Redefining "renewable biomass" in EISA

As we strive to find sustainable alternatives to the demonstrably unsustainable fossil fuel paradigm the definition of "renewable biomass" is critically important. It is not just biofuels, biopower, or bioproducts that are (or are not) environmentally sustainable. Sustainability is a function, too, of the feedstock - and it may vary by region. Corn grown in the midwest might be sustainable while corn grown in California might not be for any number of reasons - water, pests, climate, topography, or soil to name a few. And that doesn't begin to address the question of economic sustainability which is determined by a host of other factors like capital availability, markets, infrastructure, ownership, manpower, and subsidies.

Bruce Dale of Michigan State University said at the 2008 California Biomass Collaborative "All biomass is local. And, as Tip O'Neil used to famously assert 'All politics is local.' So the obvious syllogism is that 'All biomass is political!'"

Funny if it wasn't so true.

Which is why it makes no sense for a federal definition of "renewable biomass" to be exclusionary (which is the way that it is as currently defined in the EISA law). It should be as inclusive as possible - allowing local considerations to determine what is environmentally and economically sustainable.

I think this is the inferred conclusion of an excellent "renewable biomass" testimony made today by Environmental and Energy Study Institute Senior Advisor Jetta Wong in her presentation at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy, and Research.

Here are some key points that she made in her summary and conclusion.

Summary:
On December 19, 2007 the President and Congress took a huge step forward in trying to mitigate climate change and reduce our country’s reliance on fossil fuels by enacting the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA, P.L. 110-140). EISA substantially increases the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), calling for the production by 2022 of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel with specific targets for greenhouse gas reductions. Within the 36 billion gallon mandate, 21 billion gallons must come from advanced biofuels, which means renewable fuel other than ethanol derived from corn starch. Additionally, there is a carve-out within the advanced fuels mandate that 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel be derived from ‘renewable biomass.’

This is an aggressive and ambitious RFS. It is laudable, but it stirs up a lot of difficult issues regarding the sustainability of biofuels. One of the biggest factors in determining if a biofuel is sustainable is the choice of feedstocks used to produce the renewable fuel. Unfortunately, the definition of ‘renewable biomass’ included in the law deems several feedstocks ineligible, including thinning materials and woody residues from federal forests, some woody feedstocks from private forests, and a wide array of feedstocks from municipal solid waste.

Key Points :
• Renewable fuels are important to our climate and energy security strategy. They are reducing our dependence on foreign oil, reducing the cost of gasoline at the pump, and if produced sustainably, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Renewable fuel facilities provide a market for low-value material produced through forest management practices.
• Abundant sources of woody biomass in the west can increase the distribution of liquid transportation fuels across the country. This will help to meet the large fuel markets of the west while further securing our energy supply.
• Mill residue and other woody materials create complications (in terms of collection) and should be carefully considered during implementation.
• Municipal solid waste is a low-value feedstock that several companies are investigating. Confusing or varying definitions included in public law create risk, limit innovation, and ultimately reduce the use of a feedstock currently considered a problem.
• Production of renewable fuels from low-value materials, such as woody biomass and municipal solid waste, reduces the pressure to develop feedstocks on sensitive land.
• A variety of stakeholders overwhelmingly support a broadening of feedstocks that could be eligible for the RFS. Specifically, low-value woody biomass sustainably harvested from both federal and private lands should be included.

Cellulosic biofuels can be produced from a highly diverse array of feedstocks, allowing every region of the country to be a potential producer of this fuel. (Cellulose is found in all plant matter.) As a result, support for cellulosic biofuels has brought together a broad array of constituents including environmentalists, farmers, national security experts, industry, and religious leaders. Unquestionably, the production of renewable fuels needs to be done in a way that sequesters carbon and enhances natural resources, including soils, water supply and native habitats. Production of renewable feedstocks should not be deemed to be in competition with the goals of sustainable agriculture or forestry. In fact, there are opportunities for renewable fuel and energy production to aid conservation efforts and environmental sustainability beyond those associated conventional agriculture, forestry or fossil fuel production and consumption.

Conclusion:
The wisest course of action would be to focus on feedstocks that do not compete for land resources, such as low-value forest residues and other waste materials. The RFS is a very aggressive mandate, but it is not an impossible one, as long as we do not exclude any of those feedstocks that can be produced sustainably and that meet important environmental and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. With conversion technologies still in development, we must keep our options open and strive to produce renewable fuels that meet objective and appropriate standards of sustainability. Fortunately, our nation possesses abundant and readily available feedstocks that satisfy this criterion.

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technorati biomass, waste, forestry

Flambeau River BioFuels trailblazes Paper & Pulp Mill Conversions

It is always life-affirming to see the good guys win one. In this case the good guys are the participants of the Flambeau River Biofuels project led by strategic consultant Ben Thorp whose vision, persistence, and professionalism has been an inspiration to all who know him.

It has been a labor of love for Ben who has seen the industry he has devoted so much of his career (at Georgia Pacific) be reduced to a fighting retreat as offshore sourcing, labor prices, and environmental activism has taken a toll on this proud industry. During a time of heightened awareness of the need to buck the oil addiction, it is rarely mentioned that biomass conversion is the nation's largest producer of renewable energy (see chart).

To date the electricity and heat produced by combusting manufacturing residual wood at paper and pulp mills is generally used in plant operations. With projects like the Flambeau River project, the biofuels produced will be sold on the open market (capacity of 6 million gallons per year of Fisher-Tropsch liquids in the form of renewable sulfur-free diesel fuels and waxes).

The refinery is projected to open in 2010.

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U.S. Department of Energy Awards Flambeau River BioFuels a Grant to Construct First-in-Class Facility for Production of Renewable Diesel to be Co-located at Pulp and Paper Mill in Park Falls, WI

PARK FALLS, Wis., July 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Flambeau River BioFuels is pleased to announce that it has received approval of its $30 million grant request from the U.S. Department of Energy to construct and operate a first- in-class biorefinery at an existing pulp and paper mill in Park Falls, Wisconsin. The final award value will be subject to final negotiation with the Department of Energy. When in full operation, the biorefinery will produce at least 6 million gallons of liquid fuels per year in the form of renewable sulfur-free diesel. The biorefinery will not be dependent on any food-based feedstock materials, but rather on by-products or residuals from forest and agricultural sources. The biorefinery will also generate at least 1 trillion BTUs per year of process heat that will be sold to Flambeau River Papers, which will make it the first integrated pulp and paper mill in North America to be fossil fuel free.

"This grant supports Flambeau River BioFuels' goal to be a major contributor in achieving the Federal government's goal of increasing renewable fuels production and reducing our nation's dependence on Mideast oil," said Bob Byrne, President, Flambeau River BioFuels. "With this funding, we will be able to accelerate the retrofitting of this mill from a pure pulp and paper plant to a broader production facility that will produce biofuels within the same facility, thus sharing key infrastructure elements and costs."

The Flambeau River BioFuels biorefinery will employ two commercially proven technologies to produce clean renewable energy and biofuels. It will gasify biomass resources, such as forest residuals and agricultural wastes, into a high-quality synthesis gas, which will then be catalyzed by the well-established Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process to generate renewable transportation fuels (sulfur-free biodiesel).

