Forest management

Jerry F. Franklin and K. Norman Johnson provide some crucial insights about the need for new approaches to forest conservation ("Forests Face New Threat: Global Market Changes," Issues, Summer 2004). Changes will need to occur in attitudes, as well as in tools such as regulations, incentives, markets,

The need for a more strategic approach to applying limited resources is exemplified here in the Pacific Northwest by circumstances Franklin and Johnson touch on briefly in their necessarily concise overview. As they point out, the Northwest Forest Plan (covering federal forest lands in the range of the northern spotted owl in portions of Oregon, Washington, and northern California) may have had the unplanned but desirable effect of creating a more stable regulatory setting for private and state lands. Unfortunately, the biodiversity-oriented land allocations of the plan don't necessarily coincide with the greatest potential for biodiversity, which tends to occur on lower-elevation private and state lands. Also, many private landowners are asking not only for even greater regulatory predictability, but also for a lower regulatory burden, even though there is broad (though not universal) agreement that the current regulatory framework is inadequate to conserve biodiversity.

The answers may lie in part in giving greater consideration to a tool addressed only briefly in the paper-incentives, which may most usefully be considered as one half of a regulation-incentive framework. Regulations set the common baseline for all landowners, whereas incentives can be used to reward landowners who exceed the regulatory requirements in providing public benefits.

Such incentives can include tax relief or direct payments, and the reality is that there will not be enough of either to reward all potentially interested and deserving landowners. Conservation planning, particularly plans that can simultaneously consider multiple public values such as biodiversity, watersheds, and open space, can provide a means for strategically targeting available resources. Less burdensome application procedures, better marketing, and more efficient delivery of incentives would also help. Creation of flexible incentives programs, such as that established (but as yet unfunded) in Oregon in 2001, can help overcome artificial and often overly restrictive boundaries among programs designed to protect wildlife, watersheds, or

recreation, or to provide for carbon sequestration. In many cases, measures taken to provide for one of these values will protect others as well.

Like Franklin and Johnson, we can not claim to have all the answers or to see the future with perfect clarity, but the authors deserve our gratitude for opening this most important discussion about the evolving landscape of forest conservation.

RICK BROWN

Senior Resource Specialist

rbrown@defenders.org

SARA VICKERMAN

Director

svickerman@defenders.org

Defenders of Wildlife, West Coast Office

West Linn, Oregon

A failure to foresee the consequences of a changing global market for wood has resulted in an emerging crisis for forest management in the United States. The crisis (together with possible solutions) is very well documented by Jerry F. Franklin and K. Norman Johnson.

To an outside observer, U.S. forest policy, especially in the 1990s, has been difficult to comprehend. When it should have concentrated on increasing its industrial competitiveness to meet the predicted increases in the wood harvest from the fast growing and therefore low-cost plantations of the tropics and Southern Hemisphere, the United States has instead increased regulations and costs for its forest industry. Also, in the misguided belief that lower wood use would result in more forests being "saved," some environmentalists have advocated using less wood.

Some extreme environmentalists may disagree, but most, if not all, forests must be managed. Without management there will be a decline forest health, more wildfires, the possible reduction-if not total loss-of the habitat of some forest dwelling species, and other problems. If the funding of forest management is not to come from an economically viable but environmentally responsible forest industry, the money must come from another source. Because the revenue from other forest uses is unlikely to cover the cost of management, the only alternative is public financing. Given the increasing competition from other seekers of government funding, forest management is unlikely to be a high priority.

The Franklin and Johnson plea for "an overhaul of forest policy" is urgent, if not overdue. The growing demand for water is a particularly compelling rationale for watershed management in forest policy. By far the most likely source of funding is their recommendation for "creating or maintaining a viable domestic forest industry." At a time when concrete, metals, or ceramics are being substituted for wood in many applications, we should be looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of wood products as well as promoting their environmental advantages. The only way to pay for environmentally responsible forest management is to maintain a healthy forest products industry that can provide the funds.

WINK SUTTON

Rotorua, New Zealand.

winkbev@xtra.co.nz