News for forest resource professionals published by …...News for forest resource professionals published by the Society of American Foresters August 2017 Vol. 22, No. 8 Cook to Receive

News for forest resource professionals published by the Society of American Foresters August 2017• Vol. 22, No. 8

Cook to Receive First SAF Diversity Leadership AwardBy Steve Wilent

As the executive director of for-est assets at North Carolina State University’s College of Natural

Resources, Sam Cook oversees the man-agement of the university’s 80,000-acre Hofmann Forest, as well as nine oth-

er properties. He also focuses much of his time and energy toward developing other assets: students, especially minori-ties. It was this work that SAF’s National

Connecting Veterans to the Forestry IndustryBy Andrea Watts

In the June issue of The Forestry Source, Deb Hawkinson, president of the For-est Resources Association (FRA), high-

lighted a new initiative to connect veter-ans with the forestry industry. To learn more about why the initiative started, I recently chatted with Hawkinson. She is personally connected to the military com-munity, which is one of the reasons why she is a champion of FRA’s initiative.

“I grew up in the military,” she said. “My dad was in the marines, so I spent my life moving all around the country and seeing him go off to war. My husband was in the 82nd Airborne, and my son is a doctor in the army. It’s all over my life, and if I could just use my personal expe-rience, and if I can help these great people in the forest-products industry connect with the great people who serve our coun-try, I would really like to play a small role in doing that.”

What follows is our conversation, ed-ited for length and clarity.

BMPs: Standards for Protecting Water Quality

Foresters, loggers, and landowners around the nation have followed forestry best management practices

(BMPs) for decades—specifically, practices that protect water quality. The develop-ment of most formal BMPs occurred af-ter the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, which describes a BMP is “a prac-tice or combination of practices consid-ered by a State [or authorized Tribe] to be the most effective means (including tech-nological, economic and institutional con-siderations) of preventing or reducing the amount of pollution by nonpoint sources to a level compatible with water quality goals.”

Some states, such as California, Ken-tucky, and West Virginia, have passed laws requiring the use of specific BMPs. In oth-ers, following BMPs is entirely voluntary, whereas others have a quasi-regulatory system in which state laws specify desired outcomes, but do not require the use of BMPs. For more information, see the 2015 report by the National Association of State Foresters, Protecting water quality through state forestry best management practices, at tinyurl.com/jyzq87m.

Articles in this edition of The Forest-ry Source look at BMP implementation in two states and the US South in general. In Michigan, a new Forests for Fish program aims to help foresters, loggers, and land-owners think beyond specific practices to

the connections between land manage-ment and water quality (see page 4). In Florida, where the BMP implementation rate is nearly 100 percent, a new BMP manual for protecting 16 sensitive wild-life species has widespread support. Dan Roach, public affairs director for Rayonier Inc., which owns 2.7 million acres of tim-

berland, most of which is in nine south-ern states, offers perspectives on BMPs in Florida and the South (page 6). And on page 7, look for a list of articles describ-ing studies of BMP implementation and effectiveness, many of which are from the Journal of Forestry, along with other re-sources.

Veterans in FirefightingThrough New Mexico’s Returning Heroes Wildland Firefighting program, US Military veterans receive free wildland firefighting training and National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) certification. Following suc-cessful completion of the program, they are qualified to be called upon during a wildfire emergency. Page 11.

Operation PonderosaThe Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve in west Texas is located on one of three sky islands in the state and the only one in private ownership. The 33,000-acre pre-serve hosts an unusual population of ponder-osa pine, relics of a time when the climate was cooler. As is the story for many landscapes, an alteration of the natural fire regime trans-formed the preserve from its historical condi-tions. Along with reintroducing prescribed fire to the landscape, foresters have experimented with thinning, burning, and a combination of both treatments to see which would best re-create the historical tree density. Page 12.

A Sobering Podcast SeasonIn Season 2 of his podcast series, Tom Da-vidson writes that he was “confident that the bad old days when women in the woods were isolated, ostracized, and objectified were long gone, but my optimism did not hold up.… As the 27 interviews unfolded, I slowly sobered up to the reality that, although the most bla-tant behaviors may be old news to many, for some women they happened just yesterday—for more than a few, they are still happening today.” Page 14.

Pathways to Student SuccessAlong with a number of academicians, for-esters, and institutions of higher learning, the authors of this article have developed a collaborative for discovery-based science ed-ucation, undergraduate research, and transfer pathways for place-bound rural students to a world-class university. Page 17.

I N T H I S I S S U E

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D E P A R T M E N T S

VETS n Page 10COOK n Page 8

Special Edition:

Best Management Practices

In this photograph from the Forests for Fish Facebook page (facebook.com/ForestsForFish/), forester and SAF member Nia Becker looks at the Pere Marquette River from the Tank Creek Ranch Tree Farm in Lake County, Michigan.

