy or top down direction.  In fact the results of that review suggested that our respective scientists do it because they can, rather than because they need to.

I’d offer that it is only at your respective levels of leadership when considering all of the information, all of the challenges, and all of the opportunities, that we can come to the conclusion that we can’t afford to wait any longer to look for ways to build on that strong foundation for even grander achievements.  Clearly the “we need to” is there.

The closing sentences from American Canopy are as follows: “The nation” -- and I would posit, the continent – “tends to rediscover its tree resources only in periods of catastrophe.  The rest of the time many of us motor along with indifference, leaving the issue to the government, corporations, and the permanent environmental movement.  But this is a risky approach.  America’s forests and trees” – and the continent’s – “are more necessary now than ever.”

We’ve purposely chosen to take a modest step with this convening by intentionally limiting the discussion to forest health – a challenge that we share.  That’s not to say that we can’t do even more, rather, we must make a good start.  The forest health crisis that is, in and of itself, big enough.

We are a continent that is indeed blessed with rich and diverse forests.  They are the source of the greenest of building products, life-giving water, abundant wildlife, the source of recreation that leads to spiritual re-creation, and so much more.  If we cannot sustain those forests in healthy and productive condition, what we will have lost is irreplaceable.

Those of us who are forest scientists or scientist of any ilk, are usually very good at telling others what we do and how we do it.  Studies tell us this helps us connect with people’s rational side.  Yet, Simon Sinek in his book, Start with Why, notes that the deepest connections come not as a result of the rational brain; rather, the emotional one.  That’s something that we a scientist don’t want to hear.  He notes that people don’t buy what we do or how we do it until they understand why we do what we do.  Among our many challenges over the day ahead will be to ensure that we don’t fall prey to spending all of our time on the “what and how” and rush past the “why”!

As we begin our day together it will help if we have a few – but very few -- ground rules.

First, this is your time.  We ask you to be present and engage deeply for the future of North America’s forests.

Second, let’s make few assumptions.  It will do us little good to spend our time thinking of the world the way the economist did when he was shipwrecked on a deserted island with only a case of canned beans.  The economist first assumed that he had a can opener.  My admonition to us all is to operate within the realm as we currently know it – with current policy and financial realities – and not to assume a better political climate or unlimited sources of new funds. 

-Carlton Owen

Collaboration vs. Conflict

For decades the driving questions have been… “Jobs or environment?”  “Protection or degradation?”  Are those really the only choices?  Is the courtroom the only place one can go for answers?

More and more thinking people – both those who would label themselves first as business people or those who prefer the tag of environmentalist – are finding that the old ways just don’t work.  Our problems are too complex, the trade-offs too costly, and the win-lose just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Since its inception a mere five-plus years ago, the Endowment has sought the path of bringing together the brightest minds from a variety of perspectives to look for shared values and interests that will lead to collaboration, positive action, and results. 

Forest Conservation; Forest Health; and Water
It’s at the core of our work in the forest policy arena as displayed in the more than three-dozen organizations that comprise the Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation who are working together to advance solutions to maintain landscape scale areas in working forests; it’s front and center in the work of the Forest Health Initiative where genetic scientists, conservation leaders, and public policy officials are considering the potential of modern biotechnology bound by common concern about the exploding impacts of pests and diseases as manifest in millions of acres of dying forests; and, it’s at the epicenter of our work in linking water consumers (all of us) with the source of our life-sustaining water – upstream forests and those who own and manage them.

Views from an Environmental Oracle
In a recent speech that accompanied his acceptance of an award from one of our partners in developing the National Conservation Easement Database – NatureServe – Bill Ruckelshaus encourages collaborative decision-making as we confront the ever-present and ever-evolving challenges of balancing environmental health and public freedoms.  Ruckelshaus, at nearly 80, has been at the forefront of America’s navigation of environmental regulations both in establishing them and having to implement them (having served as EPA’s 1^st and 5^th Administrator; and, working in private business with Weyerhaeuser Company) and is among the nation’s deepest thinkers on the topic. 

“We’ve got to try…a new approach to problem-solving, … [one that] relies on a resurgence of civic virtue and the resulting collaborative decision-making processes. … When you see two principals shaking hands … and everybody else is watching them do that, it’s like something magic has occurred. Instead of fighting each other, they’ve decided to work together. And that’s when progress starts.”