"As you can imagine, we are very pleased that our technology approach has been recognized by the Department of Energy as a viable way to produce biofuel from forest residuals -- one of the most abundant renewable resources in the U.S." said William "Butch" Johnson, whose company Johnson Timber is both a project partner and a supplier to the biorefinery. "Since day one, our project has received strong support from Governor Doyle, Chairman Obey and Senator Kohl and we wish to thank them for all their efforts. Once operational, the biorefinery will serve to validate the technology while creating a compelling new model for the pulp and paper industry that can be proliferated throughout the U.S."

"A clean energy future depends on combining Wisconsin ingenuity with our state's resources, and I want to congratulate Flambeau River BioFuels for leading the way," Governor Jim Doyle said. "Their proposed biorefinery shows us all that we can have an energy future that creates jobs, protects our environment and relies less on Mideast oil and more on Midwest know-how."

The Flambeau River BioFuels biorefinery will create permanent, high-skilled operating jobs in the region, long-term logging jobs, and short-term, engineering and construction jobs, thus contributing to the economic stimulus of Park Falls, Wisconsin. The biorefinery is expected to be in operation in 2010.

The project team leading this endeavor is comprised of premiere engineers and scientists with demonstrated successes in implementing new technologies. It will also be supported by the expertise of university and government laboratories.

Flambeau River Biofuels received this grant through their partnerships with: ANL Consultants, Auburn University, Brigham Young University, Citigroup Global Markets, CleanTech Partners, Emerging Fuels Technology, Flambeau River Papers, Johnson Timber, National Renewable Energy Lab, Michigan Technological University, NC State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ThermoChem Recovery International, University of Wisconsin, and the USDA Forest Products Laboratory.

"This grant will help meet our government's goals of creating new jobs, stimulating remote areas, re-positioning traditional industries for a new world era, and, most importantly, producing clean fuels from renewable resources abundantly found in the U.S.," said Bob Byrne. "We are proud to be a part of this important initiative by taking a leading position in the advancement of bioenergy technologies and the development of cellulosic biofuels."

For more information please Bill Johnson at 1-715-558-1630 or Bob Byrne at 1-715-661-0235.

SOURCE Flambeau River BioFuels
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technorati BIOstock, biomass, forestry

Are Marginal Farmlands the Key to Sustainable Bioenergy?

There are many aspects that need to be considered when comparing the sustainability of different feedstock. We are all familiar with the feed vs. fuel debate. Then concern arose about land use change - deforesting to create land for growing biofuel feedstock. Ideally, the highest yielding, most sustainable energy crops would be grown on available land not already being used for any other purpose.

A recent study by scientists from Carnegie Institution and Stanford University that focus on the availability of "marginal farmlands" that are not forests, not being used to grow food crops, but are suitable for growing energy crops for conversion to bioenergy and biofuels.

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Report Says Abandoned, Marginal Farmlands Key to Sustainable Bioenergy
7/11/08

Biofuels can be a sustainable part of the world's energy future, especially if bioenergy agriculture is developed on currently abandoned or degraded agricultural lands, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Using these lands for energy crops, instead of converting existing croplands or clearing new land, avoids competition with food production and preserves carbon-storing forests needed to mitigate climate change.

The report, The Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands, asserts that sustainable bioenergy is likely to satisfy no more than 10 percent of the demand in the energy-intensive economies of North America, Europe, and Asia. But for some developing countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential exists to supply many times their current energy needs without compromising food supply or destroying forests.

Elliot Campbell, Robert Genova, and Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, with David Lobell of Stanford University, estimated the global extent of abandoned crop and pastureland and calculated their potential for sustainable bioenergy production from historical land-use data, satellite imaging, and ecosystem models. Agricultural areas that have been converted to urban areas or have reverted to forests were not included in the assessment.

The researchers estimate that globally up to 4.7 million square kilometers (approximately 1.8 million square miles) of abandoned lands could be available for growing energy crops. The potential yield of this land area, equivalent to nearly half the land area of the United States (including Alaska), depends on local soils and climate, as well as on the specific energy crops and cultivation methods in each region. Still, the researchers estimate that the worldwide harvestable dry biomass could amount to as much as 2.1 billion tons, with a total energy content of about 41 exajoules, nearly 7 billion barrels of oil, or about eight percent of the world's energy demand.

"At the national scale, the bioenergy potential is largest in the United States, Brazil, and Australia," says lead author Campbell. "These countries have the most extensive areas of abandoned crop and pasture lands. Eastern North America has the largest area of abandoned croplands, and the Midwest has the biggest expanse of abandoned pastureland."

The authors say that using these lands would generate about six percent of the nation's energy needs, though larger opportunities exist in other parts of the world. In some African countries, where grassland ecosystems are very productive and current fossil fuel demand is low, biomass could provide up to 37 times the energy currently used.

"Our study shows that there is clearly a potential for developing sustainable bioenergy, and we've been able to identify areas where biomass can be grown for energy, without endangering food security or making climate change worse," says Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology.

The results of the study were published in the June 25 online edition of Carnegie Institution for Science.

An abstract of the report :

Converting forest lands into bioenergy agriculture could accelerate climate change by emitting carbon stored in forests, while converting food agriculture lands into bioenergy agriculture could threaten food security. Both problems are potentially avoided by using abandoned agriculture lands for bioenergy agriculture. Here we show the global potential for bioenergy on abandoned agriculture lands to be less than 8% of current primary energy demand, based on historical land use data, satellite-derived land cover data, and global ecosystem modeling. The estimated global area of abandoned agriculture is 385−472 million hectares, or 66−110% of the areas reported in previous preliminary assessments. The area-weighted mean production of above-ground biomass is 4.3 tons ha−1 y−1, in contrast to estimates of up to 10 tons ha−1 y−1 in previous assessments. The energy content of potential biomass grown on 100% of abandoned agriculture lands is less than 10% of primary energy demand for most nations in North America, Europe, and Asia, but it represents many times the energy demand in some African nations where grasslands are relatively productive and current energy demand is low.

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technorati BIOblog, BIOstock, biomass, agriculture, forestry

CA Draft Scoping Plan comment: Sustainable Forests

This is one of a series of comments submitted to the California Air Resources Board for their draft version of the California Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan. Other BIOenergy BlogRing comments are linked here:
• Challenge the Status Quo
• Recycling and Waste
• Sustainable Forests
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The ill health of our forests is a statewide catastrophe. We are witnessing deforestation by wildfire, bug infestation, and decay that consumes our forests without adequate reforestation efforts. It is estimated by the California Forest Foundation that we are losing over 30,000 acres of timberlands (an area the size of San Francisco) each year to brushlands.

Nationally, six of the seven worst fire seasons on record have occurred within the last eight years with some fires lasting months and covering hundreds of thousands of acres. Just four wildfires that were recently studied were found to emit the GHG equivalent of adding 7 million cars to our streets for one year.

The smoke and emissions from wildfires are greenhouse gases that we can see, smell, and touch as ash and particulate matter is strewn across the landscape. But this is only the start of the GHG problem. Decay contributes 3 times as much greenhouse gas as the fire itself.

