VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

THE THREAT FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS AND HOW TO MINIMIZE IT

In http://www.vardaman.com/greensheets/boom.htm, we described the severe restrictions placed by mostly-urban voters on the business of growing trees for profit in the Pacific Northwest.  Every timber-cutting operation in Washington must be approved in advance by the state forestry agency.  Clearcuts won’t be approved unless they cover only a few acres and thus do not spoil the view.  The emphasis is on maintaining the forests as if they were museums.  All of this has raised operating costs and created regulatory uncertainty.

An even worse disaster to the business in Maine was avoided by defeat of a referendum in this week’s election. For graphic descriptions of what might have happened, look at http://www.maineforest.com.  Although clearcuts in forest management would be objectionable because they supposedly destroy the environment and ruin wildlife habitat, it would be OK to clear a few acres, build a house, plant a lawn, and later clear more land for horses.  Clearing land to build houses would be good; cutting trees to grow more trees would be bad.  Our Maine correspondent reported that the instigator of the referendum submitted a similar one two years ago and is expected to submit another in a couple of years.  If such a measure should eventually pass, he guesses that “we will be living in a pristine wilderness, surrounded by second homes.”  The forests that now produce both wood and beauty will then produce only beauty.

These two examples from the far corners of the U.S. are as extreme as any we know of, but those who would force timberland owners to manage their assets in certain ways are everywhere.  (They have been with us almost 100 years; see the nearby article by Warren Flick http://www.vardaman.com/greensheets/forest.htm)  It is not enough for landowners to do no harm; they must do or not do certain things in certain ways.  Urban consumers of large quantities of products made from wood want to tell landowners how to employ landowner capital to satisfy consumer wants.

These attempts to establish basic forestry practices by laws or regulations have two fatal flaws:

1. They apply the same general rules to the most variable biological communities we can think of.  Each acre of forests is different from all others; even across many 40-acre tracts, the differences are huge.
2. They attempt to maintain in unchanging condition a community of living plants that constantly and vigorously compete with each other.

Every timberland tract has substantial value, and its owner regards it a significant investment.  Some owners may be better at cultivating them than others, but all constantly study ways to improve their unique productivity.  None willfully employs measures of environmental destruction.  Even clearcutting, a practice often condemned, has occurred repeatedly for 12,000 years.  Since the Ice Age ended, every U.S. forest has been “clearcut” 50 or more times by fire, windstorm, insects, disease, landslides, or volcanic eruptions, all events that humans had nothing to do with.  The fires that we saw on TV near Los Alamos this year were typical examples; they were caused by lightning in areas that were especially dry this year.  In S.E. US, frequent hurricanes or attacks by Southern Pine Beetles are equally thorough.  The effect on a forest is the same, but clearcuts by humans produce useful products.

Although this situation seems grossly unfair to us, laws must be obeyed.  The forces pushing for these laws, etc. are powerful, and if their effects cannot be minimized, they will destroy the economic value of these lands.  The easiest way to minimize them, and one that will be available until the regulatory burden gets so heavy that no one will accept it, is to sell the land and the problem.  Several industrial landowners, who are favorite targets that are easy to attack because they are impersonal and seem to be remote, have done so and stated that their reason was regulatory uncertainty.

The most common way is a public relations campaign by an association.  The Maine Internet site is an example, and every state forestry association plays a similar role.

A third way is the typical landowner-assistance program operated by many industries.  In exchange for advice and services in growing timber, private landowners provide not only the land and the capital to grow the trees, but also their considerable political power to combat burdensome regulations.

The most profitable example is a PPICâ, a Pine Plantation Investment Contractâ.  All of them were created by converting open fields into pine plantations.  By fractionation of the land’s productive capacity, we have the landowner, the strongest possible ally, on the ground at all times.  He lives on or near the tract, and we pay him annual fees for use of a specified part of it.  If activists try to regulate us, they must also regulate him and thousands of other small, private landowners, and that is an entirely different matter.  Several PPIC’s in Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia are listed for sale on www.se-timbersales.com.  Each has a ten-digit code name; one in Alabama is AL87121JCS.  We believe that they will qualify for like-kind sales of timber without taxation.  If you want one as an investment, but are not satisfied with certain details of these, we’ll be glad to purchase one that will fit your needs.  The supply of them is virtually unlimited.