Eastern White Pine abundance in 19th century forests: a reexamination of evidence from land surveys and lumber statistics

But the protection of Headwaters Forest did little to relieve the tension or limit the acrimonious debates among the company, state agencies, and local environmentalists over the amount and location of logging on Pacific Lumber's remaining forest holdings. The activists' furor was matched by Pacific Lumber's aggressive logging policies--policies that eventually proved unsustainable and forced the company into bankruptcy in January 2007. Humboldt County remains ground zero in what is popularly called "the timber wars."

Today, the timber wars continue. Tree sitting has become a vocation, and on any given day in Humboldt County, five or more young people are living in old-growth trees on Pacific Lumber property. Having failed in court-ordered mediation, the various parties are fighting in bankruptcy court over the future of Pacific Lumber's forests. Lines have long been drawn, emotions remain high, and the possibility of finding resolution seems dim. At the root of the irreconcilable conflict is the lack of any shared vision and any common definition of sustainable forestry.

Forests and Carbon Credits

Typical cap-and-trade systems include trading of credits from sources not covered by the "cap." Trading of these "offset" credits is an important tool to,, secure significant emission reductions in the short term while new technology is developed. Forests are a clear choice- for an offset program because they capture and store carbon naturally and have great potential to store vast amounts of it over time. Both the Kyoto Protocol and the New England system include a role for forests by allowing credits for reforestation (tree-planting) projects. The drafters of the European Trading System, however, had concerns about the credibility of forest offsets and omitted them from the European system.

A common criticism of offset trading for forest, wind energy, landfill, gas, or any other type of offset project is that such projects are not regulated or held to any standard in the current, voluntary carbon market. Despite the lack of accountability or any federal regulatory system, individual desire to combat climate change is driving a robust market for carbon offsets estimated at over $100 million last year.

Carefully crafted policies like those developed for forest projects by the nonprofit California Climate Action Registry and adopted by the California Air Resources Board address these concerns by establishing a clear standard for calculating the amount of carbon stored in addition to what would have been stored under a "business-as-usual" scenario. The additional amount stored is the net benefit to the climate and becomes the basis for a credit. Concerted action by policymakers to incorporate standardized accounting systems like California's into state and federal climate change policy would not only help address global warming, but would also create financial incentives for forest landowners to adopt long-term, sustainable forest practices.

As the scientific and economic components align, encouraging signs are also emerging in the most difficult social realm-- public opinion. Currently, with Americans increasingly identifying environmental problems as a major concern [3], protecting the environment has become a cultural value and a political necessity. The public's response to global climate change shows that society can be educated and will exercise its consumer power in an effort to address an environmental problem. We are poised to create this "radical center," promulgate a new cultural construct of sustainable forestry, and produce a holistic ethic of sustain- ability where people better understand their connection to the natural world and the resources it provides, among them air, food, water, biological diversity, and wood.

Our animated discussion in the forest clearing lasted an hour, while some members of the disparate group struggled unsuccessfully to reconcile the optimistic signs we saw all around us with their deeply ingrained pessimism, the residue of past excess, and conflict. Eventually--and for some, reluc- tandy--the group agreed with the professional foresters that rigid size and age limits wouldn't always work and that this project was indeed an example of sustainable forestry. For most of us, not only was logging like this viable from both environmental and economic perspectives, but also and most importantly, we hoped that with time and education, it would become acceptable to the broader public.

Still, the activists wouldn't admit that the pending bill they had backed was ill conceived, and the deadlock remains to this day. We climbed back into the vans and headed up the hill. We found our way out of the forest, but California still hasn't found its way out of the woods.

Endnotes

forest california fssessment

[1] For example, wood reuse and recycling may eventually become as commonplace as recycling of aluminum cans, helping reduce demand for fresh timber.

[2] As the system now exists in the United States, several different nonprofit organizations, most prominendy the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forest Initiative, bestow a sort of "green seal of approval" on umber companies that meet their specific standards for environmentally responsible forest management. Interest in these systems is growing, as evidenced by the World Bank's 2004 timber investment policy and the purchasing policies of companies like Lowe's and Home Depot, who offer their customers lumber from forests "independently certified" as sustainable. Lumber from forests meeting the Forest Stewardship Council system's requirements is given special credit by another nonprofit, the Green Building Council, in its voluntary "LEED" (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program for green buildings. See www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx7CMSPage ID=51. Although a few timber companies have already seen their market share increase due to certification, significandy greater par ticipation by retail customers is needed before forest certification can provide consistently meaningful financial rewards.

