oys geographic information system techniques to identify areas across the country where private forest services such as timber, wildlife habitat, and water quality might be affected by factors such as development, fire, insect pests, and diseases.” The Service also intends to reach out and participate in community growth planning to “…reduce ecological impacts and wildfire risks.” Even the “urban forest” is studied as part of the program.
New Approaches May Benefit the Forest Products Industry
At best, the Forest Service’s new initiatives will help the owner of small acreages profitably manage their land to achieve personal goals. Service examination of the nation’s family forests has revealed that the vast majority of small acreage (100 acres or less) owners are not focused on holding the land for timber production, rather, they hold the land for scenery, privacy, nature protection, and recreation.
The problem with managing land for esthetic values is expense. While a landowner might hold nature protection and other goals to be important, those goals often take a back seat to spending priorities. The Service worries that too many owners of small parcel forestlands believe benign neglect is an adequate management strategy. Unfortunately, in today’s world of fragmented holdings, invasive species, and other threats to the forest, a neglected forest is often an unhealthy forest.
To address the fiscal problem and encourage active management of even small forests, a “priority action” of the Open Space Conservation Strategy is to “Promote national policies and markets to help private landowners conserve open space.”
If small acreages can be managed profitably to achieve owners’ goals, the result will be a fresh look at everything from the management of habitat to strategic harvest, the nature of the harvest itself, and the kinds of harvesting and processing equipment required to manage the forest.
First Steps toward Enhancing Profitability
An early step toward enhancing markets came last year when the Secretary of Agriculture (under which the Forest Service operates) announced a national initiative to make wood a primary building material in “green building” projects. Citing a Forest Service study, Science Supporting the Economic and Environmental Benefits of Using Wood and Wood Products in Green Building Construction, Secretary Vilsack said, “This study confirms what many environmental scientists have been saying for years. Wood should be a major component of American building and energy design.”
How the Forest Products Industry Will Change Due to Forest Service Initiatives
The national shift to utilizing family forests for wood products will drive significant change in the industry. An increasingly large portion of the nation’s timber resource will be in the hands of family forest owners who control smaller parcels and are uninterested in clear cutting. More emphasis is likely to be placed on removal of damaged trees (insect, storm, etc.), uneven age cuts, and thinning. Greater demand for forest products and greater awareness of the need to actively manage land for forest health and improved habitat will mean more wood products will come from small acreage stands actively managed to achieve goals not necessarily related to optimizing timber production.
A paper released by the University of Minnesota’s College of Natural Resources and Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station pointed to the issues raised by small-scale harvest saying, “The likelihood that an increasing share of the nation’s timber supply will be obtained from relatively small tracts or uneven-aged, mixed-species stands poses a number of challenges to harvesting technology. Cost-effective and flexible harvesting systems must simultaneously meet evolving criteria for safety and minimal site/stand impact.” The paper concludes that small-scale equipment “… that can help minimize the capital and operating costs associated with partial harvests or when operating on smaller tracts,” will see increasing importance in coming years.
On the processing end, small-scale s