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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Fighting fire with finance: Unique financing approach can restore ailing forests

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Forests provide many different services to people, most of which we don’t pay for and therefore tend not to be aware of or to take them for granted.

Wildfires burning in important municipal and farm irrigation watersheds have awakened many to the true cost of unhealthy forests, when tens of millions of dollars must be invested to filter the water that nature previously filtered for us, rehabilitate a watershed to stabilize the soil, and clear sediment from reservoirs that filled after a wildfire.

This TedX presentation by Leigh Madeira demonstrates how using financial markets and private investment, water districts, cities and other entities can accelerate the restoration of watersheds after 100 years of fire suppression has created overly dense forests. [Read more…]

Federal judges invoke ‘The Lorax’ in defense of trees over pipeline permit

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Quoting Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” the Fourth Circuit spoke for the trees this month by scrapping a key federal permit for a planned section of a natural gas pipeline crossing 21 miles of national forest in Virginia, including a section of the Appalachian Trail.

“We trust the United States Forest Service to ‘speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues,’” the ruling states, citing the 1971 children’s book. “For the reasons set forth herein, we grant the petition to review the Forest Service’s record of decision and special use permit, vacate the Forest Service’s decisions, and remand to the Forest Service for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The Richmond-based appeals court said the Forest Service, which had approved a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to snake through the George Washington and Monongahela National Forests, pulled an about-face after its technical staff’s research painted a “grim picture” of the pipeline’s potential impacts on the environment.

“A thorough review of the record leads to the necessary conclusion that the Forest Service abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources,” U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. “This conclusion is particularly informed by the Forest Service’s serious environmental concerns that were suddenly, and mysteriously, assuaged in time to meet a private pipeline company’s deadlines.” [Read more…]

CLT or MPP? Freres family enters market with mass plywood panels

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Mass plywood panel in Freres Lumber plant during tour for the IMTC 18. Photo: David Atkins, Treesource

Following in the footsteps of other family businesses that have moved into the mass timber market, Freres Lumber has taken the entrepreneurial leap into a new product line called mass plywood panels (MPP).

Tyler Freres led my International Mass Timber Conference group on a tour of the new facility at his family’s plywood plant in the small town of Lyons, Oregon, about 20 minutes from the state capital in Salem.

“We have been making veneer since the 1950s,” Freres said. “And my grandfather first started in the sawmill business in the 1920s.”

[Read more…]

i-Tree app: How much is a tree worth?

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According to the last census, 81 percent of Americans live in urban settings, so urban trees are the only forests most people encounter day to day.

And that’s if they are lucky enough to live or work in the forested part of a city.

“The 135 million acres of urban and community forests are perhaps the most valuable, hardest-working forests in the country,” says Paul Ries, co-chair of the Sustainable Urban and Community Forestry Coalition.

That’s a bold statement when you consider corporate forests that produce billions of board feet of timber every year or uniquely American treasures like Olympic or Yosemite national parks.

Is Ries biased? Maybe, but he also has hard numbers to back up his statement: 1.6 million jobs with an $82 billion payroll, over $5 billion in energy savings and almost $5 billion in carbon sequestered in trees.

An assessment of human health benefits puts the figure at $6.8 from urban forests in the U.S. There is no disputing that urban forests encounter the most people. [Read more…]

Foresters, furniture makers, city leaders create 3rd life for Baltimore’s urban wood

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A Baltimore nonprofit organization called Humanim employs a local workforce to salvage valuable lumber from abandoned rowhomes. Photo: Humanim

Fred Rogers, creator and host of the long-running television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” once wrote: “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” Mister Rogers was referring to transitions that occur in our lives, but the same idea can be applied to salvaging and reusing urban resources … even the wood in old houses.

Home salvage is explained in a 2007 book by Robert Falk, a research general engineer with the U.S. Forest Service. In “Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses,” Falk says: “As the son of a Depression-era remodeler, my father taught me early on that building materials can live more than one life. … In our resource-rich nation, there’s a wealth of high-quality building material available for salvage. The windows, doors, cabinets, fixtures, lumber, trim and hardwood flooring that often end up in the landfill can all be easily salvaged and reused; and these items can be of much higher quality than those found in new construction.”

While salvage is far from a new idea, it’s catching on in some U.S. cities. Consider Baltimore, a city that has seen its population decline by more than a third since the 1950s – an out-migration that left thousands of vacant houses.

Now, through a four-year initiative called Project C.O.R.E.(Creating Opportunities for Renewal and Enterprise), Maryland is spending millions of dollars to demolish 4,000 of these buildings.

Project C.O.R.E. also creates opportunities to incorporate social and environmental benefits – opportunities that are being addressed through a partnership called the Baltimore Wood Project. Through this partnership, lumber from 1,000 Baltimore rowhomes is being salvaged and repurposed in a way that gives the wood a third life to follow its first two lives: as trees and as construction material. [Read more…]