A unit of Lasting Forests Sustained forests; sustained profits evolving since March 30, 1999

You have heard what was said at this conference and Gloria Manning will help analyze and compare these things. In contrast, let me share with you what I believe is an important result of this conference. It is a singular perception, a whole brand new concept that I did not have when I walked into the hotel. It is a reaction to, not a summary, of a conference.

It is my perception that we have witnessed an extraordinary event. We have been a part of it and viewing it at the same time. A hundred men and women in "tight times" decided consciously and deliberately to come together to discuss "environmental issues affecting forestry and forest products industries in the Eastern U.S." We have met for 2.5 days ... and "discuss" we did! But now we feel frustrated. In the most modern of settings with the most modern of equipment with assistance form extremely well-informed people we feel ill-at-ease. We did not succeed.

I suggest the need for an awakening. I am not at all sure I know the consequences of my observation. I struggle toward the light and I request your help. I do not make this observation to be evil, or impolite, or just to create editorial attraction. It is a call to awareness; a call to seek new strategies for achieving the important objectives stated for us all by the steering committee and Dr. Dolan. It is an expression of a need to awake together. Our conference itself is educational. Old conferences were good; appropriate for their day. They no longer work for the modern problems with which we all grapple.

I am like the mule hit with a 2x4. Perhaps it was laminated. This conference finally got my undivided attention. I have known there were changes but the reality has finally engulfed me:

• we cannot agree on anything in the university; within the society; between societies; between the public- the environmentalists - the industry -- except in the most general and vague concepts.
• we have very diverse education; many do not graduate from highschool
• there is diverse commitment to and skepticism about our political system
• there is extreme difference in socio-economic groups; abject poverty to striking richness
• strange patterns of knowledge about nature, forests, and animals gained from piecemeal TV
• unreconcilable differences in public as well as corporate policy and actions.

It may be that the old ways of doing business won't work and that nothing else will either. Other civilizations have destroyed themselves. This is an un-American thought and more pessimistic than I usually allow myself to be, but I think the evidence is squarely on the side of rational hopelessness. I struggle on with a little hope, wondering if you will ponder with me the alternatives. We can "fix it", achieve ovjectives outlined by Dolan at the start of the conference, but the work ahead is enormous, available, but far from operational. The conference, based on my one-person observation, failed. We had a wonderful conference that through no fault of its planning or conduct or facility, failed. It did so because the problem was insurmountable. We have asked too much of our conference. Perhaps we have asked too much from our current way of doing business. The problems, however, are real and there are possibilities for skillful, strategic action that can turn things around. Selecting and operating on only one will not be sufficient.

I am making this observation in parallel with another one about U.S. citizens. We have heard it several times. There are mostly city folks out there; 70 percent. In Texas 8 out of 10 university enrolees come form 5 major cities. No one in our voting Congress-calling, letter-writing, injunction-filing, sign-carrying, marching public has ever seen a chicken killed, chopped wood, gotten a jeep stuck, or tied down things in a night storm. The point: things have changed; people have changed. They just don't understand (and its not our fault.) We assume they know too much. Les Pengelly of Montana used to say of the public: never underestimate their intelligence; always underestimate their information (1964).

• we did not see emerge a concept of more scientific observations
• we saw no new pattern of rational thinking
• we heard about magic, emotion and relations to the whole, not just parts
• we praised forestry as practiced well and taught in superior schools for over 50 years
• we have no new concept or definition of an "environmentally sound forestry operation"
• we have no new plan for recognition of superior practices
• a new research cooperative has not emerged
• I noticed no new incentives proposals to counteract disincentives.

• phone calls are not to people
• phone calls are not returned
• complaints are met with counter complaints or shared sympathy
• a public meeting to educate is often an embittering event
• publications on any research topic now exceed our ability or time to read the abstracts
• publication lists are too long to scan for relevance
• software is now excessive, taking more time to learn it than the time it will save once learned
• the USFS is said to be "broke"
• the wall is down; our Enemy is divided
• wars break out like lighting fires in a dry forest.

My wife thinks I'll never kill myself. She claims I'll never finish the suicide note. My list of environmental concerns and factors is very long. I cannot explain anything about the complex environment in "a paragraph or two." To be brief about something as large, complex, and complicated as the environment with its combinations an permutations is to be wrong. To act as if we could be brief is to be silly: to show that we don't know that we don't know. The public sees through silliness and arrogance. The dimensions of any environmental situation are so great that the average, well-educated forestry graduate cannot possibly discuss it well. That person cannot even list all of the relevant factors.

I hasten to add that I have met many below-standard graduates of our forestry and wildlife schools and as a taxpayer I am incensed by them and as a professor I am embarrassed. The university has gotten by without scathing comment in this conference. It is now rare for us to be treated so kindly. We admit, as others around us to some real problems. There is guilt enough on all sides to share. Grade inflation has occurred; curricula have diversified; and (I speak from experience) synthetic courses are presented to advanced students who have little in their heads to synthesize. We're not doing comprehensive wildland management half as well as we know how.

There are suggestions that I have developed from the conference:

1. Talk total systems. Perfect knowledge about 2 parts of a 10-point problem will usually result in decision failure.

2. Build and use large computer simulations: Let a particularly obnoxious person with a proposal enter that idea and see what will be an index to all of the consequences -- to him or her and others.