[3] See pewglobal.org/reports/display.php? ReportID=256.

[4] See www.foresthistory.org/research/usfscoll/ policy/ northern_spotted_owl/1986owlnews. html

Louis Blumberg, a member ofSAF, is director of California forest and climate policy for The Nature Conservancy, California Chapter, responsiblefor promoting landscape-scale conservation of forests in California on both private andpublic lands. His work involves the development of public policy and financing tools that support sustainable forestry, climate benefits, and sound fire management policy. He is actively involved in integrating a rolefor forests in the evolving climate change policy in California and the West, promoting forest carbon sequestration, carbon markets, and standards- based forest carbon project policy in California.

Response

Sustainable Forestry and Private Land Stewardship: A Different Perspective Bill Stewart

Imagine a parallel field trip to the one in the accompanying essay where representatives of nonprofits, government agencies, unemployed foresters, and their teenage kids are driving around San Francisco, California. They are interested in breaking the deadlock over sustainable communities and specifically addressing the shortage of affordable homes for rural residents relocating to urban areas for jobs and educational opportunities. They are exploring whether it would be socially acceptable to simply pick out some, but not all, the big homes built many decades ago with California lumber and give them to new rural immigrants. Although this story nearly parallels all the issues in the accompanying essay, i doubt that urban politicians and leaders of environmental groups based in urban areas would consider this a fair solution--especially inasmuch as their homes or their friends' homes may get chosen.

The argument over more punitive or supportive approaches to promote forest stewardship is repeated with slighdy different characters about once a decade here in California. Although the vast majority of California's private and public working forests are managed with forms of selection silviculture that result in multiaged stands and where much of the value is in the larger and older trees, you would not know that from reading the newspaper. Furthermore, it appears that periodic threats to ban the harvest of large trees sends a message to many landowners that managing for big trees may result in significant financial losses. This is not a message that bodes well for sustainable forestry in the long haul.

Forest products and forests are big issues in California. We are by far the largest consumer of lumber, paper, and packaging products of all the states. Whatever residents tell the pollsters about environmental concerns, every year they consume an increasing amount of wood products. By most estimates, California's carbon footprint would skyrocket if we shifted from our prodigious consumption of wood products to more energy-intensive alternatives such as steel, concrete, and plastics.

We are also the only state to have three national parks named after tree species (Redwood, Sequoia, and Joshua Tree) and have more forest acres in Wilderness status than any state outside of Alaska. Through the purchase of private land and redesignation of national forest land, we now have 97% of our old growth groves in protected status. Most of the remaining stands are owned by families rather than industrial timber companies. We still have lots of trees on private land--around 4 billion trees bigger than 5 inches in diameter. The Forest Inventory and Analysis data suggest that around 36 million trees are big or old enough to be restricted from harvest under the basic requirements of the most recent failed "heritage tree" bill mentioned in the accompanying essay. That is one big or old tree for every resident of the state. Mapping, measuring, and having a public meeting over each big tree would please some parties, but would do litde to create accessible new open space or assure landowners that forest management centered around trees of many sizes and ages is a reasonable venture for a family business.

Nearly all parties also agree that California's forests produce a wide array of ecosystem services. From a financial perspective, however, most of the services are essentially given away for free and generate litde or no cash value. Many parties are working to change this relationship. For example, downstream user fees on the clean water runoff from forests have been suggested but never acted on for decades. A newer and potentially large market could develop if the United States puts real prices on carbon dioxide (c02) offsets similar to. those in Europe. Such a market could potentially generate new financial value from numerous sources such as the sale of long-term forest carbon inventory contracts, higher chip prices for slash destined to generate C02-neutral electricity, and building products without the C02 emission penalty that could logically be put on competing energy-intensive products such as steel and concrete.

Forest sector opportunities are out there for both current forest managers and urban startups. However they will all need revenues that exceed costs if they are going to last. a mix of supportive regulations and honest prices for goods and ecosystem services could have strong positive impacts. a mix of expensive regulations and low prices will have the opposite effect.

Bill Stewart (stewart@nature.berkeley.edu) is a SAF member and a University of California Cooperative Extension forestry specialist based on the UC Berkeley campus.

