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A Total Forest Management Plan
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Robert H. Giles, Jr., A. L. Hammett, and Brian R. Murphy, 1998
Abstract
The total paradigm is one of regional optimization of a natural resource system (forestry and agriculture with other outdoor-related systems) to achieve human objectives. It includes environmental economics and dynamic planning, working to maximize an unconventional benefit-to-cost ratio. The benefits are a computed estimate of weighted expected achieved demand for a set of objectives. Substitutions are included. Costs are discounted over more than 50 years. A computer system is proposed for the optimization. The paradigm includes using a geographic information system and selecting commodities optimal for sites, maximizing long term benefits and minimizing costs. Directed at farms and villages within regions, the paradigm optimized in two phases, one within commodity or service enterprises, the other among all enterprises within a region. The benefits are viewed as the sum of the efforts delivered, perceived benefits at acceptable costs to diverse groups of people of a region. Emphasis is on crops, trees, and livestock but the system includes (1) profits from all possible commodities, (2) pest and loss reduction, (3) waste recycling, (4) environmental stabilization or improvement, (5) cultural stability, (6) protection of biodiversity, (7) international marketing, (8) continual education, (9) continual system improvement, (10) responsiveness to likely future conditions, (11) attention to off-site factors and forces, and (12) written and televised unique prescriptions for the people of each site.
Skirmishes between disciplines 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?" We believe that 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. We believe that some of these difficulties can be addressed by attempting to discuss, comprehend, and implement the concept of a total land production system. We call it the Total concept for brevity; it is not a small concept. Its parts are not new. It is an alternative packaging of ideas that when used together is likely to have clearly improved effects. We do not suggest that there is a new problem to be solved by the Total concept. It is merely a concept, a way of looking at and approaching a variety of problems and challenges in natural resources areas. If there is a problem to be solved, it is fundamental -- how to be more effective. That's all.
The concept of forestry is large and its meaning is debated. Our argument is that forestry should be defined as a total system of land production. When restricted to a concept of tree production for wood, forestry is very limited in its range of justifications and bases for income production and other benefits. 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 fish, and other-than-tree plants. We do not know why trees must be the only acknowledged product, the only entity that is listed as profitable from a complex system managed by people of land with trees. Often more money is made (or can be made) from so-called "minor forest products" than from tree growth; more value added by log processing than forest protection or forest health enhancement. These are topics of the rational decision-maker, the Total system manager, not merely a producer of trees. We start with land with trees, admit to the power of forestry and all of its insights, but suggest that fundamental economic theory may lead us farther down a productive pathway than retaining that often traditional and limited view (Hof 1993). We advocate Total. It is a concept of a land system producing products and services indefinitely; it includes forestry. It may not be appropriate for federal or state lands for 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.
Total probably includes the nebulous concept of "ecosystem management" but rarely do authors dealing with that phrase include financial gains, energy budgets, esthetic elements or the organizational, administrative and enforcement elements of a system that will achieve the non-specific end results of all of that management action. Not opposed to ecosystem management, we are opposed to private as well as federal land managers failing to state goals and objectives, the desired ends of management. We wonder about the meaning of writers who assert that ecosystem management "turns from production forestry." We prefer to continue to see forestry as a broad concept and field of work, one dealing with an almost unlimited array of resources, uses, and users. When foresters dealing with the forest resources then they, by definition are engaged in system production, in producing benefits for people. How well they do that -- manage production -- is the evaluation that most components of society are making. Trying to broaden the context of forestry, to return it to concepts almost a century old and to have practitioners and society understand is a task that lies ahead.
Trying to move from a concept of producing only "tree based products" to that of the Total system with a productive land and water base will be very difficult because of the societies, journals, schools, and loyalties already built. The concept is difficult to put simply. Some of its parts are complex. Here we attempt a brief statement but the meaning of the concept may become more apparent in the strategies suggested. The following 8 strategies or approaches highlight the need for and benefits of the proposed Total. The system itself is under design and development. Here 8 overlapping strategies are listed. Even if never fully implemented, we believe that implementing several of these strategies can improve landowner economics and natural resource management.
