Industrial forests.

We in the United States today can boast of the highest-yielding forests in the entire world. Even with the pressures of developing this country over the past three centuries, nearly three-fifths of the forestland that existed when Columbus arrived in 1492 is woodland again. Many people find this hard to believe and are surprised to learn that more than half of New Jersey, our most heavily populated state, is forested and that forests make up two-thirds of the total land area of the Northeast.

Though small in scope as compared with the U.S.S.R. or Canada, American timberlands are by far the most productive. And despite past and present practices of harvesting this renewable resource and the recurring devastation of fires and insects, the volume of wood fiber on these lands is actually increasing each year.

PROFILE OF THE INDUSTRY

Only about 15 percent of this timber resource-some 71 million acres-is owned and managed by private forest-products companies, a little over half that currently held in the public domain. The following is a breakdown of the nation's commercial forestland by ownership:

TABLE

GROUP LAND %

(millions of acres)

Private ownership

Forest industry 71 15

Other private 277 57

Public ownership

Federal government 97 20

Other public 39 8

Timber is the nation's most valuable agricultural crop, accounting for 24 percent of the total harvest, as compared with 23 percent for corn, 17 percent for soybeans, 16 percent for hay, 12 percent for fruits and nuts and 9 percent for wheat. It dominates some local economies. An overview is provided by Tables 1 and 2 on page 26. In 1986 -four years after the figures in Table 2-(not shown) the total value of the industry's output exceeded $200 billion or about 6 percent of the gross national product.

Individual companies processing timber are typically small. In 1982, for example, 91 percent of the establishments had fewer than 50 employees. But some firms are huge and rank with the nation's leading manufacturers. Among the top five are Weyerhaeuser, Georgia-Pacific, Boise Cascade, LouisianaPacific, and Willamette. Total 1988 sales: $74 billion.

A distinct trend is evident in the industry toward larger and fewer companies. This change reflects two major phenomena that affected the industry during the 1980s. First was the application of high technology and the quest for greater efficiency to stay competitive with other countries and alternate products. Computerized lasers and "green chains" (conveyor belts) are now commonplace in sawmills, plywood manufacturers are introducing innovative lathe equipment, and papermills are installing efficient new pollution-reduction equipment.

The second phenomenon was a shift in the source and nature of raw materials from the woods. We saw a significant move from the Pacific Northwest to the South, as reductions in old-growth timber were replaced by greater availability of southern pines. By 1986, according to Perry R. Hagenstein of Resource Issues, Inc., the South accounted for just over one-half of the total removals from growing stock in the United States, up from about 45 percent 16 years earlier.

REFORESTATION 

More than a billion tree seedlings are planted each year by the forest-products industry. This represents about 55 percent of the annual reforestation effort in the entire United States and reflects the industry's longtime commitment to maintaining our renewable resource.

Replanting serves the goal of producing more and better timber while at the same time protecting watersheds and wildlife habitat. Since 1980, for example, when Mount St. Helens blew its top and leveled miles of the surrounding area, Weyerhaeuser foresters have completely restocked the company's devastated tree farm. This is an incredible accomplishment, which Weyerhaeuser people characterize as the equivalent of planting 800 trees a minute, 400,000 trees a day, each working day for 20 years.

This exemplary sense of stewardship for the land is entirely consistent with a new conservation programGlobal ReLeaf-initiated last year by the American Forestry Association. Planting trees, whether in rural or city locations, has a direct and positive impact on environmental quality. Urban trees play an important role in reducing carbon-dioxide levels, a major cause of the dreaded greenhouse effect. According to the AFA, urban afforestation serves also to improve public health, moderate temperatures, reduce noise, improve recreational opportunities, and lower human stress levels.

As for rural areas, officials of the U. S. Forest Service point out that more than 20 million acres in our southern states would be more economically productive and environmentally stable if reforested to native pines rather than being continued in marginal crop production or erodible pasturelands. And current estimates suggest that we are wasting the economic opportunity to produce-through stepped-up reforestationup to 16 billion cubic feet more wood each year-enough to tie up half a billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually.

PROBLEMS

The forest-products industry has confronted serious problems during the decade of the 1980s-economic slowdowns, supply shortages, trade restrictions, foreign competition, to name a few. Scott Wallinger, senior vice president of Westvaco Corporation, points out that future fiber supplies will depend heavily on industrial forest ownerships that are intensively managed. Local economies must compete with tree plantations in Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, and similar places where intensive forestry is fueling major economic development and export. It is my personal view that many American companies have not yet awakened to this present-day reality.

But of all the problems the industry is facing, none has been as pervasive or as difficult to deal with as those involving people eager to exert their personal property rights to aesthetic views, privacy, clear air, and clean water.

Industry executives, in my opinion, have been slow in recognizing and understanding a major demographic trend that has evolved in recent years: the urbanization of the nation's wildlands. Unfolding before our eyes is a mass movement to the country, as harassed and often frightened city dwellers seek to escape the urban blight of smog, crime, drugs, and transportation gridlock. The explosion of high-technology information and communication systems has often facilitated this shift in demographics by promulgating the notion that people can perhaps work more effectively at home than at the office.