The goal of reducing 5 MMTC02E by 2020 seems woefully inadequate considering the GHG from the combustion of just one wiidfire (2007 Moonlight Fire in Plumas National Forest) which burned 65,000 acres has been documented to have generated 4.9 MMT GHG. Unmanaged treatment would add an additional 15 MMT GHG according to a study by the California Forest Foundation. If wildfire trends continue on their current trajectory, we will have to see much greater reductions to maintain the forest managed GHG sequestration defined in the Scoping Plan.

There are forest management practices that can and should be implemented that would mitigate the greenhouse gas impact of these fires while reducing the ferocity of future fires. These practices are not mentioned in the Scoping Plan and I'll list them here:

1 - We need to thin our most vulnerable forests.

Recent reports of a thousand fires in California spotlight the urgency of the problem - which is neither the lightning that sparks the fires nor the lack of firefighting resources to fight the blazes. The real problem is the density of the number of trees with undergrowth - estimated to be 4-10 times their historic profile - on our largely unmanaged forests.

In 2003, the U.S. Congress passed the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) allocating $750 million dollars in federal funds to thin approximately 20 million acres nationally. Thinned forests contain the spread of wildfires.

Due to resource allocation to fight forest fires, answer environmentalist challenges (729 lawsuits between 1989-2003), and the resultant bureaucratic inertia only 77,000 acres have been thinned.

Thinning forests won't reduce the incidence of fires, but it would significantly reduce their size and GHG consequences.

2 - We need to salvage wood from impacted forests.

Reducing the biomass of dead and dying trees would go far to mitigating the GHG impacts of wildfires since decay contributes three times the GHG as the original fire itself. Large diameter wood could be converted into saw logs and building materials that sequester carbon in energy efficient homes. Scrap wood could be used to cleanly generate green electricity and convert into carbon-neutral biofuels reducing our GHG from fossil fuels.

3 - We need to replant our devastated forests.

From 2001 to 2007, over 143,500 acres of forestland outside wilderness owned by the federal government has not been replanted and has been left to turn into brush.

Following the 1992 Cleveland Fire in the Eldorado National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service replanted some lands, and left some untouched in an experimental ecoplot. Today, trees stand more than 17 feet tall on replanted lands, but brush dominates the untreated ecoplot.

Unlike government-owned lands, private forest landowners quickly remove dead trees and other fuels for additional fires and then replant. It is a part of their enduring legacy for their children.

CARB needs to incorporate these common sense steps into the Scoping Plan otherwise the status quo will prevail. CARB needs to show leadership in fighting bureaucratic inertia caused by public resistance to necessary change in forest management. These problems will worsen in the midst of compounding global warming factors. As the Plan so clearly states "Future climate impacts will exacerbate existing wildfire and pest problems in the Forest sector."

We can ill afford to lose the carbon sequestering forests of our state.

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technorati biomass, forestry

California's Target for Forest Carbon Reduction

The California Air Resources Board is responsible for implementing the state's AB32 Global Warming Solutions Act. It's first step is to provide a Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan that outlines the reduction goals for achieving a reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

One of the goals is the reduction of 5 million tons/year of CO2 from forests using sustainable management practices. It is no secret that California can profit from better management of both its private and public forest lands. But as documented in studies from the California Forest Foundation, wildfires in America are at an all-time high and trending higher. Unless aggressive changes take place, like implementing forest management programs funded by the federal 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act, greenhouse gases may well outpace the reductions stipulated in the plan.

Here is the specific text in the Scoping Plan that stipulate the Sustainable Forest portion.

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Sustainable Forests

Preserve forest sequestration and encourage the use of forest biomass for sustainable energy generation.

The 2020 target for California’s forest lands is to achieve a 5 MMTCO2E reduction through sustainable management practices, including reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and the avoidance or mitigation of land-use changes that reduce carbon storage. California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection has the regulatory authority to implement the Forest Practice Act to provide for sustainable management practices and, at a minimum, to maintain current carbon sequestration levels. The federal government must do the same for lands under its jurisdiction in California. California forests are now a net carbon sink. The 2020 target would provide a mechanism to help ensure that this carbon stock is not diminished over time. The 5 MMTCO2E emission reduction target is set equal to the current estimate of the net emission reduction from California forests. As technical data improve, the target can be recalibrated to reflect new information.

California’s forests will play an even greater role in reducing carbon emissions for the 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals. Forests are unique in that planting trees today will maximize their sequestration capacity in 20 to 50 years. As a result, near-term investments in activities such as planting trees will help us reach our 2020 target, but will play a greater role in reaching our 2050 goals.

Monitoring carbon sequestered on forest lands will be necessary to implement the target. The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, working with the Resources Agency, the Air Resources Board, and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection would be tasked with developing a monitoring program, improving greenhouse gas inventories, and determining what actions are needed to meet the 2020 target for the Forest sector. Future climate impacts will exacerbate existing wildfire and pest problems in the Forest sector. These problems will create new uncertainties in reducing emissions and maintaining sequestration levels over the long-term requiring more creative strategies for adapting to these changes. In the short term, focusing on sustainable management practices and land-use issues is a practical approach for moving forward.

Future land use decisions will play a role in reaching our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for all sectors. Loss of forest land to development increases greenhouse gas emissions because less carbon is sequestered. Avoiding or mitigating such conversions will support efforts to meet the 2020 goal. When significant changes occur, the California Environmental Quality Act is a mechanism providing for assessment and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Biomass fuels will also play a role in the expansion of renewable energy sources but will be accounted for in the Energy sector. Similarly, no reductions are yet attributed to future fuels management strategies, but that accounting will be done following implementation. Public investments to purchase and preserve forests and woodlands would also provide reductions that will be accounted for as projects are funded. Urban forest projects can provide the dual benefit of carbon sequestration and shading to reduce air conditioning load. The Forest sector is already a source of voluntary reductions that would not otherwise occur. ARB has already adopted a methodology to quantify reductions from forest projects, and will be considering additional quantification methodologies later this year. Table 11 summarizes the emission reductions from the forest measure.




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technorati BIOblog, BIOstock, biomass, agriculture, forestry

Georgia's Energy Innovation Center: An interview with Director Jill Stuckey

In April, 2008, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue established six "innovation centers" to focus executive activity in industries perceived to be of key importance to the future of the state. One of these is the Energy Innovation Center (EIC). The primary goal of the EIC will be to increase production and use of renewable energy and biofuels in Georgia by utilizing natural resources, locally grown feedstocks, agricultural and industrial byproducts, solar energy, wind power and other renewable energy alternatives.

“The state of Georgia is quickly becoming a recognized leader in alternative energy and fuel,” said Governor Sonny Perdue. “Our goal is to develop a bioenergy industry that provides substantial economic benefit to Georgia and produces 15 percent of the state’s transportation fuels by 2020 from locally produced biofuels.”

At this past week's huge BIO International convention in San Diego, I had the privilege of shaking hands with Governor Perdue and the pleasure of interviewing his Director of the Energy Innovation Center, the dynamic and engaging Jill Stuckey.

“The governor wants a complete circle when it comes to energy development and production in Georgia,” said Stuckey. “Our goal is to grow the feedstocks, produce the fuel, and use our own energy. Designating energy as a focus of one of the Centers of Innovation allows us to harness the power of our resources under one roof.”

