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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 27. The Forest Group
Dreaming: Quiet…waiting…probing roots…probing, probing…still stalking by the rock…the weakly seedling pressing to unseen depths … needle-pointed pressure …waiting for the shadow-tree to fall … patience is everything …but then there is the fall…all seems lost…but then is the time to grow …to seize sunlight…capture carbon and store it in the next shadow-tree. Just Dreaming …
| A description of a Group that produces profits from wood products and services for a very long time and manages places for profits to be made annually by other Groups. |
Rural System has been said to be complex and complicated. Part of the reason is that each of its groups such as described in this chapter is also complicated. The problems begin with the words used. The meaning of forests, forestry, and foresters are such problems.
Things assumed to be well known are rarely so well known. Things like forests have been discussed at the dinner table for years for they were personal, seen, and the every-day environment of 80% of U.S. citizens. Most people are now urban and more than a generation separate from the family dinner table. Forests are known only from TV, short hikes, car window scenery, or youthful summer camping experiences. There have been major misrepresentations, claims, threats, and changing knowledge of things going on in " the woods." It is well known that people relate differently to forests and that their extremes are evident, no matter what the causes or roots of the differences. Some people see forests as spiritual places of inestimable value and best untouched, even untrodden. Others see them as impediments to high crop production with high gains that are only possible from the land from which trees are removed. Some do not realize the great differences in federal, state, and private forests and their legal mandates that reflect the range in values held for forested areas by different voting groups and the changes that have taken place in goals and policies over two centuries. There will be no way to resolve these differences, certainly not the conflicts. At best, Rural System articulates a singular point of view, makes it as precise as possible for observers and staff, and believes that it reflects in 2008 the best possible approach to managing many acres of rural private land. The approach is different for public lands and for many private lands and the differences need to be noted. Rural System staff work on private lands, partially to avoid the almost intractable conflicts between public and private interests on public lands. All resource decisions require balancing maneuvers, but on public lands, with poorly articulated objectives, changing policy and personnel, and its well-paid staff with its own language, we saw no hope for recognizable balance. We knew we could not be efficient or effective with them, so we encourage them to handle well the conspicuous problems of forestry on public lands. There is no " proper private-land forestry," only a single best approach. It is " Rural System forestry," a systems approach, and the Forest Group operates that subsystem.
The Forest Group has the potential of generating significant financial resources for the landowners, the region and the conglomerate. There will be many gains (other than from wood products; see Chapter 15, Table 2) secondary gains (e.g., hunting), and associated gains such as groundwater recharge which we shall clarify for the land owner. Some gains are expected to be as great (e.g., hunting) as the direct financial ones. The work of the Forest Group goes against the grain of current forest use, for most private land forests are not influenced by much information about efficient forestry or alternative land use. Few acres on private land with trees are harvested under the supervision or guidance of foresters despite great costly efforts to have them do so. Local forest conditions seem to have worsened, especially due to farmland reversion and large-area, uncontrolled clear cutting. There are few foresters, thousands of private forest land owners. Even if willing and demanding of service, owners cannot have their demands met by present public and private foresters given their practices and costs. There is a disjunction in local demand and the number of qualified foresters. Large dispersed areas in rough terrain create potential high costs of service per unit time required. Low or marginal gains from wood sales tend to suggest that foresters' assistance and costs can be foregone. Most private-land forests have never been entered by a forester and few acres are under their direct control or influence. Owners proceed with unsupervised, often conspicuously inappropriate harvests, many with trespass and timber poaching. Sound forestry advice, when available, can generally provide a viable alternative to the rapid turnover in ownership of forestland (on average every 12 years) by providing a flow of benefits, and reducing the harmful effects of " cut-out-and-get-out" practices before land sale.
The alternative message of Rural System forestry is never heard convincingly from public foresters or private consultants. That message is that under our contractual management of your forested land, we can more that double the expected income from your existing forested land for you and your family and then continue that for your family or investors. Annual income may be possible. That seems to be the bottom line. This chapter describes the details of how the Forest Group does that.
Forests
It's not an academic exercise or a waste of time to clarify the meaning of forest, forestry, and foresters. A shorthand and precision to my meaning will be useful in the rest of the chapter. Forests are real places but also concepts. Not immediately evident to everyone, forests also includes owners, surrounding land, water, proximity to services as well as markets, taxes, roads, the legal and economic environment, risks of loss, tax policy, current consumer preference, wildlife damage, game preference and hunting attitude, presence of poachers and vandals, and tendencies of society toward outdoor recreation. They embody current technology for processing wood, gaining wood prices, marketing, warehousing, and international sales. Forests are not just lands with tree clumps.
For many people in the U.S., rural implies farm fields and pastures but for others, rural means forested land. Its meaning is debated by some political advisors; some are too-easily satisfied with " non-metropolitan." Words have connotations depending on where you have lived. They are place-specific. Forests and woodlots may denote fields. They are the frame, the total surround for things of value and interest. For others they themselves are " rural land." They are land areas of the world in which trees are (or are soon) likely to become (after replanting and young tree growth) the conspicuous dominant organisms. They are wonderful places. For many people they are areas of mystery and wonder, for others a place for new and different stimuli, for others, just another factory, a place to work. For others, they are the generalized awful, too hot or too cold, pestiferous, dangerous places. They generate questions because they are complex, dynamic, and when best known, sure to produce surprises.
Forests function in cooling, changing wind, percolating water, providing landscape views, altering gases, housing wild animals and plants, and diluting pollution, as well as functioning in their standard roles in private ownership of anything. Their functions can be called services, some of which are " ecological." (Kimmins 1987). To emphasize trees in such a system is akin to spending too much time in discussing …the lung… when the topic is the human body! Unlike urban spaces but like most private agricultural land, forests have many very important social roles. With the exceptions of public buildings and a few private, life-enhancing beautiful buildings, urban spaces are very private. The private forest is never as private at it seems or is claimed by its owners.
A forest has identity and value depending on its proximity to or absence of a wood-processing mill. Its value or importance includes the availability of fossil energy and biomass-energy demand. It is likewise a function of effective clean air programs, socially-responsible farm policy and enacted and authorized legislation, policies on wood use in fossil energy conservation programs, and public lands policy related to protecting rare plant and animal species.
Forests are whole administrative units, some public, some private, and some in partnerships. While a tract of land may have trees on it, is it a forest? Surprisingly, 21 percent of private forest land is held in ownership units of less than100 acres. Such areas may be too small for efficient timber management operations. " Forests" blend at unknown boundaries of scale from " a few trees" into " woodlots" and eventually the phrase " forest region" comes into use. The forest is a type of on-going or expected natural land condition or use. They are difficult to specify, also to define. When trees are all removed from an area, is that land a forest? The logger will call a tract of land a forest after he or she has cut all trees from it and replanted it to trees. Such land may look at a distance as if covered with grass. It is a forest. Others may not recognize it as such and assume it will soon be a pasture. Some argue that trees must be of a dense nature. A brush field becomes a forest when the stems reach a certain density, diameter, and height. A forest may be completely wild (as in a wilderness) or may be land with trees intensively fertilized, pruned, thinned, and harvested as in a commercial plantation. Forests include lakes, ponds, streams and wetlands. Some include small crop areas, some planted for wild animals. In the western USA, land within a designated National Forest may not have a tree and will be classed as rangeland but will have the name of a National Forest. There, as elsewhere, a Forest may be a legally designated unit. Where any forest ends is unclear, for there are vast numbers of forest products, each dependent on the entire system. That system may include the ions in soil moving to the tree bole that may be turned, on or off the site where trees grow, into lumber or blocks of wood soon to become furniture handles or paper pulp before becoming fine paper. A product can change overnight into another product when a market price drops or spirals upward. When an owner does not know what a forest really is (or cannot decide) , it cannot be very surprising that discussing what one is, or should be, or how it should be managed often leads to disagreements. Rural System deals with private land, new concepts of the total land system, and tries to clarify its unique concepts of forests and forestry, pulling them from within special federal, state, university, and corporate clouds of meaning.
There are 37 billion acres of land on Earth; 29 percent of the Earth's surface is forested, more of the land area of the world than in any other major type of land use or coverage. Outside the Arctic region, about 36 percent is now or potentially forested.
