VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

UNIQUE, COMPLICATED, IMPORTANT QUESTIONS DESERVE BETTER THAN COOKIE CUTTER, SIMPLISTIC, UNSUBSTANTIATED ANSWERS

If the headline of this article is longer and contains bigger words than normal, it's because we are concerned about something that happens every day, and we hope to draw you attention to it. Our concern is this: the timberland owners of the south and the taxpayers of the nation are being shortchanged by the "conventional wisdom" on forest management that is repeated and repeated by foresters who should be ashamed for trivializing a huge body of knowledge that can produce enormous benefits. Advice and recommendations based on what is hardly more than hearsay evidence cause the owners to commit errors that cannot be corrected without great cost in money and time and the taxpayers to waste dollars that are already too scarce.

Each timber property is unique; in fact, each acre is like no other acre in the world. Everyone readily accepts that its available water, sunlight, and nutrients are unique, but equally unique is its ability to product income, monetary or otherwise, from timber, hunting, fishing, and recreation.

Each timber property is also a complicated system, in which all biological and economic factors react with each other in ways that are often invisible. Anyone attempting to manipulate such systems with their unique characteristics can succeed only by thoroughly understanding the forces at work and then writing unique prescriptions. Uniform treatments set forth in agency or company policy manuals are almost sure to cause harm.

Finally, each timber property is an important asset to its owner. The smallest commercial forest in the south today is worth $50,000, and we don't know anyone who considers this a negligible sum. Acting on conventional wisdom can reduce the value of such a tract by $10,000, and when a stock-market investor suffers such a loss, he starts looking for someone to sue. We wouldn't blame timberland owners for similar attitudes.

The statements below are examples of cookie-cutter forestry and characterize the speaker as a dispenser of conventional wisdom. Following the statements are our suggestions about the proper responses of timberland owners to them.

"We recommend selective cutting and natural reproduction. Establishing the future stand does not require a large capital outlay." "OK, but show me what my total investment will produce under your plan and under the alternative of clearcutting and planting, and then let me decide which course is best. And if I want to utilize natural reproduction, won't I have to leave seed trees, and shouldn't they be counted as capital investment?"

"Our super seedlings are the best, and they are the size that tree planters prefer." "OK, but show me the results of progeny tests of your seedlings so that I can compare them with others. And I don't care what tree planters want; I want the size seedling that, because of its survival and growth, will be most profitable for me."

"We recommend planting 700 or more seedlings per acre. Then you will get good volume growth and good tree size and have flexibility about whether or not to thin." "OK, but give me the numbers and diameters of the trees that I will have at age 10 and age 15, and let me decide whether volume growth and tree size are good. I'd also like to see the calculations showing why your plan is best."

"We always recommend ABCDEF herbicide for site-prep. Many of our clients have had good results with it." "OK, but show me what other products are available for my unique combination of soils and vegetation to be controlled. I'd also like to see evidence that you have investigated the environmental aspects of using it."

We often wonder where conventional wisdom and cookie-cutter forestry come from. They must arise form the scientific and economic inadequacy of the dispensers. They cannot come from inadequacy of the present state of the art, for the south is now home to the world's best forest scientists who frequently publish all their findings.

Life is too short for such tripe. Forestry is too fine a profession to be trivialized. Timberland is too precious a resource to be mismanaged.