National Association of Conservation Districts

National Association of Conservation Districts

NACD's mission is to serve conservation districts by providing national leadership and a unified voice for natural resource conservation.

Forestry Notes

April 2009
Volume XVIII, Issue 5

 | PDF version | Archive of Previous Issues |

  1. Stewardship at Its Finest
  2. Q&A with USFS Director of Cooperative Forestry Paul Ries
  3. NRCS Oklahoma Honors Assistant State Forester
  4. White Named NRCS Chief
  5. Wisconsin Forests Enrolled in MFL Awarded FSC Certification

1.Stewardship at Its Finest
Trinity RCD has made itself the perfect partner for BLM and USFS in California

In northern California, in the small town of Weaverville, the Trinity County Resources Conservation District is changing the way stewardship work is being done, and in the process showcasing the value and versatility that conservation districts can offer to their federal partners.

Several years ago, the Bureau of Land Management Redding Field Office was exploring options to dispense of a parcel of land that was isolated from the rest of the acreage the office managed. When the BLM office began discussing the option of trading the 1,000 acres to industrial timber, concerned Weaverville community members came to the RCD office in an attempt to save the viewshed. “We already had a working relationship with BLM doing a lot of other watershed restoration work,” said Pat Frost, district manager for Trinity RCD.

In California, RCDs have the ability to own easements and land, and that began a discussion about Trinity RCD purchasing the land to keep it in public use. At that time, however, Trinity RCD did not own any lands, and when District officials looked into leveraging potential revenues from a sustainable forestry operation to pay for the acquisition, the potential risks were too much to ignore.

Said Frost, “Thankfully it didn’t work because the timber market here has not done well since then.”

As discussions between BLM and Trinity RCD were heating up, other opportunities became available to the two organizations.

“One of the things our District does well is facilitate community outreach, so we just began to hold visioning sessions with the community – anybody and everybody who might have an interest in that land,” said Frost. “While we were going through that process, the stewardship authorities enacted by Congress went from the pilot program to permanent.”

That allowed BLM and the U.S. Forest Service to enter into agreements with a group like Trinity RCD on stewardship plans of one to 10 years so long as it had non-merchantable goals – forest health, recreation, watershed protection. Because those agreements allow for timber harvests, there was an opportunity for Trinity RCD to manage the land and create a sustainable yield to help provide for future goals and projects.

“We began to go down this path of trying to figure out how to use those stewardship authorities to enter into a long-term agreement whereby the RCD would be the bridge between the community and federal land managers on managing the forest,” said Frost.

By September of 2005, BLM and Trinity RCD had a stewardship plan in place.

And while the cooperative agreement with BLM is limited to a 10-year term, nothing in the agreement prohibits the two partners from amending the existing contract and extending it another 10 years, said Frost. BLM and Trinity RCD have already talked about adding some acres to the agreement to extend the current agreement.

So far the BLM office has been pleased with how well the stewardship agreement has worked. Said Walter Herzog, lead forester for the Redding Field Office, “The main reason it’s been a success is because we’re working with a group like Trinity RCD that has so many specialists on its staff. We have a small staff that manages 250,000 acres. Because this is so close to Weaverville they’re able to implement projects that we would not be able to do. They’ve truly been stewards of the land.”

The ideas that came from those initial visioning sessions produced a list of ways in which the Weaverville Community Forest could service the local needs of community members. These things were embedded in the stewardship agreement:

Through a hazardous fuel treatment and a 200-acre harvest, Trinity was able to generate $135,000 in receipts that has been used to help pay for several projects, including invasive weed control, post-fire rehabilitative efforts, and trail development. Frost has also been able to work with a local Extension office to identify and preserve heritage fruit trees that are scattered throughout the area.

Frost emphasized how important it has been to hold regular community meetings to keep the 3,500 people of Weaverville updated on the work being done and to collect new ideas. “Our community members know we value their ideas.”

“This year,” he said, “we’re going to start using a report card – a half page piece of paper that they can use to score how well we’ve done. It will help tell us if we are meeting the objectives.”

