"Appalachian Forestry in the 21st Century"
Virginia Division Society of American Foresters State Meeting
Norton, Virginia, June 14, 2001

Challenges Facing Foresters in the New Millennium
Presentation by M. Rupert Cutler
Retired Founding Executive Director, Western Virginia Land Trust
Roanoke, Virginia

Good evening. Thank you for inviting me to address you at your important annual meeting. I am honored that you would ask a retiree, whose most high-profile moments in the world of forestry policy took place more than 20 years ago during the Carter Administration, to share his thoughts with you tonight.

I'm not sure my wife Gladys and I have ever been in Norton before. In Ronald D. Eller's book, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers-Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1030, I've read that, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Wise Country was the leading coal-producing county in the state. And that, about the same time, Dickenson County was where the Yellow Poplar Lumber Company sent tens of millions of board feet of poplar logs to the mill by means of a huge splash dam on Russell Fork. We read stories in The Roanoke Times about the proposed Coalfields Expressway, and we hear about deer hunters being astounded by Rocky Mountain elk released by the State of Kentucky that wander across the state line. It's beautiful country, and we're glad to be here.

I hope to offer some observations and perspectives that will be helpful as you determine the policy positions of the Society of American Foresters. My talk will have two parts: supportive conclusions about forest ecosystem management and recommendations regarding state forestry programs arrived at after serving as a member of the Virginia General Assembly's chip mill subcommittee.

In some ways, I am one of you. My undergraduate upper classman coursework at the University of Michigan consisted of forestry courses supplemented by courses in wildlife management and journalism. At forestry summer camp in 1954, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I was one of only two wildlife majors among about 30 forestry majors, taking largely the same courses. Twenty years later, when I was a faculty member and extension specialist at Michigan State University, Forestry Department Chairman Lee James defended me from attacks by others in the forestry business after I was nominated by President Carter to be the assistant secretary of agriculture in charge of the Forest Service. (The criticism was based, I suppose, on my pro-wildlife and pro-wilderness work in the 1960s for the National Wildlife Federation and The Wilderness Society.) When I was assistant secretary and had ordered the Forest Service to conduct a review of the entire National Forest System to allocate roadless areas to wilderness and non-wilderness--the process known as RARE II--the forest products industry's reaction was more positive than that of the environmental organizations.

I was an active member of the Society of American Foresters for over 25 years. I served on its first national Task Force on Sustaining Long-Term Forest Productivity, chaired by Logan Norris of Oregon State University. More recently, I allowed and encouraged the SAF Blue Ridge Chapter to build an interpretive trail of several miles' length in Virginia's Explore Park-in fact, I helped build it--to show school children samples of commercial forest management techniques and their benign environmental consequences.

I disagree with the position taken by the Sierra Club to the effect that there should be no commercial timber harvest in the National Forests and other federal lands. I still believe in the concept of multiple use forestry. I am confident that forestry can be practiced so that forests can simultaneously produce commodities and jobs, clean water, abundant and diverse fish and wildlife, and recreational opportunities that include wilderness-based solitude and challenge. I respect foresters and the forestry profession.

In other ways, I acknowledge, my experience and philosophy probably differ from many of you here tonight. For one thing, most of the forests I have visited and tried to influence the management of during my working career-with the National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the United States Department of Agriculture-have been public lands. The issue of private property rights does not surface in such discussions. I have been on a steep learning curve recently when it comes to how to constitutionally and fairly influence forest practice on private land.

For another thing, the national and regional private environmental conservation groups I worked for and represented over the years are supported by and governed mainly by what some call "urban greens." I tend to give their concerns priority attention. Many of these "urban greens" are relatively well-educated and well-to-do professionals who live in cities and suburbs. You may question their credentials to influence forestry policy because they may only see forests on their annual vacations or from airplanes as they cross the country on business trips. Their personal contact with forests may be limited to having forests serve as a backdrop for their homes or as a place to fish, hunt, ski, hike, or camp. They may not even realize that forests are the source of their drinking water and the oxygen they breathe. The relationship between working forests and their lives may come into focus only when they buy hardwood flooring, solid wood furniture, or lumber for do-it-yourself projects. But these urban dwellers are just as much the owners of the national forests as those who live near and work in them, and they have a right to clean water and air and an attractive and productive outdoor recreation environment.

I empathize with the forester's difficult situation, with so many citizens opposed to tree-cutting, and with urban-based voters out-numbering rural-based voters in most states. Wood products are needed by society. It is counterproductive from a global environmental protection standpoint to place so many restrictions on forestry in the United States that the forestry industry is driven to harvest more timber in other countries with even more endangered species at risk and far fewer environmental protection rules in place.

