State of the Forest: Doing Right by the Trees

The following article contains references to sexual assault. 

Trees cover one half of Tennessee, providing jobs, recreation, and habitat. But current forestry practices have raised concerns about the woodlands today’s children will inherit. Nashville Banner senior staff writer, Leon Alligood, spent six months crisscrossing the state by land and air, and interviewing over 100 sources, resulting on a five-day series of insightful commentary about Tennessee’s most valuable natural resource.

 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The chinkapin oak is what foresters call a sweepstakes winner. In its 275- to 300-year life, the tree has endured, fire, insects, blizzards, hail, wind, storms, drought, lightning and man. It is one of the lucky ones.

“We wouldn’t take anything for it. There’s not another like it,” says Perry Lanius of Lebanno. The tree shades their front yard of the home on West Main Street he and his wife, Frances, have shared since 1952.

Trees.

Tennesseans love them.

We relish their cover during the sultry days of summer.

In the fall, tourists flock to see their changing cascade of colors.

By their growth from seedling to young tree, we compare the metamorphosis of tyke to teen; in their constancy, we find comfort as middle age yields to seniorhood.

Concurrent with our infatuation for trees standing is an appreciation forests harvested.

Our homes are framed with two-by-fours.

We desire the cachet of fine wood furniture in our living rooms and the luster of oak in kitchen cabinets.

Settled in easy chairs, we read books, magazines, even this newspaper, all of which are printed on paper that began as a tree growing in the woods.

This dichotomy, the forestry equivalent of having our cake and eating it, too, has been around since the earliest pioneers marveled at the frontier’s thick forests, even as they cut them down for fuel and shelter.

Today, many Tennesseans find it difficult to reconcile feelings about our woodlands and how they should serve us. Questions are being asked — not only from environmental circles, but also from loggers, sawmillers and others in the wood-products industry — about what kind of forest we will have in the 21st century.

 

Chipping Away Our Forests

Billy and Stanley Wheeler, father and son, earn their daily bread in Guys, Tennessee, a small community hard against the Mississippi state line. The Wheelers own a pallet-manufacturing business, B.S. Mac. For about eight years, the father-and-son team has used low-grade hardwood trees in their business. The local woods are full of them, not only in McNairy County, but throughout the state. In fact, while the volume of timber has increased in Tennessee over the past half-century, quality has diminished.

Foresters blame a century of high-grading, a practice of removing highly marketable trees while leaving the specimens that do not pay their way out of the woods. These remnants form the basis of the next forest.

For decades, Tennessee loggers, landowners, and foresters have longed for a market for these second-rate trees, the ones better suited for firewood than furniture. Until about six years ago, the Wheelers’ pallet industry served that purpose.

Then came chip mills in northern Mississippi, able to grind tons of hardwood logs each day into wood flakes used in making paper, especially white paper. Deciduous trees — hardwoods — are used almost exclusively to manufacture this product. The American Forest and Paper Association reports that white paper is in high demand worldwide because of computers, copiers, and fax machines.

Stanley worries McNairy County is not big enough for both his pallet business and the paper companies. “When we’re running full, we hire 20 people. That hasn’t happened since last March,” he says.

Today, tons of logs the Wheelers say they would have sawed into pallet boards are now diverted to the pulpwood stream. The logs Stanley does buy are more expensive, too. Loggers demand $3 more per ton than what the chip mills are paying.

 

Concern for Hardwoods

Because of their encounters with the “paper tiger,” the Wheelers don’t like what they see, for the future of their business or for the forest.

The father and son are not alone. Increased harvesting of the state’s hardwoods for pulp has prompted concern not only from conservationists but also from other traditional hardwood users. Most of the concern centers around clearcutting and problems associated with this harvesting method.

Extensive clear-cutting to satisfy a paper mill’s need for wood fiber could lead to a hardwood deficit, meaning more trees are being cut than are being grown, environmentalists contend.

Paper mill critics have other concerns, too. Will paper companies replace a clear-cut forest with fast growing loblolly pine rather than allow oaks and other hardwoods to regenerate? Will ecosystems and water quality be harmed?

Pulp and paper manufacturers, who collectively own about 1.1 million acres in Tennessee, believe they are good stewards of the forests, securing work for thousands of Tennesseans while providing woodlot owners with a source of revenue and consumers worldwide with needed products.

The debate continues.

So does the cutting.

 

Sustainability Questioned

Since the late 1980s, U.S. Forest Service statistics for Alabama and Mississippi indicate the pulp and paper industry has repeatedly violated a cardinal rule of sustainable forestry. Never cut more trees than are being grown.