There are 737 million acres of forested land in the U.S. The total land area of the U.S. is 2.4 billion acres and about 41 percent of that is held by the public and Indian tribes. Of U.S. forest lands, only about 482 million acres (65%) are said to be capable of producing a commercial timber crop. About 20 percent of this is in federal ownership; 14 percent is in industrial forests; and 6 percent is owned by states and cities. There are 155 US National Forests. The US Forest Service expects timber sales to reach about 2 billion board feet in 2005, far below the peak of 12.7 billion board feet in 1987. That agency only contribute 6% of the annual national timber harvest (2000). A billion board feet takes on reasonable scale when it is known that it takes about 10,000 board feet to build a modest single-family home. It is important not to be misled by press coverage or to be drowned by these numbers. Sixty percent of the US is in private ownership. Rural System's general 20-year national destination … influencing at least half of that significantly.
Significant acres of these forest lands cannot be reached (because of river, lake, or topographic barriers) or are unavailable (e.g., wetlands) for any reasonable type of wood production. The majority of the people who make decisions about forest land use, about 4.5 million of them, is an unknown, diverse, and changing group of individuals or families. Even though there are said to be 2 million non-industrial " tree farmers" in the U.S., these are a small, variable, but tree-biased group. The small, non-industrial private forest landowners of the U.S., designated tree farmer or not, are the potential customers of the Forest Group. The Group will not run out of work to do.
There are about 2.7 million acres in the multi-county region of the Eastern US that is the first region of interest of Rural System. Of this, about 70% are forested. Of this area, figures differ on access and whether the trees can be (or should be) harvested. There are thousands of acres of state and federal land in the region that we just have to assume to be under appropriate management. The Forest Group may later seek contracts with agencies to do for them cost-effective management. In summary, there are at least 800,000 acres of privately-owned-potentially-productive-of-woodland in the nearby region, the working domain of The Forest Group and associated Rural System. For example, there is nearby Giles County, Virginia, one of about 95 counties of the state. Of its 232,000 acres, there are 167,000 acres of private forest land, 52,000 acres in National Forest land. Bringing half of 167,000 acres under superior management can have profound effects on the environment and economics of a county and a major river of the nation. Still dawning is the sunlight of knowing that regions are no longer relevant now that there is the Internet. Knowledge, maps, products… whole markets that can be created and exchanges made nationally and internationally as never before. The emphasis of The Forest Group is on private land U.S. conditions, but potential international trade in wood and wood products makes that emphasis of little importance.
Government forests (local, state, and federal) are special with their own staffs, research, tax base, and other support groups (e.g., fire control, police, media, communication). They have been active for a very long time. Those federal acres listed above as being within the National Forests contain the former Jefferson National Forest (now combined into the George-Washington-Jefferson National Forest (1995)), a tract of about 1.8 million acres in Virginia. The Jefferson Forest has about 690,000 acres. Not to belabor the amount of forested land held by agencies, it still needs to be seen that when agencies hold land, it is largely removed from the tax roles of the counties. In the now-depressed southwestern counties of Virginia, the " coalfield," the National Forests hold over 360,000 acres. This agency land, large corporate land ownerships (notoriously poor tax payers), new timber-land holding companies (called TIMOs), and trust lands all combine to contribute to depressed rural financial conditions. These land ownership and holding conditions work against providing the massive funds needed for employment and public services of all types including roads, health, emergency service, and schools. They suppress economic diversity, promote overuse and loss of farmland, and add to inadequate housing … the banner of the federally-supported Appalachian programs. The Forest Group will work toward contracts for managing such areas, but its initial efforts are toward private non-industrial lands.
Trees
I must retreat from an orderly, linear discussion of forests and forestry to briefly comment on trees. Private forests are lands temporarily allocated to trees. Forests or trees? For tree growth, 13 mineral nutrients are essential. It is evident to a modestly trained observer whether a forest has good or adequate nutrition. When modest gains over long investment periods are acknowledged, it is essential to analyze the nutritional conditions of stands and to adjust them as quickly as cost effectiveness criteria will allow. Fertilizer studies in forests have been notoriously difficult to interpret. Rural System holds that small amounts of the essential nutrients added can payoff in the periods being planned for high-value wood production. The linear programming for such work is treated like a diet problem for the human hospital, maximizing growth from fertilizing with the 13 specifically-priced nutrients up to their needed levels for trees, all subject to or given a fixed budget. Trees removed from private lands have taken with them nutrients from the soil for over two centuries. When combined with channels deepening and water tables reduced by the same tree removals, we now have significantly reduced site quality. The loss of trees as cover has allowed nutrients to be dissolved and percolated from the soils of the area. Trees can be viewed as if they are machines that are deep-mining nutrients and moving those into leaves. Thus, autumn leaf-fall is a type of nutrient addition or surface fertilization. We study the nutrient content of leaf litter, and then adjust fertilization rates for cost effectiveness. Stop-loss and recovery work are needed.
Trees are like wolf cubs. They seem to be single, solitary and need to be tended very carefully. Many die, more than live. All that we see, seem to know, and think about are the survivors. Cubs grow and can survive if they are good participants in packs. A few solitary survivors are exceptions but they do not deny the pack rule. The solitary ones just have not yet met their typical life-challenge. Wolves are pack animals, very social. So are trees. Their connections below ground and those above are as unseen as the communications among hunting wolves. Trees depend upon fungi to help them take up moisture-carrying nutrients; stringy primitive bodies perform, indistinguishable from root hairs. Trees cannot even claim independence as a species. When their underground systems are large enough, their roots unite; sap flows in either direction among them with need. Root systems decay in the ground and their residual spaces serve as drain tiles or pipes to accommodate infiltration of water and nutrients into the soil for other roots. Mature trees are not evident, above-ground things, but whole clumps, often with interlocked roots sharing water, energy, and nutrients. Together they are protecting each other from wind gusts, their trunks from being sunburned, and together standing and diluting weakening attacks from insects and disease. Trees in forests are not singular but societies, as elsewhere in life and in the pack, and in human communities … starting, competing for energy and scarce nutrients, storing it, overcoming stresses and developing fail-safe relations, and reproducing.
Each species does that differently and the forester knows and works with the differences. The fluffy-seeded species require moist sites and spend their first days developing root systems. Large-seed species, e.g., the oaks with their acorns, undergo freezing and then produce leaves rapidly to collect energy while their roots develop slowly … for they may emerge as the tree stock after a shading old large tree has toppled. Some species drop their leaves, avoiding the winter snows. Others retain their leaves, have shapes to slide off snow, and stay green (like a Christmas tree) for a year … to fool foresters and others about when they are stressed and dying.
Forestry
" Forestry" is a single word but a large concept that ranges in definitions, interests, and expertise. It may include growing, protecting, and in some cases harvesting giant tropical furniture-wood trees. It may include protecting sparse high-mountain tree communities in national parks for their scenic value and water production. It includes and ranges in intensity among education to legal action, from genetic studies to why bears claw valuable plywood-producer veneer trees, from theological concerns for the creatures of " the woods," to international timber-tax law. Some definitions of it include recreation, wildlife and fisheries work, and international trade. A new definition of it appeared in 2007 when global warming became evident and reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere became essential for future human societies. Then new battles flared up, but the concept of the forest as a salvation and sink for capturing and storing carbon became widely known. " Sequestering" carbon was too fancy a word. Forests as " embodied carbon" cleaning the air became well expressed. Major differences (as well as overlaps) occur in management concepts, information needs, and applications of techniques and policies between public and private forestry, between preserved forests and industrial forests. Similar difficulties occur in giant differences in forest values and management in the eastern and western USA, even north and south.
Forestry as perceived by Rural System staff is a total system of land production. Doing forestry means operating a forest system. That includes: reforesting and regenerating stands; enhancing work that is cost effective; maintaining an inventory; protecting trees from fire, insects, disease, and thieves; conducting effective well-scheduled harvests; using proper transportation, marketing, processing, storing, and preserving; and taking other actions, all concentrating on adding value to wood products in the region, developing alternative storage and exports as appropriate, making genetic improvement, monitoring, and doing profit-making studies into all of the above. Making assessments of forests for tax credits paid for their carbon embodiment function for the public became a new role after 2007.
Landowners rarely include land value itself (with or without trees) as their system commodity. Some owners find that the value of land as real estate increases far more rapidly than the value of wood volume growth or its potential sale value. They often do not include total ownership production -- total investment, all lands and waters, all minerals and viewscapes, all taxes and tariffs. Animals are a forest product, as well as are fish, and other-than-tree plants. There is no special reason why trees must be the only acknowledged product, the only entity that is listed as profitable from a complex system of land with trees managed by people. Often more money is made (or can be made) from so-called " minor forest products" than from tree growth; more value added by modern log processing than forest protection or forest health enhancement. These are topics of the rational decision-maker, the system manager, not merely a person watching trees grow. At tax time, landowners combine all production from trees, crops, livestock, and other off-farm investments … the annual income from the total system. Forestry is done by and for people who live in or nearby forested areas, those that invest in them, and those that love and benefit from them, usually in ways that few of then can list, some not even fathom.