Jill is not a newcomer to energy innovation. Prior to this role she was in charge of Alternative Energy in the state.

"When Rita and Katrina hit I was one of the ones who had to try to find fuels when there weren't any coming in through the pipelines from the Gulf. In metro Atlanta, that's where our fuel comes from.

"People don't realize that two thirds of our tank capacity in the world is in our gasoline tanks in our vehicles. Only one third is in our gasoline terminals, gas stations and their tanks. When there is a scare and everyone runs to the gasoline stations, we run out. We want to see fuel developed within our state to increase our self-reliance during crises - whatever they are."

"What the Governor would like to see is that we raise the feedstocks, we produce the fuels there, and we use it there. We would love to see that, when we drive to the pumps, the fuel is coming from 75 miles away from people we know rather than 5,000 miles away from folks that might not like us very well. Not to mention the economic development difference of having a factory right within our community instead of sending it to a foreign country."

I asked Jill several questions about Georgia's longterm commitment to biofuels and its various feedstocks for biomass conversion.

What is Georgia's attitude toward corn ethanol?

"If it wasn't for corn ethanol, gasoline prices could well be 20% higher than they are today. Lots of people are growing corn now. We have doubled our corn acreage in the state of Georgia since a year or so ago. We have a 100 million gallon ethanol facility that will be starting up this Fall. "

What about cellulosic ethanol from wood as a feedstock?

"We have 12 million acres of plantation forests in the state of Georgia. That's our crop. We know how to manage it, we know how to use it. Just about all the industry that I have spoken to is very anxious to look at the next generation utilizing pine for something other than paper - but still embracing that industry."

Back in November, the Governor joined the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary, the Under Secretary of Agriculture and renowned investor, Vinod Khosla for the groundbreaking of the Range Fuels facility in Soperton, GA. What is the commitment of Georgia's government to cellulosic ethanol from woody biomass?

"The Governor came in and was very excited about the groundbreaking and the opportunity for Georgia and the potential for this company. He is very committed to this industry.

"The Range Fuels facility was able to acquire their environmental permit within 76 days. He had an executive order stating that we would turn it in 90 days once we had a completed application and we beat that. He has also passed legislation that gave them tax-free on all their bricks and mortar materials. A lot of the machinery was already tax-exempt but he passed that for all alternative fuels companies. He is very committed to that and I don't see any of that is going to change. I wouldn't be surprised to see more legislation passed to help these companies."

What about succeeding Georgia administrations? Can investors and timberland owners be confident that policies set today will last for the next generation?

"All the upcoming candidates for Governor are interested in alternative fuels and alternative energy as well as the existing pulpwood industry. That industry has a lot of potential with a big headstart if they were to get involved with these projects. I have seen considerable interest in that industry."

What do you think about hybrid trees and energy crops?

"People talk a lot about switchgrass. The numbers I've heard are $80-$100 per ton for that. Wood is less than half of that. We have 12 million acres of plantation pines sitting in Georgia, ready today. We are doing some work with the polonia tree because it grows three times faster than a pine tree. It doesn't have the saps that are inhibitors for the ethanol process.

"We are always looking toward the next generation working with people like Arbogen. We are trying to find the most tons per acre the fastest we can grow. The pines are so great - they don't need a lot of water, you don't have to cultivate them like you do with most other crops. If we don't want to harvest them today we can harvest them next month. It's such a no-brainer."

In the face of mainstream media confusion and disinformation moving forward requires stakeholder engagement and public outreach to make sure that all sectors of Georgia are ready for the changes ahead. How is that being handled?

"That's one thing the Herty Foundation is trying to do - to gather all the powers to be in Georgia and the landowners. They are trying to explain what they see the future is going to be - selling their wood and how to grow it, and explaining that they may not be selling by green ton but by BTU or moisture content - and try to get them to think about how the future is going to be for wood-to-energy as well as wood-to-paper."

The controversial U.S. Senate staff redrafting of the definition of qualifying biomass feedstock in the 2007 EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act) could be interpreted to exclude Georgia woody biomass. What can Georgia's political leaders do to insure that federal law does not infringe on state's management over their own resources?

"From the state's standpoint we have been very involved in that issue from our state forestry commission as well as we are working with our landowners because they are very concerned about that issue. We are very vocal in Washington working with our elected officials in Washington to help any way we can."

"We need to hurry up and try to get this figured out."

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technorati <BIOstock, biomass, agriculture, forestry

Sustainable Forestry for Bioenergy and Bio-based Products

To many preservationists the term "Sustainable Forestry" is an oxymoron. To them all management of forests is unnatural, and therefore unsustainable. I have two questions for them:

1 - If your garden was infested with bugs, suffering from lack of soil nutrients, invaded by weeds, recently burned, or eroding from water damage, would you intervene by managing it? If yes, then why should forests be treated differently?
2 - Hasn't civilization already changed the character of our natural forests to a point from which they will never return to a "natural" state?

Even the experts of the USDA Forest Service would agree with the second question. Some of the problems that are plaguing our public forest lands are the result of aggressive fire suppression of the mid-1900's that were initiated in response to massive fires of the period. If we want to restore our forests, we need to return them to a profile more closely resembling the 1800's with care to make sure that the restored profile is more sustainable. But it will take management to get there, and management to sustain it in the face of growing population, climate change, and global competition for energy feedstocks.

Forest management is necessary. The expanded interface between wildlands and civilization (called "Wildland Urban Interface") is inevitable and the current high density (number of trees per acre) of undermanaged forests is changing their character. The consequence could be a spiral of forest wildfire and decay causing unprecedented greenhouse gas emissions, leading to more global warming, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions. The magnitude of the problem potential dwarfs emissions from other sources.

The forest industry is ready to lead the way to more sustainable forest management practices. The Southern Forest Research Partnership (SFRP) is a leader in research examining how the use of woody biomass can be expanded to aid the health of our forests while insuring that health is sustainable. SFRP research is available online with digital manuals and powerpoint presentations that can be used to train the public about environmentally sustainable bioenergy production systems.

I met up with Dr. Larry Biles, Interim Director of SFRP, at the 2008 Smallwood conference in Madison, WI who had barely enough time during his presentation to outline the wealth of SFRP information available online. Their 300-page training manual is located the Forest Bioenergy website (under Training Tools). They also have a forest encyclopedia (actually a series of several encyclopedias that focus on specific topics) and he highly recommended both the Forest and Range and Interface South websites that provide useful information for practitioners of forest management.

He gave me a CD of the training materials and I found them to be extremely well written and up-to-date (having been published in September, 2007). They really do "span the gap between knowledge and application."

Of particular interest to me was Module 7: Environmentally Sustainable Bioenergy Production Systems:

This module provides an overview of adaptive forest management along with international agreements and various certification systems. It covers issues related to forest soils, water quality, and biodiversity conservation. Specific issues include soil compaction, streamside management zones, and the management of dead wood.

The final part of this module deals with designing low impact operations. Using tools and information presented previously, the readers learn how to plan a low-impact operation. A summary of the concept of best management practices and links are provided to each state’s specific BMP program. You will learn about the proper application of these practices to conserve and protect the environmental sustainability of the forest while maintaining biomass and timber productivity.

