A dirt forester's perspective.

A man who has paid his dues gets down in the duff about what constitutes good forestry.

BEFORE THE European discovery of the "new" world, entire forests in many parts of Europe had disappeared due to human exploitation. Wood famines caused by exploitation of fuel wood became so serious that people were beheaded for cutting down trees without per mission. In response to centuries of deforestation, forestry, the "art and science of keeping and developing the forest"--took root in 13th century Germany. By the 16th century the science of silviculture and the practice of sustained-yield forest management was well established in many regions.

In the 19th century Germany went through another period of forest exploitation under the guise of "scientific" forest management, highlighted by the removal of natural forests and their replacement with plantations. After their forests were reduced by overcutting and plantation failures, German foresters returned to biologically astute forest management, aimed at keeping and developing the forest rather than removing it. As history illustrates, it is by increasing trees, both in number and in size, that enlarging societies sustain their forests.

Sustaining the Forest

Forests vary in definition from sporadically treed savannas, through plantations in which mono cultures of young trees evenly occupy the ground, to great woods where a variety of trees fill layers of both vertical and horizontal space. Although forests contain more living organisms than just trees, large trees are a well-measured "indicator" of a true forest. Consequently, a forest may be best considered as a complex, diverse, vegetative and animal association dominated by mature trees.

Opinions on the meaning of the term "sustain" tend to vary with forest value systems To sustain literally means to "hold up" or "nourish," which in forest management implies more than simply maintaining a nondeclining flow of timber. Gifford Pinchot, the first Forest Service Chief, summarized this concept when he spoke of drawing from the forest while preserving it and encouraging productivity while increasing the capital value of the stands. One cannot "preserve the forest" or "increase the capital value of its stands" while simultaneously removing them. This explains why today's leaders in sustainable forestry concepts generally reject the industrially preferred cycle of first deforesting and then reforesting large acreages.

Sustainable Forestry

All the time-tested sustainable forestry operations I have explored share a common denominator . . . they focus on what is left rather than what is taken. If foresters visualize themselves as trustees of an asset that belongs to the future as much as to the present, then future forest values will guide their forestry. This implies that well-sustained forests are not only maintained but also enriched or expanded. To increase forest wealth takes more restraint than simply preserving the capital and spending the interest . . . it requires reinvesting some of the growth back into the growing stock to enlarge and improve it. None of the sustained forests I have investigated have endeavored to cut all their growth increase within each harvest cycle.

Sustainable management regimes also share some common aspects. Noting these has led me to conclude that the practice of sustainable forestry should include as a minimum, four basic measurable facets:

* Desired Future Condition

* Sustained Yield 

* Ecosystem Maintenance

* Community Stability

Desired Future Condition

Perhaps the most important facet of achieving sustainable forestry is a stated management vision of the future forest landscape. Whichever silvicultural tools foresters use, long-term forest sustainment requires gauging current activities against the development of the forest toward a desired future condition. Although this future condition will vary with the forest's history, ownership goals, and social demands, identifying it sets distinct management guidelines.

Human goals for a forest rarely coincide with the future landscape toward which unchecked natural disturbances and processes would drive the forest. This dichotomy is well illustrated by the landscape created inadvertently by our culture's active suppression of forest fire. Fire, particularly in the West, is the very disturbance that historically created our most valuable timber stands and diverse forestscapes. Without forestscape level management that emulates the patterns and processes of natural disturbances like fire, timber values and forest productivity will eventually decline. Sustainable forestry must ideally bring a forest to a state that is within a natural range of variation.

This is why forest-smart managers study and silviculturally mimic historical forest disturbance as well as pay careful attention to a variety of contemporary resource conditions. Soil, wildlife, water quality, vegetative types, and timber volumes become reality checks of how well a particular forest is progressing toward a desired future condition. A decline in the quality or quantity of any of these vital resources is an early warning that a forest may be headed toward a state of nonsustainable disharmony.

Sustained Yield

Sustained-yield forest management was classically defined by German foresters as "the continuous human use of forests without impairment of the future function or productivity of any of the resources." In commercial timber-producing forests, sustained yield may be focused down to the continual balancing of timber harvesting with timber growth. Maintaining a nondeclining flow of timber requires more than replacing large, slower-growing trees with quicker-growing seedlings; it implies maintaining a continual balance of timber. As Gordon Robinson, forester emeritus and author of The Forest and The Trees, liked to say, "It takes timber to grow timber!"

The careful balancing of long-term forest resources like mature trees with short-term social and economic demands is not a simple task. At the landscape level this balanced state can often be approximated through a variety of silvicultural systems, including prudent forms of regeneration harvesting, popularly called "clearcutting." Overcutting of forest landscapes, stands, or certain species, regardless of the harvest technique employed, is always contrary to the practice of sustained-yield forestry.

