North Carolina Division - Appalachian Society of SAF

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I worked as an industrial forester in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado. We purchased live pine, spruce, and fir timber from the surrounding national forests and hauled it to one of three sawmills that made dimensional lumber for the Denver housing market. Life was good. Each mill supported about 100 employees in the mill or woods. The wages they made supported their families and paid taxes. The federal treasury received money for the stumpage we bought. The county schools and roads were supported by the 25% funds generated by the timber sales. Heavy fuels, composed of down, dead logs, were removed from the forest by a process we called “YUM” (Yarding Unmerchantable Material). Industry and government foresters, trained at the same universities, but pursuing separate career paths after graduation, worked together toward a common goal – creating a well-managed, regulated forest of various age classes from wild, essentially even-aged, natural stands.

Always lurking in the background, however, was the threat of invasion by bark beetles that hit the lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce especially hard. When we detected the occasional outbreak, industry and government jumped right on it, working cooperatively to control the insects by pre-salvage logging before they flared out of control. Fortunately, we had the mills to take the infested logs to, where they could still be converted into useful products before the spoilage began.

There weren’t many graduate industrial foresters in northern Colorado in those years, but we did what we could to educate the public and our elected representatives about the importance of the USFS timber sale program and its role in creating new, more beetle-resistant stands. As the years went by and the old-growth stands continued to age, we knew we were in a race for time. Sooner or later, if we didn’t harvest the trees, nature would. We continued to preach the pro-management message to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately, not enough people did and the loggers, always tolerated at best and derided at worst, were gradually eased out of the woods by political pressure.

Finally, the 1990s arrived and with it came the virtual collapse of the timber sale program on the national forests. The mill I worked for closed its doors for lack of timber supply after operating on the same site for 70+ years. All of the employees that worked there moved away, gone with the wind. No longer would there be a local processing facility where beetle-infested logs could be taken. The trees, and the beetles that killed them, remained standing in the woods where the insects built up to epidemic proportions.

Our worst nightmare finally came to fruition in the mid 2000s. In the space of a few short years, the remaining stands of old growth trees succumbed to the inevitable insect scourge. Old-growth stands, well over rotation age, carrying 150–200 square feet of basal area per acre, and composed of 5” – 9” dbh trees having 40 annual rings in the outer inch of wood, didn’t stand a chance. I now read reports that up to 90% of the lodgepole pines in my old operating area are dead and being salvaged as raw material for a fuel pellet plant. There is such a glut of dead trees on the market that stumpage has dropped to zero. In other words, the pellet mill is taking dead timber off of private land and paying nothing for it. The landowner benefits by having a cleared site and potential fuel hazard removed. I’ve even heard reports of contractors offering bids to landowners of $4,000 per acre to remove the trees, just to be rid of them before the inevitable fires come.

The point of all this is that forests, both public and private, must be managed if they are to provide a steady, reliable flow of goods and services to a modern industrial nation of 300+ million people. By managed, I mean that stands should be optimally stocked with a mix of species matched to the site to meet the landowners’ objectives. Forests must be protected from fire, insects, and disease to reduce natural mortality to a minimum. Soil, the basis of all life, must be used but at the same time conserved for future generations. Regular logging must take place to keep stocking at desired levels and to final harvest the crop trees when they are mature. Harvested stands must be promptly regenerated so long-term sustainability is assured. A variety of species and age classes must be created by regular harvesting to reduce the risk of total loss from a single destructive agent and to create inviting wildlife habitat. A network of roads must be maintained so that all areas of a property can be accessed for necessary silvicultural activities. And finally, forest products must be skillfully marketed so the landowner receives an encouraging financial return from years of custodial effort.

Where do SAF members fit into this picture? We are the forest management professionals, trained in ecology, measurement, harvesting, silviculture, protection and a myriad of other topics that allow us to make sound, science-based decisions regarding the future of the forests we manage. We must be the ones to take the pro-forestry message to the public and to our elected representatives, always keeping in mind the lessons revealed to us by the non-managed forests of the West. We must keep a vigilant eye out for well-meaning but misguided policies that restrict our ability to make independent, professional judgment calls on our clients’ behalf. We must always keep in mind that, should proactive forest management lapse here, what happened to the forests of the interior mountain West could happen to us as well.

In other news, I’m pleased to report that the North Carolina Division had a very successful summer meeting at Little River Golf & Resort near Carthage in early June. Close to 130 participants listened as a variety of guest speakers discussed topics relating to the growing urbanization in our state and the accompanying forest management challenges and opportunities. If you missed their presentations, no problem; you can still view them on our APSAF-NC Division web site. The meeting was financially successful as well, although at this writing we still had a few outstanding transactions that prevent the preparation of a final report. The generated funds will be used to support worthy forestry activities that promote the mission of our Society.

Speaking of meetings, please mark your calendars for January 26-28, 2011. The 2011 ApSAF annual meeting will be held at the Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston, SC.

If you see our own William Snyder, please give him hearty congratulations for being elected an SAF Fellow. Fellowship status recognizes a lifetime of dedicated service to the profession of forestry.

As a final message, I hope you will all remember that membership is the lifeblood of SAF. If you have a friend or colleague who might benefit from membership, why not invite him or her to your next chapter meeting? Let’s each do our best to reverse the recent declining trend in membership by signing up just one new member this year. Our motto for the year should be, “Member, get a member.” Information about membership can be found at the SAF web site. Please take a few moments to review it. It will be worth your time to do so.

Past Chair's Messages:

4/5/2010