Foresters
Foresters do forestry within forests and elsewhere. There is no common agreement on the definition just as there are none for " forest" or " forestry." A scientist in a laboratory working on tree genetics is as likely to call herself a forester as is a lobbyist working on international tariff law related to log export. The may have had the same undergraduate education. Perhaps like people in wildlife management that suffer the definition problem, foresters are in a non-discipline and foresters are what foresters do. Members of the Forest Group are very diverse and rarely call themselves " foresters" but define themselves as members of the elite forest-centered Group working for the good of the total system, concentrating on one objective, improving management toward profitability of one of the natural resources.
The Forest System
Describing what must be done in the world of the forest may be difficult because the reader, likely holding fast to a particular " proper" definition, will not accept the conditions and the system being described as that for the Forest Group. Forestry, some " brand" of land use, or the perceived status that groups of old trees has for many people, becomes a metaphysical issue. The U.S. Forest Service policy for many years, " multiple use forestry," has many believers and supporters. It was a well-taught practice, said to be good for federal lands and assumed good for other lands. There were stated beliefs and practices. The sacred was known. It can be neither defined nor denied. Alternatives are now available; some barely ventured as conceptual competitors. Rural System had an alternative for private lands. Rural System staff will quickly and easily adopt a conversational mode for the " operational environment," the working platform (Chapter 12) discussing gross responses and broad functions when they can be fairly precise. The " mode of action" within the wooded area - from soil litter integration to processing the felled tree - is usually so poorly known or complicated that they lead to sure failures. Staff is inclined to not discuss these differences common in the press but move as quickly as possible to available data bases, collect data if they seem insufficient, use approximate models, and build toward specific decisions that can be captured, tracked… and improved where they show weaknesses.
An example of a major difference and expected minor conflict in understanding the Forest Group's work will be in what some people perceive to be the requirement in forestry which is to have " sustained yield." The literature of forestry and forest laws require it…on public land. That concept is flawed because the sustained yield of a product of declining value will send into bankruptcy an enterprise or land owner sustaining production of such a product. The " yield" needed is profit, not specifically cubic feet of wood, but any set of abundant, well-priced benefits - the entire list of services, products, and other benefits listed in the chapter on objectives (Chapter 7) The profits proposed are all from different well-managed enterprises working on the same forested tract, all being computer analyzed to achieve a stated sum of the likely profits from all enterprises. Trees may have to be removed in a special way, perhaps at a higher cost than otherwise, to assure a constant minimum stream flow. (Thus, for example, wood profit is not maximized but cold-water angling profits are added to the corporate annual totals.) Stands of trees are harvested in a not-easily understood sequence due to past practices, few of which were site specific … or desirable. Harvest efficiencies are gained for the 150 years; deer forage is stabilized (with hunting fee gains); early succession bird nesting sites are retained (with bird-watching-tour profits gained)).
The Rural System concept is one of maintaining or restoring productivity and in some cases to approach maximum productivity but only within the context of reasonable profits. (There are few places where we even know what this productivity is or can be.) Pictures of historical giant tulip popular trees and oaks are of a size almost unbelievable. We believe that, with management, such trees can be seen again on some sites. In few places they can be afforded because past a point, volume gains in wood of specified high quality are not profitable gains. Tree volume, wood quality, and monetary value of the standing log become stable, and then eventually decline. The value of the land occupied by the trees themselves must be tallied. Rural System staff works with all of the benefits of all trees of a stand. In each stand the total actual and potential value to the owner is evaluated. While wood value may decline in a very old stand, the floral or faunal complex may produce esthetic, recreation, tourism, bird-watching or other benefits suggesting appropriate harvest delay. (Even though there is financial loss in wood value, the net gains of the delay---especially for the long-term increase in site quality may fully justify the no-cut recommendation.) The Forest Group is not involved in negative economics. It promotes rational financial strategies to maximize profits and other benefits from a forest over a very long time. We may call it a program for " sustained benefits" if we must (wading into the " sustained yield" and " sustained development" morass (Chapter 8).
While supportive of " biodiversity" enthusiasm, we take it to mean and include more than endangered species preservation. We believe that a variety of animals are needed for a variety of plants, and that plants, including trees, need animals for rooting-body development, fertilization, and many other parts of their complex set of life requirements and stand-support functions. We work to maintain and enhance particular aspects of forest stands, hundreds of such parts, and are reluctant to generalize and to amalgamate them unnecessarily as " diversity." We believe that profits to the landowner from tours conducted by Nature Folks can be added to the real value of endangered species present on a tract.
Slogans for forest management like sustained yield and " harvest the worst first," while instructive and regionally beneficial, tend to disregard tree locations and road and harvest costs, minimize likely neighbor-tree damage, and require costly field analysis by foresters, and very long planning periods for payoffs. The simple rule ignores site quality and potentials resulting from stand conversion of present stands from unplanned chaotic forest origins to suitable productive species on suitable sites. The rational land owner (not the unusual one but the general body) needs to be able to plan on a package of benefits from forested land…or they will engage in logging, or sell the land, or both. The record is clear.
Wood is a typical product of the land, the working platform (Chapter 12) , but the emphasis in Rural System is on sustained profits, not on standing, harvested, processed wood (e.g., pulp chips or mine timbers), or embodied carbon. It is on total system profits from the land that has trees …and all of the other land…for the planning period. From one perspective, hated by some foresters, lands are re-vegetated and trees grown to provide profitable conditions and output for at least 20 major enterprises of Rural System, and in addition, almost as a sideline, may contribute some profits from wood sales. Heretical sounding, on some areas we harvest timber, making no profit in order to benefit wildlife (because over the next 40-50 years, the best production of food and faunal spaces for a group of important animal species will occur as the replanted trees grow back.) That other profit will come from " the land with trees" and it may be as high as or higher than from trees harvested. The emphasis has been wrong and it takes years to " un-educate" university-trained foresters, some of whom are tree-stand specialists with a few other courses studied. This is a complete reversal in action and attitude once present and one largely required of foresters in the past. The forester was " lord of the forest" and had to be in charge in the face of poachers, arsonists, vandals, forest wildfire crews, changing lumber demands and prices, massive equipment investments, road building and maintenance requirements, hunters and poachers, and moonshiners who hid their stills in the valleys where the water was clean and the smoke from fires hardly ever showed above the tree tops.
The Forest Group is not " for trees." Statements like the previous sentence, out of context, will quickly be used against the Group. It is for the landowner and long-term corporate financial profit. It deals with existing forests but keeps open for the ownership the question of adding trees to other units of the ownership or removing trees from some units, all to achieve the desired (1) expected, (2) long-term [150 years], (3) net gains from the total ownership. How the work may contribute to a quality of life score, Q* is displayed for consideration and possible tradeoffs. The words need the numerical emphasis. The Group is " for pasture" if that, along with the rest of the ownership and other Rural System Tracts, achieves the system objective for profit. Without it, the land owner has every incentive for land mining, high grading, premature cuts, clear-cutting, and the other practices of the past that deflated land value, destroyed scenic, faunal, and watershed values, and obscured the other potentials of the land.
There are other enterprises working within Rural System on the forested land. The land is not unlike many drink and food brands being sold from the same dispensing machine. The other groups of for-profit products and services, all working on the same tracts at the same time include:
Starting at the End
Rural System starts at the end… starts analyzing and operating at the end of the " forest system" by concentrating on desired results. Wood is sold, but it can take many forms, and each has a different price. Prices and other factors vary, so a computer system accommodating such change is needed when it is reported or discovered. (Change can be predicted, then simulated using the same system. Profits can then be compared between taking a path to the predicted price and the current price remaining in place.) Price is very much a function of wood supplies and these are influenced only slightly by sunlight, water, and soil nutrients but by agreements between Canada and the US, and Japanese wood-buying under the influence of tariffs and regulations (related to disease and insect threats, whether partially-cut or whole logs, etc.). A cut in Asian wood buying may increase western wood stocks, which reduces demand for southern wood, which reduces the price Rural System can get for the land owners. The annual fluctuations, largely out of control of the landowner, are real and large, about 2-10%. We call this fluctuation A.