So it makes sense for all of us who depend on the continued existence of large tracts of forest-whether we use them for sustainable timber harvest or recreation (we all use them for drinking water and breathable air)-to work together to slow forest fragmentation and irreversible development and encourage the practice of ecosystem management. Let us make common cause to defend the forest land base. As I wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece in 1980, when I co-chaired a federal study of the rate of farmland development, "Asphalt is the land's last crop."

If you can accept some old growth set-asides, streamside buffer zones, enforcement of Best Management Practices to save water quality and wildlife habitat, and conservation easements to protect long-distance wildlife travel corridors, forest conservationists such as the members of Virginia Forest Watch can accept clearcuts of modest size, carried out using good silvicultural practices, to get the wood our people need to the mills and the lumber yards. Then we can concentrate on working together to save forested land in large tracts for a variety of uses.

I don't want to wear out my welcome with a too-long speech and will keep my eye on my watch. In the next few minutes I'll try to summarize two topics. I'd like to explain and recommend forest ecosystem management. Then I will suggest some changes in state laws and executive branch organization to improve the environmental impact of logging on private land in Virginia.

Ecosystem Management

As I summarize the recommendations of the first SAF Task Force on Sustaining Long-Term Forest Productivity, please think about how these recommendations might be implemented on private land.

I know it's easier to re-write the Forest Service Manual, and thereby reform National Forest practices, than it is to do ecosystem management on the relatively small tracts many of you deal with on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps "stewardship planning" is one answer. Forest co-operatives may be another. Perhaps some of you have already figured this one out. I'm sure progress in this direction is being made on corporate lands, and I'm sure that attempting ecosystem management on non-industrial private forest land is more difficult
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(SLIDES)

1. We know that a forest is more than a collection of trees. Forests have many products, services, and values. Our challenge is to use them in a sustainable way so we do not foreclose the options of future generations.

2. Foresters have long sought means of increasing the timber supply, such as tax reforms, direct economic incentives, and better market information.

3. Equally helpful are efforts to reduce demand, by slowing the rate of human population growth, getting more product from trees being harvested, protecting wood products from decay, and developing wood fiber recycling systems.

4. At the root of the increase in the demand for forest products, and its potentially harmful impact on the forest environment and the availability of forests for any use, is the rapid rate of human population worldwide. Urban sprawl is taking over the "wood basket" of Virginia. The SAF has been on record in favor of policies and programs to stabilize the human population, and I think this is a good idea.

5. Ecosystem stability depends on harmony between people and land.

6. I served on the first national SAF Task Force on Sustaining Long-Term Forest Productivity.

7. The task force concluded that traditional sustained yield management is not sufficient to achieve the goal of sustaining forest health and long-term productivity of all values.

8. It concluded that a broader ecological approach providing a different context for achieving sustained yield is needed. The task force called this approach "ecosystem management."

9. The task force noted that traditional sustained-yield management focuses on continuing the flow of one or more products within constraints imposed by environmental and economic factors.

10. The task force recommended that a transition be made to ecosystem management. As defined by the task force:

· Ecosystem management focuses on the condition of the forest. Goals are to maintain soil productivity and conserve the gene pool, biodiversity, landscape patterns, and ecological processes.

· Actions and yield projections are determined with the goals established for the ecosystem as a whole.

11. Ecosystem management is not the replacement of the production of goods and services with the preservation of some natural state. It recognizes that natural disturbance regimes provide the basic blueprint for sustaining pattern and process across the landscape.

12. Ecosystem management seeks management practices that reflect landscape patterns and ecosystem processes. This does not mean all landowners must have the same objectives, but rather that ecosystem integrity is maintained in aggregate at the ecosystem level.

13. Ecosystem management uses intensive forest management within the landscape as a necessary part of meeting the needs of people across the landscape.

14. There is a place for "production wildlands" in the spectrum of the forest land management systems across the country that also includes multi-use wildlands and native wildland reserves. All three goals--producing resources, balancing uses and values, and protecting nature--can be met.

15. In summary, the way public and private forestlands in the United States and in Virginia are managed must be politically and socially desirable, economically feasible, and ecologically sound. It is the "socially desirable" and "ecologically sound" goals in which I--and the Virginia Forest Watch organization, of which I am a member--are primarily interested. I hope this brief description helps you understand the concept of ecosystem management. With this discussion in mind, let's move to my reaction to the study of the impacts of satellite chip mills authorized by House Joint Resolution Number 730 passed by the Virginia General Assembly on February 25, 1999. As you know, Delegate Barnie Day of Meadows of Dan chaired the subcommittee.

16. Among its meetings was a May 2, 2000 field trip to the Brookneal area in Charlotte County, where members of the committee made a low-altitude aerial survey of recently logged sites.

