Forest Carbon Project Update
The Carbon Forest and Low Impact Forestry
I am becoming more convinced with every passing day and every forest fire that marketing logs for the building trade, the pulp/ paper or the biomass industry will cease being a viable financial option by the end of the coming decade. And it will not be the result of a standoff between tree huggers and hostile corporate boards. Rather its demise will come as a pleasant surprise to all parties when they sit down with Carbon Cap and Trade markets and calculate the financial benefits they stand to accrue by keeping their trees alive, upright and prospering for a long time. The money owners will receive for their forest carbon storage will almost certainly exceed what they might have earned from their prior markets. And by choosing this option they have struck a blow for climate change in the process.
In rural states like those of northern New England, there is an accelerating and concerted effort to prevent farm and forest land from being paved over by residential housing construction. Land trusts are finding themselves in exciting conversations with deep pocket RRS’s, (Rapid Response Teams), looking to finance forest lands that, for the first time, offer a stable and substantial financial future. Tying up a thousand or more acres in Southern Maine is no longer a fantasy. Today donors and non-profits are more than willing to invest in a forest environment where their trees clean the air and water and produce a marketable commodity, carbon storage.
Much of this northern forest and its soils have been damaged by prior harvests, off road use and general human error. The new agenda for these forest owners will be to repair that damage and, in so doing, increase carbon capture and storage potential. This is where Low Impact Forestry will play a role. LIF trained horse crews and appropriate machinery, working alongside FTC’s (Forest Carbon Technicians), would execute the extraction of:
-Damaged trees, unable to retain normal growth due to a compromised canopy, bole injury or root damage.
-Overstocked and /or suppressed trees of inferior size that are infringing on surrounding growth.
-Invasive species that do not have a role to play as the forest climate warms.
All remaining growth would be left standing, regardless of its traditional use or commercial value. All labor for this logging would be billed by the hour.
There will be a new player in the picture working side by side with local, licensed foresters. These folks will attend two years of training and receive a Forest Technicians Degree from colleges like Southern Maine Technical (SMTC) or Unity College in Unity, Maine. Their skill set would include measuring the health and profitability of their client’s carbon forest, help navigate the carbon market and ensure that breaking information would be accurate and up to date. Working with these technicians, the cost of the client’s Cap and Trade application process would be considerably lower.
Low Impact Forestry needs to be in a leadership role in this scenario. Last year’s November LIF meeting at Ken and Adrienne’s woodlot was the last time I picked up a chainsaw. Shortly after returning home, I had an accident with the horses that did some serious redesigning to my spinal column. The doctors said that might be it. I had friends show up to work the horses and get that winter’s firewood to the shed. But it just wasn’t the same. The problem ended up for me as much a psychological one as physical. My identity was so tied to the forest and the horses that my ego started having a hay day with my self-esteem. Thankfully my wife Marty gently guided me to some powerful wisdom.
While watching Brad’s VT TV movie last spring, I realized that there was no way I could ever have made a living over the past forty five years , without cutting big wood, the very wood that is now standing tall in my woodlot, the backbone of our carbon strategy.
Last spring I spent time walking through our woods seeing the trees I had marked for harvest. I was shocked and embarrassed by what I saw. Now I know that the pine and oak I had targeted are the prime carbon mitigators. Yes, I had an assortment of hardwoods marked for our yearly firewood. But the remaining trees, really any wood today that is over six inches DBH, healthy and contributing to the canopy, I plan to leave alone. The conclusion I came to on that cool April Sunday, after reviewing my past choices and Brad’s video, is that the only way I ever made money with horses was cutting big wood, I mean 20-28 inches DBH, pine and oak. Everything else was a wash, actually a detriment if you consider the carbon loss, the saws running and the diesel it took to get that pulpwood to market.
Last winter a teacher/friend of mine and I offered a course in forest carbon to 14 girls in our local middle school. We taped off a 100 sq. foot plot and measured the carbon stored inside. The girls then each adopted one tree, gave it a name and were then told that the tree was theirs to manage and protect for the rest of their life. Some of the trees were over 100 years old. The class was cancelled due to the arrival of the pandemic but all seemed to agree that it was a great success.
Most of these girl’s fathers, brothers or primary male figures work in the woods on one of the seven large logging companies in our five town area. If what I am portraying comes true, many if not most of them will be out of work in the not too distant future. Many of these men helped me get started 45 years ago. Many of their children went to school with mine. So I am not proud or particularly satisfied by the letter I have written to you describing the imminent future. But LIF is twenty three years old this November and we have a responsibility to consider all that is coming down the road.
Mitch Lansky sent me a recent article which I have attached for your viewing. The authors don’t spare many words. See a shortened version below.
Dear Members of Congress, April 23, 2020
As forest and climate change scientists and experts, we are writing to urge you to oppose legislative proposals that would promote logging and wood consumption, ostensibly as a natural climate change solution, based on claims that these represent an effective carbon storage approach, or claims that biomass logging, and incinerating trees for energy, represents renewable, carbon-neutral energy.
We find no scientific evidence to support increased logging to store more carbon in wood products, such as dimensional lumber or cross-laminated timber (CLT) for tall buildings, as a natural climate solution. The growing consensus of scientific findings is that, to effectively mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, we must not only move beyond fossil fuel consumption but must also substantially increase protection of our native forests in order to absorb more CO2from the atmosphere and store more, not less, carbon in our forests.
Furthermore, the scientific evidence does not support the burning of wood in place of fossil fuels as a climate solution. Current science finds that burning trees for energy produces even more CO2 than burning coal.
• William R. Moomaw, Ph.D.Emeritus ProfessorThe Fletcher School and Co-director Global Development and Environment InstituteTufts University
• George M. Woodwell, Ph.D. Founder Woods Hole Research Center
• Michael Dorsey, Ph.D., M.F.S., M.A.M.F.S.,Yale University, School of Forestry
These are just several of the over 200 distinguished scientists and foresters that crafted and signed this letter.
This is followed by multi page document indictment signed by over 200 scientists, economics and forestry folks. I have attached a complete file with more names and accusations to my e-mail.
I hope that we can overcome the awkwardness I feel when addressing such important issues as the future focus of LIF and the forestry community.
Bit I look forward to the challenge. I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Peter Hagerty, Porter, Maine