Markets for types of wood change. Desirable colors for kitchen cabinets change; knotty pine or other patterns in wood have changing preferences by home builders. Wood is replaced by plastics or metal; proportions of wood-used in homes changes. More slowly and rarely as large, this is fluctuation B.
Forestry is very much about " getting the wood out." It is about how to move wood from the stump to the mill cost effectively. Whether there are one or more mills present (pulp, veneer, lumber, milling, products, etc.) determines whether any interest exists or can grow in forestry. If there is no place to sell, no buyer, there is no market for the landowner. Mills require a reliable, low cost supply of wood of the proper quality. Mills come and go, change products, buy from different areas (even internationally). Rail systems and loading yards change. The owner of forest land can never be certain that there will be an operating mill (or rail terminal) in the vicinity. Many mills have been closed in the northwestern US. This is fluctuation C. The price that the mill pays per unit delivered to the mill is an evident fluctuation; call it D. The logger or Rural System bids competitively on wood in the forest. The amount of that bid or the statistic about the general value of wood on the stump at a particular time and place is called " stumpage." It is a total figure and includes considerations of labor; hauling distance to the mill; roads needed to be built, improved, and managed; log landings (to move logs to trucks); and virtually all costs of each local operation, " the sale." It is a complex computation and bids usually vary widely. When stumpage is perceived to be very high, no bids are made… and the wood stays in the forest. Recently, vandals have increased expected costs on some sales beyond a level for a reasonable bid. When hunters use back-country roads that are wet they have destroyed them, making logging-operation costs excessive and operations profitless. Stumpage variations are called fluctuation E.
Trees can be cut and ground into chips in the forest and moved to a pulp mill. Logs can be sawn and partially dried in the forest. Specialty woods can be sawn into rough shapes for future use (furniture blanks). Lumber can be dried, then moved to a processing mill. The concept is that of adding value to the bole of the tree just taken off the stump. That's fluctuation F.
The first addition to value supplied by Rural System is to certify all Rural System Tracts (Chapter 12) as sustained forests under Smartwood, an international "sustainable forest" certification process (The Certification Group). Wood from such areas (planned, carefully regulated, multi-resource oriented, long-term in scope, socially responsible, etc.) is marked for removal and is able to gain premium prices in mass supplier outlets (e.g., Home Depot, Lowes). Export markets pay premiums. Without growing an extra volume of wood, certification can increase the value of Rural System Tract (Chapter 12) wood compared to identical wood from other tracts in the same mill from 3 to 10%. Thus another fluctuation; call it G.
In the forest, there must be accurate estimates of the wood present so that a precise stumpage estimate can be made. Stumpage is largely based on trucking and labor costs, fairly constant and well known by the bidder, and then on the price in the mill per board foot, cord, or cubic foot. Having a good estimate is a good idea. Estimates are usually provided by the seller. The logger or bidder will make his or her own estimates. The science of estimating the merchantable wood in a forest is called " forest mensuration." The problems compound as the counts are made for each species of tree, the number of each, their height, and diameter, " form class" or degree of taper, and amount of defect (stain, rot, etc. associated with insects, disease, fire, wind or ice, lightning, and mechanical damage). The good wood is tallied. Call that defect-fluctuating proportion H.
The " timber cruise" is an outdoorsy sounding walk in the woods for a very complex array of botanical, spatial, geometric, sampling, and ecological data and their syntheses. The probable sound merchantable volume is estimated. Not surprisingly, it too fluctuates, partially because foresters move. Education, expertise, and software capabilities change in a dynamic staff. Call this professional component of the fluctuations J.
New challenges to forests from regulations, suburbanization, breaking up tracts (" disaggregation" or fragmentation), and changing labor regulations and supplies add further uncertainty. Call that fluctuation K.
Forestry is very much a decision-oriented activity, from plantations to harvests. Unless " a guess" is an acceptable phrase, foresters must estimate the expected payoff of investing in a situation and subtract from it the expected costs of arriving at that moment. The expected payoff, for example is the product of the payoff and (1.0 - the probability of failure). With fluctuation levels giving no better than 95% chance of desired outcomes in fluctuations A through K described above, the odds of success seem low, barely about 0.57 (i.e., 0.9511), … not inspirational. The fluctuations are rarely simultaneously bad, so there is a slight chance for success. Perhaps forestry is much like gambling. As long as " the house" takes in more than it loses, the games continue. The house being able to make large and stable gains, wins; the players, too small and unsustained, lose. Rural System seeks to greatly improve the odds, reduce fluctuations, and provide the stability of " the house" for the private land player. They can be greatly improved when acreages of adjacent landowners are managed as a single unit.
The probabilities for desired outcomes must be kept very high by careful, diligent work or else there is little rationale for Forest Group action. Even then, the incentives (rate of return) are small. Investments must be diversified and, as with other investment portfolios, made for reasons other than the maximum rate of return. Many timber and pulp organizations are widely recognized as real estate investment companies that have only secondary interests in the wood on their " land-for-sale." The Forest Group can work with such owners and will increase the value and services of their land as they wait for the proper buyer (Chapter 25).
Wood (tree-size) growth in the start-up region of the Forest Group now exceeds harvest by a ratio of 17 to 10. (That's about as meaningful as saying the teenager's growth is greater than his interest in work!) The rates of change and fluctuations in forests need to be studied using data on total acres, productive acres lost, wood types, and median ages of trees. Harvests can be increased, but the concerns are that quality of useable, potentially profitable growth is not occurring on superior trees or on productive sites, i.e., where growth is sustained and where access costs are reasonable and where other environmental impacts (erosion, soil compaction, etc.) are not extreme. Markets are poorly known and changing. Society needs wood of all types but finds substitutes being made daily, yet threats of energy shortages suggest that the substitutes may be short-lived. In 2004, the US Forest Service listed urban expansion into surrounding rural areas as one of the top four forest problems of the nation. The problem is complex in the Virginia region described above, even more so for the small-acreage landowner. Not using forestry or a forester's advice is ecologically, economically, and environmentally unacceptable in an area where poverty is high, human emigration great, rural forests are being replaced with structures, and where communities now suffer. Past public investments in general forestry knowledge and information being supplied (publications, schools, research, etc.) are not reaching the land.
Staff of The Forest Group has the means to solve these problems for the small- and large-unit landowner. The staff can take the hassle out of problems for the out-of-state, absentee, or other owners that are busy with daily affairs and unaware of the complexity of forest-related decisions. It can meet specific owner objectives, not simply cut trees for immediate income. It can assist in financial planning for college and other needs of the land owner, even financial crisis management (forest banking) to prevent disastrous land impacts from development or liquidation. It provides land owners with expert-guided, objectives-based planning for at least our 150-year future. (That is incorporated within The Trevey (Chapter 19).)
The success of the Forest Group is like that of the other groups of Rural System. Few of them, alone, are likely to be profitable over a brief stated period. Many have already shown great success at failing. " Together," all of the enterprises, is the byword for system success. The forest can be profitable but it is not assured. It is very difficult to do so. Everyone who wants to do so cannot succeed. Once there is a pattern of success, it is folly to invent it over and over for each situation. When economies-of-scale are gained by tracts and labor working together, improvements can be made gradually and risks reduced.
The forest profit, alone, can be augmented by income from a single enterprise, for example the conventional and well-known deer-hunting fees developed by the Deer Group. If numerous, scheduled, and well priced for the total forest area, the annual income from hunting, treated as an invested annuity, can equal the value of the timber at expected harvest time, thus showing twice the financial gain with the land, re-forested, as capital for the next cycle of growth and benefit production. One benefit is profit, usually conditional or required for the existence of and gaining the other benefits (Chapter 7).
Ecosystem Management
" Ecosystem management" (Chapter 16) is a name for an obscure federal land use policy (a type of objective (Chapter 7). It is potentially at odds with the activities of the Forest Group. Since the early 1970s, school children and others have learned of ecology and environmental concerns. The world is populated with amateur ecologists and thus the phrase has a variety of connotations. Rural System probably includes this concept but authors describing and proposing it rarely include financial gains, comprehensive energy budgets, esthetic elements, or organizational, administrative, and enforcement elements of a system that will achieve non-specified end results of the management action. The phrase does not hint at the profound role of people and the needs of working directly with them over time. Not opposed to it, I am opposed to private as well as federal land managers failing to state objectives, the desired end result of management. I wonder about the meaning of writers who assert that ecosystem management " turns from production forestry." I prefer to continue to see forestry as a broad honored concept and field of work, one dealing with an almost unlimited array of resources, uses, and users. When modern foresters of the Forest Group deal with forest resources they are engaged in resource system production, i.e., in producing benefits for people.