Satisfying the community’s approval is now more important than ever; at the end of last year Trinity RCD expanded its stewardship work through a 12,000-acre agreement it signed with the U.S. Forest Service. According to Frost, initial talks on this plan began even before the BLM agreement was finalized, but all of the parties were content on waiting to see how well things worked with the parcel Trinity RCD was given to manage. The success of that project gave USFS officials and Trinity RCD the confidence to work together on a similar agreement.

It started with the same process – community meetings and talks between the Forest Service and Trinity RCD. “Initially we didn’t know how much land we were talking about,” said Frost. “We had just started doing work on the BLM land and we were a little cautious about committing to more than we could accomplish.”

The community encouraged Trinity RCD to expand initial boundaries to take on an area that would include all of the Forest Service land in the Weaver Creek drainage. “It really became more of a watershed approach than a ‘road is a handy boundary’ type of thing,” said Frost. Trinity RCD formed a steering committee to work through all of the details with the Forest Service, and in December of 2008 a 10-year cooperative agreement with the Forest Service was signed. Soon, said Frost, they plan to do a fuel reduction project on 100 acres.

The Forest Service sees this agreement as a win-win for meeting its objectives.

“The Shasta-Trinity National Forest is excited to enter into the stewardship agreement,” said Sam Frink, resource planning project leader for Shasta-Trinity National Forest, “because identifying and implementing forest projects that are ‘driven’ by local community involvement should benefit both the Forest Service’s mission of providing good land management and the community’s desire to have the local workforce employed in providing a healthy forest environment around the Weaverville community.”

The real secret to success in making these agreements work were the local people the district was able to engage. Their support and interest gave the District and its federal partners the confidence that there is a need and enough support to make these agreements work. And community members remain involved. On March 21, Trinity RCD held a community volunteer planting day where locals were able to help manage the forest that means so much to its community.

For more information on this project, visit the Trinity County Resource Conservation District Web site at http://www.tcrcd.net, or contact Pat Frost, district manager for Trinity RCD, at 530/623-6004 or through email at pfrost@tcrcd.net.


2. Q&A with USFS Director of Cooperative Forestry Paul Ries
In February, Paul Ries arrived in Washington D.C. to take on the role of the Director of Cooperative Forestry for the U.S. Forest Service. Ries replaces Larry Payne, who retired in spring of 2008, and is in charge of a number of programs that are of great value to private non-industrial forest landowners.

At his former job as the Director of State and Private Forestry for the Northern and Intermountain Regions of the Forest Service (Regions 1 and 4), Ries worked closely with conservation district leaders in the West.

His agenda? “That’s the question I’ve been asked the most,” said Ries. “I don’t come in with an agenda. Things are not broken. People have been doing a good job of managing programs and partnerships.”

Ries shared some time with Forestry Notes for a brief interview to discuss the challenges that lie ahead for him at his new post, what excites him about the changes that have been made in the Farm Bill, and how his office will help to strengthen the bond between the Forest Service and NACD.

FN: Talk about what drew you to this position.

Ries: In my previous job I covered an area from Nevada to North Dakota. I loved it as it was a great job. I’ve worked in state and private forestry for the past 10 years, and while my whole career has been with the Forest Service, a lot of that was at the local level working with conservation districts. When this position opened up a lot of people talked to me about it and I debated a long time before deciding to go forward. (The hesitancy) wasn’t because the position was so scary but rather because it was a big change to move to Washington D.C. In the end I had a lot of good advice and counsel and folks seemed to think this was a good fit. And I’m thinking they were probably right.

FN: In stepping into this role, what excites you about some of the opportunities you now have and the programs you’ll be able to share with people around the country.

Ries: I find it an exciting time to be here right now. We’ve got an economic recovery package which arrived at the Forest Service about the same day I arrived that has $550 million of state and private forestry opportunities in it, and that’s huge. We also have a new Farm Bill that we’re just beginning to implement that carries with it a world of opportunities. And, at the same time, we just got an appropriation bill for 2009, and that’s special in a number of ways: for one, it’s an appropriation bill and not just a continuing resolution, and has a little bit of growth in it for some of our programs. Optimism is high for the 2010 budget as well, with perhaps a few more opportunities for growth for some of the Farm Bill programs that haven’t been funded yet. We’re waiting to see the numbers still, but from what we’ve seen from the President’s budget so far, it’s good news.