The SFRP and supporting organizations have provided a tremendous service collecting this information and providing straightforward media for its distribution and presentation. The slides are a gold mine for presenters who wish to engage stakeholders in decisions affecting the management of forests.

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technorati BIOstock, biomass, forestry

Engaging Forest Stakeholders through Stewardship Contracting

We have seen too many examples of mainstream media spinning and twisting the discourse between science research, environmental concern, and public opinion. I recently attended a workshop that showed a constructive approach that is taking root in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Back in early March I organized two side events at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) on "Bioenergy and Communications." The humble objective of these panels was to address the challenge of communicating bioenergy information to the public and engaging stakeholders the colossal energy and environmental paradigm shifts that are predicted to occur over the next few decades. The panelists were terrific but the central question remained largely unanswered:

What new ways might exist to engage stakeholders in the constructive development of economically sustainable solutions to environmentally sustainable challenges?

The federal Stewardship Contracting program is a good example of one innovative approach. It is providing a constructive means for bringing diverse stakeholders together to plan and finance forest restoration programs while rebuilding the economic infrastructure of local communities.

Last week the first of four traveling workshops titled Biomass Utilization and Stewardship Contracting was held in Auburn, California. It was hosted by the Sierra Business Council and sponsored by Resource Innovations of the University of Oregon, UC / Berkeley Cooperative Extension, USDA Forest Service (Region 5), the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and Placer County (site of the recent Angora Fire in Lake Tahoe).

During these two days of presentations attendees witnessed the testimonies of Forest Service managers, community leaders, environmentalists, academicians, consultants, and fire fighters. These experts spoke knowledgeably about the challenges of forest restoration from their unique perspectives. Then examples were given of existing projects that were changing the environmental and economic landscapes of the forests they were designed to restore.

Four stewardship examples from the Pacific Northwest are amply documented in Redefining Stewardship: Public Lands and Rural Communities in the Pacific Northwest - a publication prepared by Ecotrust and Resource Innovations.

Besides meeting some terrific local leaders, what I learned was that patient community discourse is necessary in the formulation of sustainable projects. It is preferable to engage stakeholders up front rather than suffer the delays of reactive litigation to plans that have not been fully vetted by those most vested in the results of forest restoration - the local community.

Similar workshops will be held in Sonora (May 22-23), Bishop (May 28), and Chester (May 30).

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technorati BIOstock, biomass, forestry

Up in Smoke: Reforesting California after wildfires

The problem I have with Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) is that they attempt to measure only the impact of a new project upon the status quo. They stop short of analyzing what will occur if no attempt at remediation is done. Below is the finding of one report based on data secured from the Forest Service. It seeks to compare action to inaction rather than just the environmental impact of the project itself.

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California Losing More Than 30,700 Acres of Forestland per Year
Federal Government's Replanting in Wake of Fires Lags

Following the 1992 Cleveland Fire in the Eldorado National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service replanted some lands, and left some untouched in an experimental ecoplot. Today, trees stand more than 17 feet tall on replanted lands, but brush dominates the untreated ecoplot.


AUBURN, Calif., April 29, 2008 - California has lost forests on federally owned land at the rate of more than 30,700 acres per year over the last seven years because of a lack of replanting following catastrophic forest fires, according to a review of Forest Service data by The Forest Foundation and the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.

The 30,700 acres lost annually is equivalent to losing a forest slightly larger than a city the size of San Francisco. If this failure to reforest federal land in California were to continue over the next 100 years, this would lead to the loss of 3 million acres of forestland and conversion into brush fields.

From 2001 to 2007, over 143,500 acres of forestland outside wilderness owned by the federal government has not been replanted and has been left to turn into brush.

"The federal government is consistently unable to replant and restore forests following devastating wildfires," said Doug Piirto, department head for the Natural Resources Management Department at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo and a member of the Forest Foundation's Scientific Advisory Panel.

"The result is a loss of forestland and a loss of all the benefits these forests provide - from filtering our water to absorbing greenhouse gases," Dr. Piirto said. "We need to commit ourselves to restoring our forests by doing all that is necessary: preparing the land, reforesting and following up with the required maintenance to ensure a healthy forest in the long term."

On the heels of tree-planting celebrations last week to mark Arbor Day, the deforestation on federal forestland stands in stark contrast.

Over the course of the seven years, a total of 304,000 acres of federally owned forestland were deforested, with just 88,900 of those acres replanted. As a result, nearly 71 percent of the previously forested land has been replaced by brush.

The loss of forests limits the amount of carbon that could be absorbed by forests in California and help the state's fight against global warming. According to the non-profit group American Forests, a restored acre has the ability of absorbing and storing 200 tons of carbon dioxide - or the equivalent of absorbing carbon emitted by 35 minivans.

"This deforestation deprives future generations of the forests we have enjoyed," said George M. Leonard, Chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees and former Associate Chief of the US Forest Service. "Without replanting, the land turns to brush and becomes even more susceptible to another fire and more devastation to forestland."

In 2007 alone, more than 100,000 acres of national forest land in California were burned into a deforested condition due to wildfires, compared to approximately 50,000 acres in 2006.

"Replanting has long been the policy and practice of the Forest Service," Mr. Leonard said. "We must maintain that tradition and not allow tens of thousands of acres to be lost at a time when our forests are more needed than ever."

In 1993, for example, following the 1992 Cleveland fire in California that consumed more than 20,000 acres, reforestation occurred - leaving us today with trees that are 15 to 20 feet tall. As part of an experiment, a small "ecoplot" was left untouched to see what would happen. Today, that land is filled with brush.

Unlike government-owned lands, private forest landowners quickly remove dead trees and other fuels for additional fires and then replant. For example, after the 2000 Storrie fire in Plumas and Lassen Counties, local private land manager W.M. Beaty and Associates removed dead trees and fuels on the 3,200 acres it managed that burned in the fire. Its reforestation efforts, including the planting of nearly one million trees, were completed by 2004. Some trees in this young, mixed conifer forest are more than 7 feet tall.

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Links between California Wildfires and GHG emissions

"Reducing wildfires maybe the single most important action we can take in the short-term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming." - Dr. Tom Bonnicksen

Dr. Tom Bonnicksen, a professor at Texas A&M and author of "America's Ancient Forests: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery" is a staunch advocate for restoring our forests to a healthier condition. That shouldn't make him controversial but it does because he advocates what many environmental groups consider "heretical" means to achieve this objective - removing excess biomass through forest thinning, salvaging of dead and dying trees, and reforestation on a massive scale. Recognizing such restorative steps will require the building of temporary roads and the re-introduction of forest product industries to buy the wood, he has drawn criticism from environmental groups, including coordinated attempts to question his academic credentials.


Above is a historic chart produced by the National Interagency Fire Center that plots the disturbing rise in wildfire acreage nationwide in the last 50 years. This doesn't register the growth of intensity of fires which are believed to be at unprecedented ferocity producing even more GHG. The trend line shows the legacy of the last ten years when litigious obstruction by environmental groups of planned USDA Forest Service projects has been the most vigorous - delaying remedial public forest programs.