Ecologists know that ecosystems are very predicatable. Ecology, the study, increases their predictability. They know that their rates can be increased or slowed, stopped, and some started. They also know that named communities or aggregates of plants and animals proceed along well-known paths to conditions that may, or not, be pleasant or meet the needs of some user group. A community that is fine for rabbits and foxes (Chapter 26) may not be advantageous for deer or black bear. A forest of Christmas trees has none of the structure or benefits of a mature red oak forest …whether for soil plants, birds, mammals, of product profit potential. Trying to broaden the context of forestry, to return it to concepts almost a century old and add to it new technology, and to have practitioners and society understand it in this new way is a task ahead.
Not an ecosystem approach, Rural System's Forest Group activity is a total system approach - economic, resource, computer, esthetic, energetic, mechanical, hydrologic, etc., etc. It is more abiotic than biotic. The emphasis is on " total," on the economies possible in regional development. It needs to be long-termed and clearly based on the low-risk assumption that fossil energy will be in very short supply in the US in less than 150 years. It will need to use high-technology to regain a place for humans when the human condition has, unrecognized, been largely a function of abundant energy collected and stored by plants over millions of years. It will need to deal with some forests stressed, others enhanced by changing temperatures and soil moisture, as they gain stature as society's embodied energy. Securing a human place in the distant future will require having energy collectors since stores of it will have been used up. Rather than lament the loss and weep for our grandchildren, Rural System moves to change.
There are days of great discouragement when I recall how difficult an idea is to get past the thickness of a skull. My shift from seeking the optimum farm (Chapter 1) to seeking the optimum set of linked enterprises and the optimum number of interrelated Rural System Tracts often comes to my mind.
Rural System's " Rural System Tracts" concept is that some lands are best used for the good of owners over the long run when they are managed and maintained with a dense tree cover. Throughout the eastern US, the general natural tendency is for land to be covered by communities of plants and animals within which trees are evidently dominant. Lands that have their vegetation removed will, after a few years, have a new community emerge to once again become recognizable as a forest. (There are, of course, areas that will not readily return to trees because of precipitation, poisons, soil, and other factors.) We do not know beforehand, before we start management, whether an acre should be " in trees." We deny the too-flippant comment of the realtor: " highest and best use" since: " it always depends!" It may be that an area should be covered densely by growing trees when we arrive on the scene, but we literally force ourselves to ask while using the computer, how to make sustained profits, given the criteria and limits set by the land owner. Producing forest wood may be one such requirement. If not, the computer may report that forest production is best for R acres, not S acres.
Herein, I'm describing work on lands that will become covered with trees when left to natural tendencies. Whether it is good or bad for rural areas to be covered with trees is not a good question. Whether it is right or wrong is equally poor. It just is. Society needs wood and pulp but also wheat and pears, and since all cannot be produced on the same plot in the same year, decisions have to be made about which to plant, destroy, or cultivate…and, under our objective, has the primary requirement of making money from the process, whatever it is called. We can let " nature" take its course, but the odds are low of the results of that being decided to be best for a land owner or any group of people over the average life of a healthy tree. Not to decide about what should be on an area will result in the natural tendency and thus, by default, the decision is to say that any tree-coverage is best. (It may be, but it is unlikely.) Maybe " highest and best use" is a useful saying for some people, but it provides no real guidance: The questions flow easily: Highest possible? Highest ever experienced under natural conditions? What about after enhancement with fertilizers and irrigation? Wood better than wheat? Is profit per acre the best criterion? When will that be true? Always? How do we factor and balance needs and prices with changing production and demand over time? How can we know what is highest and best? (Chapter 25). These do not seem to be " forestry" questions but because they have rarely been asked or addressed for private lands, they remain as questions and they often produce problems.
Public forest policy, an attempt to address some of these and similar questions for all citizens as well as international visitors, remains awash in a stormy polluted sea with litigation yachts, legal flotsam, experimental vessels, leaking dingys, and some land lubbers who claim that they can see far from the lighthouse.
The major work of The Forest Group is on Rural System Tracts (Chapter 12). These are privately-owned lands,separate areas, like state forests or Forests of the U.S. Forest Service) with different objectives but unified management. Staff of The Group discuss and get owners to place constraints and limits on their areas and harvests, but in general, an aggregation of such tracts in a region is operated as if it was one productive unit with profits shared based on quality-weighted acres in the mix. The major gains are expertise, superior supervision, detailed analyses, a trained staff, and efficient and effective preparation into sale units, storage, and marketing. The Land Force (Chapter 14) becomes invaluable.
Objectives
Land can be used to meet landowners' many (100+) objectives. One could be: " To see whatever Nature produces during the rest of my life." Such an objective may not satisfy may people. Staff assist in formulating these objectives, inform the owner of the costs; provide necessary and appropriate legal, ecological and other constraints, provide a prescription and plan, and help implement the total system over the long run. With the owner, The Forest Group develops a set of type-three objectives. Few people realize how many objectives there are in forestry and this has led to great misunderstanding. When we assert we are doing good forestry, a reasonable person may ask, " How do you know (Chapter 5) it is good?" We answer: When we are at least achieving the following objectives for a corporation or family to hold land for pride, estate values, speculative price increases, … or benefits from any reasons and to gain related benefits, including bounded profits by applying the composite strategy of engaging in a contract with the clear objectives of:
We believe that there are other objectives as well, many more specific, each important, but each with different levels of importance or value in relation to those listed. How these are achieved is described variously as methods, practices, tactics, and procedures. (We use system " processes," Chaper15) While professionally committed to forest profits, staff are more committed to gaining productive total Rural System tracts, most of which will have within them forests as an important part, some of which may contribute to planned sustained owner annual profits. Maximizing the land in trees in not the objective. Planting the right species on well-selected areas may be one decided practice.
The Forest Group's vision of forestry has elements that are entwined with those of Rural System. That results inconfusion, almost impossible to avoid. In general, The Group is primarily involved in producing profit from trees. It has and encourages many other activities on forested land but other Groups within Rural System actively managed them. The concepts and principles with which it works include one that land and a system, not merely trees, are what are managed. Because land has trees on it only puts it into one category of current use. That use can rapidly change, even though everyone is aware that forests take many years to develop. Growth can be enhanced…or eliminated!
The Forest Group philosophy is that sophisticated modern forestry is so complex that no un-aided human can do it well. To attempt to do so is to fail. To " recommend a practice" is equivalent to a doctor prescribing medicine for an unknown patient over the phone. The staff of the Forest Group does not provide pieces of advice. It provides whole plans for how a forest should be managed over a 150-year period. The whole forest is only a part of the whole ownership in the context of the landowner's whole set of interests and surrounding lands. All must be well known for best-feasible solutions to be designed for a system. There are thousands of available practices and their permutations. Selecting the best set is a task for the computer-software-armed professional staff. As the Forest Group approaches a land ownership, it relies on at least 200 years of professional forestry expertise, only 100 of them in the US. That involves study, apprenticeships, publications and sharing of information, detailed research, and syntheses of many types. Few, if any, well-educated foresters can master the total forest, fewer still, the total system. The Forest Group employees work as a group. They seek to " do forestry" for landowners. They will satisfy many aspects of their curiosity and encourage learning of all types but " to educate landowners about good forestry" (the claims of public agencies) is impossible. The Group advertises partially to educate, a failure of public programs. It demonstrates, but only in the context of providing prescriptive services, appreciation, and general understanding to the private landowner. Landowners cannot be converted into foresters … or any other wildland manager. (One or two exceptions do not deny the premise.) Too many public dollars are spent trying to do so, negating the role of the expert. The needs are for education to explain and make comfortable the land owner following the prescription of the Forest Group staff.
Efficiency seems like a pretty good idea. As in other systems, efficiency in one place may not achieve the objectives of the system owners. Not efficiency but achieving cost effectiveness of the total system is the mission. Of whom? Of what? It is hard to imagine the average C-grade graduate of current forestry schools as being able to be responsible for the total system. The net has been thrown too far; the catch is too great. Some still see the forester as the manager of the total system or the generalist who can manage some part, or the specialist who can plant, raise, and specify when to cut trees (not actually cut them, for that is the role of the specialist logger), and move them to markets. These three identities capture the ambiguity within the " field of forestry," among people calling themselves foresters, and certainly among the public. By collective work within Rural System and clear attention to sustained bounded estimated profits, we overcome the inefficiencies caused by poor naming and inconsistent use. The " profession" of forestry, once narrow and clear, is now so broad and multi-dimensional that it cannot be communicated well within or outside the university or agency.
