National Association of Conservation Districts

National Association of Conservation Districts

NACD's mission is to serve conservation districts by providing national leadership and a unified voice for natural resource conservation.

Forestry Notes

Dcember 2009
Volume XIX, Issue 1
| PDF version | Archive of Previous Issues |

  1. Forestry on a Global Scale
  2. Teton CD Assists With Recovery in Wyoming
  3. Latest Legislative Update from Washington, D.C.
  4. New Resource for Communicating With Family Forest Owners
  5. Forestry Briefs
  6. Conservation Calendar

1. Forestry on a Global Scale
Board member represents NACD at the 13th World Forestry Congress

In October, NACD Board Member Charles Holmes participated in an 18-member official U.S. Delegation selected by U.S. Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell to represent NACD at the 13th World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Holmes, an Alabama landowner, is the chairman of the NACD Forest Resources Policy Group. He is also a member of the national Joint Forestry Team. Holmes represented NACD as a private lands/working lands forest landowner, and was able to share information, network with other participants and participate in key sessions during the week.

More than 7,500 people attended the conference, which is held every six years. This year’s theme was Forests in Development—A Vital Balance.

“The conference allowed me to share the story of conservation districts with people from India, Greece, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and the United States,” said Holmes.

The delegation met each morning of the eight-day trip to discuss the week’s progression and make assignments to cover key presentations, side events and exhibit activities. Holmes attended sessions on forest and biodiversity, forest wildlife, tools for forest carbon estimation, and advances in grassland conservation in the Pampas of Argentina.

The conference also enabled Holmes to assist others in need of forest planning. “There was a lady that came by the exhibit from Washington D.C. who asked where I was from,” said Holmes. “Her sister-in-law was an absentee land owner from Atlanta and owns a farm 15 miles from mine. She asked if I could help. The Saturday after my return I met Betsy of Roseland Farm and we are on our way to getting her a farm plan.”

During a field trip to the Otamendi Nature Reserve close to the Parana River, Holmes observed natives trying to restore the land back to native grasslands and marshes. Holmes noted, “They were having trouble finding partners and technical assistance to do the restoration. Conservation districts should go international!”

Learn more about the 13th World Forestry Congress.

2. Teton CD assists with recovery in Wyoming
A number of Wyoming’s conservation districts have taken a lead role in helping to breathe life into a shrinking timber industry that lacks the necessary infrastructure to compete.

Randy Williams, executive director of the Teton Conservation District in Jackson, Wyoming, said, “With a lack of infrastructure we knew we needed to be innovative, but part of the issue was also a consistent flow of material off of the forests themselves.”

The combination of stewardship contracting opportunities and emerging biomass markets has helped to accomplish a number of objectives, including the restoration of forest land in the three adjoining national forests, he explained.

To get things moving in the right direction, the Teton CD partnered with other conservation districts in the state to host a series of stewardship contracting workshops, the first held in Dubois in 2007. Other workshops were held Meeteetse, Saratoga and Jackson. The districts engaged stewardship contracting officers from the U.S. Forest Service, as well as speakers and presenters from the private sector in the workshops.

Subsequent to that effort, the group established a stewardship agreement with the Shoshone National Forest. Another stewardship agreement was set up with the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundations (RMEF) implemented the stewardship agreements on these National Forests with local facilitation by the conservation districts.

“The agreements allow us to bring on projects as they are ready, both financially and environmentally,” said Williams. “Another nice thing about the stewardship agreements is that in the middle of the work plans, if you identify more funding you can bring it into the project.”

According to Williams, the Teton Conservation District has been able to partner with other Wyoming districts, including the Dubois-Crowheart and the Little Snake River districts, to increase the scope of proposed stewardship projects.

In summer 2010, RMEF with assistance from Teton Conservation District, will perform a 250-acre thinning project. A 17,000-acre treatment in the Gros Ventre Watershed is also being discussed.

“It’s all part of trying to bring product off of the forest while meeting the prescriptions and healthy forest mandate that the Forest Service has,” said Williams.

