Sustaining Sustainability

Social, economic and ecological stakeholders together could successfully manage Western forests to reduce wildfire hazards and restore ecosystems.

While there is general agreement that active management of Western forests could reduce wildfire hazards and restore ecosystems, the successful implementation of projects depends on an approach that merges social and economic sustainability with ecosystems needs. Last year, the Southwest Oregon RC&D asked Sustainable Northwest (SNW) and Jefferson Sustainable Development Initiative (JSDI) to chart such an approach. The resulting recommendations underscore the importance of accommodating human and ecological needs, and integrating manufacturing options to achieve maximum efficiency and full utilization. Today, efforts across the region are taking up this approach based on the idea that sustainable solutions require the participation of multiple businesses and multiple stakeholders.

In order to describe a truly sustainable pathway for southern Oregon’s wood products industry, SNW and JSDI chose to give equal consideration to ecological, social and economic conditions and parameters.

The overstocked forests of today are the result of past management choices. In southwestern Oregon, fire suppression is the primary culprit. Over the last century, an average of 70 lightning-induced fires have been extinguished every year on Medford BLM lands and surrounding National Forests.(1) As a result, forests that historically held less than 100 stems per acre now typically have over 1,000 stems per acre. This constitutes a forest health problem, but it is also an economic development opportunity in an area where lumber and wood products employment has gone from being 20 percent of the workforce to less than five percent.(2)

To determine the scope of this opportunity, it was first necessary to understand the true nature of the supply. A three-step process estimated available supply. First a compilation of Forest Inventory Analysis, Continuous Vegetation Survey, and Natural Resources Inventory revealed 53,000 MMBF of timber among all ownerships in Jackson and Josephine counties. In order to understand available timber, this volume must be filtered through likely harvest scenarios. Next, the research team looked at the social and scientific acceptability of treatments. Finally, volume estimates were extrapolated by overlaying possible treatment scenarios across forest conditions.

Thinning medium to high wildfire risk lands from below to nine inches would yield an average of 16 tons per acre. Within Josephine County there are 243,000 acres posing this wildfire risk on slopes less than 40 percent. This conservative approach would yield timber with a harvest and removal cost up to four times greater than its market value and it would not address the full spectrum of ecosystem needs across the landscape. It, therefore, failed ecological and economic tests of sustainability and precipitated a need to look at a more diversified matrix of treatments. Additional thinning from below to 120 BA (basal area) on 30 percent of the land and to 80 BA on two percent (with a 21-inch diameter cap) creates a near break-even scenario and yields an average of 20 tons per acre, 40 percent of which is Douglas-fir less than nine inches in diameter. Mixed hardwoods make up the bulk of the remainder. Although unanimous support for any single harvest scenario is elusive, an adaptive approach that avoids roadless areas and old growth while beginning conservatively and monitoring carefully is a comfortable place to begin for many stakeholders. Harvest scenarios must be adaptive and responsive to a wide range of concerns and issues.

The existence of a local organization to monitor is critical. The Southern Oregon Small Diameter Collaborative has been instrumental in developing and maintaining a base of support in the region. Community support, and the supply security it can engender, is key to stimulating needed investment in harvesting and utilization infrastructure.

Such investment, by both new and existing businesses, is also stimulated by providing an analysis of products and markets that can be manufactured from the anticipated log supply. The study listed several potential product categories and then screened them according to their capital costs, raw material needs, market potential, and compatibility with existing industry. Those that showed the most promise and were further explored are:

• Biomass to energy, primarily at a
  community scale that includes wood
  boilers and distributed power generation;
• Specialized wood processing
  such as moulding, gluing and other
  value-added applications;
• A merchandising yard that produces
  firewood, post and poles, and
  chips; and
• Medium-scale sawmilling and
  drying of softwoods and hardwoods
  for non-commodity markets.

The analysis of each of these ventures confirms their economic viability and each has the potential to surpass its break-even point with volumes well within the limits of what the forest can sustainably provide. Since their profitability is largely dependent on fluctuating market assumptions for price and volumes, we pursued scenarios to improve their financial forecasts. Perhaps the most interesting finding of the analysis is the efficiency that can be gained through integration of efforts. Sharing land, equipment, inbound material and utilities have enormous consequences on both the fixed and variable costs of an endeavor. For instance, integration of a firewood facility can reduce production costs by $30 per cord and reduce fixed costs by 25 percent monthly. This would mean the difference between merely breaking even at 300 cords per month and showing a monthly net profit of $12,000 at that same volume.

The study has stimulated activity across the region. In Hayfork, California, a wood campus is being developed that will apply integration principles; in Baker City, Oregon, the local forest owners association has secured funding to establish multiproduct merchandizing yards; and in southern Oregon, multi-scaled biomass projects and post and pole operations are underway. Each of these efforts is underpinned by the notion that social, economic and ecological sustainability are dependent on each other. As these endeavors proceed, they reaffirm the idea that comprehensive sustainability requires the integration of efforts as well as the integration of interests. The complete study can be found online at www.pacrimrcd.org/southwestoregon.

Ryan Temple is director of Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities for Sustainable Northwest.

References:
(1) Sensenig, Tom. Southwestern Oregon Forests, Unique and Challenging.
(2) US Census Bureau, COunty Business Patterns.