To circulate his interpretation to a broader audience, Dr. Bonnicksen published a very professional 52-page booklet titled "Protecting Communities and Saving Forests: Solving the Wildfire Crisis through Restoration Forestry." It should be required reading for all environmental policy makers in California because it clearly states how the state has arrived at a condition of ever increasing wildfires and suggests sensible actions to mitigate the problem.

Taking his research a step further, Dr. Bonnicksen has just released a new study entitled "Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Four California Wildfires: Opportunities to Prevent and Reverse Environmental and Climate Impacts" which draws the connection between GHG and forest fires. Without restorative action, fires will get worse and greenhouse gas emissions will increase. With action, not only will the growth of forest fires and bug infestations likely be held in check, but more carbon will be sequestered, correcting the imbalance created by the original fires.

A key to understanding the urgency for remedial action is recognition that GHG doesn't just come from the combustion and smoke of the original fire - that only accounts for 25% of the emissions. The other 75% comes during the period of decay of the affected forest. According to his research of four representative fires, initial combustion plus eventual decay emissions represent the equivalent of adding 7 million cars to California's roadways for 1 year!

The study also paints a revealing picture of the difference in GHG impact between responsive action by private timberland owners versus the publicly-obstructed remedies proposed by the federal government. Because of fierce anticipated public opposition, the Forest Service has no know plans to plant trees on burned areas of the Tahoe area Angora fire - consequently 0% of the total CO2 emitted will eventually be recovered from plantings. Contrast this with the Fountain Fire where 100% of the privately owned burned land was replanted. The study estimates that 99.2% of the original lost C02 will be recovered.

Here is an abstract written by The Forest Foundation on their website where free copies of the study is available for download:

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Wildfires, Forests and Climate Change
California wildfires release millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Conversely, sustainable forest management removes greenhouse gases from the air, stores carbon in wood products and regenerates landscapes in a perpetual cycle of carbon sequestration. The Forest Foundation developed the Forest Carbon and Emission Model (FCEM) to help clarify the relationships between wildfires, forest management and greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Four California Wildfires: Opportunities to Prevent and Reverse Environmental and Climate Impacts

In the report above, the FCEM presents details of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with four California wildfires. It estimates the total emissions from combustion and decay, provides comparisons to autos and other emission sources, and notes the potential value of reforestation to recapture gases released from wildfire. This report considers the Angora, Moonlight, Star and Fountain fires.

Forest Foundation Study Finds Four Wildfires Send 38 Million Tons Of Harmful Gases Into Air, Equivalent Of 7 Million Cars On The Road For One Year In California

The Forest Carbon and Emission Model Overview and Technical Information

The FCEM report above considers site characteristics like vegetation type, density, mortality, acres burned, and other factors to estimate emission totals. The FCEM Overview and Technical Information report explains the inputs and methodologies used to drive the model.

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Woodchip prices now and in the future

With the passage of the Energy Bill, speculators are looking closely at the possible impact of increasing demand on biomass feedstock prices. We have seen the early impact on corn - what about wood?

In the current market the availability of woodchips, a residual from the manufacture of wood construction materials, is down because the housing construction is down. The price for woodchips has gone up because the supply is low.

What can we expect when wood begins to replace coal and natural gas in boilers or is used as the feedstock for conversion to biofuels? Supplies will increase to meet demand and the price will go down, right?

Not so, according to a press released just distributed by Business Wire that can be found at Forbes.com. Here is the story in its entirety...

Alternative Fuel Demand Boosts Prices of Forest Products

Power companies in the South and Pacific Northwest will drive prices for wood fuels higher as new facilities are built to produce an energy alternative to fossil fuels, experts in the forest products industry said Friday.

But the supply of wood chips - a byproduct of lumber production used at pulp mills and power facilities - is dropping as residential construction drastically slows in the weak housing market. The reduced supply has raised prices by almost 10 percent since the third quarter of 2006.

"The supply of wood chips is already low because of the problems with the housing market," said Pete Stewart, president of price information provider Forest2Market. "Increased demand from power facilities will continue to increase prices."

The current increase in demand for wood fuels is coming from forest products companies in the U.S. that have either updated or installed new boilers that run entirely on biomass - plant material such as wood chips, bark and tree limbs. Forest products companies burn wood fuel to power their operations.

Southern forests are facing additional pressure from Europe as utilities overseas, bound by the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, import wood chips to produce power. The weak dollar has made it cheaper for Europe to import wood fuels to satisfy their energy needs.

The U.S. has not signed Kyoto, but individual states are mandating a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power companies.

In the Pacific Northwest, the dynamics are slightly different. The majority of wood chips are sawmill byproducts used by the region's pulp mills. Generally, wood-fueled boilers are fed hog fuel, which is made of bark and other wood waste unsuitable for pulp production.

"With the startup of new power facilities, the forest industry will have the opportunity to earn additional revenue by collecting forest biomass to supplement residual hog fuel," said Gordon Culbertson, Forest2Market's Pacific Northwest region manager. "Many companies are seeking creative strategies to develop biomass as an economical source of fuel."

Nevertheless, prices for wood chips in the Pacific Northwest are increasing because sawmill production is idled by poor lumber demand. To fill the void, small saw logs that would have otherwise been used in lumber production are being chipped.

The demand for wood fuels throughout the country will continue to grow. U.S. utility companies are planning to build biomass-fueled power facilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the rising costs of oil. These facilities should come online in the next two to four years, which will further increase competition for wood chips.

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Senator Wyden: Thinning Forests to Save Them

Well, at least someone in the Senate has it right. Thinning forests is not only "not all bad" but absolutely necessary if we hope to return forest to their historic condition - their condition prior to the relocation of native americans, the rampant logging, the counter-productive suppression of forest fires, obstructive environmentalist litigation, and real estate overdevelopment of wildlands. Without thinning, there will be insufficient funding of this important work which will help reduce forest fires, their greenhouse gas emissions, and their rapacious impact on wildlife habitats.

Below is a press release reporting on Senator Ron Wyden's (D-Oregon) explanation of the need for thinning legislation. On January 9, 2008, a story by Jeff Barnard appeared in on the AP news wire about Wyden's plans to introduce legislation in support of measures to expedite the deployment of national forest logging projects.

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Wyden Says Pacific Northwest Forests in Trouble, Thinning Will Help Increase Forest Health, Reduce Fires, Increase Jobs
Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Medford, Or -- Thinning the Pacific Northwest’s troubled federal forests will increase forest health, decrease the chances of catastrophic forest fires and create more timber industry jobs for Oregonians, Senator Ron Wyden said today.

“Thinning creates a healthier forest, a healthier economy and a healthier environment,” Wyden said during opening remarks at a roundtable discussion on how to improve federal forests in the Pacific Northwest. “Trees going up in smoke do nothing for the quality of our communities, our air or our families. As chair of the Public Lands and Forest Subcommittee, I am committed to finding a solution that protects our treasures while meeting our needs for healthy forests and providing timber for our mills.”

The roundtable discussion included representatives of federal forestry agencies, timber, recreation organizations, conservation groups and others. The roundtable in Medford and another earlier this week in Bend were are a follow up to a Public Lands and Forest Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C. last month.