Biomass is a valued ally

The prime issue is markets, said Williams. Competing on a global scale with traditional markets has become difficult. “Our model is to look at localized markets and develop niche market opportunities.”

That is where biomass fits in well with for the work being done.

A few years ago, the district began working with Terra Firma Organics, a contractor that breaks the material down with a Morbark 4600XL horizontal grinder and assists in marketing it. This year, the contractor will process 50,000 tons of biomass, most of it wood chips from forest residue.

Dane Buk, owner of Terra Firma Organics, said that a number of steady clients lined up to accept biomass for a variety of uses. One example is Basic American Foods in Rexburg, Idaho, which uses chips to feed the company’s wood boiler systems.

Biomass harvested from projects managed by RMEF in the Sublette County Conservation District is used for soil remediation.

“Test plots done about a year ago showed that whole tree grindings of sub-Alpine fir–the needles, the bark, everything–is extremely helpful for Sodic soils that have been difficult to get anything to grow in,” said Williams. “We amended those soils with wood chips, added nitrogen and gypsum and timed irrigation and got good results with native shrubs and grasses.

“There’s a market for other western states to use biomass in that regard,” said Williams.

Wyoming conservation districts, working with Wyoming State Forestry, have considered log sort yards, and are exploring three “Fuels for Schools” projects throughout the state, including one in Dubois where the school district presently relies on propane and diesel for its heating source.Wyoming’s conservation leaders have also looked at other innovative ways to utilize biomass, especially for potential local uses.

Terra Firma Organics has received a grant the Wyoming Business Council to conduct a feasibility study for designing a portable pelletizing plant that can be moved around on semi-trailer trucks; the plant would process four to six tons of pellet material per hour.

Said Buk, “This design would include everything from drying, to pressing the pellets, to bagging – everything. We’d be able to ship high-value pellets locally.” The progress Williams sees in the work being done in Wyoming is encouraging.

“You start with one thing – biomass – and you get into associated types of efforts to make it work,” said Williams. “It’s all very exciting.”

For more information on the stewardship and biomass work being done by Wyoming conservation districts, contact Randy Williams, executive director of the Teton Conservation District, at 307-733-2110, or via e-mail at randy@tetonconservation.org.

3. Latest Legislative Update from Washington, D.C.

Interior Appropriations Bill Signed, FLAME Act Provisions Enacted

The fiscal year 2010 (FY10) Interior and Environment Appropriations bill has become law. The bill contains a 16 percent increase for the U.S. Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry programs and continues funding for 319 Nonpoint Source Pollution Grants.  The act appropriates approximately $2.1 billion to the Forest Service and $795 million to the Department of the Interior for wildland fire management. It also created the Federal Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement (FLAME) Wildfire Suppression Reserve Fund. 

The Forest Service and the Department of the Interior will now be able to tap into reserve accounts to cover the costs of large or complex wildfires when the annual budgets for suppression are exhausted, reducing the need for the agencies to transfer funds from vital programs.  It provides an additional $413 million to the Forest Service and $61 million to the Department of the Interior to cover costs of suppressing large, complex wildfires that meet certain criteria and to replenish wildland fire management funds if they are depleted.

Forest Service Program Funding highlights include:

Estate Tax Reform

H.R. 3524, the Family Farm Preservation and Conservation Estate Tax Act, has been introduced by Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA). H.R. 3524 would exclude from the gross estate the value of working farmlands, forestlands and certain conservation easements. The bill would also impose a recapture tax if such farmland is sold outside the decedent’s family, is no longer used for farming purposes or if a qualified conservation easement is sold or violated.
Senate Climate Bill not expected until spring 2010

Although the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved its version of climate legislation, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), it was a very partisan vote as Republican lawmakers boycotted the committee’s work on S. 1773. 

The bill is subject to further action in Senate committees, including review by the Finance Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, among others. Both of these committees have held hearings, but schedules are starting to slide and a timeline for further committee review has not been released. Senate leadership has stated that health care and financial reform will be addressed by the Senate before it takes up climate change on the floor.  Senate leadership has indicated that it will be Spring 2010 before climate change will likely be considered. 