Custom Forestry
The vision of the Forest Group is one of placing land under the intensive contractual care of experts (perhaps (but only partially) analogous to a lawn-care company, a frozen-food delivery service, or a furnace maintenance company). " Handle it; handle it" is the statement that The Forest Group wants to hear from the absentee landowner. They also want to hear from the farmer on the land, but they tend to be independent and already " know some stuff." Thirty-seven percent of Virginia is controlled by absentee landowners (including international owners) and the numbers increase as towns and cities fill and expand. The land that suburbanites and city folks hold from a distance needs to be cared for up close, carefully, sensitively, and for the future. When " away," owners may treat land as a productive platform as we have discussed, but that is for analytical and descriptive purposes, for computations, a perspective needed to be sure of making a buck and being sure to do that next year as well so that it will still be there, better than before. To the staff and citizens of the rural areas however, forests are personal, sensual, intimate, vital things, not platforms. They need mending, then tending … with care. Some need to be held, like the torn and worn teddy-bear, " just because." When handled by The Forest Group, people who care, the land and conditions will be better for distant investors as well as neighbors… and people of the future.
The staff has the means to solve these problems for the small- and large-unit landowner. The staff can take the hassle out of problems for the out-of-state, absentee, or other owners that are busy with daily affairs and unaware of the complexity of forest-related decisions. It can meet specific owner objectives, not simply cut trees for immediate income. It can assist in financial planning for college and other needs of the landowner (The Wealth Management Group), even crisis management to prevent disastrous land impacts from development or liquidation.
Staff of The Forest Group will seek to grow itself as an organization so positive that its influences can be felt throughout the region. It seeks to accept responsibility for management of private lands in the region. These special places are living, working, profitable demonstration and research areas. They are self-sustaining and provide employment opportunities for local people.
The Forest Group unifies the following diverse activities for reasonable profits over the long run. These are called Stages, some are sequential, others on-going. The Group tries to develop a constrained optimization of the forest system, then to see how achieving that system, if carried to completion, might affect the optimization of the total system. Both are studied as constrained or bounded modified expected present net value as an objective.
Stage 1 - Marking Limits of the Ownership Window and The Relevant Outer Area
Working on private lands, first in the hardwoods of the mid-Atlantic states of the US, (then progressively in the piedmont and coastal industrial pine forests), The Forest Group, starts with the working platform, discussed in Chapter 12, the legal ownership, its boundary, and land 100 yards outside of the boundary. This becomes the map " window," the specified subsystem and area studied, analyzed, and described for the owner and for which a plan is to be produced. Information on ownership outside the boundary is collected where possible (only that readily and freely available) for it is related to access, runoff, trespass, land value encroaching land uses and their influences (noise, odor, dust, etc.), taxation influences, adequacy of faunal home ranges, fire and trespass threats, and invasion of pests and various threats. There has to be set a limit to the area of work. The more circular and smaller the area, the lower the costs for gaining the information in the relevant outer zone.
| Circular Forest Area | Area of Relevant Outer Zone |
| 50 acres | 42 acres |
| 150 | 69 |
| 550 | 126 |
In Virginia and throughout the Appalachians over the entire hardwood tree growing area, the land has been grazed, clearcut and burned, converted to crop fields and later allowed to return to tree cover …repeatedly generally in 30-year periods since the early 1900's. There was a race to take out all of the American chestnuts when the canker disease (that arrived in 1904) was very evident in the 30's. Logging slowed during the World War II period (the loggers were away at war); a logging rush hit when servicemen returned to build houses and new industries. There are now few big trees. Those left were on steep slopes, dry ridges, deep in coves, and were saplings then and not cut. We took all large trees, and the small, crooked, and broken ones were left to grow…for future loggers, and we are now them.
Throughout the US there are thousands of acres of tightly-packed, small-diameter trees. Since the depression of the 30's people have taken firewood and any tree big enough to imagine that they could "see" a 2 x 4-inch board in the center of a short 8-foot log. The land we call "forested" over much of the area, if not easily classified as "unsuitable" for logging, is covered by small, crowded, fire scarred and diseased specimens on rough terrain far from roads and with collection points far from rail or pulp mills. Fluctuating and unpredictable wood prices color all decisions. Trees that do exist are too expensive to move to trucks and haul to distant mills. Some are cut, ground into chips and moved to paper mills. There is little reasonably-profitable work for former loggers and their helpers.
The future of forestry in the western Virginia region is for optimists. For the near future, it is akin to mined-land restoration. The land once grew giant trees. It can again. There may once again exist blocks of large, well distributed, late-succession trees, re-established by funding from the land, but not necessarily exclusively funded from on-site wood sales. The all-important water source, precipitation, is present. Calcium has been leached from the exposed soils. That loss can be reduced and topsoil actively restored, partially by carefully working on productive areas. While thinning, harvest delays, and improved patterns can improve these areas, there are, in addition, other financial gains that can be derived from these areas. There are many Groups of Rural System.
Stage 2 - Subtracting Non-Forest Land From the Ownership
Using GIS and the Alpha Unit concept, we first designate non-forest land, that part of the platform not capable of or unsuited for significant profitable wood production. These lands include secure military areas, brownfields, lakes, streams, ponds, planned and sure-to-become lake and pond areas, surface-mined areas, borrow pits, roads and highways, permanent wetlands, and permanent buildings. Lands too steep (over 15% slope) or otherwise inaccessible to logging equipment are also designated. Inacessible land may be difficult to determine at first but owners can provide some leads and they are soon realized as areas blocked by wetlands, rivers, rock walls, or ownership barriers. Some may be blocked by the presence or likely presence of an endangered plant or animal species. Since it is unlikely that crop areas and pastures will be allowed to revert to forest, these are classified separately. We are progressively identifying, zeroing-in on, lands on which we can probably do profitable forestry. We spend no further time or money on analyses of these lands for tree resource potentials.
Of the land that is now in trees, we identify areas unsuitable for tree harvests by current methods and standards. Technology may advance tree harvest procedures and possibilities, but the high- and increasing-energy costs will likely make them unsuitable. Protecting the land and capturing CO2 will become more important, adding to the undesirability of harvests from such lands. We mark on the area map all tree areas in wetlands, on slopes 15% or greater, on land with site index less than 60, all that is on slipping soil "lenses," and all that are farther than a stated maximum skid distance from roads. This is a maximum distance and it may change with labor costs, technology, and fossil energy prices. Computer maps are reproduced when significant cost changes occur. We also exclude areas on the maps within the picture-windows of the main houses on the tract, all above and within 20 yards of permanent springs, all within 20 yards of stream heads (first-order stream). We exclude areas beside streams, about 50 feet (and program the computer to exclude a greater or lesser width to the side of a stream where soil and slope conditions demand protection for the stream and allow only occasional single tree removals). The effect of seeing the new map can be striking to the owner. There may be plenty of trees on the ownership but few areas where reasonable Rural System forestry can be practiced. In the past, these have been lands privately owned that were giving many public services as do all forests, but taxed as other lands. These were unproductive but taxed lands that brought an economic hardship to owners. Now we attempt to make the maps and analyses to show the different dimensions of land, seek fair taxation, and seek to reduce premature tree removals to "pay the tax collector." There may be, and it is likely, that more "area with trees" will have been excluded than retained, more areas that can be said to be "set-aside" for wildlife or watershed or other general reasons than most people realize. A high-elevation, steep, shallow soil, North-facing slope with 40 year-old oaks 100 yards from a jeep trail is an area for hunting and other recreation, not logging.
On the remaining land, high intensity studies can be conducted because they are needed and may now be afforded. The new active rural forest area is where modern sophisticated forestry is practiced. It is where high profits can be produced if the land stays under intensive management. The other lands, still with trees, are available for groundwater recharge, soil building and watershed surface protection, and many wild plants and animals of interest to people in the Nature Folks Group and to many other Groups in the recreation sector. Ponds and lakes, evidently " in the forest" and related lands are managed cooperatively with The Fishery. Land is designated by the exclusions as being for advanced-age-community wildlife, for grassland and early-succession animal and plant species, for viewscapes, noise attenuation, and autumn color, for hiking trails and campsites. Secondary benefits (services, opportunities, etc. such as trails and campsites) are also available from within the intensively managed Rural System Tract. These Forests within Tracts, however, are primarily the areas for a high-value wood crop with incalculable other values. The total resources of the total ownership are being managed by The Forest Group but also used by the many other groups. On these special areas, special attention is being paid to assure great sustained profits from wood production … later its processing and marketing. The clash of concepts continues. No matter how often repeated … the objective is improved tree growth potential but not wood. The objective is sustained total corporate profit. Clearly, they are related. Reduction in profits from wood may be readily agreed if a proposed practice by another Group shows greater total system profit when the two are achieved together.