Total is a land production system maximizing a diverse set of owner benefits over a long period while minimizing costs and meeting legal and social constraints. "Land" is all of the resource, actual and potential physical and esthetic characteristics within and adjacent to an ownership -- three dimensional, above and below the soil and water surface.
Strategy 1 - Acknowledge Free Products and Services
The services in Table 1 are of inestimable value and should be recognized by societies as the shared benefits provided freely by forests. To have them, however, there must be forests and people who own land and retain them in or manage them as forests to provide benefits for which they do not get paid. No other private-property resource provides so many benefits as free goods or services to society. We believe there should be some compensation or incentives (e.g., in foregone taxes or direct payments) for people managing land well. Scoring mechanisms for the amount and quality of such management can be created. Several have tried to place value on Nature (Bengston 1994, Costanza et al. (1997)) and to assign silvicultural options for management of migratory birds (Thompson et al. 1993).
Strategy 2 - Enlarge Lists of Products, Services, and Options
There are many products of the forest (Table 1), some well recognized, others undeveloped, many only potential (but recognizable in nominal groups), and still others unknown but likely to be present based on knowledge of past rates of discovery of new products. Sufficient sources of income are listed in Table 2 to be convincing that there are more than a few traditional forest products and several forest services (as in classical concepts of economic "goods and services"). The land with trees also provides products less useful and services that are costly, according to classical economic thought.
We believe that alternative analyses will clarify the past ambivalence about consumptive and non-consumptive uses of forest animals. A deer, legally taken, is a forest product. The opportunity to hunt or fish is a service that may be sold. "Viewing deer" and "fish watching" opportunities (Smith 1994) may also be purchased. These are valuable dimensions of land, potential services widely known as "option demand." Different land units have different primeness (Giles and Koeln 1983) for supplying these products and services. One difference in land primeness is equivalent to site class difference.
Many possible natural-resource-related businesses have been explored. Upland bird populations can be managed as a business (Mullin 1994). Certainly fish and wildlife managers need to be more oriented toward marketing (Salwasser et al. 1989). Fishing, both current opportunities as well as those that can be developed, represent an alternative service and products from land. Unlike hunters, anglers may catch and release animals. This practice is widespread and suggests that the production of land is angling opportunity, not merely the biomass of harvested fish. This situation allows repeated benefits to the landowner from a single fish. Potential income, related to such angling, might be, for example, from fishing fees, guide fees, boat access fees, and bait and tackle sales. In many areas, landowners apply more strict regulation on anglers on their waters than on public waters. Strict regulation may accompany access across private land to public waters. Ponds, often created on small tracts of land of low forest productivity, can be managed intensively for (1) human food production (e.g., catfish, tilapia, hybrid striped bass); (2) recreational opportunity (e.g., where high fish density results in high catch rates popular with children); (3) trophy fish; and, (4) special-gear angling (e.g., fly rod fishing for bass and sunfish).
Strategy 3 - Increase Scope
There is something peculiar in a name that clamps on a brain and limits thought. Loyalties develop and certain things have to be done "in the name of .... " There are boundaries on all sides as in "You do forestry ... we do fisheries." Our appeal is to lay aside classical nominal issues (except those legal, and then legally appeal those that prevent production) and to get on with production of not unprofitable as well as profitable commodities, opportunities, and services.
"Land" is not a particularly useful word. It implies area. We think it means volume (5 miles beneath the mapped areas and 5 miles above it). It connotes soil and rock, but we view it mainly as things seen, water, animals, plants, and the dry (or moist) dirty (or clean) air around leaves and animals. For the modern Total person, it is also contiguous or nearby things. This is the appeal of "landscape ecology", the so-called broad-scale look at land. Land is what we control as well as that which is nearby and that which affects production from our land both positively or negatively (e.g., proximity to fire sources influences wildfire probability); it is everything with which we work ... over which we can achieve some significant level of control. Discussion regarding land should be about what can and should be done with it -- now and over the long run, into perpetuity ... at least 300 years.
Strategy 4 - Richness
Years ago a pork producer claimed that they processed "everything but the squeal" implying total system processing, use, and no waste. Modern tree mowers suggest that complete tree harvests are possible. We hasten to use the example of the pigs to recall that at one time there were great wastes. These can be called "unused products" with meaning and little humor.
