New report highlights threat to future of forestry industry

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The future of the forestry industry in Scotland is under serious threat unless urgent action is taken to secure the long-term supply of timber, a leading industry figure has warned.

Stuart Goodall, Chief Executive of Confor: Promoting forestry and wood, said action had to be taken now to protect the 40,000 jobs supported by the forestry sector in Scotland, many of them in rural communities with few other large employers.

Speaking after the Forestry Commission (FC) produced its first-ever 50-year and 100-year timber supply forecasts, Mr Goodall said Confor had analysed the figures and concluded that a ‘trough' in supply of 60 million cubic metres of timber could cost Scotland more than 1000 jobs and mean that a chance to cut carbon emissions by 55 million tonnes would be missed.

Mr Goodall said: "Action has to be taken now to safeguard a Scottish success story and ensure our industry continues to thrive in in the long-term. That means hitting existing targets to plant 6000 hectares of commercial forestry every year until 2022 - and then maintaining that through to 2042. We cannot wait until it is too late. A failure to act will see a damaging drop in investment, inevitably leading to job losses - and will make it exceptionally difficult for Scotland to meet its carbon reduction targets."

He added: "The regular 25-year FC forecasts were really helpful - but the life cycle of a softwood tree is more like 35-50 years, so we needed a longer view of where timber supply was heading. Confor feared a falling away of supply in the 30-40 year timeframe, which is why we asked for a 50-year and a 100-year forecast to be prepared. Security of supply is everything in a long-term industry like forestry - that's what the big companies in Scotland, like James Jones, Norbord and Glennons, look at when deciding on future investment."

Currently, the sector is confident, with timber supply at a record high - but Mr Goodall added: "Beyond the 25-year forecast, a gentle rise in availability gives way to a steeper fall - as a result of the falling of commercial planting in the last few years. That's why we analyzed the long-term figures and their impact - and our findings are a serious cause for concern."

Mr Goodall called on the Scottish Government to fulfill its commitment to plant 60,000 hectares of commercial forestry by 2022 - and to further commit to planting 6,000 hectares a year until 2042: "If that happens, we have estimated that 1000 jobs will be secured and 55 million tonnes of carbon can be saved - and the virtuous cycle of economic and environmental benefit will continue. Forestry is an exceptionally important business sector - as well as 40,000 jobs, it adds around £1.7 billion in value to Scotland's economy every year. Increasing domestic planting can also make a hugely positive impact on the balance of payments by reducing imports."

Tom Bruce Jones, a Confor board member and joint Managing Director of Scotland's leading sawmiller James Jones & Sons, said: "The fall-off in supply might seem far away, but we have to act now to secure a successful industry for the future. There is a big problem coming over the horizon - and it wasn't covered by the existing forecast. By the time the traditional cycle of 25-year forecasts had identified this problem, it would have been too late to do anything about it."

Mr Bruce Jones, whose company has substantial operations in Lockerbie, Moray and Angus, added: "We have to start tackling the challenges that are affecting planting rates and to ensure more trees are going into the ground right now. We also need to ensure we are replanting our forests after they are harvested. That will give businesses like ours confidence to keep investing.

"Forestry in Scotland is currently a great success story - so let's to keep it that way. A sustainable timber supply creates long-term investment, which is good for the economy and jobs, good for the environment - and good for Scotland."

Confor has already campaigned successfully in a number of areas: securing a fair balance of grants for planting commercial and non-commercial woodland; speeding up applications for new planting; securing additional Scottish Government funding for new planting; and ensuring existing woodlands removed in the event of disease or for wind farms are re-planted elsewhere.

But Mr Bruce Jones said there was still much to do: "We have to commit to keep planting - it's a simple as that. The industry is in great shape but a failure to act now means that by the time the problem is staring us in the face, it is too late."

The report, the ‘50-Year Forecast of Softwood Availability', is part of the National Forest Inventory. (NFI) It can be downloaded from the Forestry Commission website: www.forestry.gov.uk/inventory

While softwood is one thing, as far as forestry and timber is concerned, what we must look at much more, however, in the UK, and elsewhere, is to bring broadleaved hardwood production back into our woods and forests and especially the practice of coppicing.

But, then again, the Forestry Commission was never designed and created to do that. Its job was the creation, originally, of timber for pits and the war effort and not much seems to have changed in their way of thinking, as softwood is still the main concentration point for their work, it would seem.

Softwood, though not in the regimented plantations either, is fine and good on grounds where other trees may not grow too well but a good mix must be created rather than the monocultures that not only look ugly and are almost devoid of life on the forest floor but which also are susceptible to all manner of diseases.

What forestry and woodland management needs in Britain, including Scotland, is a serious rethink and a new way of doing things which, in fact, is not a new way but a very old one.

© 2014

Sustainable forest management benefits people and the Planet

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

While it’s true that collecting used paper and recycling it into new products is good for the environment, there’s a catch. The wood fibers in paper can be recycled only about five times before they get too weak and break down.