Bi Anne Heissenbuttel and John Kessler

Response Sustainable Forestry Requires Economic Viability

It is important, when addressing what the public expects from sustainable forestry, to first identify who "the public" is. The article on "Mobilizing the Radical Center" to achieve sustainable forestry in California is replete with assertions about public opinion that more accurately reflect one segment of the public-- environmental activists such as those participating in the field trip-- not the mainstream "public" or even the "radical center" Blumberg describes. Although the participants of his field tour may strongly disagree over management options, it is incorrect to assert that, for the general public, such practices "will require a major shift in the prevailing public view." In fact, recent opinion polls demonstrate that environmental issues are well down the list of priority concerns for the public, following the nation's economy, health care, education, national security, and other issues. Even the Pew poll cited by Blumberg shows that, although there is a general increase in the percentage of Americans citing "pollution and environmental problems" as a top global threat, the percentage is still a minority of respondents, and the focus of the poll is not on forestry as an environmental issue.

Blumberg goes on to suggest that ecologically and economically sound policies for forest management may not be socially acceptable (again, acceptable to whom?), yet the requirements he promotes to satisfy his radical center are far from being economically feasible. He quotes Paul Hawken, who stated "sustainable forestry considers watershed services and biodiversity, as well as cultural values, and provides equitable rewards to individuals, communities, and other owners." However, none of the economic incentives that Blumberg promotes provide a reasonable level of economic viability. He specifically discusses financial incentives for certified logs and lumber, which actually were discontinued in 2005. He also discusses using biomass material for generation of electricity, but admits that subsidies are required to make that use viable.

Another underlying theme of the paper suggests that current forest practices in California are not sustainable. This is a completely false premise, but a likely outcome of the changes he proposes, which include new restrictions that would further erode the economic viability of any forest management scheme. Although we agree that "revenue goals should be aligned with environmentally sound outcomes," we would emphasize that where there are conflicts, new solutions must be both environmentally and economically viable. To ignore this basic need would be disastrous for our forests, because landowners needing income from their lands would be forced to convert their forests to some "higher and best use" such as shopping centers or subdivisions.

Blumberg proposes that clearcutting, a valid silvicultural tool, should be allowed only to restore damaged forests. This narrow restriction would, for example, preclude its use for regeneration of tree species that do not respond well to selective harvest. Again we agree that working forests should be managed to provide multiple benefits, but arbitrary restrictions on the type of harvest or the age and size of trees that may be cut will often preclude achievement of wildlife management and watershed protection goals. And as noted above, if the end result is to diminish the financial value of a forest, conversion to nonforest uses may be the only feasible alternative for a landowner, precluding achievement of preferred ecological and social forest resource management goals.

The Northern California SAF wrote its strong concerns with SB 754, the referenced legislation that would prohibit the cutting of all remaining old-growth trees on private lands in the state, to the lead sponsor of the bill. Among other problems noted, the bill would have imposed a clear disincentive to landowners to grow big, old trees, just the opposite of what Blumberg's radical center might strive to achieve. In addition, the bill would undermine sustainable forest management in the state by establishing huge economic obstacles through excessive and unnecessary planning, mapping, and reporting requirements.

Ignored by Blumberg, but an important factor for forest landowners, is that long-lived forest products (including wood for houses and furniture) also store carbon, and this function should be recognized in any equitable carbon trading system. Unfortunately, the California Climate Action Registry currently does not recognize the carbon stored in wood products. Neither does it allow the use of even-aged forest management systems. These two factors significantly erode its usefulness to landowners as a tool to generate revenues from their working forests and have limited the participation by timberland owners. If landowners cannot economically use their forests to generate wood products and other market values, including traditional revenue sources and potential payments for ecosystem services, credits for carbon storage, and use of wood for biomass energy, more forest land will be lost permanently to development.

Anne Heissenbuttel, CF (aeheissenbuttel@volcano.net), is a member of SAF and a California Registered Professional Forester. She is a principal with Heissenbuttel Natural Resource Consulting, located in Pine Grove, California. John Kessler, CF (jkessUr@nctv.com), is a member of SAF and a California Registered Professional Forester. He is a principal with Black Fox Timber Management Group, Inc., located in McCloud, California, and currently serves as chair of the Northern California SAF Policy Committee.

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