Thursday, March 29, 2012

American Timber Harvesters: A Dying Breed?


Last weekend we had the privilege of meeting with the principals of about thirty timber harvesting firms from across America.  The group was meeting in Washington, D.C., where their association staff executive granted the Endowment the opportunity to visit with them about the future of this critical link in the forestry sector value chain.

Does Profitability Make a Difference?
In preparing for the meeting, we reviewed the results of a recent survey conducted by Timber Harvesting Magazine.  The study looked at the profitability of timber harvesting businesses across the U.S.  While the results might not pass academic muster for scientific purposes, the results were no less telling. 

For the calendar year 2010, on a “pre-tax” basis, more than one-half of all firms reported either losing money or at best breaking even.  When those making less than a 10% return on their investment – something few would consider a “get-rich-quick scheme” or much less enough to provide a healthy financial foundation -- the number skyrocketed to fully 94% of all firms.

Lest you think this was a tiny sample, more than 800 firms from 39 states responded to the survey.  Based on the best available information, that’s roughly 10% of the entire sector.  And, 2011 was likely even more economically challenging!

Should You Care about the Plight of Loggers?
Why should we at the Endowment – and you, if you care about healthy forests – be concerned about timber harvesting businesses?  The answer to that question has many parts.  First, without a robust and financially-sound logging sector, how can one “manage” forests?  Without harvesters how will America’s sawmills, pulp & paper mills, and growing number of wood-to-energy facilities, get wood from the forest to a conversion facility?  When landowners need to thin a forest to ensure that it is more resilient, healthy, and resistant to insects, diseases, and wildlife, how is such to be achieved without a market for the wood and a means to harvest the desired material?

An often stated truth is that the lion’s share of American forest landowners sadly don’t avail themselves of the service of a forester when they decide to conduct a timber sale.  Yet, 10 of 10 landowners do call on a logger.  That’s a powerful and critical connection that offers tremendous value if society could better capture it.

Forest Management Requires an “Axe”
All-too-often we who are concerned about America’s forests have viewed loggers as there when they are needed.  Something that can be “turned on” or “turned off” as needed.  Even worse, many look at them as necessary evils.  Such thinking has led to literally thousands of small businesses approaching the brink of economic disaster.  Aldo Leopold, a forester called the “father of American wildlife management,” said the “axe” is necessary to manage forests.  Few of us are trained or equipped to “deploy” that axe ourselves.

We may find, albeit too late, that without a professional, well-trained, well-equipped, and financially-sound timber harvesting sector, America’s forests and Americans who care about them are the ultimate losers. 

More later on what we at the Endowment are doing to try and create a brighter future.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

24 Hours, 24 Ways Forestry Improves Our Lives

The following story comes from Craig Rawlings at the Forest Business Network. The Endowment has collaborated with The Conservation Fund's ShadeFund, the Forest Guild, Dovetail Partners, and the Pinchot Institute for Conservation to create this list of "24 Ways Forestry Improves Our Everyday Lives." Check out the list and dig a little deeper with links to videos, reports, and fact sheets. 


Today is no ordinary Wednesday. In 1971, the 23rd General Assembly of the European Confederation of Agriculture gave birth to the idea that we should designate one day around the world to celebrate the world’s forest and all that they offer for “protection, production, and recreation.” The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation agreed that this could help grow public awareness of forests around the world and officially made March 21 of each year ‘World Forestry Day.’


Forestry…

1. Produces products that are both safe and sturdy

With proper design and maintenance, wood products are some of the most durable and safe on the market. Resistant in instances of high humidity, tough to break, and minimally processed, wood surpasses many other raw materials as the safest and sturdiest choice for everything from our homes to our children’s toys.


2. Produces products that can be recycled and are also biodegradable, and thus do not clog our landfills for generations.


3. Helps improve air quality

Better air quality means better health and lower spending on healthcare. Tree cover in Washington, DC saves $51 million in healthcare costs each year.


4. Helps sequester carbon from the atmosphere

  • Carbon is stored in the forest as trees grow.
  • Carbon is also stored in the wood products we use in our homes and businesses.
  • Wood building materials release less carbon into the atmosphere during production than other materials such as concrete, steel and glass
  • See how the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities’ Softwood Lumber Check-off Program will promote messages like these, and more, to increase acceptance and use of softwood lumber.

