KUFM Commentary

Policy, Political Economy and the Move to a Forest Restoration Economy

At the same time the timber industry was collapsing in the 1990’s, natural resource managers, policymakers and communities were starting to realize the social, ecological and economic sustainability of the West was increasingly threatened by declining forest health and closure of the local sawmill.

Stand replacing wildfires of the 1990’s, 2000, and 2002 were the wake-up call, promulgating a series of policy initiatives focused on the restoration of forests and the reduction of hazardous fuels. Prior to
1998, hazardous fuels reduction was not even a line item in the federal budget. Funds had never been requested. From 1998 through 2000, congress appropriated $93 million a year for hazardous fuels
reduction, which escalated to $1 billion in 2001 and $3 billion by 2005. With a 100 million acre crisis at hand and support from congress, timber no longer needed to pay its way out of the forest. Federal agencies changed their management focus from merchantable, large-diameter sawlog removals, to small-diameter, sub-merchantable materials.

As a response, place-based initiatives emerged uniting conservationists, labor management, local stakeholder interests and policy makers. All centered on a restoration framework and an emerging local “green” restoration economy, operating within a “zone of agreement” around social, ecological and certain economic values.

By-products of community protection and forest restoration are primarily small diameter trees and woody biomass. Existing and new cottage industries were encouraged to develop and provide for
utilization of these sub-merchantable materials. The West was particularly ripe for this conversion due to a growing commitment to restore federal forests.

However, one of the greatest challenges to building a forest restoration economy was finding ways to fund restoration activities when traditional sawlog values were no longer primarily relied upon to offset costs. As a response, congress passed the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2009,authorizing up to $40 million per year to be spent out of the existing Forest Service’s budget to subsidize restoration work across the country.

The October/November 2011 Journal of Forestry published an article by U.S. Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell, who is quoted as saying, “The time is right for a restoration economy. The Forest Service is tailoring its programs and projects to a new management environment.” This was news to many in the forest products community. Up until then, restoration activities were a tool in the federal forest management toolbox. It appeared that restoration was no longer simply a tool, but was being used to create a “new management environment”. For those that rely upon sawlog volume to keep mills running,this is a problem.

The proposed “new” forest restoration economy focuses less on ecosystem components and outputs and more on ecosystem functions, ecological processes and outcomes. When economics plays a less important role – in any economy – political and economic regimes emerge within smaller social groups and social networks. Because these political economic regimes influence and are influenced by the organization of both social and political economic capital, it lacks a standard economic value.

With the current national deficit, pumping millions of dollars into federally subsidized forest restoration activities is unlikely unless there is political will to do so. A simple solution is to broaden the scope of projects, allowing the value of the sawlogs to pay for the restoration activities. Harvesting sawlogs within the context of restoration has been controversial and unpopular with most conservation groups. However, managing to the lowest common denominator is at a cost to the taxpayer.

With a recent move to reduce the federal budget, as much as one third of the Forest Service’s workforce could retire, not in five years or even within the next year, but in the next two months! With the loss of so many seasoned professionals, the Forest Service will likely rely upon social groups and social networks to accomplish their mission. The Forest Service is at a crossroads; whether the new forest restoration economy is the next evolutionary step in a 100-year old agency or forces the devolution of managementto social groups, states and/or counties is uncertain.

Management of our federal forests resources, in a combination that contributes to the three interrelated and interdependent elements of sustainability – social, ecological and economic –is important and keeps us from repeating mistakes of the past. However, economics in the larger context must be equal with other social values.

On behalf of the Montana Wood Products Association, I am Julia Altemus, thanks for listening.

The National Christmas Tree

It is that time of year again, when millions of Americans are on the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Some trek into the woods seeking the perfect tree and outdoor experience. Others make their selection from a local Christmas tree farmer and some simply unpack the Christmas tree storage box from the attic or garage.

The history of the Christmas tree dates back to a 7th century English monk, who suggested the cone shape of the fir tree represented the holy trinity. By the 12th century, Christmas trees hung upside down from ceilings in central Europe at Christmas time. It was not until the 16th century, that people started to adorn Christmas trees with candles, wax ornaments and gingerbread. References to Christmas trees decorated in America were rare until later in the 19th century.

Today, there are roughly 30 million Christmas trees sold in the United States every year. However, every year for the past 88 years, only one receives the title of standing as our country’s National Christmas tree. At 5:00 p.m., on a Christmas eve in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge walked from the White House to the President’s Park, also known as the Ellipse, to light the first National Christmas tree, which was lit with 2,500 donated red, white and green lights. The President touched a button at the foot of the tree, lighting a 48-foot tall balsam fir donated by Middlebury College in Vermont.

Even though a “community Christmas tree” had been lit on the U.S. Capitol since 1913, to celebrate “A Civic Christmas”, the idea of decorating an outdoor National Christmas tree originated in 1921, with a press aide for U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover who had worked as a technical journalist for General Electric. A trade association named The Society for Electrical Development was looking for a way to encourage the use of more electric Christmas lights and the use of more electricity.