Harvested or not harvested, a deer is a forest product. The hunting of deer is also profit-oriented activity or service. A deer is not one product. It is over aggregated as "deer" because it is glands, flesh, tallow, bones, antlers, hide, and hair ... and there is a real (or potential) different market for each part. New Zealand has deer farms and people there export deer parts to China. The annual waste of deer flesh in the U.S. is appalling; the failure to convert hides to useful leather products is equally amazing. These "forest products" should be converted by collection, transportation, processing, and advertising ... as in all production systems of products or services ... into potential profit, at least not wastes or incurred costs.
A walnut log carried from the forest and processed 300 miles away is a product. That same log sawed in or near the forest into furniture blanks is the same tree, from the same land, but it produced employment, salaries, and taxes in the community near the land. The product we see is not the tree but the furniture blank. Good management involves adding net value locally. Often achieving local economic stability means more than gaining high rates of return on investments. Stabilizing a local work force is a service of the forest. More importantly, that community stability is a total land service if that land is well managed. Shortsighted investors mine land of its trees or other resources. The trees may grow back; the nearby human community may not. Only management can sustain this other service of the land, i.e., community stability and all of its associated financial and social benefits.
"Richness" is used in ecological circles to mean the number of species present in an area. It is sometimes synonymous with biodiversity or diversity. In a total production system, the emphasis is on many products, a diversified product mix. Why? No sense in overlooking a good bet; no waste; diversity to stabilize. Why not?
Strategy 5 - Use the Mix
When 100 bushels of x crop has been worth $500 and 100 bushels of y crop worth $500, then it seems reasonable to invest in both about equally. No sense in putting all of your resources in to one crop. If the price of crop y dipped to $2.50 a bushel, most people would, if they could, shift more of their production to crop x. Few people are pure tree growers, but many grow trees to make money. Even those small private woodland owners that claim that profit is fifth or sixth in importance in a list or reasons why they hold woodland (pride of ownership, wildlife and nature, family tradition, recreation) will shift their action and cut trees if the price is right or their financial need is great enough. Finding the value at which they will harvest all of their trees is an interesting academic problem. Land in trees obviously may have a monetary value. Once all costs and alternatives are considered, that value may not be positive. It is reasonable to do at least limited financial analyses on land to provide one basis for relative analyses of potential gains from land. (Such analyses themselves are a forest land-related service).
Much literature suggests that forestland owners should provide for wildlife. The connotation is that other use(s) should be given up. This is not necessary. If single-crop wood production is the criterion for success, then some production will be foregone in the perfectly designed and optimized forest that is maximizing present-net value. There are so few such areas that this is a false criterion. There need not be forestland investment loss when wildlife or other products are used. We suggest there can be a profitable mix of products (but hasten to add that determining the optimum mix is not simple). In a simple two-product example there may be two scenarios:
1 - Gross sale of forest production of $100,000 present-discounted at 0.06 after 30 years = $17,411.
2 - Forest production from 90% of land in the above example in trees but with 10% devoted to wildlife production and annual returns from hunting-opportunity leases over 30 years at $500 per year results in a present-discounted value of $22,465.
The concept illustrated is not one of tree vs. animal competitors but of mutual or joint production discussed by Teeguarden (1982:276-290) and Hof (1993). Scenario "2" above has a larger present value than scenario 1. It would be selected by the rational decision-maker (even though annual income is very conservative and a liberal yield of tree profit is foregone to achieve wildlife benefits). We emphasize that there are multiple products, and there are annual returns possible in the long periods between traditional tree harvests.
Strategy 6 - Expand the Horizon
The above two scenarios within Total also suggest a major way to overcome the income and tax disadvantage of forestry as an investment. When land is managed well for forestland owners, they will get annual reports on gains in product sales and production. They will also receive information on land quality increase, land sale value increase, and tax benefits as well as costs and losses in taxes, poaching, trespass, uncontrolled fire, and other losses. The trivial accounting in scenario 1 and 2 will not meet the needs in Total. To concentrate on the harvest date at the planning horizon as the only productive time of the forest misses one of the points of Total. Product harvest dates are spaced throughout the ownership life, providing income incrementally to the owner, whereas timber gives income gained only at irregularly spaced harvest times.