5. Provides places to visit and opportunities for outdoor recreation


6. Provides beautiful landscapes and scenic vistas

Healthy forests and forested landscapes are some of the most beautiful places to visit. Whether you seek to find spring flowers or take a tour of fall colors, forestry provides opportunities to view and enjoy the beauty of nature.


7. Provides wildlife habitat and promotes biodiversity

  • Forestry supports diverse wildlife habitat and healthy wildlife populations.
  • Forestry supports opportunities for hunting, wildlife viewing, bird watching and other types of outdoor recreation.
  • Forests managed at a moderate or low intensity for a wide variety of goods, services, and natural values, not unlike the New England “working forest” concept, provide habitat primarily as a function of being maintained in forestland use. These lands, both public and private, encompass the majority of the forest area of the U.S. and, with the broad diversity of management approaches on individual tracts of varying size, provide an accompanying diversity of habitats in terms of age, successional stage, vegetative composition, climate and landform. Read more about this in the Pinchot Institute for Conservation’s report titled ‘Sustainable Forestry and Biodiversity Conservation: Toward a New Consensus.’

8. Provides food and other culturally important products

Forestry supports the production of important food crops, including fruits, nuts, and special products like maple syrup. Forestry supports culturally important products such as birch bark crafting, basket weaving and medicinal plant collecting. Read an article on basket making (scroll to p. 10).


9. Employs thousands of people

Sustainable forestry can be used to address chronic rural poverty in developing countries – and prevent deforestation.

10. Offers a source of renewable energy

The branches and tops left after a timber harvest provide a low-carbon, domestic energy source that can help move us towards a renewable energy economy

11. Makes clean and safe water more available and utilities cheaper

There are clear linkages between water quality and the cost of water treatment. A number of studies show measurable, statistically significant changes in the cost of water treatment as a result of source water quality degradation.

12. Protects water quality and improves soil quality, particularly on trails and roads during management activities.

Guidelines have been developed for removal of woody biomass that protect water quality and other important forest conditions.

13. Cools climate

The energy consumption linked to wood products manufacturing is low compared to energy requirements for competing products such as steel and concrete. Carbon emissions are similarly lower.

14. Helps reduce urban heat islands

  • Trees and forestry are important in all of our communities. Urban forestry supports the care and responsible use of our urban forests. Urban forests are important because of their size and scope, their impact on local economies, and the many social and environmental benefits they provide, due in large part to their proximity to people. According to the U.S. Forest Service, urban trees in the contiguous U.S. account for nearly one-quarter of the nation’s total tree canopy cover—approximately 74 billion trees.
  • Urban forestry—sometimes referred to as urban forest management—is the planning and management of trees, forests, and related vegetation within communities to create and add value. Throughout the past two centuries in the U.S., the focus of urban forestry has shifted from one of beautification to one that includes the environmental, conservation, economic and social benefits of community trees and urban forests.
  • Read Dovetail Partners’ report – Urban Forestry: A Revolving Discipline.

15. Provides a tool for restoring fire adapted forests

  • Millions of acres of western forests have become unhealthy because of a century of fire suppression.
  • Collaborative forestry provides a way to restore these forest to historic conditions.
  • Read about a Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program project in the Cibola National Forest.

16. Helps protect our communities from wildfire and ensures that they do not become out of control

Forestry operations provide the knowledge and economic drivers to reduce the threat of wildfire around communities in fire adapted forests.


17. Offers tools for addressing invasive pests and pathogens that threat our forests

Unfortunately, exotic attackers from gypsy moth to sudden oak death threaten our forests, and forestry offers tools to respond to these invaders.


18. Is part of vibrant rural communities

Forestry is part of the tradition and future of rural communities across the country.


19. Helps conserve forestland and protects sensitive areas

Through working forest conservation easements, land owners can ensure their land remains as forest while still providing income and forest products.


20. Finds creative uses for wood affected by pests and disease

Forestry allows for the recycling and creation of one of-a-kind wood products from trees that must be removed due to diseases and pests, such as the emerald ash borer. Small businesses like City Bench utilize these diseased trees to make one-of-a-kind wood furniture.


21. Allows for the continued growth and regeneration of healthy forests, keeping forests as forests.


22. Protects utilities from becoming disconnected.

Forestry prevents damage during storms so power and utilities do not become disconnected.


23. Provides tools to respond to a changing climate.

The changing climate is already altering where trees grow best and forestry gives us tools for adapting to new climate realities. Read the report: Climate Change, Carbon, and the Forests of the Northeast.