Stage 3 - Using the Working Platform and Naming the Alpha Units
The Working Platform - Every tract of land is unique. Computer technology allows that concept to be useful and we now manage the Alpha unit, each 10- x 10-meter square on the land surface. Now characteristics of every site can be used to determine what trees grow best on what sites, but equally important in the larger system is the answer to what species, at what age, in what arrangement, suffering what expected losses and costs, at what distance from a road and mill, given today's and future technology, and expected received funds, can be profitable … given several possible interest-rate change patterns. Asking the question of profit is not a bad idea.
The computer opens doors for staff of Rural System to see the working platform as a place for producing profits from harvested wood. (Quickly said: suspend thought, momentarily, about all of the other known and advocated uses of the same platform.) We, just as quickly, assert: other enterprises may be working on the same platform, the same mapped area, the same set of unique units during the life of the tract, from the time that trees are planted or regeneration encouraged through to harvest, all growing under the supervision of the forester. Temporarily, herein, let us just think about the system with the platform with trees.
The literature of forestry is filled with papers and books on land classification into types. These names (e.g., red-oak or white-oak types) tend to speed discussions, allow something of the history of an area to be deduced and predictions about future growth made. The effort has been valuable. Now we have an alternative and that is in massive regional computer data bases, computer maps, field electronic displays of such maps and associated data, and a new procedure (GPS) for precisely locating where we are and have been within the forest. This allows us to avoid generalizing, avoid the grossness of "types," to utilize the vast research findings that had to be compressed into some meaning within the words for different "types." We know that every 10-yard by 10-yard (1 meter is approximately 1 yard)-square mapped area in the region is probably unique. We treat each as an individual within a population. "Central tendency" is useful when we want to generalize for a spot. Generalization is no of longer of interest. There are no longer average solutions because each ownership is unique. We already know the specific factors of each 10 x 10 yard map spot!
Stage 4 - Heavy Regulation
We know that we can get high performance and use of the land and that it can be diverse. We desire collaboration, at least that spirit, but we're in control with the owner's limits and objectives, and we know where. Early on, we impose heavily regulated use because building control is difficult and a "tradition" needs to be formed. Releasing control is easily done.
Stage 5 - Addressing Non-Owners
We see all resource decisions as social, having a major human group component. Resources, by definition, are for people. Of course people are interested in them, possibly concerned, and want to maximize their satisfaction levels, their quality of life, and the achievement of their objectives. What's new?
People love land. The conflicts that often occur on public lands (and in family groups on private lands) are about the uses of the forested land. Public claims about the use of private land can emerge and can slow progress there. The claim emerges on land as if from a community of interest. One community says it wants A and the other says it wants B on land because the un-owned land is quickly and easily personalized. Social trends, discoveries, large investments, and technological advances have produced a "we …or you … can do anything if we set our mind to it" attitude. Inequities have led to suggestions that we need to satisfy everyone. We definitely do not have to satisfy everyone and efforts are known to be failures. We do encourage procedures that include protecting the minority view or wish but resist their exclusive control or veto power.
As part of our forest action we seek to cause desired behavioral change in non-owners and the public nearby-the-forest by
These are activities that prepare the community. They may be called " education" but they are corrective re-education and actions to change behaviors favorable to our objectives. They are group oriented, not tree or forest oriented.
We know what conflicts are likely to occur. We list all of the uses of the forest as columns, then the same list as rows in a table, and fill in the blanks in the table with likely conflicts. There are few surprises later. Is it a surprise that fly fishing specialists seem unhappy with people rafting? We tend to work on changing expectations for we see "problems" that we work to eliminate or reduce as "the difference between the experienced and the expected condition or event." A big gap usually means a big problem. To reduce the difference, we move from least costly to more costly or difficult techniques. That list is:
Stage 6 - Knowledge Base
The Forest Group unified the following diverse activities for reasonable profits over the long run. It developed and used a constrained minimization of the expected present net value from the forest system alone. The bounds were the major constraints. Then using a similar program, staff could see how achieving that system, if carried to completion, might affect the optimization of the total system.
To do so, the Group first built a knowledge base of the land, documented within The Trevey (Chapter 19), including GIS technology and incorporating expert knowledge made site-specific in alpha units (e.g., Odum 1971, Emery et al. 2001, Moen 1973, Perry 1994). The GIS Group managed that system. Scott Klopfer's(1998) map for best sites for white pine forests is an example for the State.
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While it might be possible to build a database for each property, the costs of sequential, piecemeal work are very great and wasted at every overlap. Getting and holding information in a common source is done cost effectively. Data have to be managed, gained, cleaned, stored well, corrected, easily retrieved, and updated when appropriate for site specific applications. The financial gains are made when large data management systems are used for large areas, preferably each state and its adjacent states because of data base sizes and the different ways data are now sampled, collected and made available and the likely similarity of topics and informed staff. The use of a single data system my many groups is a conspicuous efficiency and some groups serve each other (e.g., The Trevey and the Forest Group.)
Close contacts with local universities and colleges and work with graduate students led to awareness of a gold mine of information on improving forest growth and yield, products, markets, and economies. It is dispersed, directed at each small part of the complexity called "forest" and "forestry," indicated above. The Forest Group captured this by making internal report summaries, by writing books for sale, but especially by linking government and commercial computer programs with economic and ecological models.
These models include the coefficients discovered by students and scientists. These contain the equations, the limits, and the rates. These are designed to allow questions to be posed about system changes on the annual profits resulting from realistic changes such as selling a part of the tract, placing a road from A to B, replacing species C in area D with species E, or the financial loss of delaying the scheduled harvest of area F (due to high road building cost estimates). They are used in a progressive way, typically operating on data either accumulated from areas summarized from computer maps, or from individual alpha unit. They are often used in brief simulation exercises, making changes in a set of three variables to which the system has be found very sensitive, thus allowing bracketing-in reasonable solutions. Because we are able to discriminate differences in all major forest types (now refined and re-numbered) within the ownership, we can use models for each type and get very precise estimates for description and prediction. Never before have we had the past research, the computer maps, and the global position satellites that enable our precise location (even in complex terrain) for taking samples. We use modern area-proportional sampling. Never before have we had the computer speed to enable monthly updates of information and ongoing re-computation of models, called auto-regression. The staff and the Land Force move data on forest conditions (stem density, tree height, diameters, GPS location) from hand-held field computers to models that are combined with computer map data. Models are re-done, and results quickly moved back to the field (e.g., current rates of growth since management began, mill volumes, and daily market value).
Stage 7 - Transition Theory or Ecological Succession
The Forest Group uses new transition theory to replaces forestry yield curves and combines concepts of economic productivity with ecological succession that is alpha-unit specific for virtually all trees, other plants, and animals of the ownership. It is shaped to apply as well to soils erosion, water runoff, and even phenomena in streams and ponds. The working equations are continually updated through auto-regression procedures as additional data suggest needs for change. These processes are described in Chapter 15)
Stage 8 - Transferring Technology
"Technology transfer" in the Forest Group has begun to mean that the system builds trust in the landowner for the forester to use any and all available technology on their land if it is in the most effective (financial and energetic means) for achieving their objectives for at least 150 years. The key words are "trust" and "used." A related saying is: "To believe the message, you just believe the messenger." The need is to build trust - in any way possible - by everyone. Slippage is easy; recovery is long and difficult, far out of proportion to the slippage.
Technology is abundant and on the shelf. We seek to find it, rescue it from its traps, and move it into use -observable, practical, proof-perfect use. While "communication," "inputs," and "education" are often useful concepts, we limit our work to moving concepts, tools, procedures, and techniques into observable use on the land, into making money legally over the long run while improving the resource base for the land owner, local employees, the community … and of course The Forest Group.
