Land Stewards and Their Helpers

What do 15,000 folks in Hawaii have in common with more than 686,000 in New York?  They are owners of a piece of America’s forest.

Earlier this week I received a copy of the USDA Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry Annual Report – April 2012.  It was accompanied by a much longer Appendix comprised of State and Territorial fact sheets.  Receiving  this in the midst of the now full-blown race for the White House , and all of the sound bites about “too much” or “too little” government, got me to thinking about the men and women who own America’s forests and those who help them tend it.

Who Owns America’s Forests
We are indeed one of the most blessed nations on the planet.  Parts of those blessings arise from the fact that one-third of our expansive land is blanketed with tree cover!  And, not too far down the list of blessings comes in the fact that all 308 million of us as American’s own a part of that forest heritage whether it be held in trust in National Forests, state forests, parks or other public lands. 

The part of this picture that too many of us take for granted is that the largest slice of that “forest pie” is not owned by us individually nor collectively, rather, some 35% of that forestland –some 251 million acres – is held by families and individuals.  And a lot of them … nearly 11 million owners.

In our system of government they clearly “own” the trees and the land.  Yet, there are many public benefits that accrue to us all without our direct engagement either in the form of payment or responsibility.  Those private forests help clean our air, filter and provide our drinking water, and serve as homes to a vast array of wildlife.

Managing a Forest Takes a Village
Harkening back to another line from yet another Presidential campaign, I recall the one that served to once again divide us when Hillary Clinton published her book, “It takes a Village.”  This borrowed line from an African proverb about the impact that all in a community have in helping to raise a child, has similar implications when we think about forests.

Yes, clearly the landowner carries a heavier responsibility and burden than do others (just as do parents).  Yet, few landowners walk that road alone (again, just as do parents).  Most call on the services of a consulting forester to help them develop and implement a management plan to achieve their objectives.  Few landowners – private or corporate – maintain the necessary firefighting equipment to call upon when disaster threatens.  Nor, do many own their own mills to serve as a market for their raw materials.

Indeed, forest ownership and management is a complicated business.  Among the many blessings we have are the well-trained men and women of the primary federal natural resources agency – the USDA Forest Service – and their state-based compatriots at the forestry commissions and state forestry services that have for decades been there when the fires were raging, the bugs attacking, and after the harvest with seedlings to help start that new forest.

In a time of dumbing-down of very complex issues into one-line sound bites, it is important that we all remember and say a word of appreciation to the men and women who steward America’s private forests and those who help them tend it.  I for one am very thankful for the professionals at the federal and state level who answer that calling in concert with the range of private businesses who help make up the forestry village.

Written by: Carlton Owen

Keeping Forests as Forests While Helping Disadvantaged Families

In the rural south, one of the primary and historic sources of rural African American wealth—land ownership—drains out through land loss, damaging the potential of communities to capture and regenerate wealth.  Within the context of a comprehensive system of landowner support, expanding and improving the practice of sustainable forestry can help plug the land leak by demonstrating the productive capacity of the land, creating new income for landowners, increasing land value, stabilizing land ownership, and slowing the conversion of working forests to development.   That’s the theory behind the Endowment’s newest project – “Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention.”

Ownership Losses Undermine Families
Black farmland ownership peaked in 1910 at 16 to 19 million acres.   By 2007, this number had dropped to 3.3 million acres.  In a very recent indication of the scale of ownership, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation in Charleston, SC mapped 41,000 acres of heir property in the rural counties surrounding them.  Heir property is land with unclear title and complex family ownership due to lack of wills, making it particularly vulnerable to loss.  It is believed that a large percentage of heir property landowners are African American.

Despite dramatic land loss across the rural south, farm and forest land continues to be an important source of African American family wealth, with a total value of $14.3 billion in 1999.  An estimated 43% of Black farmland owners have forestland totaling 1.2 million acres.   About 16% of Black-owned farmland is in forests with the average forestland holding being 43 acres.

Drivers of Change are Many
The causes of under-utilization and involuntary loss of rural African American land are numerous and complex. In addition to fragmented family ownership (heir property), financial pressure from development and consequent rising taxes, failure to maximize potential income from land due to lack of information, limited access to government programs, and lack of credit are contributing factors.

Moreover, support for African American forest owners is fragmented and difficult to access.  Historic discrimination and subsequent lack of trust have resulted in under-utilization of USDA Rural Development, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), USDA Forest Service (USFS), and state extension forestry programs by African American landowners.  Additionally, nonprofits in the region that do provide support to African American landowners are often very under-resourced and, as a result, lack capacity.  Currently, USDA programs to address past deficiencies in government outreach to minority and limited resource landowners create a particular opportunity for nonprofit/government collaboration.

Best Hope Found in Collaboration
There is a long history of grassroots, nonprofit, and philanthropic involvement in the field of African American land retention and communities and practitioners have made much progress in understanding and addressing African American land loss. Through “Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention,” the Endowment seeks to learn from, leverage, and move forward the work that has been and is being done.

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