One other thing that has given cause for excitement is that there’s some real serious talk now about doing something different with the Forest Service budget relative to firefighting. And that’s huge for us, and when I say us I don’t just mean the Forest Service … it’s the US with a capital ‘U’ – all of us. Firefighting costs have been consuming the budget of the Forest Service and we’ve really seen a decline in other programs just because funds weren’t available. We’ve had one record fire season after another and we continually have to pull back money and reallocate funds to fire suppression. If we can find a solution to that to help the other programs prevail then we’re all going to benefit.

FN: Talk about forestry’s place in this new Farm Bill.

Ries: This is an interesting Farm Bill for us. Historically we’ve looked at forestry in the Farm Bill being in the domain of the Forest Service and this Farm Bill has changed some of that, as well as changed the amount of funding available to forestry for private landowners and non-industrial private forest owners. Before we had a cost-share program in the Forest Service – first SIP, then FLEP, and then FLEP went away and we didn’t have one. All over the country there were some alliances being formed with NRCS looking at different ways to meet critical needs through the NRCS programs; that became evident in the West following one really bad fire season after another when we had huge restoration and watershed needs for these private landowners and no program in the Forest Service with cost share that could really help them. But the Farm Bill took some of that good work being done on the ground in a couple of key locations and changed the way we do business to where EQIP, in particular, is going to be available for forestry. It makes a whole lot more money available to those private forestry landowners and it’s also a program conservation districts have been in the thick of. They understand it better than we do. I think there’s a real opportunity here and a real need, and it’s going to change the nature of our working relationships.

FN: Being someone who has worked with conservation districts, now that you’re in Washington D.C. how do you plan to grow the relationship the Forest Service has with NACD?

Ries: A lot of my experience is in the West, but in state and private forestry in particular, we’re all about partnerships. We have a long-standing relationship with state foresters and a partnership that goes back before the Forest Service was formed. Locally, we’ve had strong partnerships with conservation districts, with RC&Ds and others. But those relationships haven’t been as strong nationally, and I think there is a lot of room to grow there. We’re really just started to reach out to conservation districts on a national level and NACD a few years ago, and I have to give Larry Payne a lot of credit. He really worked awfully hard to form that relationship and it’s something I fully intend to continue. We all have so much work to do, and we have so much we can share. The more we work together the better off we’re all going to be.

FN: What are the great challenges you see for yourself in this post?

Ries: Probably the most immediate is the economic recovery funding. It’s been pretty consuming for me. My plan was that I was going to come here, get to know the staff, get to know the partners and start working. That all had to go on the backburner as we worked on 2,700 project proposals that came in from all around the country. And we’ve tried to figure out the best way to identify those that were going to make the most difference in the counties that have the most need.

The story is, that economic recovery is about three things – jobs, and jobs and jobs. And while that is true, it’s also about making a lasting difference on the land, something we can all point back to later and say ‘Wow, we really made the most of that opportunity. And not only did we put a lot of people back to work, but we really made a difference in the watersheds that we all care about.’ In the Forest Service, a big part of our history is that during the Great Depression when the Civilian Conservation Corps came along, the Forest Service hosted a lot of those CCC camps, and many, if not most of the trails and the campgrounds and a whole lot of our ranger station buildings that we still use today were built by the CCC. They made a huge difference in the infrastructure of our national forests. So with this economic opportunity, with a bad economy that’s real scary but the chance to have some funding that puts people to work, we’re all very aware of that legacy and hoping that we can make the kind of difference that our predecessors made with the CCC.

FN: What is your opinion on forestry and where it fits into new emerging markets?