“It’s outrageous, even by federal government standards, that over half of the Forest Service budget is spent on fighting fires while tens of millions of acres of choked, second growth forests go un-managed, waiting to burn,” said Wyden. “Government inaction, endless appeals, and poorly allocated resources have put communities, jobs and forests at risk like never before. If we are willing to work together toward bipartisan, sensible solutions, we can restore our forests, reduce the risk of catastrophic fire, protect old growth and ensure good, family-wage jobs for decades to come.”

Wyden noted that The Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) authorized up to $760 million in new money to complete hazardous fuel reduction work on 20 million acres of federal forest land, but that only 77,000 acres had been treated.

“At that rate, it would take the Bush Administration more than 250 years to complete the Act’s mandate,” Wyden said. “I, for one, am not willing to wait that long.

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No incentives for national forest waste-to-biofuels

As a result of some backroom redrafting of the Energy Bill in the House, USDA Forest Service authority to fund proper forest stewardship through the sale of forest thinning slash and waste has been dealt a serious setback - needed bioenergy infrastructure will be ineligible for woody biomass-to-ethanol incentives.

This is a blatant usurpation by a few autocrats of the conscientious efforts and intent by many bipartisan congressional leaders. The sad part is that it will be communities around the forests that are hurt most because proper forest stewardship is long overdue on public lands. This was a prime opportunity to enable the Forest Service to take corrective action to avert bug infestations, forest fires, and real estate development in and near public forests.

Here is a reprint of an article that appeared in the Rapid City Journal.

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Energy bill cuts national forest wood waste
By Steve Miller, Rapid City Journal

A last-minute change in the federal energy bill discourages the use of wood chips, tree limbs and other wood waste from national forests in the production of ethanol, according to a forest industry spokesman.
The surprise provision makes no sense, says Aaron Everett, a spokesman for the Black Hills Forest Resource Association.

The energy bill passed by Congress and signed by the president earlier this month requires an increase in the amount of ethanol produced from renewable biomass materials such as grasses and wood waste. The bill requires 21 billion gallons of ethanol to be produced from biomass, including cellulosic materials, by the year 2022. Corn-ethanol production is slated to double, to 15 billion gallons.

All of South Dakota's congressional delegation worked hard to make sure slash piles and other wood waste from national forests would qualify for the definition of renewable biomass in the energy bill, Everett said.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, made sure the definition included national forests when the bill came out of that committee, Everett said.

However, the bill had been changed in the House to exclude national forests before it got to the Senate. Everett said he suspects environmental interests got the provision inserted at the last minute.

"I think it fell victim to groups whose aim is to limit, in any way possible, forest management on public lands," he said.

Everett said the exclusion discourages the use of hundreds of thousands of tons of wood waste just from the Black Hills National Forest.

The provision was discovered too late in the process to change by the time it arrived in the Senate, according to Brendon Plack, a legislative aide to Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. Plack said much of the language of the 1,100-page bill apparently was written behind closed doors in final negotiations.

The provision doesn't outright ban using wood waste from national forests to make ethanol, Plack said.

However, it ensures that ethanol made from such national forest biomass will not count toward the increased renewable fuels standard target in the energy bill, he said.

That means ethanol made from national forest biomass will not qualify for government incentives, Everett said.

"It represents a policy disincentive," he said.

Companies making ethanol from wood products will have more incentive to use wood waste from private land, Everett said.

There is one exception in the definition: biomass from federal forests in the immediate vicinity of private homes qualifies for the renewable fuels standard.

"Essentially, for the purposes of energy incentives for the federal government, forest biomass on national forest lands might as well not exist," Everett said.

(The definition in the bill, however, does appear to list wood waste from tribal lands as qualifying for the renewable biomass definition.)

In contrast to the energy bill, Plack said, the farm bill does count wood waste from federal forests as renewable biomass.

"That fits in well with Sen. Thune's biomass crop transition program, which would pay individuals who transport that biomass to bio refineries on a per-ton basis," Plack said.

The farm bill has passed both the House and Senate, and a conference committee will meet next month to iron out differences between the two bills.

Everett said an important existing incentive for renewable energy was stripped from the bill when the Senate dumped a tax package. Some Republicans objected to taxes on oil companies in the package. But it also included reauthorization of a production tax credit of a 1-1/2 cents per kilowatt hour for renewable electricity production, Everett said. The incentive promoted practices such as burning wood chips to make electricity, he said.

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com

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Logging trees to save forests from development

One of my favorite forest industry resource sites is the Smallwood Utilization Network operated by Craig Rawlings and Nora McDougall of Missoula, Montana. I find a timely piece of information whenever I read one of their monthly newsletters (you can subscribe for free here).

This month's nugget is an editorial published in the Seattle Times about the retrenchment of various conservancy groups who are suddenly realizing that the forest products industry is good for forests and is a bulwark against the plagues of bugs, fires, and real estate developers that are ruining these precious resources.

The author of the article is Brian J. Boyle was Washington's commissioner of public lands from 1981 to 1993 and is the leader of the Northwest Environmental Forum. The University of Washington's College of Forest Resources has brought together a broad spectrum of stakeholders to apply scientific and policy information to address critical environmental and natural resource management issues. Potential users will include resource and environmental agencies; energy, forest, agriculture, and real estate interests; and land conservancies, environmental groups, tribes, and NGOs.

Here is the text of his article in its entirety...

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Save Northwest forests for conifers, not condos
By Brian J. Boyle

The Nature Conservancy announced this past summer that it plans to log trees on 161,000 acres in the Adirondack forest in New York to preserve the forest. The conservancy says that the logging will help pay off the debt incurred buying the land from a private owner, pay taxes, supply logs to a local sawmill and protect "a unique jewel of nature from fragmentation and development."

In Washington, the Cascade Land Conservancy has acquired 140,000 acres of "working forests" with a similar goal — to prevent development. The land conservancy also has plans to log sustainably, in keeping with the idea that the forest "works" when it provides logs and jobs — and income for the conservancy to manage the forest.

One might ask, how did the conservationists become tree-cutters?

Twenty years ago, environmental activists chained themselves to trees to save them from cutting, and the forest industry was often branded a threat to the environment. Yet, today, sustainable logging may be the salvation, because in the words of one conservationist, it's a choice between conifers and condos.

When you fly over Western Washington and some areas east of the Cascades in the daylight, you see unbroken swaths of trees. A forest? you ask. But try flying over at night — in Eastern King, Snohomish, Okanagan or Lewis counties — and what you will see are lights, thousands of them, from houses on rural subdivisions split into one- to five-acre parcels. This isn't a forest, it's "rural residential." This forest doesn't have spotted owls or murrelets, and the dominant bird species may be the crow. Once-timbered slopes now have serpentine driveways leading up to rural mansions.

Working forests, on the other hand, include areas actively managed for timber and for environmental services, such as fresh water, wildlife habitat and climate protection. Washington's working forests include 8 million acres of private and tribal forests and more than 2 million acres of state forestland.

Protecting the forests from development has turned conservation leaders into working-forest proponents. They've teamed up with old enemies and other strange bedfellows to keep sustainable timber operations in business, and they're stopping forests from being converted to subdivisions the old-fashioned way, by buying the land.