Sam Cook, executive director of forest assets at North Carolina State University’s College of Natural Resources, with students from the 2017 EnviroKids Geospatial Program. Cook is the first recipient of SAF’s Diversity Leadership Award. Photo: North Carolina State University.

4 The Forestry Source

Forests for Fish Focuses on the Benefits of BMPs in MichiganBy Steve Wilent

Mention the state of Michigan and most people will think first of Detroit, nicknamed Motor City

for its prominent place in the US auto-motive industry, or the city’s fame as the birthplace of Motown Records. When SAF member Mike Smalligan thinks of Michi-gan, however, he thinks of forests. Forests and water.

“Here in Michigan, we are surround-ed by four of the five Great Lakes, and we’ve got 11,000 inland lakes and 30-some thousand miles of river, so if any-thing, we take the availability of fresh water for granted here,” said Smalligan, a forest stewardship coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resourc-es (DNR). “The five Great Lakes make up about 20 percent of the world’s available supply of freshwater. And somewhere around 45 percent of the surface area of the Great Lakes lies within Michigan’s po-litical boundaries, so this one little state is responsible for somewhere around 9 per-cent of the world’s freshwater supply.”

Of course, Michigan has an abun-dance of forests, too. Its 19.3 million acres of forests cover about 53 percent of the state. About 18.6 million acres are con-sidered timberland; only four other states have more timberland acreage.

Smalligan manages the DNR’s Forests for Fish project, an effort to promote the message that well-managed forests pro-vide abundant clean water and quality fish habitat. He also administers the DNR’s for-est stewardship program, which connects private landowners with consulting for-esters who write forest-management plans for their properties; a portion of the con-sulting foresters’ fees are paid by the DNR, using funding provided by the US Forest Service. Landowners who have a manage-ment plan are also eligible for state prop-erty tax reductions.

Forests for Fish, a three-year project funded by the US Forest Service, was ini-tiated in 2016.

“The basic premise of the program is that forestland provides abundant clean water and quality fish habitat. I’m trying to get foresters, loggers, and landowners to think about the connections between land management and water quality. Best management practices are the tools that we use to keep that water clean, to keep sediment out of streams, and [to] provide good fish habitat. I’m trying to get forest-ers and loggers to think about BMPs as benefits they provide to society, rather than just a cost that they incur as they do busi-ness out in the forest.”

The DNR’s BMPs manual, Sustainable Soil and Water Quality Practices on Forest Land (at tinyurl.com/y8myllnv), describes how to identify and establish riparian management zones and the activities al-lowed within those zones, avoid or reduce sedimentation from forest roads and land-ings, build stream crossings, avoid rutting, and other practices.

“From a legal standpoint, the use of these BMPs is voluntary,” explains the manual. “However, properly applying these practices enables the responsible party or parties to meet pertinent environ-

mental protection regulations. Voluntarily applying these practices will, under most weather conditions, prevent sediment or other nonpoint sources of pollution from going into a stream or other open water body.”

“My guess is that some loggers and landowners think of BMPs as a minor irritation, something that they have to do to comply with either state or feder-al law, but most simply think of them as the industry standards for doing good business,” Smalligan said. “But they prob-ably don’t often think about the benefits those BMPs provide—many of them don’t make the connection between all of that clean water and good fish habitat down-stream with the good work being done in the woods upstream. So Forests for Fish is part education, but it’s actually most-ly marketing—it’s an attempt to help the public understand those benefits.”

Smalligan and his colleagues are in the process of developing Forests for Fish educational materials for natural-resourc-es professionals and the general public. Michigan SAF will play a role in dissem-inating such information. The spring meeting of the state society, held in March, focused on Forests for Fish, as will the an-nual fall meeting to be held later this year.

“We are also working with the Mich-igan Forest Association, a landowner as-sociation, and the Michigan Tree Farm Program, which will host a joint meeting

in September. We’ll be rolling out the For-ests for Fish concept to the public at that meeting.”

Smalligan also is taking the Forests for Fish message to the Great Lakes Log-ging & Heavy Equipment Expo, held this

year in Escanaba, Michigan, in September. In addition to distributing educational materials at the expo, Smalligan created a Forests for Fish ad for the event’s program, which reads in part, “Thank you loggers for using BMPs to keep Michigan’s water clean!” He also plans to provide educa-tional materials at the Michigan Associa-tion of Timbermen annual meeting next spring.

Loggers and LandownersLoggers generally accept the use of BMPs and even view compliance as reason to take pride in their work, Smalligan said. In helping to conduct logger training classes required by landowners and mills certified by the Sustainable Forestry Ini-tiative (SFI), he has asked loggers about their view of BMPs.