At an American Forestry Association meeting a few months after the lighting of the first National Christmas tree, President Coolidge criticized cutting down trees for the use as Christmas decorations. Believing this to be the end of the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, it was suggested that a live tree be used instead. On December 18, 1924, A 35-foot tall Norway spruce was planted on the west side of the Sherman Plaza by the American Forestry Association, and President Coolidge threw a switch at 8:00 p.m. illuminating 1,000 red, white and green lights and white electric candles. It was the only year a switch was used, before or since.

An inspection of the National Christmas Tree in 1929 found severe damage from the decorating process and the heat and weight of the lights. Another 35-foot tall Norway spruce was planted and for the first time, decorations were placed on the tree. However, the decorating process and natural events have caused the National Christmas tree to be replaced several times over the decades.

From 1942 to 1945, for the first time in its history, the National Christmas tree was not lit due to the need to conserve power and observe security restrictions during World War II. The lighting ceremony commenced in 1946 with the first live national broadcast, and for the first time federal officials suggested that the tree be replaced with an artificial tree, which was actively opposed and the idea dropped.

The tree lighting ceremony remained largely unchanged until 1954, when President Dwight Eisenhower approved a month-long series of events known as the “Pageant of Peace”. The pageant required the National Christmas tree move from the White House grounds to the Ellipse and for the first time since the White House became a unit of the National Park Service in 1933, the Park Service required cut trees rather than live trees. A practice that lasted until public and environmental objections pressured the reintroduction of live trees in 1973.

The National Christmas tree and the lighting ceremony have withstood near-disasters, world wars and conflicts, and anti-war and environmental protests; yet 88 years later, the National Christmas tree remains a wonderful public spectacle and a unifying tradition.

On behalf of the Montana Wood Products Association, we wish you a very joyous holiday season.

Place-based Collaborative Conservation vs. Timbers Wars of Old

Recently, considerable discussion has centered on whether broad stakeholder interests, uniting together to work collaboratively on natural resource project recommendations to restore functioning ecosystems and enhance ecological processes, is an appropriate and effective way of managing our U.S. Forest Service System lands.

Collaborative conservation emphasizes the importance of local participation, sustainable natural and human communities and voluntary consent and compliance rather than enforcement by legal and regulatory coercion. Collaborative conservation reaches across the great divide connecting environmental advocates, commodity producers, forest practitioners, biologists, hydrologists, local residents, and national interest groups to find working solutions to intractable problems that will languish unresolved for decades in our existing policy system.

Forests cover one-third of the nation. These forests offer important functions by filtering half the nation’s water supply, providing jobs to more than a million forest products workers, contributing more than $100 billion in labor income and sales, absorbing 20 percent of the U.S. carbon emissions, generating $14.8 billion of recreation revenue, and providing habitat for numerous wildlife and plant species.

Montana’s total land base covers approximately 93 million acres. Forests occupy 22 percent of the land base, with 30 percent under private ownership. The remaining 70 percent is under state or federal jurisdiction. Of the 70 percent under state or federal ownership, the U.S. Forest Service hosts roughly 61 percent (or just over 12.2 million acres) of the non-reserved timberlands. Non-reserved timberlands lay outside of Wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas, Inventoried Roadless Areas, administrative and research sites. Even though Forest plans identify non-reserved lands as “suitable” for timber production and harvest, they have become the epicenter of the land management debate for the last 30 years.

Recognizing the “timber wars” of the past, has not and will not produce a successful platform for federal resource management, the forest products industry has undertaken a number of conservation programs in an effort to address sustainability and environmental concerns associated with the sustainable growth, harvest, and processing of forest products.

Collaboration between the forest products industry, environmental and non-government organizations can be an effective way to identify common objectives, reduce conflict, and produce mutually acceptable land management programs and activities. Collaboration on specific landscapes allows industry to continue to harvest fiber and timber, and produce forest products and provide jobs with the support from interest groups and the local community.

Those that choose to engage in a collaborative group understand that reaching consensus on a project recommendation requires considerable time and an ability to listen to opposing values and viewpoints. In addition, a successful collaborative strives to be proactive, to understand each other’s interests, and where positions are “checked” at the door. The group is committed to the process by adopting rules of engagement, understanding the consequences of no action, and determining the role and source of science.

In Montana, long-standing watershed collaboratives and new emerging stakeholder groups, all in some degree, mirror a national effort encouraging ecological, economic, and social sustainability. These collaboratives look to leverage national, state, local and private resources, work to facilitate the reduction of wildfire management costs, including reestablishing natural fire regimes, demonstrate the degree which various ecological restoration techniques achieve ecological and watershed health objectives and use forest restoration byproducts to offset treatment costs while benefitting local rural economies and improving overall forest function.

There are those that choose not to enter into a collaborative discussion or process by opting to continue with the failed status quo model of attacking projects through the appeals process and litigation arena, instead of working to reach consensus recommendations. Unfortunately, the greater emphasis on process has had a collateral affect of facilitating the growth of adversarial activities and behaviors. An administrative record has too often taken the place of a conversation, leading to a point of diminishing returns.

The jury is still out on whether all the effort stakeholders put into collaborative conservation leads to work done at the right place for the right reason. The collaborative process may not be a perfect system or offer a perfect solution, but if it fails due to an orchestrated attack by opposing forces, the options are to revert to the “timber wars” of old where biodiversity is not an objective, rather a constraint, or to congressional intervention.