Global
Connections and the Forest Service
Forest Service Associate Chief Sally Collins
Centennial Forum
Albuquerque, NM—November 8, 2004
Welcome! It’s a pleasure to be here today with so many of
our partners and collaborators. We’re here to commemorate
a hundred years of global connections for the Forest Service and
to prepare for even more global connections ahead. This is a huge
topic for us, and I’d like to thank Harv Forsgren and the
folks in Region 3, along with Val Mezainis and our International
Programs Staff, for putting on this forum on global connections.
I’ve had a chance to look over the agenda. You’ll be
covering a lot of ground in this forum, all of which will be great
preparation for the delegates going to the Centennial Congress in
January. Right now, I’d like to help set the stage by saying
a little about why I think global connections are so critically
important for the Forest Service.
International Roots
Our roots as an agency are really international. The people who
first introduced the idea of sustainable forestry to this country
were immigrant European forestry professionals, like the Prussian
Bernhard Fernow, who served as Chief of the USDA Division of Forestry
in the late 19th century.
The first Forest Service Chief, Gifford Pinchot, got his training
in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Pinchot’s Prussian mentor,
Dietrich Brandis, got a lot of his own forestry experience while
working for the British in India. And, of course, Pinchot later
traveled widely in Russia and the Philippines, where he gave policy
advice on forestry.
So international programs are nothing new to the Forest Service.
Other countries have always had something to teach us about forest
management, and we’ve always tried to share what we know from
our own experience as well.
Today, I think those global connections are more important than
ever. Let’s start by looking at some of the major challenges
we face today and what some of the international dimensions might
be.
Future Challenges
For the past 2 to 3 years, we’ve been conducting Chief’s
Reviews. These are strategic reviews of the Forest Service at the
regional level. Our review teams have noted several threats in particular:
- fire and fuels as well as huge insect and disease outbreaks
in some areas;
- invasive species nationwide;
- loss of open landscapes, including working farms, forests,
and ranches;
- resource degradation through recreational use that isn’t
properly managed;
- a huge backlog in restoration projects and facilities maintenance;
- oversubscribed water resources in large parts of the West;
and
- substances in the atmosphere—from ozone to carbon dioxide—that
are threatening the long-term health of our ecosystems.
Think about how many of these issues have international ramifications:
- Fire and fuels—how often have we welcomed firefighters
from other countries during a difficult fire season? Many of those
countries have similar fire regimes and fire management challenges
with very similar social and ecological dimensions.
- Invasive species—for both prevention and control, we
absolutely depend on international partnerships.
- Oversubscribed water resources—some of our oversubscribed
rivers, like the Colorado, cross international borders.
- Substances in the atmosphere—I think the global warming
issue speaks for itself.
Loss of Open Space
But let’s just look at one issue in particular—loss
of open space, in particular loss of working forests in the United
States. You might think of this as a local private-land issue, and
it is. But it also has huge international dimensions. Let me explain.
In the United States, our forest estate overall has been fairly
stable for the past hundred years. Still, we’ve had a net
loss of almost 10 million acres of forest land since 1953, an area
larger than the state of Maryland. And if we project forward half
a century, then we expect the loss to more than double to 23 million
acres—an area larger than Maine. The rate of loss is growing.
There’s also been a decline in the value of our forests for
timber production. Jim DeCosmo, a vice president at Temple-Inland
Forest Products Corporation in the South, compared the recent cost
of producing lumber plus the cost of transporting it to
Baltimore, Maryland, for a number of foreign countries and for the
American South. He found that cost plus freight to Baltimore
is lower from Europe, South America, and Canada than from Atlanta,
Georgia.
To me, that’s stunning. DeCosmo attributed the United States’
competitive weakness to lower taxes in other countries. It might
also have to do with lower labor costs there and a high dollar exchange
rate in recent years. Whatever the reason, it is predicted that
foreign imports will continue to grow.
As foreign imports gain market share, forest land in the United
States becomes less attractive to forest owners and investors. That’s
simple economics. Private forest owners have been selling forest
land for some time, and the buyers have often been developers. That’s
the long-term trend we’re seeing.
Global Dimensions
You might ask, what’s wrong with that? Why do we need so much
forest land if we can import so much of the timber we need?
There are at least two problems with that. One problem has to do
with the impact of our consumption on the forest resources of other
nations. By importing so much of our wood, are we driving unsustainable
forestry practices in other countries … illegal logging …
deforestation?
The other problem has to do with the loss of nontimber forest values
here at home. When forest landowners, large or small, cannot reap
a profit from managing forests for wood products, they are often
forced to sell their land. When that happens, we lose part of our
wood production capacity. But we also lose much more. We lose scenic
beauty, a sense of naturalness, and opportunities for outdoor recreation.
We also lose the environmental services we get from forested landscapes,
such as water purification, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity.
I think you can begin to see the global connections: global markets
for wood … loss of forested landscapes to development …
the impacts of consumption choices on forested landscapes abroad
… the loss of environmental services and amenities here at
home. The possible solutions, I would argue, are also global—or,
at least, they have global dimensions.
If we are truly serious about conserving our forested landscapes,
then I believe that we need to consider attaching a dollar value
to the services and amenities that trees give us as part of healthy,
functioning forests. Forest owners should be able to reap financial
rewards from sustainable forestry beyond the commercial production
of forest products.
One way to do that might be through carbon markets. The Forest
Service is the lead agency for developing that possibility through
a global trade in carbon credits. Successful international models
already exist.
We’re also interested in the possibility of developing systems
for making watershed services as well as soil and biodiversity services
pay. Although relatively little has been written in these areas,
there are already some ideas and even some models out there.
Global View
I think these are some of the major challenges and opportunities
we will face in the coming century. As a nation, we can no longer
afford to focus narrowly on our own backyard when it comes to natural
resources. So many of the challenges we face have crucial international
dimensions, even something as seemingly local as the loss of a working
forest. Like fire and fuels, watershed health, or invasive species,
our biggest problems today cross borders and boundaries.
So must the solutions. Fortunately, the Forest Service has a strong
tradition of global engagement. Gifford Pinchot always saw conservation
as a global movement, and he even envisioned it as a global peacemaker.
He reasoned that if we can conserve our renewable natural resources
worldwide, then we can eliminate one of the biggest incentives for
waging war: to plunder the resources of other countries.
For that, we will need global partnerships, and I believe that
the Centennial Congress in Washington must become a springboard
for building those partnerships. The Centennial Congress will not
be about the issues we deal with every day, like what to do about
roadless areas or whether the planning rule for national forests
should be this or that. These are indeed critical issues, but they
don’t rise to the level we envision for this Congress. We
expect the Congress to take the long and the broad view—the
view across decades and centuries.
The long and the broad view is necessarily the global view. If
we are to succeed in our second century as an agency, then we must
take a cue from the past: Like Gifford Pinchot, we must see the
global connections and act on them. You are here to set the stage
for that at the Centennial Congress, and I thank you in advance
for your global vision and your dedication.
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