—Bill Ruckelshaus

To view the video … http://connect.natureserve.org/BWB2012/AwardPresentation

Timing Hints: Peter Goldmark’s intro:  0:22-7:22; Mary Klein’s remarks:   7:34-15:36; Bill Ruckelshaus:  16:33-46:43

Setting Goals and Marking Progress

There are very few beliefs that the majority of us hold in common.  Among those – recycling is good.  When America’s forest products industry established a goal that by 1990, 33.5% of all paper and paper-related packaging consumed in the country would be recovered, few believed it was possible.

That early goal was quickly met and replaced by an even more aggressive one that would see a 50% recovery rate.  That too is in the rear-view mirror.  In fact, in 2011, the American Forest & Paper Association reports that 66.8% of paper was recovered for reuse…an all-time high.  This puts the industry well on its way to achieving its most recent goal – 70% recovery by 2020.

Incremental Goal and Celebrating Successes
If in the mid-80’s industry had set a goal of 100% recovery, such would either been ludicrous or it would have been so far into the future as to be irrelevant.  As someone who picks up litter in my neighborhood and my favorite walking trail weekly, I too would like to see such progress.  But, let’s put things into perspective. 

Is it really possible to recover and reuse 100% of something with such a low value as an individual magazine or scrap of paper?  One need only consider the numbers of cans and bottles – each that carry a deposit return premium – that remain on the roadside to assess the height of that mountain.

Regardless, American consumers and our partners in the forest products industry shouldn’t lose sleep over the road left to travel.  Rather, we should celebrate in the great progress that has been made.  In a country as large and diverse as the U.S., to have achieved a recovery rate of more than 2/3rds is worthy of a moment’s notice and celebration!  Too, unlike the scattering of “bottle bills” designed to advance recovery and recapture of cans and bottles, most of the paper victory has come as the result of an enlightened public and an industry that has found economically-viable ways to collect a former waste product and convert it to a range of useful new products – from tissues to renewable energy.   

5th Anniversary Outreach: Results and Challenges

Even young organizations need to use milestones as vehicles to consider and assess progress.  That’s just what the Board and staff of the Endowment did with the achievement of five years as an organization.  At its November 2011 meeting, the Board approved an intentional plan to “reach out to interested publics” to share the Endowment’s progress and to seek input as we move into the next five years.

Organizational Input
Among the primary tools the staff developed to enhance awareness and solicit input was a special program that provided an overview of the Endowment’s progress and programmatic investments over its first five years.  We used that presentation to speak to and solicit input from nearly a dozen organizations ranging from the California Board of Registered Foresters to the Professional Agricultural Workers Conference.  Each presentation was designed to provide a high-level Endowment overview followed by an open discussion/input session.

Knowing that there were significant limits to our ability to share this opportunity with anywhere near all of the groups and organizations we desired to reach, we augmented the outreach/input tool to include an on-line survey open to anyone.

Findings
Perhaps we fell prey to hearing what we wanted to hear.  We hope not.  In short, when each group better understood the Endowment’s mission – to advance healthy working forests and family-supporting jobs in rural forest-reliant communities – and that we had to do so only using interest and earnings from the endowment corpus, we found strong support and alignment with our approach.  There were strong kudos for choosing to “do what others can’t or won’t” and to “focus on a few big ideas; rather than being lured by trying to be all things to all people.”

Yes, there were some criticisms and suggestions that we weren’t focusing where the commenter thought we should.  While this list was far shorter than the accolades, we do not discount its importance.  Among the more frequent comments were:  the Endowment should focus on educating the public about the importance of forests and the need for their protection/management; target family forest owners to ensure that they are giving proper attention to long-term stewardship; and do more to address America’s forest health crisis with special attention to sustainable management of the public lands.


To everyone at each of our public sessions or who took the time to provide an online response, you have our appreciation.  We know that we – the Endowment Board and staff – have been given a rare opportunity and even bigger responsibility.  As the largest public charity in America working to advance the cause of forest sustainability and rural-forest health, the challenges are indeed large.  Our funds, while large by historical perspective, pale by any comparison with foundations working on other issues to see the billions of dollars and thousands of staff members allocated to the challenge.

We have a choice.  We can bemoan the fact that we don’t have enough funds to do all that we know we should/wish we could be doing, or, we can do the very best with what we have.  We’ve chosen the latter course.  We look forward to your continued input as we make the journey and as we adjust the tools and course headings along the way.

