Posted on 05/29/2002 2:08:15 PM PDT by Glutton
South's forests grow in private hands
By ALLEN BREED
The Associated Press
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At 87, Speed is twice the age of most of his oldest trees, but that doesn't make him impatient. He points to a stand of 60-foot loblolly pines that would make good saw logs today, but they'll stay there a while longer.
Growing trees is a business to Speed. And only two forces - God in the heavens and the markets down below - will dictate when he cuts them down.
"I wait until it's mature," the former state legislator says from a 155-year-old farmhouse built from timber cut on site. "It's not only more profitable, but it's more environmentally sound."
Speed and thousands of other private landowners like him make up the unique face of the Southern forests.
Unlike the forests of the West, which are mostly public property, the vast carpet of green that covers 60 percent of the Southern landscape is almost entirely privately owned, its harvest largely unregulated.
Individuals and corporations own about 90 percent of the South's 201 million acres of timberland. And 79 percent of that is owned by nonindustrial owners such as Speed, who intend to log some or all of their property at some time.
The South produces more wood than any single country in the world, and that wood is the region's most abundant resource.
Today, Southern forests are in flux. Harvests are increasing. Development is taking a bite out of forest lands, and timber owners are increasingly planting row upon row of fast-growing pines.
A comprehensive, two-year federal study of the region's forests found that the region's natural pine forests declined from 72 million acres in 1953 to 34 million acres in 1999. Pine plantations now occupy 32 million acres, or 15 percent, of the current Southern forest and are projected to increase to 54 million acres by 2040, comprising a quarter of all Southern forests.
A recent study by the University of the South in Tennessee found that 15 percent of the native forests on the southern Cumberland Plateau have disappeared since 1981, 74 percent of that loss from the conversion of hardwood forest to pine plantations by timber companies.
That change has come as the timber industry has sought more softwood to feed chip mills, making paper and other wood products, that have more than quadrupled in the region in the past two decades.
John Evans, who led the Tennessee study, worries that such a large swing toward pine monoculture will make greater areas of the South's forest susceptible to pine beetle infestations. And he believes more of the region's trees will require chemical help to grow.
"If we're making this decision about the landscape, where we're converting hardwood forests to pine ... we'd better be darn sure we've got good science to back it up," he says. "I would argue that we don't."
Speed knows that someday, parts of his farm may be dotted with houses instead of pines - but not in his lifetime, if he can help it. And he hopes his three children have learned something from watching him manage the land all these years.
"They've been taught that that's the most profitable and the most desirable and the most environmentally sound system to follow," Speed says. "My children will reap the benefit of the inheritance. Of course, the general public reaps the advantage also.
Copyright © 2002 The Register-Guard
NC Ping!!
I was living in the "pine barrens" stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. There are plenty of nice longleaf pine forest, and they are replanting the slower growing longleaf when logging.
The rain tends to wash the nutrients down through the san to the water table, so loblolly doesn't get fat fast, and has other problems there.
I noticed many old turpentine scars on older trees harkening back to the days they did alot of extracting of that from the forests there.
The one thing I hope becomes second nature to the silvaculture industry in the south is to allow percentages of older trees of the species diversity a native forest usually has.
If a forest is a neat corn row of same species and age trees, it's downright depressing. Not to mention barren of a healthy diversity of forest life.
There's a lot of private timber land on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. It's fared a heck of a lot better than the Indian and USFS lands, which have been scraped raw.
I have a good eye for if a forest is healthy or not. As I can't see wgat is going on, I worry about how much of Dixie is getting whittled by chainsaws.
Good luck with your operation. Forestland on our continent is a valuble carbon sink, and without forest health all species - including our own - suffer.
What will they think of next. Ooops this family has owned this tree farm since the civil war, so this concept can't be new?
Will they come up with the Concept of Good Stewardship next? Ooops, that has been a corner stone of Judeo/Christain living for a couple of thousand years and more.
Yup. Alabama is 73% forested and that increased by one million acres last year.
"Concept of Good Stewardship... that has been a corner stone of Judeo/Christain living for a couple of thousand years and more."
I think you are on to something...Mississippi is a very religious state and Oregon is considered a "mission field".;o)
(The bold smiley face is to let any Oregon FReepers know I mean no offense.)
When you have a state where Andy Kerr and other enviralists have condemned capitalism and any use of the land for farming, ranching, logging and even living on it for decades, you eventually have what Oregone has become. A state staggering on the edge of bankruptcy due to socialistic enviralism.
The enviralist religion/culture takes from society and never produces a damn thing. When you get over 50% of your people who have made their religion and life enviralism and socialism. You have a society/system rigged for failure.
In the real world we need jobs and businesses and corporations that provide those jobs. When the society is anti business, no growth and looks backward instead of forward, that society is in danger of not existing in the future. Their only way of surviving is to raise taxes to pay for the lifestyles of those who provide nothing of value and just take from society.
When taxes are raised, more businesses leave the state or just fail. This means less tax income coming in, and the left wing socialist enviralists will tax the remaining businesses and workers more to pay for those who produce nothing but mantras.
This comment by you is an interesting one, " When I tell folks out here that Mississippi's largest export is timber, well, they look at me like I'm nuts, too.
Hey, that's not too far from us!
CD
Federally owned lands are often mismanaged and the timber industry gets tremendous breaks (example: federally built roads) all with our tax dollars. The problem is bigger in Western U.S. simply because it has more federally owned land than the South.
Bottom line is that environmentalists are on the same page as you, unless you favor a corporation that makes a quick windfall, sacrificing otherwise productive land and wasting our tax dollars.
I'm not for corporations ripping off property, nor am I for the enviral nazis closing down millions of acres of forest and land to everyone but them. Then using poor science or not science to set up phoney endangered species rulings to enable Rural Cleansing to get rid of farmers, loggers, ranchers and any human daring to live in their druid heavens.
This all will be coming out as the internet allows no hiding for corporations nor enviral nazis.
...to enable Rural Cleansing to get rid of farmers, loggers, ranchers and any human daring to live in their druid heavens.
Chill Gramps! I was defending the private owners (and their good land use) on this thread, trying to show you we have a common goal. We could work together on this goal but it will never happen if you continue in your attack mode and continue to believe the rediculous, extreme statements you make.
My family has been farming for generations on land we homesteaded back in the 1800s. So don't accuse me of trying to rid the land of farmers or ranchers or anyone else.
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