Big trees vs. fire-resilient forests?
Society in general wants to preserve big, tall trees. But according to The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Forest Service, more than 6.6 million acres of fire-adapted forests in eastern and southwestern Oregon require forest management to survive. That means cutting down some trees.
Our challenge is: How do we restore forest health but save the big trees?
This issue of eNews highlights a new technology called "torrefaction" that turns low-value, small-diameter wood from restoration projects into a commercial fuel source. Finding a market for this new wood energy product would aid collaborative efforts aimed at restoring ecosystems to favor big, fire-resilient trees such as ponderosa pines. Without such efforts, which often mean thinning forest stands, we leave our forests open to uncharacteristic fire that destroys property, damages water quality, drains government budgets, devastates habitat and discharges harmful smoke.
Another story in this issue highlights the Defrees family's recognition as National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year. For generations, this northeastern Oregon family has sustainably managed forestland in the face of fire, insects and drought. They've spent decades building and maintaining defensible fire lanes and thinning their forest to reduce fuel loads. The result is a fire-resilient forest where one can find healthy trees, prime wildlife habitat and clean water.
Saving the big trees - or the forest - doesn't mean leaving things alone. In fact, as the Defrees family has shown us, it means exactly the opposite.
For the forest,
Paul Barnum
Executive Director
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Rediscovery Forest gets festive for holidays
The Rediscovery Forest at The Oregon Garden in Silverton will soon be decked out in more than 500,000 twinkly lights for the annual Christmas in the Garden celebration.
The 15-acre forest, which OFRI manages in partnership with the garden as a working, teaching forest, will be a central part of this year's event, scheduled to take place from Nov. 25 through Jan. 1, 2017. Along with a colorful holiday light display in the Rediscovery Forest, the celebration will feature carols, festive music, plays and other entertainment in the forest's Discovery Pavilion.
OFRI is a co-sponsor of the event, which will also include a traditional German Christmas market, a snowless tubing track, ice skating, photos with Santa, and holiday food and drinks.
"With more than 35,000 people expected to attend Christmas in the Garden, it will be a great opportunity for visitors to learn about forestry and wood products while exploring the Rediscovery Forest," says OFRI Director of Forestry Mike Cloughesy. "We also hope to increase the visibility of the Institute and the educational programs we offer."
Advance Christmas in the Garden tickets can be purchased online for a discounted rate.
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CLT in the United Kingdom
To learn more from British design and construction industry professionals who are revolutionizing the use of wood in multistory buildings,
OFRI Director of Forest Products Timm Locke last month joined representatives from Oregon's economic development agency, Business Oregon, on a fact-finding tour of the United Kingdom.
During the week-long trip, sponsored by the Softwood Export Council, Locke met with architects, timber engineers, contractors and cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufacturers who have been involved in the U.K.'s mass-timber industry since the start. He also had the chance to tour buildings and factories, including a modular housing factory owned by the insurance company and pension fund manager Legal and General.
"What was most remarkable about that visit is something U.K. architect Andrew Waugh pointed out," Locke says. "Legal and General, an insurance company completely unrelated to the wood products industry, did an unbiased financial analysis and came to the conclusion that CLT is the best way to tackle Britain's affordable housing crisis. I think that really says something."
Since the first CLT building in the U.K. was constructed in 2003, more than 500 have been built. By comparison, the U.S. has about five times the number of people and 40 times the land base, but only a handful of CLT buildings completed or under construction, Locke points out.
"Much can be learned from our friends across the pond and their successes in establishing CLT as a mainstream construction material," he says.
For more details about Locke's trip, check out his blog.
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OFRI board welcomes new members
Oregon State Forester Peter Daugherty has appointed four new members to the OFRI board of directors.
Matt Hegerberg, Eric Schooler, David Hampton and Mike Sullivan officially take office on Jan. 1, 2017.
Board members include forest-products producers from various size classes that pay harvest taxes to support OFRI's programs. The board also includes one member representing small woodland owners and one representing forest-sector employees.
Hegerberg, co-owner of the Hood River-based logging company WyEast Timber Services LLC, will represent Class 1, which includes producers of less than 20 million board feet per year.
Schooler, president and CEO of the Portland-based wood products company Collins, will represent Class 2, producers of at least 20 million board feet per year, but less than 100 million board feet per year.
Hampton, a director and shareholder of the Portland-based forest-products company Hampton Affiliates, will serve as a Class 3 representative on the board. This class includes producers of at least 100 million board feet per year.
Sullivan, Oregon political director for the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers Union, will serve as the board's employee representative.
The new board members are replacing Jennifer Beathe, W. Ray Jones
,
Bill Kluting and David Schmidt, whose terms expired.
By law, the state forester appoints the 11 voting board members to serve three-year terms. Two other members serve ex officio: the dean of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, and a public representative appointed jointly by the president of the Oregon Senate and the speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives.
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Oregon tree farmers win national award
Northeastern Oregon tree farmer Lyle Defrees and his son, Dean, have won the 2016 National Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year Award from the American Tree Farm System (ATFS).
The Defrees family, which manages a forested property in Baker County for timber and cattle, will be honored for exemplary forest stewardship at an awards reception Dec. 6 in Washington, D.C. The annual award recognizes an individual or family who has had an incredible impact on their land in the time they've owned it, overcome challenges, and promoted the importance of forest stewardship in their community.