17. They flew over and later visited the Brookneal Chips, Inc. chip mill.

18. They hiked over the "Liston harvest site" where the landowner, Mrs. Kathy Liston, was unhappy with the way the area was logged by the timber owner, Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation. Among her complaints were the cutting of old oak trees near the historic plantation home place, the obliteration of a slave cemetery, failure to leave vegetated buffers for filtration and habitat along watercourses, and the creation of steep, bare-soil skid trails and haul roads potentially leading to erosion and siltation.

19. State Forester Jim Garner participated in all of the chip mill subcommittee's meetings. Most of the responsibility for follow-up to the work of the chip mill subcommittee will be his agency's, the Virginia Department of Forestry.

(END OF SLIDES)

The Chip Mill Study

Four members of the Joint Subcommittee Studying the Impact of Satellite Chip Mills on Virginia's Economy and Environment-Delegates James Dillard of Fairfax and Mitchell Van Yahres of Charlottesville, private citizen member Shireen Parsons of Christiansburg, and I-ended up disagreeing with the conclusions of the Subcommittee majority who feel that the impact of satellite chip mills on Virginia's economy and environment is modest, and that landowners and the forest industry should not be burdened by additional constraints, even if they are intended by their sponsors to protect the public interest in a sound economy and a healthy environment.

We of the minority concluded from our participation in the Subcommittee's study that a need exists for greater governmental oversight of forestry and the forest products industry in Virginia, on behalf of the citizens of the Commonwealth of present and future generations. While we think this increased level of oversight of logging on private lands is needed regardless of the rate of increase in the number of chip mills in the Commonwealth, we believe it will become more necessary as the number of chip mills in the state grows and as forest removal across the state exceeds forest growth.

We think such interventions should be put in place without delay, to protect the value of private land adjacent to that being logged and to protect the long-term public trust interests of citizens in clean air and water, biological diversity, and the generation of clean air and water by healthy forests. The protection of these public values is required under Article XI of the Virginia Constitution.

In our printed dissent, we offer detailed observations and conclusions as well as a number of specific recommendations. Time constraints this evening limit me to just hitting the highlights of our recommendations. They are as follows:

1. We believe a comprehensive forest policy should be written and adopted for the Commonwealth of Virginia with the participation of all stakeholders in the Virginia forest resource.

2. We support an increase in the number of Department of Forestry foresters and forest hydrologists employed to protect the Commonwealth's water quality from pollution by logging operations.

3. We want a performance review of the Department of Forestry done by the General Assembly's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. It will identify the strengths and weaknesses of the department, including the adequacy of its staffing and budget and the quality of its performance in carrying out its mandated statutory duties. These include protecting the Commonwealth's water quality from forestry activities. It could explore transferring responsibility for the task of enforcing water quality laws in logging and wood-manufacturing operations to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Commonwealth's primary and expert water quality protection and enforcement agency, from the agency that is responsible for the promotion of forestry and forest products.

4. We believe there is too little forest hydrology expertise on the staffs of the VDOF, the Forestry Department of Virginia Tech, and the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service. We support the hiring of more water quality protection specialists by the VDOF and the creation of a new forest hydrologist faculty position at Virginia Tech and two new forest hydrology extension specialist field positions in the Extension Service. This would provide the research and logger training needed to take science-based steps to reduce logging-related water pollution problems in Virginia.

5. We urge the General Assembly to pass a new law making the use of forestry best management practices mandatory, with serious fines for noncompliance. This step already has been taken in other states including Kentucky. BMPs have long been used by forest products corporations on their own corporate lands, in their own self-interest.

6. This new law also should include landowner protection provisions that require the notification of the VDOF and adjacent landowners of intent to log well in advance of such logging and the active presence of a certified "master logger" on the logging site whenever logging is under way.

7. Preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) by the corporation proposing to build it should be required whenever a chip mill is proposed for construction. It should include a description of the impact of the mill in terms of the volume of wood it will require, the sources of that raw material, and the impact on the ecosystem of that logging.

8. Policy oversight of the Virginia Department of Forestry should be transferred from the Secretary of Commerce and Trade to the Secretary of Natural Resources. This would reinforce the fact that Virginia's forests are not just a commodity in the market but a precious legacy that, considering all forest products, values, and services, is an important component of the natural resource base of our Commonwealth that must be managed with the interests of all citizens and future generations in mind.

Delegates Dillard and Van Yahres agree with those of us in the forest conservation community such as Forest Watch that such reforms are a good idea. I realize that a laundry list of major changes like this is a lot to comprehend quickly, and that the first reaction most folks have to changes of any kind is negative.

But I hope you'll mull these ideas over and not dismiss them out of hand. Some of us will be working in Richmond to try to advance these propositions, and we'd appreciate your help with one or more of them. Thank you again for inviting me and for listening. Your attention and consideration are appreciated. Have a good meeting!

Thank you.