Bob Mitchell, a high school physics teacher-cum-forest advocate from Chattanooga, is afraid the same fate awaits Tennessee’s hardwoods. “These states had a lot of resources; a lot of trees were down there before these companies came in. Now they have devastated that area,” he alleges. “Doesn’t it make sense that they would continue on into Tennessee, and doesn’t it make sense that they would continue their clear-cutting practices on our hardwood forests?”

There is reason to put credence in Mitchell’s scenario. In 1989, the last year a forestry survey was published for Tennessee, six counties in the state showed deficit readings for hardwoods.

The next survey won’t be tabulated for two years, but both foresters and industry watchers indicate that number could rise significantly, particularly along the Mississippi and Alabama borders. “The 1989 numbers were good, but for my area — this southwest corner of Tennessee — things have changed drastically since 1989,” says Pete Moditz, area forester with the Tennessee Division of Forestry. “Even though we don’t have the numbers to back it up, we are in a deficit at this point.”

 

Defining Sustainability

That Tennessee hardwoods are harvested for pulp is no surprise. In Kingsport, a Mead paper mill (now owned by Willamette) has been using deciduous species since the early 1900s. More recently, the use of the state’s hardwoods by paper mills began increasing in the 1970s and by the 1980s matched the amount of softwoods being used.

During the period 1983 to 1993, hardwood pulp production in the state ranged from a 1989 low of 490,900 tons to a high of 743,100 tons in 1993, according to the U. S. Forest Service’s annual reports on Southern pulpwood production.

“The information universe is increasing so rapidly, and even though a small proportion of it may be printed on paper, absolute paper consumption is still increasing,” says Stan Lancey, director of economic services with the American Forest and Paper Association.

Mitchell says it all adds up to nonsustainable use of Tennessee’s greatest natural resource. “The current demand for chips is driven by the world market, and our region cannot sustain that market,” he argues. “If nothing is done, it’s going to be a rape. These companies would like to turn Tennessee into a pulpwood lot.”

Nonsense, says industrial forester Don Kimberly, manager of over 170,000 acres of middle Tennessee woodlands owned by Champion International Corporation. “That’s another of those myths out there,” the Waynesboro man says. Kimberly says anti-logging activists like to point out that Wayne County, headquarters for Champion’s operations in the region, is one of the six Tennessee counties already showing a hardwood deficit. “What they don’t say is that statewide there are three times as many hardwood trees growing than were being harvested,” he says. “Sustainable to me means over a long run we can cut as much as we’re growing. We may be cutting less this year and more the next year, but the two years combined is sustainable growth.”

The word, however, has a different meaning for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “What I’m most concerned about, and I’m looking from an endangered species and wildlife standpoint, is habitat,” says Lee Barclay, who heads the agency’s office in Tennessee.

Because the pulpwood industry in Tennessee has increased its use of hardwoods, Barclay said there could be detrimental effects on deer, bears, squirrels, and other animals who depend on mast — the acorns and nuts that many hardwoods produce.

 

Fear of Pines

An indictment of clear-cutting hardwood forests is that the majority of these acres will be replanted with pine. This fear of pine plantations replacing the state’s oak forests pervades the environmental community. “I’ve got nothing against pines, but I don’t want a pine monoculture replacing our hardwood forests. We’ve got something special here that other states, except for maybe North Carolina, don’t have,” says Alan Jones, executive director of the Tennessee Environmental Council.

“I’ve planted close to a million pine seedlings on industrial forest lands throughout the southeast and Wisconsin. I’ve seen the results of what can happen,” says Dennis Haldeman, a former forest industry worker who is now an active member of several Tennessee environmentalist groups. “I got fed up with it all. Yeah, it’s wrong.”

However, there is little statistical evidence available to indicate hardwood sites statewide are being converted to pine in large tracts. Paper company land, which accounts for 8.5 percent of the state’s total forest, is the exception. Timber managers report it is not unusual for part of a hardwood tract on company property to be converted to pine. “But we don’t automatically choose pine,” Champion’s Kimberly notes. “We are site-selective.”

According to area forester Pete Moditz, that is a sound forestry strategy. “Some people say we’re going to run out of hardwoods. I have helped landowners plant 3,000 acres of pines, and that’s a lot, but do you know how many acres of forestland are in my area? There are 600,000. If it were all planted in pine it’d take 200 years. That ain’t going to happen.”

 

The Wheelers’ Dilemma

The Wheelers are at a crossroads. To reinvigorate their pallet company, father and son are considering options to business as usual.