"We truly are honored to be chosen as the National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year," says Lyle Defrees, "Our family has had a passion for our land and conservation for generations. Most everything we do is to protect our land from fire so it can continue to provide for us, the wildlife in our region, and our fellow Oregonians."
Each year ATFS, a program of the American Forest Foundation (AFF), honors four Regional Outstanding Tree Farmers, chosen from its 74,000 members nationwide. The Defrees family was among these regional winners after the Oregon Tree Farm System, a state affiliate of the ATFS, recognized them as Oregon's Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year for 2015. The AFF governance and the ATFS community then select a National Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year from the regional awardees.
In honor of the Defrees family winning the national award, AFF also produced a short video telling their story.
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Sen. Wyden praises biomass project
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden applauded the work of Troutdale-based HM3 Energy during a recent grand opening ceremony for the company's pilot biomass plant.
"We in Oregon have an opportunity to show the country - even the world - how to do biomass right," he told attendees.
The senator joined some 50 community leaders, biomass supporters and media at the October event, where biomass energy pioneer and company president Hiroshi Morihara proclaimed that HM3 is "open for business."
HM3 uses a process called "torrefaction" that heats woody biomass such as logging slash in an oxygen-free environment to create dense briquettes that can be burned similarly to coal to create energy. Proponents tout torrefaction as an economic and environmentally safe way to utilize small-diameter wood from restoration forest thinning operations that has little or no value as a wood product.
"Using woody biomass for energy production, and doing it in an environmentally responsible way, can help restore forest health and reduce the risk of wildfire," Wyden said. "Biomass can help bring jobs to the woods and can support rural areas across the state."
According to Morihara, the Troutdale operation is a fully functional pilot plant, designed to demonstrate how the torrefaction process works. A Japanese company has announced its intent to build a large-scale plant in Oregon by 2018 using the HM3 technology with technical support from OregonBEST, a nonprofit accelerator that funds and supports clean-tech startups.
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Lectures discuss future of forestry
The Hagenstein Lectures, a new series of public talks about sustainable forestry in the 21st century, launched last month with an inaugural event at the World Forestry Center in Portland.
The Oct. 9 event, "Emerging Voices in Forestry," attracted about 150 attendees. It featured talks by five young forestry leaders who discussed local and global forest issues and the future of the profession. Speakers included Aaron Everett, Washington state forester, and Mike Dockery, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station.
Dockery discussed the lessons he's learned about sustainable forestry from the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin. He emphasized the important connection between people and forestry.
"We need to work with people to understand what they want out of their forests," Dockery said. "A forestry that's a people-centered forestry ... That is the vision I have for forestry in the 21st century."
Along with individual lectures, American Forest Resource Council President Travis Joseph led a panel discussion about modern forestry. The panelists were Sue Baker, a research fellow with the School of Plant Science at the University of Tasmania in Australia; Eric Farm, coastal operations and marketing manager with the natural resources consulting firm Barnes & Associates Inc.; and Abe Wheeler, a forester with the Bureau of Land Management.
The World Forestry Center and Society of American Foresters launched the lecture series in honor of the late professional forester William D. Hagenstein. OFRI was a co-sponsor of the inaugural event.
Video recordings of the Oct. 9 talks will be made available on the event website.
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The Oregon Legislature created the Oregon Forest Resources Institute in 1991 to advance public understanding of forests, forest management and forest products and to encourage sound forestry through landowner education. A 13-member board of directors governs OFRI. It is funded by a portion of the forest products harvest tax.
Copyright © 2016, Oregon Forest Resources Institute. All Rights Reserved.
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See what OFRI's been up to on Facebook
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Help us get to 3,000!
We've updated our
Facebook page, and are posting more outings and interesting articles than ever.
Check us out and give us a like!
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2016 Tree Farmer feted at OTFS meeting
The Oregon Tree Farm System has scheduled its annual meeting for Nov. 21 at the World Forestry Center in Portland.
The meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It will include a workshop on succession planning for tree farms, and a recognition luncheon honoring the county tree farmers of the year. The 2016 Oregon Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year and Tree Farm Inspector of the Year will also be announced at the luncheon.
The workshop, held from 9 to 11 a.m., is free; the luncheon is $30 per person. The cost for lunch goes down to $15 per person for additional attendees after two full registrations.
For more information and to register for the meeting, workshop and luncheon, visit the OTFS
website
.
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OSU hosts groundbreaking for forest complex
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Oregon State University held a groundbreaking ceremony on Oct. 29 to celebrate the construction of a new home for the College of Forestry.
The 85,000-square-foot Oregon Forest Science Complex will consist of two buildings, a new Peavy Hall to replace the College of Forestry's old building, and the A.A. "Red" Emerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory. The lab will serve as a hub for the National Center for Advanced Wood Products Manufacturing and Design, a collaboration between the College of Forestry and the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts.
The new complex will showcase innovative uses for wood in building construction and design.
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Forest education guide updated
An OFRI-produced guide to K-12 forest education programs and materials offered in Oregon has been updated for the 2016-17 school year.
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Get Outside:
Tryon Creek State Natural Area
Tryon Creek State Natural Area
is located just 15 minutes from downtown Portland and is Oregon's only state park within a major metropolitan area. It provides a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of city life, with 8 miles of hiking trails and 658 acres of lush, second-growth forest to explore.
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