3. Deny the equality of every opinion: One-person; one vote is silly. Jefferson himself insisted on education as fundamental for democracy. I love Thomas' work but his emphasis on the hump in the curve is wrong: Castro was in the tail of the curve and look at Cuba. You cannot talk center-of-the population and also about leadership. A leader is in that tail of the curve about which Thomas spoke.

4. Work for the new modular manager -- a person (1) better educated in a specialty (2) with a connector or linking thought pattern, and with (3) planned long-term education. Efforts to educate generalists have failed (there are exceptions that do not deny this observation). They are rare and cannot be produced. They emerge over time. Producing generalists is like teaching a pig to sing: It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

5. Several speakers suggested the need for more information brought to each decision. Holtje argued for multi-group, inter-agency coalitions to improve management. Given the vast needs (tens of thousands of units), diversity of areas and situations, dynamics, costs, and staff layoffs alternative ways (other than teams) are needed to use the knowledge now available (e.g., expert systems, models, and dynamic planning systems).

6. Return to the oldest phrase in education: To believe the message is to believe the messenger. Mr. Ticknor make this point as he emphasized the lack of trust by society of its resource institutions. We all have to work at this national illness that creeps into society from gambling, sports frauds, political failures, and crime on the street or in the office. We are all infected by this evil pathogen.

7. We need to do serious financial analyses. Many forester do not "like economics." Many wildlifers do not even have one course in economics or finance. When only 16% of the regional land base is in federal lands we must think of the other 84% as potentially productive and not just units of "reserved productive forests", not just wood (for that will bankrupt you) but all uses together in a managed financial, entrepreneurial unit. Only a little over half of all tree-covered land in the U.S. is classed as timberland. Wouldn't it be wise to work on profits, not just wood produced, from all of the many (yet unexploited uses) of such tree-covered land?

8. As agencies cut back while needs increase there will be new roles for action groups, new enterprises, and entrepreneurial groups to meet these needs. There will be less need "to discuss" because these NG0's can move out of many political and regulatory loops and traps.

9. We're trying to get one phrase, ecosystem management to do too much work, to carry too great a load. Our topics are too numerous, too mixed for the simple phrase to work. We need 10-20 work groups to (as Giltman said) "carry these concepts across the city limits into urban America." We need to work with our words in a more scholarly way than in the past. We cannot plead for more science one day with its increased precision and rigor, then in the next day wonder why college-educated citizens are amused by biodiversity, sustainability, land ethic and forest health and otherwise meaningless (or at worst confounding) words. Why should "financial analysis" be assumed to be part of ecosystem management. Why do ecologists spend so mush time deriving a precise definition for ecosystem? Does it really have no meaning? Convinced that people are a factor in primitive ecosystems (Buchner), are therefore logically to be included vacation homes and logging camps? Viewscapes? Why should the public follow us down such an ambiguous pathway? Stop the emphasis on the ecosystem. Not just ecology but interactively the 4-E's -- ecology, economics, esthetics, and energetics are needed. A regional strategy (Aplet) will include these. The total system, not forest system, not natural system, not eco-system but total system is needed. We can now do it. We have new tools.

11. We need to present the limits to the human system. Often such presentations were called a scare tactic. The alternative is a positive "score" that can be followed and presented as a synthetic index to every person's question of "how are we doing?"

12. The field demonstration may work in small local areas but we're talking about work over 80% of the land. And people cost energy and time to get them to the demonstration. They do not know once they have experienced it what to do with the observations. The demonstration has to be taken by TV to the public. We're not talking about educating 2000 kids - merely 300 million in a world parade passing at 3 people per second.

13. We need a new Rules of Order (as in Roberts Rules) for discussion and public involvement about forestry and the environment. Perhaps we can incorporate assistance from the courts that will allow well-meaning action from trustworthy people to proceed in achieving long term social objectives.

14. We have to separate better the managed land, the owners, and the citizen's role. We badly need to segment our publics. We have many small owners; many not interested in harvests; many having acreage with trees but not ruled as timberland (20 cubic ft/acre/yr). The same words or messages cannot serve all groups.

I was 34 yesterday and now I am 61. I've seen plenty of changes but

• in 1954 I heard the same appeals for more education. 50 years and 50 million dollars later I heard the same yesterday, and today.
• in 1964 I heard the need for better understanding of the ecosystem and for cooperative efforts ("partnership").
• in 1974 along with many others I gave 35 public lectures on the population crisis.
• in 1984 I heard the appeal for baseline studies and ecological inventories.
• in 1984 I heard we have 50 years of oil left.
• in 1984 H.T. Odum published Systems Ecology

• Target your work in the decision makers -- don't do general stuff
• Strike at the sensitive points; don't wrestle fat problems.
• Lay aside classical science. Science is great but it is a process; seek knowledge by however you can get it. There is no more money, no more time. Too many species. We must be more like the medical doctor -- single patient, unique, adaptive decide today -- check and revise tomorrow. We've been led astray by the scientific paradigm after Sputnik.
• Use the power of the computer, particularly expert systems and hypermedia.
• Look for and use analogies: the life cycle of yesterday evening is isomorphic with ecologic succession of yesterday morning.
• Form diverse companies and when demands increase and state and federal servers decrease as we were told by Thomas, the time is right for the new varied organization able to exploit the gold-horde of knowledge of past research.
• Learn energy budgeting - whole system energy budgeting and lead society into the fossil-energy short world coming within the life-time of the people here this room.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.