That’s why we need fresh fiber harvested from responsibly managed forests, too. Using fresh fiber creates a sustainable cycle of high-quality recyclable material to continually replenish recycled fiber.

Paper could, yes that is true, also be made from Hemp and from old clothes made from natural materials but the way we make it at present is from wood fiber mostly and thus we must understand that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using wood fiber for paper when the wood for this is being grown and harvested in a sustainable manner, which it is, in most cases.

Would it not be for the paper industry many thousands – tens of thousands – of hectares of forest land would not exists and those forests could they not be used for the production of paper would end up being built upon and thus giving us even more urban and suburban developments and less green spaces.

While the predominate monoculture of trees planted for paper production may not be ideal those forests are better than not having them at all and thus people must think before making statements to the effect that paper produced from wood pulp is bad for the environment because trees are being felled for the making of the paper.

However, it is true that the production of pristine white paper can be polluting and this is where many paper mills and paper manufacturers have a long way to go still towards sustainability and reduced environmental footprint and still need to do a great deal of cleaning up of the industry.

When it comes to the management of forests for paper pulp production or for other purposes such as wood products of all kinds, as well as woodland management, sustainability is the key and the finest way, as far as woodlands for the production of wood for wood products is concerned coppice management cannot be beaten. This method, alas, does not work with coniferous woods needed for paper pulp production, as they do not grow back when cut at the base unlike many of the deciduous trees on our Planet.

A fair amount of people in the green movement believe that cutting trees is bad for the environment and that woodlands and forests do not need management. That is a fallacy, however, and especially forests that are planted by man will need continuous management in order to produce a harvest that is beneficial.

Sustainability in forestry was “invented” before the word ever made it into the vocabulary per se, and the first book on sustainable forest practices was written and published way back in the 18th century by a German forester and much of the management today, until the arrival of the mechanized timer harvesters, is still based on those basic rules and guidelines.

Saying that woods and forests do not need to be managed is like saying that one does not need farms and garden for the growing of food. Forest and woodland management is just farming on a different scale and for a different outcome, namely forest products instead of foodstuffs.

Woodlands and forests are “farmed” for all kinds of products, from firewood, over wooden kitchen utensils and furniture to the timber used in building, not forgetting paper pulp and much in between.

© 2014

Forest and wood are protectors of the climate

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Within the framework of photosynthesis trees extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus reduce the CO2 content.

In order to produce one ton of wood trees extract from the atmosphere around 1.9 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) detrimental to the climate and lock up 500 kg carbon in the wood. Thus our woods and forests perform a critical and crucial contribution to the protection of the climate. The proper utilization and development of our woods and forests together with a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions form an important measure in the fight against the greenhouse effect.

Woods and forests give us air to breathe and raw materials for our life. Without forests and woods there would be no life possible on Earth for every human and every animal requires oxygen in order to be able to breathe. A single say 100 year old beech tree produces every year about 4,600 kilograms of oxygen; enough for one adult to breathe for 13 years..

For trees oxygen is sort of a by-product in the production of timber and foliage. By means of photosynthesis the tree absorbs carbon-dioxide and together with water and the energy from the sun turns this into sugar molecules, required for the production of wood. The oxygen left over during this process the tree exhales into the atmosphere while it locks carbon up in its biomass.

Different to most plants trees do not just grow upwards but also outwards as far as the trunk is concerned. Responsible for the growth of the girth of the tree trunk is the so-called cambium, a material that created the cells of the wood. During winter it takes a little break and this can be seen by the growth rings of the tree.

Carbon-dioxide storage with triple effect

Alone in the forests and woodlands of Germany are currently around 2.6 billion tons of carbon fixed in the wood of the trees. This is equal to a sequestration of 9.5 billion tons of carbon-dioxide.

Woodlands and forest play an important role in combating the effects of the greenhouse effect and climate change and in relation to that directly threefold. First they remove carbon-dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores it in the wood. This storage is extended, secondly, when the wood is used in new buildings, renovations of old buildings and for the production of furniture where the carbon stored in the timber is then locked in for as long as the timber remains timber and is neither burned or disposed off in the waste stream.

A low energy house built to a great extent from wood, for example, relieves the atmosphere of around 80 tons of carbon-dioxide.

And thirdly does wood, when used in building, replace other energy intensive materials such as steel and concrete which are produced on the basis of finite raw materials.

This means that – and this is the case in Germany and other countries – if our woods and forests are managed in a sustainable manner, that is to say that never more timber is being harvest than regrowth available, the resource wood never going to be exhausted and permanently renewable. The ratio between harvest and regrowth is always regarded to be at least a 1:3 that is to say one felled tree is replaced by at least three new ones, either already growing as natural regeneration or being planted. In fact, the ideal scenario is to plant, in addition to the natural regeneration existing.

Sustainably managed woods and forests make an enormous contribution towards combating the greenhouse effect and climate change through their ability of reducing the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere and they are thus protectors of the climate.

