Mark Megalos, Executive Director

National Woodland Owners Association

Mark Megalos became the National Woodland Owners Association’s (NWOA) executive director in 2021 after having spent the previous decade in academia, serving as a professor in the College of Natural Resources through North Carolina Cooperative Extension. Prior to that, Megalos had a career with the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NWOA helps to serve America’s private forest landowners, which account for roughly 60% of the country’s forests. The Association’s quarterly magazine, National Woodlands, is mailed to more than 40,000 subscribers.

Megalos recently shared time with NACD to discuss his role and some of the challenges and opportunities facing private forest landowners.

Q: You’re a little more than a year into this role. What has been the biggest eye-opener for you in that first year?

A: I recently retired as a professor and had 34 years of state government work with Extension and the North Carolina Forest Service, so entering the non-profit or non-governmental organization world was a true eye-opener. In my role as a public servant, I was very careful of my wording and to present balanced views for landowners and other professionals so they could decide for themselves. While that approach is steeped in my DNA, the freedom to speak out, be an advocate, and seize opportunities has been truly refreshing.

One, if not the chief lesson for me, was to appreciate the role of partnerships in sharing who is at the table to help make legislative decisions and influence which priorities are made within the unique world that is Washington, D.C. Existing networks that your readers are likely familiar with include the Forests in the Farm Bill coalition, the Forest Carbon Working Group, the National Council of Forestry Association Executives, and National Hardwood Federation. All are standing networks where the exchange of ideas takes place, each with their specific focus. I believe anyone who gets to see the internal workings in Washington would have their eyes opened widely by the experience. NWOA has been a part of that network since its inception, but to a new executive director it was a real education, and still is frankly.

Q: Succession planning is critical in our attempts to keep forests as forests. How can conservation districts and other partners do more to support this process?

A: I believe that we all have a constant role to keep succession planning at the forefront of our educational outreach and information sharing. Of course, forests are of special interest to me, but I believe successional planning is an all-hands-all-lands endeavor.  The ownership of the nation’s farm, range, and woodland is an awesome responsibility and profitable enterprise. As we seek to share information, highlight opportunities and innovations, we need to do that in a way that brings the next generation along. And that opportunity needs to be open to folks of all walks of life, and most importantly to groups that may have been underserved in the past. All meetings, workshops, outreach, and publications need to be inclusive to the extent that the next generation attend and learn at the side of the current owners as to the possibilities, realities, and responsibilities that are placed in the hands of our nation’s working landowners.

NACD and its partners are on the front line of outreach and information sharing and can highlight the leaders in intergenerational planning as examples of the benefits of successional and business planning. Conservation districts are uniquely poised to facilitate needed discussions, and to ensure that processes and materials are in place to maintain and enhance the food, fiber, wood products, and the myriad public benefits that flow from these lands. Keeping them sustainable, profitable, and continuously improving.

As we have learned from 4-H and other important youth programing like Envirothon and FFA, it is the next generation that can truly prompt changes being discussed, like regenerative farming and ranching, carbon farming practices, water quality best practices, climate smart ag, and forestry. It will shortly be their world and responsibility, so let’s invite them to the table now.

I was reading this week about some high schoolers who developed a lead filter for drinking water that is simple and recyclable; innovations like this give me great hope that we are on the verge of a truly sustainable renaissance and the next generation will be the problem-solvers that make it happen. This can only be possible if NACD and its partners are deliberate in their action regarding farm, ranch, and woodland succession and planning.

Q: There is much talk right now within the forestry sector about carbon, and how forestry may factor into climate solutions. Tell me if + how this translates to your audience.

A: Great topical question. Like NACD, NWOA has been actively engaged in federal register responses on what constitutes Climate Smart Ag and Forestry practices, input on markets for these products, and even some of the grant requests for making that happen. Just this week I have been in discussion with dozens of scientists who are actively trying to make improvements to the way that we measure carbon as a part of the forestry census, also known as the Forestry Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the U.S. Forest Service. Increasing the data collected by the FIA program is being asked to answer and guide the climate and carbon policies for the country. And just as the annual tax deadline is coming this month, the FIA program has a deadline to submit a plan on how to measure carbon and create accessible tools (and more) effectively and efficiently. Increasingly, it is the underground workings and soil carbon data that need improvement and innovation, and that is true across the ag and forestry spectrum.

Washington and other state and municipal governments are actively looking at natural climate solutions to flow from the working lands. Envisioning a new day where existing farm, ranch, and woodland families can participate, sculpt, and benefit from markets and management that ensure a safer, sustainable food and fiber supply are essential to our audience – members, political, and agency leaders alike. Farmers and woodland owners share a common role as the producers of the sustainable products that make up our national gross domestic production (GDP) as the originators of many supply chains, they are in the price-taking rather than price-setting role. New markets and programs need to be worthwhile and include a benefit at the beginning of the chain on each link along that chain, as well as the final or consumer level.