The forest industry isn't the same one your grandparents knew. The so-called industrial forest is disappearing. Weyerhaeuser is the last big corporate owner in the Northwest and its future is uncertain. Other former industrial forests are now owned by pension funds and investors and valued as financial investments, not for their tree values, and are swapped from landowner to landowner to rebalance portfolios.

Family forest owners eke out a living while fending off pressures from neighbors who live in subdivisions that used to be forests. Any forest landowner may find it expedient to sell as Washington's urban areas grow and subdivisions are permitted. The money from a developer fattens a retirement portfolio faster than the money from trees that can't be harvested for 30 years. But, a forest thick with houses ceases being a working forest, a shelter for wildlife and a protector of streams.

Conservation groups, local land trusts, and timber industry, government and tribal representatives, at a series of dialogues convened as the Northwest Environmental Forum, agreed that to sustain the forest environment, they need to help keep the timber industry in business through incentives for landowners. Here is what this diverse group thinks the Legislature should do:

• Create conservation markets, by putting a price on fish-and-wildlife habitat and carbon capture, so landowners can realize profits from more than just timber;

• Help nonprofits and others acquire and trade easements and development rights to protect critical forest watersheds;

• Remove wood from overstocked and overstressed forests to reduce wildfire risks, protect wildlife habitat and save state forest-fire-suppression funds;

• Help investors produce bioenergy from wood cellulose;

• Provide tax incentives so developers permanently protect forestland in exchange for higher-density development elsewhere.

Many say the Puget Sound-area population will double by 2050. That's a lot of potential condos, unless we can find ways for the forests to be saved and to support this new image of the industry.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
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Forest Service and Sierra Club mark trees together

Maybe it's because of the wildfires, maybe the fear of global warming - whatever the reason, here is one example of a reconciliation taking place between two parties that are too often seen "at loggerheads" with each other.

The USDA/Forest Service at Black Butte Ranch in Oregon decided it was time to try a new tack in its attempt to create understanding between stakeholders in the environmental sustainability of forests. By inviting members of the local and environmental community (including the Sierra Club) the Forest Service succeeded in engaging stakeholders in the process of choosing which trees to save and which to harvest to enhance survival and the generation of new old growth forests.

Along similar lines, the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) has just released a document titled Factors that Influence Successful Collaborations Between the Forest Products Industry and Environmental Organizations. It details a dozen geographically diverse projects from the U.S. and Canada. It offers eleven factors that appear to be crucial for the broadbase acceptance of any forest management projects.

There simply isn't time to waste on litigation anymore. Here are some excerpts on a story we need to see more examples of if we expect any headway in preserving the past for the future. Thanks to The Smallwood Utilization Network Forum for citing this and other relevant stories.

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Field trip helps forge trust among diverse interests
By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin
Published: November 16. 2007 5:00AM PST

The 20 or so people — from the U.S. Forest Service, timber industry, conservation groups and some who just live nearby — stood in the ponderosa pine forest next to Black Butte Ranch.

Armed with 11 different colors and patterns of marking tape, they set out with a goal — to flag which trees they would save, with the other ones left to be cut, if they were making the decisions.

One objective point of the Glaze restoration project is to thin trees and do other management treatments to generate new old-growth forests, possibly creating an example for other areas to follow in the process, said Maret Pajutee, district ecologist for the Sisters Ranger District.

But the goal for the day was to have people see how decisions are made about which trees to cut, learn from each other and share ideas, and perhaps build trust between the different groups and the Forest Service, she said.

And putting in time on the ground with different groups at the beginning of the process, she said, could help avoid time-consuming appeals and lawsuits at the end.

The Glaze restoration project was actually first pitched to the Sisters Ranger District by Cal Mukumoto, manager of Warm Springs Biomass, on the timber industry side, and Tim Lillebo, with the conservation group Oregon Wild. While the district originally had other priorities, once Mukumoto and Lillebo built some community support for the project and raised money, the agency got on board. Now, a draft environmental assessment of the project is expected early next year.

“That has never really happened to us before,” said Pajutee. “It’s really an exciting and unique thing that’s happened here.”

With some work that the Forest Service does, the agency has trust from the public, said Bill Anthony, Sisters District ranger. In other areas, however, like salvaging fire-killed trees, there’s a very low level of trust.

But the hope for projects like this, he said, is to move that trust and understanding along.

“What’s unique about this project is the partnership … with the restoration not only being the outcome, but working together, building trust, working through (issues) constructively instead of with litigation,” said Bill Anthony, Sisters District ranger.

The district wants to avoid situations like with the Metolius Basin forest management plan, where some groups collaborated with the agency, but an appeal was still filed against the project.

“By being open, upfront, by being out on the ground with the different interests, that’s how I think this is going to be a success,” Lillebo said. But there will still be concerns, he said, and times when people don’t agree about whether a tree should be cut.

“The goal was to have an example as a potential model,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll have people say, ‘I can live with that.’”

But the overall goal, he said, is to generate old growth. Lillebo said he used to be totally against all cutting, a response to earlier Forest Service policies of cutting large areas of forests and growing them back just to cut them again as a sort of tree farm.

“People don’t trust what’s happened in the past, when the whole last 40, 50 years has mostly been cutting the big trees down,” he said.

But now, he said, the science is indicating that some forests are so different from their natural state that they need to be managed by people.

“Uh-oh, maybe we were wrong,” he said. “In a lot of cases, you can’t just leave it alone. Let’s protect the big trees, and come up with a system where you grow back this old growth.”

On Thursday, forestry consultant Darin Stringer explained the strategy that the Forest Service is considering to treat the Glaze project area, parts of which edge right up to houses at Black Butte Ranch.

The idea is to create a mosaic across the landscape, of clumps of trees that are of a specific age or size. While that may require taking out a lot of small trees in areas that already have old growth, it will also mean taking some of the medium-sized, commercial-value trees out of stands to let the remaining trees grow bigger.

To show people how this might be done on the ground, the project organizers hosted the tree-tagging experiment. The results won’t actually be used, but it was a way to let people see what goes into the process, Pajutee said.

“You have to look for a lot of things — health, lack of defects,” he said. “If you take this one down, it’ll give this one a better chance.”

Tim Clasen, who lives a few miles south of the area, had come to learn about the Glaze restoration project. He was using his yellow-and-black-striped tape to mark groups of trees, and looking for a good spot to put a clearing that would allow one tree to grow unhindered.

“I really like the idea that they’re trying to coordinate different groups,” he said.

John Morgan, resource manager with Ochoco Lumber Co., said he was tagging the trees with the healthiest, sharpest pointed crowns — the ones that have a better chance of growing big, which adds to the health of the forest but also provides good timber down the road.

If this project is done correctly, it could be a model for future projects, said Miller, who added that she has high hopes that it will be done correctly. She said she had lots of reservations when Lillebo first told her of it, and still has some concerns about things like riparian areas and cutting too much in certain areas.

But if it works, the Glaze restoration project would be something that she could hold up as an example of acceptable ways to do forest management, she said.

“I think it’s kind of exciting,” Miller said, “because you wouldn’t see this five years ago, the Sierra Club and the Forest Service in the forest marking trees.”

Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.

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