Just as "forest" turns thoughts to trees, "land" turns thoughts to terrestrial communities. Forests are often managed as watersheds; there are entire wetland forests; riparian systems are as influenced by water as by land. Land and water are inseparable. Total includes ocean estuary, wetlands, rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. These are nameable land units and within them we see the ground for productive enterprises - those producing potentially-profitable products and services.
Strategy 7 - Increase the Scale
It is commonly felt that the small private forestland owner cannot "make money" because he or she is too small. The owner often cannot afford a consultant's advice, new software, or a computer. Owners cannot rotate harvests, stabilize income, engage in any cost-effective work. However, Total requires working to achieve an appropriate scale at which financial analyses can be useful. The larger the scale of management, the greater may be the diverse opportunities for hunting, fishing, and other production. Each land unit can be managed in accord with its characteristics as a subsystem of the larger constrained, for-profit system. One area may be managed for trophy deer as, in a similar example, catch-and-release regulations can be placed on a stream fishery. Habitat of many types can be far more cost-effectively managed at a large than at a small scale. Rather than the optimum farm or forest size being encouraged as part of Total, the optimum enterprise is the management unit. In Table 2 are the potential enterprises working on many farms or lands -- in an open, willing-seller, for-profit, shared-gains mode. Total is a concept of a potential land use enterprise, united by an allegiance, not by ownership but by land products and services under contract to a sophisticated, profit-oriented management group.
Strategy 8 - Mix Profitable Products
Others have listed the many products of the forest and the thousands of things for which wood is used. We feel this awareness is needed and that it should be linked to other aspects of the Total paradigm. One key aspect of the paradigm is that a product or service must be recognizable by many people. There are many private, "secret" benefits of forestland, which need not be discussed here. These products need to make a significant difference, and need to have the potential, under reasonable management, to produce a positive estimate of expected present net value. We do not insist upon high profit because of the importance of all land resources (Table 1) as well as the importance of community stability, regional populations, and employment opportunities. Society may invest in some of its land and its people even though a positive conventional net-present-value return may not be obtained.
We suggest striving for a positive financial situation with land services and products. This has not always occurred and thus the "other products" of the forest do not have a positive image. We contend (as part of the Total concept), that product enterprises need to be developed. By example, we suggest not optimizing "the forest" but each product enterprise over an optimum number of forests, communities, or watersheds. The orientation of the enterprise (rather than of the farm or forest) allows the manager to achieve economies of scale, and economies in exports, transportation, drying, management, health, insurance, advertising, storage, and other functions. The enterprise, alone, does not guarantee profit every year. It does however, produce income between traditional harvest periods. By using the advantages of a planned, multiple-product enterprise system, one with adequate scale, then cash flow problems are reduced or eliminated when compared to those of the manager of a pure tree- cropping system. Many seasonal problems common in forestry and related enterprises (e.g., the hunting and fishing season, fruiting periods, fire season, etc.) can be reduced by shifting labor and equipment among enterprises. Throughout the year, gender differences in work can be accommodated. Lulls in some markets can be disastrous without the protection of several optimized enterprises working together for their mutual long-term continuance with joint profits. As above, we suggest that employment in meaningful work, with low or zero net discounted gain, may be a modest success criterion.
We think the Total paradigm is appropriate for the future. It has precedence in the forestry literature and in agricultural systems. It provides the practical ground for using research conclusions. It is profit-oriented; has an appropriate planning horizon; has a rich base of knowledge on which to build; retains private property rights; is voluntary; is suitable for most areas of the world; and is subject to the regulations and laws of the land. We believe it is a reasonable basis for inter- and multi-disciplinary work ... at least for the light that its discussion can bring to current problems associated with things called "forest products."
Additional notes on Total.
Literature Cited
Best, C. and L. Wayburn. 1995. In diversity is wealth. J. Forestry 93(8): 6-9. Bengston, N. 1994. The nature of value, and the value of nature. p. 57-62 In "People and Forests: Meeting the Challenge of Tomorrow", SAF Publication 94-01. Bethesda, MD.