Written by: Carlton Owen

Wood-to-Energy: A Part of America’s Energy Future

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

Lexus automobile with its commercials touting its commitment to “the relentless pursuit of perfection” may lead us to believe that perfection is just a tweak or new gadget away.  Look more deeply.  See the little hedge word there?  Pursuit.  That’s the same caveat that the founding fathers’ placed in the Bill of Rights that accompanied our beloved Constitution.  Recall that American’s are not guaranteed happiness; rather, we have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Happiness or the pursuit of it…that’s a big difference!  It’s this kind of deep thinking that had me considering another famous quote – “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”  Although not a student of world history and literature – thus one reason I won’t make a good Jeopardy! contestant -- I have often been drawn to the quote attributed to Francois-Marie Arouet, a French writer, dentist, and philosopher.  You might know him more commonly as Voltaire (his pen name).

Combining writing, dental, and philosophical thinking and skill would, one might expect, yield eclectic if not break-through thinking.  In Voltarie’s case it clearly resulted in magical output. 

Pursuit vs. Reality
While I’m a big believer in that we should “shoot high” and “dream big,” if perfection is our only objective, we likely will spend most of our time in bitter disappointment.  In reality, there are very few things in life where perfection is even the proper objective.  Things like ensuring that a space capsule re-enters Earth’s atmosphere at the “perfect angle” might be among them.  The difference between perfect and good enough in that instance is truly life or death.

But, most of our decisions and most of our processes aren’t that exacting.  All of this thinking has to do with the vitriolic debate going on across America as we seek to move to a “better, more perfect place” as goes our energy production.  As we look back on the all-too-fast retreat of the 20^th Century, we see the age of fossil fuels – one where oil, coal, and natural gas allowed unprecedented development and movement but as we know now, with some not insignificant downsides (movement of America’s wealth to other not-so-friendly parts of the world and climate change, among them).

Playing to Strengths
We spent more than a century developing and deploying fossil fuels.  With trillions in infrastructure investment, the shift to alternatives won’t come fast nor will it be simple.  In short, we will have to go to increasingly more complicated sources of power and fuel production that the Southern Growth Policies Board in a 2009 reports says will “be highly diversified to address energy needs and capitalize on the unique resources of different regions.  Each location needs to play to its strengths.  This means that areas will need to develop their systems somewhat autonomous from the greater whole because there is a wide diversity of circumstances that affect the efficient production of energy. For example, wind power does best where windy conditions are prevalent, like in the U.S. Northern Plains, solar power does best at southern latitudes with little cloud cover throughout the year like in the U.S. Southwest, while wood-based energy does best where there are productive and abundant forests.” 

Finding Acceptable Options
One of the conundrums in making the shift to suitable and acceptable alternatives is that no alternative is perfect.  But, we must recall that the fuels we wish to shift from are not perfect either.  The Endowment operates from a forest-centric perspective.  One-third of America’s landscape is blanketed with trees.  If we wish to keep those lands in forests, where they are privately-owned (the bulk of all forests), we need to provide markets and economic opportunity.  Where forests are publicly held (exempting statutory wilderness, where nature is allowed to take its course) we need markets that provide economically-viable tools to maintain forest health.

We believe that wood-to-energy is one tool that can help achieve multiple objectives.  It can help keep forests as forests, ensure their health, provide rural family-supporting jobs, and all the while , in the appropriate places and at the appropriate scales, do so while providing just a small sliver of the answer to America’s and the world’s future renewable energy needs.

To expect wood-to-energy to be “perfect” – to have zero emissions and impacts – is ludicrous.  Society must weigh all alternative energy options and not wait for the never-to-be-achieved perfection as we test and develop acceptable alternatives.  We need to make progress toward a brighter and healthier future for forests and for the people who steward as well as those who benefit from them.

Written by: Carlton Owen 

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

All children play the game.  “What do you what to be when they grow up?”  Whether the question comes from their peers or well-meaning adults, it’s standard fare.  For boys it’s often, “I want to be a fireman or a policeman.”  For girls perhaps it is “teacher or nurse.”  The reality is at those young ages, few have anything upon which to base such dreams. 

As we do grow up and perhaps for all-too-many, it’s when high school or college graduation goes from being something “out there” to eminent, we start getting more serious about the answer.

Influences toward a Career Path
For me, a 9^th grade biology teacher provided.  Because of my love for nature and the out-of-doors, she said, “You should go into forestry.”  With no personal mentors or connections to the field, that settled it.  En route I had many different part-time jobs … from sales clerk, to factory work building mobile homes, to mowing yard … yet, all served to ensure one thing – I would be college bound and would pursue forestry.

Once in college and as I gained a bit more understanding of the field, I began to hone the vision a bit more.  The image of forest wildlife biologist began to emerge.  With two degrees – one in forestry, the other in wildlife ecology – under my belt, I set out to make my mark.  Thirty-five years later I’m still in the broad forestry/wildlife field, but in a job (heading a national endowment) that was never on the radar.