“What has really caused the biggest effect on us is these loggers refuse to sort [the logs]. If it’s not a real good grade log, they put it all in chipwood, and it goes to the chip mill,” Stanley says.

He recently tried to explain to a logger that the lumberman could make more money by sorting pallet logs from the pulpwood. Stanley says it’s a simple matter of math. The response from the logger? “It’s just not worth it, that’s what he tells me,” Stanley says incredulously. “That’s the mentality that chip mills have fabricated.”

So the Wheelers are considering doing what the loggers will not do: buying all logs, sorting out what they need at their pallet plant and selling the rest to the chip mills.

A desperate act, feeding the beast that precipitated his crisis?

“We’ve got to do something,” Stanley says.

Meanwhile, the Wheelers continue to stare into the eyes of the paper tiger, trying hard not to blink.

 

Doing Right by the Trees

Following a mountain-hugging, serpentine road that flirts with nothingness, Doug Murray leads a chain of cars through a back-roads section of Campbell county.

His battered pickup, circa better days, follows a dirt path up a steep hill. The truck’s knobby rear wheels spin as the transmission shifts from first to second, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust.

A sign points the way to Peabody Mountain Cemetery, a tidy, green-lawned resting place for, among others, coal miners who died of black lung. The string of vehicles carrying environmentalists and journalists follows Murray’s truck into a gravel parking lot next to the small graveyard, but the purpose of this visit is not to pay homage to the dead buried there.

“This used to be a forest,” says Murray, pointing across the road from the cemetery to a 60-acre clearcut. The property is owned by Champion International Corporation, but was cleared by a local logger.

“As you can see, everything’s been cut and trucked out. In the process, they clogged up a stream, diverted it to make a log-loading pad and, as a result, sediment is all over the place,” he says.

The Division of Water Pollution Control agreed. Inspectors from the Knoxville office later sent the logger a notice of violation, and corrective action was taken, but without fine or court action.

For environmentalists, the clogged stream on Peabody Mountain is a smoking gun, proof that the status quo is failing to protect the best interests of Tennessee’s future forests. They want the state’s current voluntary system of forestry rules and regulations, officially known as Best Management Practices (BMB), to be given legal bite and substance.

However, representatives of the Tennessee Division of Forestry and the timber industry note the past decade has produced marked improvement on environmental issues by those who earn a living from the forest. “There are some bad actors, we know that, but for the most part, everyone is doing a better job under the present system,” says State Forester Ken Arney.

Loggers, woodlot owners, timber companies, and Arney all stress that self-regulation is the most effective method to ensure a healthy forest for future Tennesseans. Murray and other environmentalists remain unconvinced. “There have got to be some changes,” he says, standing in the middle of the Peabody Mountain clear-cut. “As many trees as are going to be cut in the next decade or so, we need to have some laws in place to make sure someone’s looking out for the forests.”

Loggers in Tennessee do not have to pass a skill test or buy a license to harvest trees for a living, a fact that galls Eileen Segal, a member of the Memphis-based Wolf River Conservancy.

“The lady that cuts my hair has to have a license, and it’s not a natural resource!” says Segal, whose group has lobbied for protection of the Wolf River in west Tennessee.

That loggers are not licensed is nothing unique to the Volunteer State, however. In fact, few states require registration of those who earn a living from the woods.

“Best Management Practices are only as good as the logger’s conscience is to implement them. I’ve seen magnificent logging practices — they’re in it for the long haul — but then I’ve seen some that I just don’t understand,” says Jeff Sinks, director of the Nature Conservancy’s office in Nashville.

“What I hear timber companies saying is that we’re going to be responsible — trust us — and as an environmental advocate, I think that’s an unfair request. I don’t think we should leave the future of our forests to chance or to companies deciding to do the right thing because it is the right thing,” adds Alan Jones of the Tennessee Environmental Council.

Tennessee is by no means alone on the issue of Best Management Practices. Of the 38 states that represent the major timber-producing regions of the country, 20 have voluntary compliance programs. In fact, only one southern state, North Carolina, makes BMPs mandatory.

At least one environmental organization has plans to push for forest reform in 1996. “We want a bill that actually does something to affect the problems that people have — siltation, water quality, and all the others related to clear-cutting. That’s what we’re researching,” says Shelley Wascom, director of Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM). “I’ve heard loggers say that sometimes they just can’t follow BMPs. That’s what the strip miners said. That’s why you need laws.”

But forest-practice regulations will not come cheaply or without restrictions to Tennessee’s revered private-property-rights laws. For instance, in California, which has the most stringent rules in the country, timber harvesting plans must be written by a registered professional forester, reviewed by the state, and then opened to public comments.

