Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future
Forests and fire, two words often linked together. Are they good or bad? Or is fire like wind or rain or floods, and context and perspective are what really matter?
I have heard people argue about whether Smokey Bear is a great communication tool for educating people about the dangers of wildfire or the source of our problems with fire suppression.
I think we can be more nuanced. [Read more…]
Leadership. Innovation. Entrepreneurship. Risk-taking. These characteristics generate advances that “disrupt” markets, as the first article in our series on mass timber illustrated.
There is often a narrative that such innovation only occurs in the private sector, but in Springfield, Oregon, the mayor, superintendent of schools, University of Oregon students and faculty all played a role pushing the proverbial envelope.
The mayor and city are putting up public funds to help reduce the risk and expense of the first parking structure built from mass timber. That’s critical.
They are also working with code officials to embrace the value of experimenting with these new ideas in “green” construction. It is not easy for code officials, as their primary responsibility is to ensure safe structures. They’re on unfamiliar ground.
All of this is part of new product and market development. And Springfield isn’t the lone ranger of mass timber. [Read more…]
The New Jersey coastline has been sinking, slowly, since the last ice age – a reflection of geologic changes, for sure, but also of changing climate conditions, exacerbated in more recent years by human-caused factors.
Species evolve and adapt to changing conditions, or not, depending on the rate of change. That’s one of the fascinating aspects of studying natural history and ecology. The number of confounding factors make it a challenging puzzle to try and sort out, especially when humans are part of that natural history.
Humans have moved species around and domesticated both plant and animal species for thousands of years. But in the past 150 years, our ability to exert even more influence, sometimes inadvertently, has become more profound.
So what can, or should, we do about it? [Read more…]
One hundred million Americans live in or near fire-prone forests and grasslands. Every summer, some of those forests erupt in flames that quickly ignite homes, some leaping ahead miles in a few minutes.
The CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” recently devoted an episode to the nation’s wildfire problem – why the fires are growing larger and more difficult to fight, and what homeowners can do to protect their property from the inevitable flames.
The report includes an interview with a former firefighter and with the former deputy secretary of Agriculture who oversaw the U.S. Forest Service, an agency that now spends more than half of its annual budget on firefighting. They provided the background. [Read more…]This week, we have a story focused a new organization called the North American Forest Partnership. With the goal of full transparency, I want to let you know that I was involved in the development of the partnership as a contractor for the Forest Business Network and for the past eight-plus months as an unpaid volunteer, because I believe the goals of the partnership are laudable.
Matt Blois’ article explores this partnership, and the similarities and differences from other trade or business sectors that develop promotional campaigns. One difference is that it has members who have litigated against each other at times in the past and potentially could again in the future, so there are built-in tensions.
However, the members have come together because they see common ground AND they see that their individual organizations have important values and purposes that serve society through very different methods. A publicly traded timberland company is focused on wood production to meet societal demands for renewable wood products, while publicly owned wilderness areas preclude all harvest and serve society’s needs for wild areas – places that feed the soul, and provide space for natural disturbances such as fire, hurricanes and ice storms to proceed unaltered so we can learn from those processes. Conservation organizations, family forest owners and academics have goals that run the gamut between these. The NAFP recognizes the legitimacy and celebrates all of these different forests.
Can this partnership achieve its goals of communicating these common values and at times exploring their differences? Only time will tell. We at Treesource think this is an important story that focuses strongly on the social leg of the sustainability stool. Our current capital “P” political world in the United States is polarized and operating in a mode of, “if you’re not with me, you’re against me.” NAFP is attempting to break that mold. [Read more…]