Lumberjack:  The Worst Job in America?
Why this walk down memory lane?  Today, Careercast.com announced its “200 best and worst jobs” in America.  At the top is software engineer and at the bottom is the lumberjack, which the study defines as “fells, cuts, and transports timber to be processed into lumber, paper and other wood products.”  While I’m having a bit of trouble differing between “fells and cuts,” the jest is, timber harvesting is hard and dangerous work.  Duh!

By the way, I find that I can be listed as either 27^th – biologists; or 188^th – conservationists.  Forester didn’t even make the list.  Is that to suggest that it isn’t a job or it didn’t even make the top 200?

The Future for Lumberjacks
I haven’t heard the term lumberjacks since I lived in the small town of Warren, Arkansas, where the local high school football team had as its mascot the “Lumberjacks.”  Am I surprised that it ranked so low?  Well no; and yes.

Without timber harvesters we wouldn’t have the myriad of lumber, paper, and biomass-based products that make our lives better.  Today there are estimated to be some 8-10 thousand independent firms that harvest and transport timber in the U.S.  While most are small businesses, when we multiply each firm by its number of employees, the total sector would rank in the tens of thousands of employees.

At the Endowment we’ve long been concerned about the financial health and survival of the nation’s loggers.  In fact, one of our very first efforts was to assess the state of the nation’s timber harvesting sector.  While we were unable to turn that assessment into a specific plan of action at that time, we continue to speak with and look for the right entry point to aid this vitally important part of the forest products value chain such that it might evolve for a brighter future.

In fact, over just the last six months we’ve met with timber harvesters (lumberjacks, loggers, etc.) from across the nation to explore specific actions that we could take together.  Our hope is that such will turn into tangible outcomes that will ensure that “lumberjacks” will be around for decades to come but that in future ratings that the job won’t be listed at the bottom of the pile.

Written by: Carlton Owen 

American Timber Harvesters: A Dying Breed?

Last weekend we had the privilege of meeting with the principals of about thirty timber harvesting firms from across America.  The group was meeting in Washington, D.C., where their association staff executive granted the Endowment the opportunity to visit with them about the future of this critical link in the forestry sector value chain.

Does Profitability Make a Difference?
In preparing for the meeting, we reviewed the results of a recent survey conducted by Timber Harvesting Magazine.  The study looked at the profitability of timber harvesting businesses across the U.S.  While the results might not pass academic muster for scientific purposes, the results were no less telling. 

For the calendar year 2010, on a “pre-tax” basis, more than one-half of all firms reported either losing money or at best breaking even.  When those making less than a 10% return on their investment – something few would consider a “get-rich-quick scheme” or much less enough to provide a healthy financial foundation -- the number skyrocketed to fully 94% of all firms.

Lest you think this was a tiny sample, more than 800 firms from 39 states responded to the survey.  Based on the best available information, that’s roughly 10% of the entire sector.  And, 2011 was likely even more economically challenging!

Should You Care about the Plight of Loggers?
Why should we at the Endowment – and you, if you care about healthy forests – be concerned about timber harvesting businesses?  The answer to that question has many parts.  First, without a robust and financially-sound logging sector, how can one “manage” forests?  Without harvesters how will America’s sawmills, pulp & paper mills, and growing number of wood-to-energy facilities, get wood from the forest to a conversion facility?  When landowners need to thin a forest to ensure that it is more resilient, healthy, and resistant to insects, diseases, and wildlife, how is such to be achieved without a market for the wood and a means to harvest the desired material?

An often stated truth is that the lion’s share of American forest landowners sadly don’t avail themselves of the service of a forester when they decide to conduct a timber sale.  Yet, 10 of 10 landowners do call on a logger.  That’s a powerful and critical connection that offers tremendous value if society could better capture it.

Forest Management Requires an “Axe”
All-too-often we who are concerned about America’s forests have viewed loggers as there when they are needed.  Something that can be “turned on” or “turned off” as needed.  Even worse, many look at them as necessary evils.  Such thinking has led to literally thousands of small businesses approaching the brink of economic disaster.  Aldo Leopold, a forester called the “father of American wildlife management,” said the “axe” is necessary to manage forests.  Few of us are trained or equipped to “deploy” that axe ourselves.

We may find, albeit too late, that without a professional, well-trained, well-equipped, and financially-sound timber harvesting sector, America’s forests and Americans who care about them are the ultimate losers. 

More later on what we at the Endowment are doing to try and create a brighter future.