Stage 9 - Certification
Still controversial, the premiere independent, international forest certification effort is that of Smartwood. Based on laboriously-developed criteria and independent field studies by inspectors, private forests may become certified as being sustainable. The Certification Group assists in promoting and arranging for this service. When criteria are met and lands with their plans and programs implemented, then there will always be a productive forest, one that takes into account, at least to a reasonable level, the non-timber aspects of forests. The certification is highly prized and wood typically brings a premium price. This is because increasingly home owners and builders desire to specify that they self consciously use wood grown and managed well as compared to that taken by excessive means without regard for the site or future conditions. Certification leads to improved marketing and significant price increases for certified "green" wood. It is now (2007) drawing premium prices in large US retail outlets and the export markets. The Forest Group operates on the belief that in the moment a tract of land is certified, the value of every unit of wood that can be sold increases by over 5 percent. In such managed areas, the rate is higher than that for increases in local tree volumes.
Lands may not be able to be certified and plans are made and certification made contingent upon certain actions being taken. Plans have to be implemented and failure to do so can result in certification being withdrawn. Locally, region-wide management of all certified lands (plans, inspections, revisions, contingency fulfillment, etc.) is now possible and it further reduces the costs of the certification process.
Developing plans is a lengthy and costly requirement for certification and The Trevey Group allows dynamic plans to be created and thereby to reduce significantly the costs of forest certification.
Stage 9 - Forest Practices
A fairly conventional list of forest practices are employed. The "newness" is in the number, diversity, spatial precision (via GPS), spatial information (via GIS files of site-specific information), operation at the alpha unit scale, use of a 150-year planning horizon, and optimization of the total land ownership profits with forested land and sub-system profits contributing synergistically. The Group engages in the following:
While forest "types" or groups of tree species with a dominant tree species have been emphasized within forestry for years, it turns out that for much logging and most other resources of the land, age rather than type is the dominant factor. There are correlations with age, of course, but given the need to analyze a rural setting, and little time or money to do so, and given the option of selecting a few most-important factors…then, age is it. Smith et al. (1975) concluded that when analyzing the potential impacts of disturbance and development on complex systems, age was one of the most important factors. After typing areas, they classified each type into gross age classes and used these as indices to "ecological sensitivity" of each area, the older being the more sensitive.
While the specific age of a forest stand cannot be changed (except by harvesting it and giving it age zero), the appearance and function of a stand for applications of transition theory mentioned above can be influenced by thinning, that is to change the apparent average or median age. The age characteristics can be changed slightly (e.g., the tallness or diameter of the plants) by water, fertilizers, and the amount of solar radiation and carbon dioxide that the trees receive. Thinning a stand of trees can create age structures desired as well as physical structures (wind speeds, nesting, solar radiation reaching the ground, etc.) Dr. A.B. Carey suggested the practice of variable density thinning which he said increased stand resistance to and ability to recover after disturbance. Age and structure diversity tends to allow stands to respond well to climatic variation, fires, and other stresses. He observed that the more homogeneous a forest, the more support it needed in the way of removing competitors, planting, irrigating, and thinning.
Stage 10 - Harvesting and Planting
There are typically many local obstacles to quality timber cutting. Those obstacles are real but that's not very different than operating an effective total forest system. In the Forest Group we view cutting trees as a way to achieve many different kinds of objectives that are typically listed within other Groups of Rural System. One reason to harvest is to gain money resulting from sale of wood, but there are others, and more money can often be made from the same acre by other work while we watch the trees mature. We need to retain great flexibility in forest practices, in lieu of tight patterns of tree harvests prescribed by local laws or regulations. For example, some sites will re-grow naturally excellent forests. To require tree planting on all sites is wasteful and will cause future problems. Replanting may be an excellent option. The Forest Group seeks to have all existing forests under site-specific, sophisticated modern computer-aided management. In addition, the Group seeks to add trees to appropriate sites where that will add profit over time to the owner and to Rural System over the planning period. Generalized laws and regulations may prevent this and thus, build into regions (counties, etc.) suboptimization.
Stage 11 - Regional Work
The Group works not only on each site but within each ownership and also regionally. The assumption is made that "perfect" forest management on one area within a poor, unhealthy, or dysfunctional region cannot be viewed as successful over many years. Skirmishes between disciplines, particularly agencies in the natural resource field, are commonplace. Avoiding confrontations may be a big part of the problem; getting together to work and produce together as social beings is another part. There is a collective problem that needs to be handled, one of "what is our system?," and "on what is it that we are really working together?" Some past failures and skirmishes have been over turf, over competition for gains from a single source, and over territorial claims that have potential influence on profits, staff, and agency budgets. Some of these difficulties can be addressed by attempting to discuss, comprehend, and implement the concept of a total land production system. It's called Rural System. It is an alternative packaging of ideas that when used together is likely to have clearly improved effects. There is not a new problem to be solved by this concept, just a way of looking at and approaching a variety of problems and challenges in natural resources areas. If there is one problem to be solved, it is fundamental -- how to be more effective … producing profits from investments of time, talents, spaces, and money.
To do so, I start with land with trees, admit to the power of forestry and all of its insights, but suggest that fundamental economic theory may lead people within the region farther down a productive pathway than retaining forestry and its often-traditional and limited view (Hof 1993). Rural System is a concept of a land system producing products and services for profit indefinitely; it includes forestry. It may not be appropriate for federal or state lands because some are now limited by policy, laws and regulations to narrow realms of specialized work. Some have broad discretion and some laws and regulations can be changed.
The owner of a small-acreage forest may not be able to become profitable over a reasonable period. Some may never become profitable from wood sales because there is no nearby mill or wood market. Economies are especially difficult to achieve when the scale of operation is small. Achieving profits and providing annual- or periodic-income from the greater enterprise operating from the available land base (before the typical end-of-rotation log sale) is a major prospect offered by the Forest Group activity. Following some successes, the staff computes regional values of land with trees (all of the dimensions of pure water, flood cost prevention, temperature influence, visual amenities, erosion control, etc.), then computes and publishes a median estimate of an annual value of forests to each citizen. The social value of forests is real, and can be computed, but not well at the stand or ownership scale.
If land, the working platform (Chapter 12), can be analyzed and prescriptions prepared by the modern sophisticated forester and action sustained, then significant gains can be made in achieving the objectives of Rural System, i.e., gaining and sustaining profits within bounds for a long planning period, typically for two hardwood rotations.
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FFFFFiguring out the Farmer or Family with a Forest State and federal agencies have called you " the non-industrial forest land owners" and have published reams of material about you. They seem to want to know all about you, thinking that if they do, they can figure out how much of a forest resource you really have and how it might contribute to the state or national " woodshed." They've know for a long time that your forests are not producing as much wood (of any type) as they might and so they try to help you and figure out how to make improvements and to find out why better forestry is not being done. In Rural System, we know most of the answers to these questions, partially based on our observations and experience, partially from analyzing reams of reports about studies of farmers and families. To start with, we know that you are unique. While you may be a little like others, the chances are that you are really different in your land, its past use, access, proximity to a mill, family size, economics, expectations, age, race, sex, education, and work responsibilities. We think that you are as uncomfortable as we are with being " averaged" (Like the guy with one foot in a pail of ice and the other in steaming water said, " On average, I'm pretty comfortable." ) Here's our observation. We know why you are not practicing superior forest management, not getting for yourself the financial gains that are possible, not contributing to the regional economy, not tending the area with trees well for the future. We can help you do all of those things. Most people do not care much about the future. Some even say, "Why should I? What has the future ever done for me?" That's a little harsh, for many people today enjoy what some in the past have done for them. Maybe being fair is as simple an idea as is needed. We hold that doing really good work today in our forests can take care of the future…so we do not have to think much more about it. We do know that people love forests and know a great deal about them … in general. Many go to meetings, watch TV, subscribe to magazines, and even join clubs and go to extended workshops to learn more about forestry. Yet they do not know enough about the particulars, the details that push sophisticated modern forestry into the profit margins for today and the future. Even some professors of forestry are not practicing superior forestry. Not doing so is not because they do not know enough. There are plenty of other reasons such as …
Heard or thought of these things? More than one of them? One or more of these can block timber harvest and forestry. We know that there are many reasons for owning forested land. One is for profit. All of the others typically require that capital is available or that profit be made to cover every year the variety of costs, challenges, and risks of land ownership. We know that " sustained yield" is a phrase often used in forestry but we know that profits of some amount are needed because there are costs. In Rural System and within its Forest Group we work to gain and sustain high profits from the physical products that are produced. Based on careful inventory and computations, we can assure you that if our plans are followed, there will be sufficient income for you to conclude "that was a good deal!" Call us at … |
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