[Senate Hearing 117-128]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-128
THE ROLE OF REFORESTATION, ACTIVE
FOREST MANAGEMENT, AND CARBON
STORAGE IN FOSTERING RESILIENCY
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2021
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[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
44-734 WASHINGTON : 2023
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
Renae Black, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Bryan Petit, Senior Professional Staff Member
Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
James Willson, Republican Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West
Virginia....................................................... 1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
Wyoming........................................................ 2
WITNESSES
Mitsos, Mary, President and CEO, National Forest Foundation...... 4
Crowther, Dr. Thomas W., Scientific Advisor, United Nations
Trillion Trees Initiative...................................... 13
Cover, Jennifer, President and CEO, Woodworks--Wood Products
Council........................................................ 19
Wudtke, Ben, Executive Director, Intermountain Forest Association 26
Irving, Jim, Co-Chief Executive Officer, J.D. Irving, Limited.... 52
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Barrasso, Hon. John:
Opening Statement............................................ 2
Cover, Jennifer:
Opening Statement............................................ 19
Written Testimony............................................ 21
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 92
Crowther, Dr. Thomas W.:
Opening Statement............................................ 13
Written Testimony............................................ 15
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 90
Federal Forest Resource Coalition et al.:
Letter to the Director of the USDA Office of Energy and
Policy, dated April 27, 2021............................... 35
Irving, Jim:
Opening Statement............................................ 52
Written Testimony............................................ 54
Kelly, Hon. Mark:
Wildfire Hazard Potential Map................................ 85
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Mitsos, Mary:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Written Testimony............................................ 6
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 89
Our Children's Trust:
Materials for the Record..................................... 99
Sustainable Forestry Initiative:
Statement for the Record..................................... 167
Wudtke, Ben:
Opening Statement............................................ 26
Written Testimony............................................ 28
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 94
THE ROLE OF REFORESTATION, ACTIVE
FOREST MANAGEMENT, AND CARBON
STORAGE IN FOSTERING RESILIENCY
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THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m. in
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III, U.S. SENATOR FROM
WEST VIRGINIA
The Chairman. The meeting will come to order. I want to
thank everyone for being here this morning for our first-ever
hearing to examine how forest and wood products absorb and
store carbon emissions and the role that forest management can
play in addressing climate change. For years now, I have
advocated for Congress to focus on climate solutions,
particularly solutions that bring people together rather than
drive us apart. We need solutions that both parties can rally
behind, and I believe this morning's topic is unique because
the solutions that we will be discussing not only enable all of
us to do that, but they can also make a tremendous impact on
our nation's carbon efforts. Today, I look forward to breaking
through the rhetoric to hear what the science is telling us.
For example, each of us saw the wildfires last year that burned
over four million acres--four million acres--in California.
That is a lot. Aside from the catastrophic loss of life and
property, those fires alone generated 25 percent more carbon
emissions than all of California's man-made carbon emissions
combined.
It is critical that we include forest and wildfires in our
conversations about carbon emissions. Our Committee has talked
at length about how many of our country's forests are unhealthy
and in need of restoration. But when you look at the problem
through a carbon lens, things really come into focus. For
example, beginning just in the last couple of years, the
forests of many western states now emit more carbon, because of
insect outbreaks and wildfires, than they absorb. Let me say
this another way--according to the latest Forest Service data,
the forests of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and
yes, our beloved Wyoming, used to be carbon sinks, but are now
carbon sources. However, scientists are telling us that if we
proactively manage our forests, we cannot only prevent
emissions from wildfires, but we can also increase the amount
of carbon we are sequestering and storing. Tree planting is a
classic example of the type of activity that can result in more
carbon being sequestered and stored than if land was simply
left alone. In West Virginia, we do not do much tree planting
because most forest managers are able to regenerate their
forests naturally, but there are currently 81 million acres of
productive forest land across the U.S. that lack adequate trees
and are in need of reforestation.
I also want to briefly touch on the new technologies that
we now have at hand with regards to forest products. We are now
able to use wood products in a manner today that is different
than ever before, and with technologies like cross-laminated
timber (CLT), we can now store orders-of-magnitude more carbon
in the construction materials used to frame our buildings.
Additionally, I am told that aside from storing more carbon,
total global emissions could be cut by 15 to 20 percent if
these technologies were used in construction. I am proud to say
that my home State of West Virginia is a national leader in the
use of cross-laminated timber. Franklin Elementary School in
Pendleton County, West Virginia, was the first school in the
country to be entirely built using cross-laminated timber. Town
leaders set out to build a school that would last and be
economical, and ended up building a state-of-the-art school
with tremendous carbon benefits. While our witnesses will
undoubtedly speak to the possibility of construction projects
like this nationwide, I also want to stress the opportunities
that this technology can bring to rural areas in the way of
local manufacturing.
This morning, we are looking to discuss common-sense
solutions based on science that both sides of the aisle can get
behind. We would like to establish a consensus of facts that we
can use to guide our Committee's work this Congress as we
review and take up bills related to forests and to climate
change. We have a great panel assembled this morning. Each of
these experts is known for being an innovative, solution-
oriented leader in their field.
And with that, I will turn it over to my friend, Ranking
Member John Barrasso, for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING
Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, for
your leadership on this and for holding today's very important
hearing.
Our forests do play, as you just said, a vital role on so
many fronts. Healthy forests provide habitat for wildlife. They
also improve soil and water quality, and of course, they yield
timber that is fundamental to our economy and our way of life.