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has introduced legislation specific to USDA leadership and agriculture and forestry’s role in a carbon offset program. S. 2729, the Clean Energy Partnerships Act of 2009, addresses the creation of an agriculture and forestry carbon offset program established by USDA. The bill includes provisions on carbon sequestration practices, technical assistance and verification. S. 2729 is now pending in the Senate Environment Committee; however, it was not discussed when the committee completed action on the larger climate change bill earlier this month. The committee did not consider any changes to their original climate change bill.

Agriculture Appropriations Bill Signed

President Obama has also signed into law the fiscal year 2010 (FY10) Agriculture Appropriations bill.  The bill provides $887 million for NRCS Conservation Operations, $40 million above 2009; $50.7 million for the Resource Conservation and Development Program; $30 million Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program; $1.18 billion for EQIP; $85 million for Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program; $9.75 million for the Health Forests Restoration Program; and $150 million for the Farmland Protection Program.

With the bill signed into law, agencies at the Department of Agriculture can now begin the process of making allocations to states to fund projects for FY10.

4. New Resource for Communicating With Family Forest Owners

The Sustaining Family Forests Initiative (SFFI) has offered a new online learning site, “Tools for Engaging Landowners Effectively” or “TELE”, on its Web site. The site helps natural resource professionals engage family landowners in a meaningful dialogue about their woods.

Family forests, defined as private forestland between 10 and 999 acres, are perhaps the last frontier in which to implement long-term sustainability concepts, and they are the forest most at risk of being fragmented and converted for development. Roughly 4.2 million individuals, families and trusts own 35 percent of all forestland in the continental U.S., totaling more than 200 million acres.

The TELE Web site combines a wealth of information from the National Woodland Owners Survey database and landowner focus groups, with demographic and behavior information, to assist in delivering credible, useful and compelling information and services to individual landowners across the country.

The site helps natural resource professionals tailor their communications and outreach efforts to the knowledge level, values and style of their target landowner audiences, allowing for more persuasive and meaningful communication and better results.

The SFFI is a collaboration of government, industry, NGOs, certification systems, landowners, and academics organized to gain comprehensive knowledge about family forest owners in the U.S.. The initiative is being led by a management team, with the support of an ad hoc advisory committee of diverse stakeholders. The Yale Program on Private Forests and the U.S. Forest Service Family Forest Research Center administer it collaboratively.

For more information, contact Mary Tyrrell at mary.tyrrell@yale.edu or 203-432-5983, or contact Brett Butler at bbutler01@fs.fed.us or 413-545-1387.

5. Forestry Briefs

Pollihan selected as WFLC Executive Director

Caitlyn Pollihan, formerly Caitlyn Peel, has been selected as the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition (WFLC) Executive Director.  Pollihan was most recently the WFLC’s Governmental Affairs Director and has been the Acting Executive Director since former WFLC Executive Director Jay Jensen was appointed USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Natural Resources.

The WFLC also selected new officers and board members at its fall meeting.  Arthur “Butch” Blazer, New Mexico State Forester, and Randy Moore, U.S. Forest Service Southwest Regional Forester, will move into the co-chair position’s for one-year. Sam Foster, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station Director, and Dr. Scott Josiah, Nebraska State Forester, were named board members.

The WFLC formed nine years ago as a working partnership between the Council of Western State Foresters (CWSF) and the U.S. Forest Service’s seven western regions, three Research Stations and the Forest Products Laboratory.  For more information on WFLC, visit http://www.wflcweb.org.

Primer Tackles Energy, Environmental and Climate Challenges

A new State Bioenergy Primer has been developed by the EPA. This Primer explores ways to tackle energy, environmental, and climate change challenges. One frequently discussed option is the use of biomass resources to develop bioenergy: bioheat, biopower, biofuels and bioproducts. View the Primer.

6. Conservation Calendar