Maintaining the Ecosystem

Forests are a mysterious living mixture of soil, organisms, light, moisture, and air. A healthy forest is the functioning system that produces a sustainable flow of timber along with many other resources. Dr. Art Partridge, a western forest pathologist, describes a healthy forest as "a forest in dynamic equilibrium, one with all parts balanced and productive." The total contribution of these many interwoven parts, often unseen, maintains the forest ecosystem that grows the timber. The continual presence of mature timber may consequently be used as a commonly measured indicator of a forest's vitality and diversity.

Different forest ecosystems will have distinct components of biological diversity. These include a variety of successional forest structures, species compositions, and biological functions at both landscape and stand levels. Maintaining soil productivity and the natural processes necessary for a vital forest ecosystem requires keeping a vestige of the original habitat types, seral stages, live trees, snags, and down woody material throughout the harvest cycles. This "retention" forestry can be enhanced by using harvest practices that blend with each particular forest ecosystem's processes.

Community Stability

A commercial forest that is maintained in a healthy, functional, and undepleted state provides a stable yield of timber and simultaneously helps to sustain local timber-dependent communities. This kind of forest may not provide windfall profits for corporate stockholders, but it will, over time, provide a quality environment, continued human enjoyment, and reasonable financial dividends to the owners.

Large forest owners can further increase modest profits and community opportunity through efficient local processing of their timber. Historically, forest degradation has often resulted from over-manipulating forestlands to conform to mill or market demands. Contemporary mills can now be tailored, along with markets, to fit the timber most efficiently produced by a specific forest while simultaneously reducing material wastage and operational costs. A mill that is content to utilize the surplus of wood grown by a healthy forest to create quality products insures long-term benefits for both forest owners and timber-dependent communities.

Good Wood Certification

The fact that today's society recognizes and values sustainable forestry is supported by the consumer interest in products generated from good forestry. "Good wood" is in demand by an increasing number of wood-product producers and wholesalers. This has led to efforts, particularly in the environmental community, to identify and certify sustainable forestry operations. (See accompanying article.)

Recently I helped conceptualize, plan, and implement a third-party certification of the Collins Almanor Forest by Scientific Certification Systems, commonly known as "Green Cross." The 92,000-acre Collins mixed-conifer forest in northern California was an excellent model of industrial-scale sustainable forestry, well deserving of the Green Cross seal. After 50 years of timber harvesting, physical inventory plots verified as much standing timber today as when active forest management first began. Focused on the leave stand quality, silvicultural techniques used by Collins foresters emulate natural patterns and processes. Sustaining the forest has resulted in a steady flow of logs to the Collins Pine mill and provided stable jobs for the adjacent community of Chester.

Testing Sustainable Forestry

Because Collins foresters are proud of their forest and its tradition of sustainable management, they congenially allow both admirers and critics to inspect their work. In order to be publicly credible, any claim of sustainable forestry should result in forest owners opening their management practices to reasonable scrutiny. Critiquing sustainable forestry requires, in my opinion as a forester, passing a forest through a flexible audit rather than attempting to conform its management to exhaustive and often subjective standards. All of the sustainable forests I have reviewed have implemented clearly stated management goals contained within an easily understood management plan substantiated by well-kept records. This permits a third-party "auditor" to overview a forest owner's records, plans, and both historic and current activities on the ground. Where to focus a closer inspection in order to substantiate a sustainable forestry claim would be apparent to an experienced forester after an initial reconnaissance.

Looking Good

I mentioned earlier that all sustainable forestry operations have a common management denominator--they focus on what is left rather than what is taken. They also have a common visual denominator--sustainable forestry generally looks good! Greg Harty, a senior forestry associate of mine, tells new foresters to carefully observe good forest management. "Looking is the best tool we've got," he says. This concept is particularly true when critiquing sustainable forestry. Every sustained forest I have visited is visually well kept and cared for. Many of those who have paid their dues in the forest agree that bad forestry is hard to hide and that good forestry looks good!

Where there are forests and people, there has always been forestry. Over time, forestry that is good for the forest has consistently been good for the people. And although the best humanly managed forests may aspire to do so, they have yet to attain the natural forest's successful test of time. This is why the best forestry may still be where there are forests and no people, and consequently no "forestry"!

Roy Keene--executive director of the Eugene, Oregon-based Public Forestry Foundation, a coalition of resource professionals and citizens dedicated to the promotion of socially responsible forestry through citizen involvement and education.