Giles, R. H. and L. A. Nielsen. 1990. A new focus for wildlife resource managers. J. Forestry 88 (3): 21-26.
Giles, R. H. and G. Koeln. 1983. Land and cropland primeness: concepts and methods of determination. Env. Management 7(2): 129-142.
Hammett, A. L. 1993. Non-timber forest products: profits and panacea? Focus on Jaributi, Forest Research and Survey Centre, Occasional Paper 2/93, Kathmandu, Nepal 3pp.
Hof, J. 1993. Coactive forest management. Academic Press, New York, NY, 189 pp.
Messerschmidt, D. A. and A. L Hammett. 1993. Indigenous knowledge of alternative forest resources extraction and marketing: significance for community and farm forestry planning and management, p. 19-30 In "From farmers' fields to data field ... and back: a synthesis of participatory approaches to resource information systems", Workshop Proceeding, Inst. of Agric. and Animal Sci., Tribhuvan University, Rampur, Chitwan, Nepal. pp. 19-30.
Mullin, M. 1994. Upland gamebird preserves: The opportunity for an alternative enterprise.Forest Farmer 53 (3): 9-11, 24.
Salwasser, H., G. Contreras, M. Dombeck, and K. Silorits. 1989. A marketing approach to fish and wildlife program management. Tram. N. Am. Wildlife and Nat. Res. Conf. 54: 261-270.
Smith, C. L. 1994. Fish watching: an outdoor guide to freshwater fishes. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 216 pp.
Teeguarden, D. E. 1982. Multiple services p. 276-290 In Duerr, W. A., and D. E. Teeguarden, N. B. Christiansen, and S. Guttenberg eds., Forest resource management OSU Bookstores, Inc., Corvallis, Oregon, 612 pp.
Thompson, F.R. III, J. R. Probst, and M.G. Raphael. 1993. Silvicultural options for neotropical migratory birds In D. Finch Ed. status and management of neotropical migratory birds. U.S.D.A. Forest Services Gen. Tech. Rpt. RM-229, Ft. Collins, CO. 422 p.
Table 1. Representative alternative enterprises including non-traditional concepts, opportunities, and services based in part on Messerschmidt and Hammett 1993.
Products
Lumber-structural (e.g., housing and mine props)
Lumber - from which thousands of nominal products are made
Sawn wood - local products such as furniture blanks
Boat woods - rafts, dugouts, etc.
Fence woods
Pulp - whole tree, billet/stick, chips
Range forage
Charcoal
Fuelwood - heating and cooking; steam engines
Resin
Latex (rubber)
Fodder (leaves and stems for livestock)
Mulch (gardening and landscaping
)
Vines
Rattan and furniture "cane"
Rope materials
Basket wood
Fibers for cloths/textiles
Spices
Chemical extracts
Grasses - paper products
Needles - livestock bedding and mulch
Energy woods (biomass, primary or secondary)
Extracts (e.g., tannin)
Wild animal products
Potentially Profitable Services of the Forests
Photo opportunities
Potentially Profitable Services for the Forest
Managerial services (all related topics)
Integrated vertebrate faunal damage management
Specialty fencing systems
Fire system
Insect/disease damage management
Software, information, and data analyses
Research (for profit, contract)
Nature-based organizations (for many of the above)
Education programs (for profit units; all ages)
Security (physical and other security)
Table 2. Alternative enterprises based on non-traditional concepts of forest products and service (based in part on Giles and Nielsen 1990 and Best and Wayburn 1995).
1. Total Furbearer System - fur, photography, medicinal
2. Managerial Services
3. Avian System - bird walks, tourism, pest control, game bird population enhancement, sales of seed and supplies
4. Fishing - fees, bait, equipment
5. Software and Data
6. Medicinal Plants
7. Livestock - managed herds of goats, cattle, and horses
8. Nursery Products
9. Fencing - specialty fencing woods and services
10. Research - contract, for-profit work
11. Ecotourism
12. Gardens
13. Recreational Trails - hikers and horses
14. Fee Hunting
15. Game and Nature-based Organization Operation Management
16. Education - for-profit units; all ages
17. Fruits and Nutmeats
18. Chemical Products - e.g., taxol, tannin
19. Mushrooms
20. Floral Products
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