Ries: There’s a bumper sticker that’s been around for a quite a while -- the first time I saw it, it was part of the Urban and Community Forestry program -- and it says, ‘Trees are the Answer.’ It’s interesting. As we look at a lot of the issues that are right in front of us today – jobs, energy, carbon sequestration, climate change -- you realize as a society just how important trees are, both in the context of forests and the context of our communities. It’s really an exciting time to be a forester. There is more going on with trees and the forest now than I can ever recall, and we’re being looked at as part of the solution in so many different ways.

I’m a real advocate of active forest management because of what it does economically but also because the biomass potential is off the charts. I come from the part of the country where we started Fuels for Schools. I’m really proud of that program. It just makes so much sense for these schools and their communities to be able to protect their community from fire in a way that utilizes that material, puts people to work and saves money on energy costs.


3. NRCS Oklahoma Honors Assistant State Forester
Assistant State Forester Kurt Atkinson, was named the NRCS Oklahoma Conservationist of the Year at the annual Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts meeting in Oklahoma City.

Within Oklahoma Forestry Services, Atkinson has promoted a closer working relationship between the state agency and NRCS to improve the delivery of technical assistance to forest landowners. Through his partnering efforts NRCS forestry activities in Oklahoma have rapidly accelerated in 2008. 

Atkinson is serving on a national committee to better coordinate the delivery of Forest Stewardship Program plans and NRCS planning assistance by streamlining the process of inputting Forest Stewardship Plans into NRCS’s Customer Service Toolkit. He played an integral role in the development of a Contribution Agreement that allows the Oklahoma Forestry Service foresters to provide much needed forestry assistance for development of forest stewardship plans and to conduct Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) tree planting transects throughout Oklahoma. 

Atkinson has been involved with the formation of an Environmental Quality Incentive Program Local Emphasis Area in southeastern Oklahoma which will promote sound forest stewardship planning while providing cost-share assistance to implement the plans. He also played an active role in the application process that helped include Oklahoma as one of the four states to be recently approved to participate in the Healthy Forest Reserve Program.


4. White Named NRCS Chief
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has named Dave White as chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Chief White has a long NRCS career with experience at the local, state and national levels, including time as the agency’s Director of Legislative Affairs, State Conservationist and on details to the Senate Agriculture Committee during development of the 2002 and 2008 Farm Bills. He has championed the inclusion of forestland in addressing resource concerns at the landscape scale and helped expand Farm Bill programs to be more inclusive of forestry practices. 

White has extensive knowledge of conservation districts and has shown commitment to working with partners at all levels to ensure protection of America’s natural resources including forests.  While serving as the Montana State Conservationist he worked closely with State Forester Bob Harrington and other forestry partners to improve the delivery of technical assistance to forest landowners and for the mutual recognition of landowners’ forest management plans.  While serving in Montana, Mr. White was the first State Conservationists to receive the American Forest Foundation’s Forest Stewardship Award in recognition of his support of conservation activities for private forest landowners.

Forestry Notes congratulates Chief White on this appointment and the forestry partnership looks forward to continuing to build a strong relationship with NRCS.


5. Wisconsin Forests Enrolled in MFL Awarded FSC Certification
More than two million acres of Wisconsin’s privately owned forest lands that are enrolled in the Managed Forest Law (MFL) Program recently received Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation by the SmartWood Program of the Rainforest Alliance. The independent certification “is significant economically as well as environmentally because these private lands (more than two million acres owned by family forest owners who voluntarily participate in the MFL Program) provide the majority of timber that fuels Wisconsin’s forest products industry,” according to Natural Resources Secretary Matthew Frank.

Said Chief State Forester Paul DeLong, “The certification award from SmartWood is recognition of the responsible management that is a hallmark of Wisconsin forestry, the results of which benefit all Wisconsin citizens.”

In Wisconsin, forestry and forestry-related businesses produce more than $20 billion annually, account for 1 in 7 manufacturing jobs, produce $7.5 billion annually in retail sales and services in the state, and generate $570 million in annual state tax revenue. And privately owned forestlands provide the majority of timber for the state’s forest products industry.

Additional background information on forest certification in Wisconsin is available on the DNR website at http://dnr.wi.gov/forestry/certification/. For more information, contact Forest Certification Specialist Paul Pingrey at (608) 267-7595.