We need to manage our woods and forests properly so that not only do they do the job as they do now but to increase the CO2 sequestration by means of trees. The more trees the greater this absorption and at the same time we get wood as raw material.

© 2013

We need more young people in horticulture and forestry

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The problem with those two sectors, and also with farming, is that the people currently involved in it are getting older by the day and there are not enough youngsters taking up those vocations.

As regards to the horticultural sector this problem has been highlighted in a recent report, entitled “Horticulture Matters”, by the Royal Horticultural Society and presented to the House of Commons on May 14, 2013.

Despite this, however, the British government is all but doing away with horticultural and agricultural studies and qualifications at general school level – as, according to a Minister, like term times based on the old agricultural pattern, they are outdated and academic studies are more important. Beats me where he thinks his food is going to come from. Then again, like most politicians, he does not appear to live in the real world and inhabits another universe.

Regardless of what the Minister may think and others young people, and not just those with bad academic achievements at school, need to be, if their interest is in the field, directed towards a career in horticulture (and agriculture and forestry) rather than being discouraged, as is the current practice, because it looks better in the league tables if people go to university rather than to vocational colleges or, the gods forbid, into apprenticeships in a trade, such as horticulture, agriculture or forestry.

Anyone who works in those trades can vouch for the fact that it is not a trade for the simple minded ones but requires, aside from interest and passion the acquisition of knowledge and that more or less all the working life.

The gardener, farmer and forester, in theory, never learns out as there will be new challenges to be dealt with each and every year, nay almost each and every day. And those trades are not just about working in gardens, on farms or in the woods; there is also plant breeding, diseases of plants and trees, etc. neither knowledge is something that comes to one in one's sleep. It requires constant awareness and study.

The challenges in all three trades, whether horticulture, agriculture or forestry, are immense, especially and including as regards to climate change and diseases that are emerging more than likely due to it.

Horticulture contributes £9 billion to the UK economy each year as an “industry” and I am sure that agriculture does some nice contribution to the UK economy also. Aside from that both, the former to some degree the latter all the way, feed us. But the studies for both are, according to the Minister, outdated.

Aside from that horticulture employs around 300,000 people in the UK, from crop growers and gardeners to scientists and turf specialists.

And this is not considering that horticulture gives us a degree of food security by providing a constant supply of safe and nutritious food. On top of that it is good for the environment in more way than one.

Farming and forestry too are important as without farming we have none of the other foods and without forestry out woodlands and forests would not be managed and fall into disrepair and decline, despite some misguided souls believing that Nature would do it all itself better than we. I have seen Mother Nature's gardening and woodland management and must disagree.

The country's gardeners (and related), farmers and foresters are getting older by the day (well, they would and will) and there are few young people entering the industries as a career. Schools are discouraging youngsters from taking up a vocation in horticulture, agriculture and forestry and this must change or we will be in deep trouble.

Horticulture matters, as does agriculture and forestry and we need new blood in those fields and we need those youngsters to begin training now.

© 2013

Foresters with horns

The use of goats in woodland management

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Goats, as well as cattle, can be and have been and are being successfully used in woodland and forest management to keep bracken and brambles at bay and to also create a more open forest.

For the removal of bracken and brambles, roots and all, hogs are, however, much better than goats and the former root out and eat the roots and everything. Goats don't get down to the roots but do otherwise a great job in keeping the vegetation down.

Goats, as foresters with horns, do have a very important place, however, in the management of woodlands and forests, especially when it comes to the suppression of certain vegetation when one does not, necessarily, want the floor plowed.

As goats will eat almost anything – well, they actually do eat anything, including plastic bags – care needs to be taken as to plants that could be harmful to them and those that you don't want them to eat must be protected from them.

In coppice operations that means that natural regeneration has to be protected from them as otherwise the goats will eat this regrowth and thus nullify the regeneration. And the same also goes for any other areas in woods where natural regeneration is desired, and where young trees have been planted. Fencing off such areas with temporary fencing such as chestnut paling is the best, non-permanent solution here, and it is one that has been used for years and years to keep sheep and goats out from such areas.

Goats can provide such a valuable work and service in managing woodlands and countryside that they should be brought back into use in the same way as should hogs, as should horses for logging.

The best part of the four-legged brush cutters (goats) and the four-legged earth tillers (hogs) is that they are, basically, quiet and use no fossil fuels.

Bringing such four-legged friends back into service will also become a necessity in the future when oil is going to end up becoming more and more expensive and, in the end, more or less, unaffordable and even non-existent.

It is then especially when, aside from the scythe and the billhook in human hands, the four-legged brush cutters and earth tillers and log movers will come into their own once again.

However, even before that time of expensive to unaffordable oil products arrives changing from gasoline power to animal power and to human power again in the management of our woods is highly recommendable as it reduces cost and thus leaves more money as income and, most importantly, reduces the impact on the environment.

© 2013