Making the Forest Sector a Player for the 21st Century

Raging infernos threaten rural communities from Alaska to Arizona while consuming hundreds of thousands of forested acres. Many of those fires are fueled by unprecedented levels of standing dead trees left in the wake of a tiny insects’ ravenous appetite – the endemic mountain pine beetle – or from decades of non-management. 

Across the country in Maine, as summer tourist season blooms, thousands of workers who once made great livings in that state’s century-old paper making industry find the mills shuttered and few jobs of any kind in their place. 

To the south, home to the majority of the nation’s 22 million people who own family-forests planted as a source of future wealth can’t find takers for those now mature trees in the wake of declining paper and lumber markets. 

No, this isn’t another “woe-is-me-story” about how tough things are. It’s a reality of just another of America’s sectors that is in the midst of tumultuous change. But, all isn’t lost nor is all bleak. Among the many organizations working to forge a brighter future for the nation’s (and the Continent’s) forest-rich communities is a decade-young, little-known entity called the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment). From what we can find the Endowment is the only not-for-profit public charity ever created as a result of the settlement of a trade dispute between two sovereign governments – in this case, a decades-long battle between Canada and the U.S. over softwood lumber.

You won’t see the Endowment’s logo on commercials promoting the benefits of using wood and paper. Nor will you find in its offices a large staff buoyed by earnings from its $200 million perpetually-endowed fund. But, what you will find is a small but dedicated group of folks collaborating with anyone who will play ball to support the interests of forests, the forest industry, and forest-rich communities on both sides of the 49th parallel. Among the advances that the Endowment has helped catalyze in its first decade are:

• Creation of two USDA Research and Promotion Programs – a.k.a. “commodity check-offs.” These programs -- one for softwood lumber; the other for paper and paper-based packaging – are generating $40 million annually targeted to retaining and growing markets for wood and paper products.
• Spearheading collaboration between the governments and industry in Canada and the U.S. to avoid duplication of costly research and development efforts to address forest health while strengthening cooperation to grow markets and partnerships via a series of Canada/U.S. Forest Health Summits.
• Supporting the nation’s fighting men and women by working with the Department of Defense to buffer military reservations with working forests that allow freedom and flexibility for training without constraints commonly found with inappropriate development.
• Working with researchers and conservation interests nationwide to plumb the potential of modern biotechnology as a response to burgeoning exotic pests and diseases that are threatening not just individual trees but entire forest ecosystems.
• Building a platform for the nation’s conservation community and natural resources agencies to catalogue and showcase the power of conservation easements via the National Conservation Easement Database to protect environmental values of private lands while keeping them on the tax rolls.
• And, lots more, from creating markets for the most important forest product – water; to outlets for low-value wood from restoration work on National Forests – torrefaction; to 21st Century products that hold the potential to reshape not just the industry but also the products that flow from forests through development of markets for mass timbers that can be used to build skyscrapers of the future to cellulosic nanotechnology that could replace plastics with biodegradable materials made from trees.

To learn more about the Endowment and its work visit www.usendowment.org