Conversely, with the recent strides toward greater national affluence, mobility, and early retirement, the demand has also increased for outdoor recreation, second homes, and large public forestlands set aside as Wilderness preserves. The 155 National Forests administered by the U.S. Forest Service (and viewed by the forest-products industry since their inception as a major source of timber supply) now accommodate more tourists than does the single-use National Park System. A new strategy initiated by the Forest Service for encouraging and managing recreation in our National Forests raises serious questions about the agency's traditional multiple-use policy and its relationships with the forest-products industry.

This is not to imply that the demographic shifts we are seeing are limited to public lands. The impacts on the future of timber harvesting are every bit as evident on private and state lands. Nor are the shifts occurring just in our faster-growing states. Every part of our country is experiencing the pressure of wildlands urbanization. In New England, for example, 89,000 acres of formerly commercial forest were recently sold in a single block for development into homesites.

Conservation easements and other innovative means are being used to control and minimize damage to environmental quality. Soon after the city dwellers relocate to their sylvan hideaways, it becomes apparent to neighboring forest-products industries that the refugees bring with them a set of urban values that conflict with normal timbering operations. Timber-harvest plans are soon challenged on such grounds as disturbances created by noise and dust, dangers posed to schoolchildren by logging trucks, and destruction of the forest views the urbanites moved for in the first place.

These complaints are then followed by even more persuasive arguments calling attention to the cumulative effects of timbering on watersheds, destruction of wildlife-dependent habitat, and damage to streams and fish-all of which the courts find convincing more often than not. The net effect is to delay, if not to curtail, harvesting operations on both private and public ownerships.

In the case of federal land, it is often fairly easy to halt any forest-management action proposed by federal agencies-usually at the cost of a few postage stamps. In Oregon and Washington, for example, we have witnessed over the past two years a dramatic increase in the number of appeals against timber-harvesting plans proposed by the U.S. Forest Service. As suggested by Figure 2 on page 26, the average annual number of appeals filed against the government from 1983 to 1987 was 66. But in 1988 alone, more than 400 such appeals were filed by citizens to stop timber harvesting ! THE FUTURE

The momentum for change has only begun gathering. My personal views were summed up in a lecture I gave several years ago at the University of California:

My objective here is to offer a plausible argument that the future of forestry in California will be whatever the public-at-large wants it to be. Not what industry leaders think it should be. And not what the profession hopes it will be. Whether we have boundary-to-boundary concrete covering tomorrow's California, or extensive common ownership of public parklands, or well-managed open spaces of forest and range shared both pleasurably and profitably by rural owners and urban visitors, depends, I think, on how creditably foresters and industry executives can project a favorable image of their resource stewardship.

What I was suggesting, of course, is an attitudinal change essential for survival of the forest-products industry. The industry's leaders must, in my opinion, face squarely what Peter F. Drucker describes in his most recent book as "the new realities." The world is changing fast, and the forest-products industry must change with it. In this context, the spotted owl and the other old-growth-dependent wildlife must be considered as surrogates for the underlying causes of public concern about the forest-products industry.

The Mead Corporation, an Ohio-based forest-products company, provides an example of the responsible good neighbor. The company's 1.5 million acres of forestlands in the Midwest and South are managed by professional foresters under a straightforward corporate policy that states: "While serving economic purposes in perpetuity-the primary reason for Mead's fee ownership of forestland Mead believes that forests must also serve a broad variety of other important purposes."

According to corporate forester Emerentia M. Guthrie, these noneconomic uses include hunting, fishing, hiking, skiing, and snowmobiling. Free maps are provided to the public covering 80 to 90 percent of Mead's timberlands, and haul roads are maintained the company for year-round access. Interpretive nature trails are also maintained, and ponds and lakes on company lands are stocked with fish. Wildlife plantings including grass and clover fields are established and maintained to enhance habitat for deer, grouse, and geese. Mature islands of aspen, wildlife dens, mast trees, and vegetated buffer strips are purposely left undisturbed during harvest operations. Finally, areas of company ownership have been set aside to preserve rare or endangered species such as the golden star lily and the flaming azalea in Ohio.

The business world of the past few years is full of examples of first-rate firms that became second-rate firms or even went out of business because they were inflexible and wanted to do things in the same old way. They failed to recognize change. Thomas J. Peters' books on excellence in business have been highly acclaimed. But a number of his so-called excellent companies can no longer compete. Their managers were too fixed in their attitudes, couldn't see the changes around them, lost their sense of social responsibility to the community, and, in preparing their marketing plans, ignored the wants of customers. The forest-products industry must not allow this to happen.

The future will provide ample opportunity for enhanced forest-products business. Some economists envisage the beginning of a strong, new upward business cycle starting in 1991. Housing starts should remain strong. Manufactured lumber exports have their greatest potential ever, as new markets arise in the less-developed countries and global economic interdependence materializes. The stage is set for a resurgence of the timber industry. But it must meet the 21st century head on and not wait to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. AF