Q: What will motivate private landowner participation in the various forest carbon programs popping up?

A: All farm, ranch, and woodland owners are resource- and cost-conscious. Therefore, before they leap into the next newest opportunity they clearly and carefully weigh the opportunity costs and benefits. I think returns are key, but not the only factor. Our working landowners are conscious of the time commitments and tying the hands of the next generation as it relates to their future and unknown opportunities. Also, front-end versus future costs are of paramount importance. When the compliance markets for carbon were the only game in town, the century-long commitment and need for a conservation easements were non-starters for our members.

Now that there are shorter durational programs that are practice-based, with fewer restrictions, there has been a greater level of participation. We also realize that working landowners want to be a part of real solutions and may decline programs that appear to be feel-good rather than deliver on true climate mitigation.

It is a fluid situation, and the details are still being worked out, but I believe that our working landowners see the value of new market solutions that will eventually settle out and create the true sustainable actions to improve the emissions that we have put into the atmosphere from our operations. Over time I trust that such market solutions can begin to reverse our global carbon, nitrogen oxide, and methane emissions. This is an urgent need that we can’t saddle our kids and future generations to solve. We need to act with them in mind.

Q: What is something you’ve identified that agency and NGO partners do not recognize (or understand) about woodland owners?   (i.e. their interests, what motivates their management and ownership)

A: In short, woodland owners are smart, adaptable, and diverse. Moreover, they might not view themselves as woodland owners in the same manner that researchers and agencies might. They are parents, neighbors, homeowners, and religious members of various denominations first and foremost who might have woodlands in their possession. So, to label them as a unified block is fraught with problems.

Perhaps some of the greatest work that has been done by researchers is to segment and classify landowners by the most common unifier, be that second-home owners, investors, woodland retreat, woodland steward, recreationists, or farmers. Beyond that it is the uniqueness and diversity of their ownership and management objectives that forms the quilt that typifies working lands in this country. Helping professionals understand that diversity can move us further down the path toward sustainability and outreach success, whether we are looking at plan creation, practices on the ground, or the latest climate-adaptation program for carbon, methane, or the like.

Q: There are always emerging opportunities for woodland owners; biochar comes to mind recently. What new markets do you envision in the coming years?

A: This is an arena where the sky is the limit, in my opinion. Market opportunities for solid wood, wood-based feedstocks, and green chemicals derived from trees, sawdust, and paper production are the foundation for a decarbonized future and I think crop residues, second cropping, and forest-based substitutions will be the rule rather than the exception in a sustainable future. So, whether we are talking about aviation or other liquid fuels, the future is bright. Some of the technologies are shelf-ready and have only waited for market prices to bring them into the fore (think $4 +/gallon gasoline). The problem is inertia for most product substitution efforts and then acceptance or preference in the marketplace to prop up that business model.

But here’s a short list of opportunities:

• Mettle (super strength-like steel),
• Insulating
• Transparent wood
• Mass timber opportunities
• Cross laminated timber (CLT)
• Glulam
• Sim(PLY)

Innovations

• Green concrete
• Wood as feedstocks for traditional fossil fuel products like plastic, plastic wraps, and Styrofoam are gaining momentum
• Aviation fuels derived from wood, pellets, or residues

Q: NACD and conservation districts have a long history of working with your organization and your state chapters. Give me an example of where the partnership is working, and an idea for how conservation districts could better help your network.

A: NWOA’s flagship magazine National Woodlands has long featured articles from NACD and utilized the Conservation Clips and newsletters in social media and other publications. Going into the future we would love to encourage your members to avail themselves of the free services and media that NWOA has to offer, including:

• Quarterly Essentials Digest of National Woodlands (our magazine in brief)
  • Encourage your leadership or members to sign-up directly at: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/9jGDlvf
  • We can add your full leadership or membership for you via email: NWOAmag[at]gmail.com
• Wednesday Woodland Word (our general interest weekly)
  • Encourage your leadership or members to sign-up directly at: https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001-amU5KCaZKY80HcuyAwkKnH7ixePpleT
  • We can add your full leadership or member list for you via email: NWOAmag[at]gmail.com
• Receive our Policy Action Alert – (monthly publication)
  • We can add your full leadership or member list for you via email: NWOAmag[at]gmail.com
• Follow us on Facebook with @nwoafriends and Twitter with @NWOAmag.

We have been busy in the last year making improvements to expand woodland owner education and reach out to collaborators like NACD. Thank you for serving that mission with us and for the dialog in your newsletter.