“I was anticipating a very negative re-action—regulations and regulatory agen-cies are never wildly popular,” he said. “But they were largely positive. Most of the loggers at these SFI trainings were very fa-miliar with BMPs and said that they were implementing them at their worksites, and were not at all reluctant to use them. They see BMPs as the industry standard, as a way of describing good-quality work in the woods. Sometimes they even ex-ceed the requirements of the BMPs.”

In contrast with loggers and oth-er natural-resources professionals, most family landowners are unaware of the ex-

Placing slash on skid trails to help prevent compaction and rutting is one of the practices spelled out in the Michigan DNR forestry BMPs. Photo: Michigan DNR.

Mike Smalligan, a forest stewardship coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and an SAF member, will place this advertisement in the program for a logging-industry trade show to be held later this year. According to Smalligan, about 5,000 loggers are expected to attend the conference.

Forests provide abundant clean water and quality fish

habitat.

Thank you loggers for using BMPs to keep Michigan’s

water clean!

www.ForestsForFish.org

Loggers generally accept the use of BMPs and even view compliance as

reason to take pride in their work.

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istence of BMPs, said Smalligan. He uses forest stewardship plans to increase land-owner awareness of them.

“One of the things that I’m trying to do with the forest stewardship program is to make sure that every forest stewardship plan mentions BMPs, describes the BMPs that may be applicable for that particular landowner’s property, and refers to the DNR website, where best management practices are publicly available,” he said.

Members of the Michigan chapter of the American Tree Farm System (ATFS)

chapter are well aware of BMPs, and the ATFS’s standards require landowners to adhere to state BMPs. The same goes for landowners and mills certified by SFI.

In addition to Forests for Fish part-ners such as the Association of Consulting Foresters and the Michigan Association of Timbermen, Michigan Trout Unlimited stands out as a vocal proponent of BMPs.

“Trout Unlimited is very good fit for this project, because anglers really under-stand the connection between land man-agement and water quality,” said Smalli-

gan. “Fisheries biologists and anglers are well aware that forest management greatly impacts water quality and fish, and [that] well-managed forests provide clean water and great habitat. Trout Unlimited has been fun to work with.”

Smalligan modeled Forests for Fish in part on Audubon Vermont’s Foresters for the Birds program, described as “an inno-vative project that works to keep forests as forests and common birds common by helping landowners integrate the practices of timber and songbird habitat manage-ment.” BMPs for Vermont foresters and landowners are available at vt.audubon .org/conservation/foresters-birds.

“Foresters for the Birds caught my attention a couple of years ago, because I thought it was a great project, in terms of making connections with a new audi-ence,” said Smalligan. “Audubon Vermont is primary partner in the project with the Vermont Department of Natural Resourc-es, and I thought it was brilliant [for the department] to reach out to Audubon. The perception is that many Audubon members are not interested in forest man-agement and may even have a negative perception of foresters, loggers, and active forest management. They may not realize that good forest practices benefit a lot of the songbirds that they like to see. So it was a smart move to connect two groups [that] don’t often work together but have much in common.”

In promoting the relationship be-tween forests and water quality, Forests for Fish is a new marketing campaign for a very old idea, Smalligan said.

“Foresters have been thinking about water for a long time. In the Organic Act of 1897, which established the reserves that became America’s national forests, one of the three major reasons to establish those forests was for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows. But I think it’s very easy for many of us as for-esters who make a living from wood and fiber, who focus on the economic values of wood and pulp, to forget that water is an essential forest product, even if we aren’t compensated for that in the marketplace.

“I hope the Forests for Fish project will help us as foresters to recognize that the Great Lakes and the waters of Michi-gan are very unique resource.”

Summary data from a study of BMP implementation in Michigan, conducted in 2016 by Steigerwaldt Land Services Inc. on behalf of the Michigan Forest Products Council Foundation

Results by Ownership

Federal LargePrivate State/County NIPF

No. of Audit Sites 17 59 86 137Percent of Needed: Applied Correctly (A) 95.4 96.2 95.9 96.4

Acceptable Variation (V) 1.4 2.1 1.7 1.5

Applied incorrectly (1) 1.6 1.0 0.6 0.6

Not Applied (2) 1.6 0.7 1.8 1.5

Percent of Total Sum: Applied Correctly (A) 34.1 42.8 33.9 35.0

Acceptable Variation (V) 0.5 1.0 0.6 0.5

Applied incorrectly (1) 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.2

Not Applied (2) 0.6 0.3 0.6 0.5

Not Applicable (NA) 61.0 52.7 60.3 60.0

Insufficient Info (0) 3.2 2.8 4.4 3.8

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

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