24. Allows for the retention of carbon in manufactured forest products such as lumber.

Read more about the Softwood Lumber Check-Off Program and how it will promote softwood lumber usage.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Putting Faces with Names; Details with Concepts

The Endowment is a very small organization with only five full-time employees augmented by one or two university interns.  As one might guess given the breadth of our work, our three program leads spend a great deal of time on the road.  Those visits to the field and related travel afford the opportunity for many to get to know our team members personally.

Using Technology to Expand Outreach
With the help of our “below 30 team” – read: interns—we’ve begun adding brief videos to our set of communication tools.  We know that this is important not only for a younger video generation but also to allow others with interest to see and hear from our team at least in a virtual way.

Adding Depth and Background to the Annual Report
The Endowment, an organization that operates on a calendar year for its fiscal/tax purposes, works very hard to get our annual report on the street as quickly as possible each year.  The latest was no exception.  Our 2011Annual Report was out-the-door and on our website before the end of February.  We think that’s fast by any measure.

In the release that accompanied our report, we committed to adding some depth and background with video links.  While we have several planned over coming weeks, we’ve posted the first of those already.  Take a look and let us know what you think.  


President & CEO Carlton Owen discusses the Endowment's Operating Context. 

Senior Vice-President Peter Stangel--Healthy Watersheds through Healthy Forests.


Vice-President Alan McGregor shares details of the Forest Investment Zones. 

Thursday, March 01, 2012

A Commitment to Transparency

Many politicians are learning the all-too-important lesson that in the Internet-age any comment made once – either verbally or in writing – seemingly lives forever.  Context rarely matters.  In such times one would think that transparency is a given.  We tend to differ.  Transparency is far more than just having access to every comment (and flub) that someone makes.

Transparency or the commitment to open processes and/or reporting of decisions, even in the Internet-age, is still an exception rather than the rule.  One of the early commitments that the Endowment made as an organization was to develop a set of values and then detailed stewardship principles that put “feet to those values.”  The seventh and foundational of our stewardship principles is summed up as, “We value transparency, welcome public interest and communicate openly.”

Easy to Say; Hard to Do
In a world that appears to be linked from one-end-to-the-other, we often find the various media vehicles and information flow yields only overload.  We know that one media or one message won’t serve all needs.  We find this to be indelible even in our very small staff of just 6 (including our annual intern).  Each of us has a different learning style and desires to receive and ponder information in different ways.  Take it to the next level with our 13 Board members and we don’t just add 13 additional styles, the challenge expands exponentially.  When taken to the next level – that unnumbered subset of America’s 310 +/- million citizens who are interested in our work – and the exercise becomes mind boggling.


So, without trying to be all things to all people, we’ve committed our selves to turning  our “valuing of transparency” into several tangible approaches that we hope serve to “welcome public interest” on one hand and “communicate openly” on the other.

Tools to Advance Transparency
Among the many tools that we used to advance our commitment to transparency are:  This blog (now published twice monthly); an annual report (published both as hard copy and an electronic version); news stories on our website; publication of final reports and “quick and dirty” summaries of convenings (to share learnings and avoid duplication of effort); one-page summaries of each of our projects and/or initiatives; press releases on significant happenings; two-way outreach sessions with specific groups as our program staff travels about the nation; a ListServ to link to those who express interest in our work;  immediate publication of annual audits as well as IRS Form 990’s upon their approval; and, two additional tools – quarterly “plain language reports” (for those with interest in our stewardship); and evaluation reports that share learnings (both positive and negative) regarding the impacts of our programmatic investments.

Annual Reports
While the Endowment has no legal requirement to produce and distribute an annual report, we’ve chosen to do so from our inception.  In fact, we just distributed our 5th report (calendar year 2011) that overviews not only results from the prior year, but also looks back to learnings and successes from our entire history.


While most Endowment documents are generated only as electronic version so as to ease access and distribution, we mail a hard copy of the annual report to every member of Congress as well as a long list of partners and opinion leaders.

If you’ve viewed our annual report before – and we encourage you to do so HERE – you’ll note that it is much shorter than that of many of our peers.  Our intent is to produce something that we hope will be a quick and easy read.  Too, this year we are adding new features in the form of live links that dig a bit deeper into how and why we do some of the things we do.  Those will be rolling out over coming weeks, so keep checking back.

Future Blogs
In the next couple of issues of our blog we will dig a bit deeper on some of our other transparency tools.   At any time we welcome your thoughts on ways we can effectively enhance chances of success towards our transparency objective.