Proponents of mandatory BMPs say the current system offers little control over the size of clear-cuts. “If a landowner wants to clear-cut every tree on hundreds of acres, they can do it,” argues Murray.

That is true, agrees Area Forester Pete Moditz, but he argues the government should not be in the position of telling a landowner how to use his land. “I think people should have a right to do whatever they want with their property without impacting other people,” Moditz says. “If they’ve got a thousand acres they want to clear-cut, I’d try to discourage them, but I don’t want a law passed that says they can’t.”

As for added expenses, California forestry officials say their regulations cost about $60 per thousand board feet, a sum that is passed to consumers or absorbed by landowners. Such a thought leaves the Tennessee forest industry more determined to avoid governmental oversight through self-control.

Arney adds: “It’s incumbent on everybody in the industry to work together to stay in the voluntary system.”

These assurances notwithstanding, environmental groups say recent events provide evidence forestry practices in Tennessee should receive more scrutiny,

 

SIDEBAR

Old Cuts, New Cuts, Unkind Cuts

The Generations of a Tennessee Forest

A misconception about forests is that they are stable and unchanging. Woods that were childhood haunts are expected to remain the same, just older. In reality, forests are in a perpetual state of flux, scientists say. They are dynamic structures of nature that, if left undisturbed, have an order of succession that drives their existence.

However, man has always interfered, beginning with Tennessee’s earliest residents, Native Americans. Five hundred years ago, “There would have been a lot of open space,” theorizes University of Tennessee forestry professor Ed Buckner. “The people here were farming, and they had a single tool that helped them — fire. Thousands of acres were burned,” Buckner says.

“Closed forests would not have supported the numbers of people that lived here. Neither would it have supported the elk or the buffalo that we know also lived here.”

After DeSoto and other early explorers exposed the Native Americans to European diseases, thousands died, Buckner says. Their abandoned fields, absent the deliberate burning, became a seemingly impenetrable forest to the pioneers 250 years later.

However, it didn’t remain impenetrable long. One of the settlers’ first acts of self-preservation was to clear-cut the forest for building material and firewood and to create fields for farming. The effect on the state was telling. Historians say that between 1773 and 1873 roughly half of Tennessee’s forest cover was stripped, a loss of about 13 million acres.

Industrial uses of forest products accelerated the harvesting and, in many cases, abused the forests.

Extensive cutting continued well into the 20th century. In this century, man also interfered by introducing chestnut blight, which in less than 50 years wiped out one of the most prevalent hardwoods of the Tennessee forest.

By the early 1930s, there were signs logging had extended beyond the resource’s capacity. In a 1931 Ashland City Times article, tobacco farmers complained of not having enough wood to burn in their curing barns.

By the end of World War II, a logging decline that was to last several decades began. Coinciding with this was a drop in the number of farms, as Tennessee’s growing industrial and manufacturing base lured workers to non-farming jobs. As the number of farms decreased, fields reverted to forests.

In west Tennessee, severely eroded cotton plots were transformed into oases of evergreen as pines were planted to stabilize the soil. A good example is Natchez Trace State Park, 90 miles west of Nashville. “It was land that nobody wanted, abused land, too steep to be row-cropped,” says State Forester Ken Arney. “Now we have a beautiful forest that everybody loves.”

However, immediately after World War II, large sections of Tennessee were anything but beautiful. The state developed a reputation for scrubby woods of little value, and it remained that way for decades.

Meanwhile, the trees grew.

Fifty years later, the situation is reversing. According to a 1989 U.S. Forestry Service report — the most recent data available — Tennessee grows three times as much wood as is harvested. Over 75 percent is hardwoods, primarily in stands of oak and oak-hickory.

Today, Tennessee and other Southern states that suffered similar fates of over-cutting 75 to 100 years ago are called the “wood basket” of America. In the last two and a half decades, numerous lumber companies, pulpwood interests, and specialty markets have opened for business here.

Environmentalists derisively say the timber industry is returning to Tennessee for a “new cut” after “running into the big pond” —the Pacific Ocean — in the Northwest. Industry officials deny a west-to-east movement, blaming recent declines in Northwest lumber production on what they term “artificial” obstacles such as the spotted owl controversy and expensive court battles instigated by environmentalists.

Regardless, Tennessee has more trees and a growing timber industry. “I guess you could say it’s being discovered, both the quality stuff and the low-quality. We’ve got a million more acres of forestland now than we did in 1950,” adds the Tennessee Division of Forestry’s Barnett. “It’s a phenomenal comeback in many respects.”