Healthy forests also sequester significant amounts of carbon
from the atmosphere. At the same time, our forests have become,
as you said, a significant source of fuel for wildfires. The
lack of active forest management has turned many of our
nation's forests into tinderboxes. It has created a perfect
storm for widespread, catastrophic wildfires. Last summer was a
devastating wildfire season all across America. In Wyoming, we
had one of the largest wildfires on record. The Mullen Fire
wreaked havoc through Carbon and Albany Counties. It was
estimated to span 25 miles north to south, 23 miles east to
west, and burned over 175,000 acres, and forced numerous
evacuations. It destroyed dozens of homes and buildings, and it
left a price tag of almost $33 million.
In addition to endangering lives, damaging property, and
destroying habitat, the increased intensity and frequency of
catastrophic megafires has disrupted many of the ecological
benefits we gain from our forests. These megafires have
resulted in increased carbon emissions and reduced air quality.
A Bloomberg story published in January reported that
California's 2020 wildfire emissions were equal to the
greenhouse emissions of over 24 million passenger cars. So if
people are concerned, rightly so, about climate change, carbon
emissions, and clean air, they should be very concerned about
our burning forests.
Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen recently testified
that her agency must accelerate its active forest management
efforts and that a paradigm shift is needed now. I agree
completely. According to the Forest Service, 63 million acres
of our national forests are at high or very high risk of being
consumed in a catastrophic fire. In addition, sawmills, which
carry out hazardous fuels reduction projects, are struggling.
The Forest Service sells well below the allowable sale quantity
of timber called for in its forest plans. Continuing this
practice is going to lead to more timber mills closing down,
and this is going to hurt local economies, as well as leave our
forests vulnerable to ongoing problems with fire and with
disease. In recent years, the Black Hills National Forest,
which spans Wyoming and South Dakota, has failed to meet its
timber targets, and since our local sawmills rely on the
national forest for most of their timber supplies, this failure
has led directly to the closure of a sawmill in South Dakota.
Worse, some within the Forest Service are recommending further
and permanent reductions in harvest levels on the Black Hills.
This would devastate our local mills and make it very difficult
to manage timber in and around the forest going forward. That
is why in March, I, along with members of the Wyoming and South
Dakota Congressional Delegations, sent a letter to the Forest
Service. The letter outlines our concerns with the recommended
timber for harvest reduction and it encourages better
cooperation between the Forest Service and the local officials
and stakeholders.
In addition to reducing emissions through active forest
management, we should also be mindful of ways we can sequester
carbon by planting more trees and vegetation. We should also
look for more ways to permanently store carbon in harvested
wood products. While I was Chairman of the Environment and
Public Works Committee, my bill, the USE IT Act, was signed
into law by President Trump. This law supports groundbreaking
innovation to address climate change through carbon capture and
utilization technologies. I believe there is ample room for
increased carbon sequestration efforts in the forestry space as
well.
So I look forward to exploring that topic here at the
Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Thanks again, Mr.
Chairman. I look forward to today's hearing and testimony.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Barrasso.
And let me now welcome our panel of witnesses, and we are
very pleased to have such an expert panel.
Ms. Mary Mitsos, of the National Forest Foundation, who is
with us in person.
Dr. Tom Crowther, who I understand is the chief architect
behind the United Nations Trillion Trees Campaign.
Ms. Jennifer Cover, President and CEO of WoodWorks.
Mr. Ben Wudtke, Executive Director of the Intermountain
Forest Association.
And finally, Mr. Jim Irving, CEO of J.D. Irving, Limited.
So Ms. Mitsos, we will begin with your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF MARY MITSOS, PRESIDENT
AND CEO, NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION
Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member
Barrasso, for this opportunity.
The National Forest Foundation (NFF) is a Congressionally
chartered, non-advocacy nonprofit that works on behalf of the
American public to ensure the health and resilience of our
national forests and to inspire personal and meaningful
connections to them. Working closely with the Forest Service,
we create public-private partnerships to lead forest
conservation efforts and promote responsible recreation. Each
year, the NFF facilitates common ground, restores fish and
wildlife habitat, reduces wildfire risk, plants trees, and
improves recreational opportunities. Our nation's forests are
an incredible resource. They provide jobs, fiber, clean air and
water, hunting, fishing, and more. They also sequester hundreds
of millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year, up to 15
percent of this country's annual emissions.
National forests can and should be part of the solution to
mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, as
mentioned earlier, increasing wildfire threatens to shift
millions of acres from a carbon sink into a carbon source.
Forest restoration can reverse this trend. Healthy, fire-
resistent forests help maintain and increase long-term carbon
storage capacity. While every forest requires tailored
treatments, tools like forest thinning and prescribed fire can
reduce fire risk and help retain forest cover. In places
already affected by fire, tree planting helps ensure forests
persist. The science of forest restoration is well-established
and widely practiced. What impedes this work is the cost at the
scale needed. The Forest Service estimates around 80 million
acres in the system require restoration. At an average cost of
about $1,000 per acre, that cost exceeds $80 billion today.
Addressing this will require every tool available,
including greater utilization of low-value wood products from
restoration treatments, funding, and policies that unlock
private investment for carbon offsets generated on National
Forest System (NFS) lands. The NFF works daily with the private
sector on investments in our public lands. The interest is huge
and growing. We create innovative solutions to match private
funding with forest needs. For example, we are combining a
multitude of partners, local governments, utilities, major
corporations, philanthropy, and more to support forest
restoration in places like Arizona, California, and Colorado.
One of the most common questions we get from our corporate
partners is, ``can we get carbon offsets for this project?''
While we have the ability to track and calculate the carbon
benefits, we do not currently have the authority to issue
carbon offsets from projects on NFS lands. Voluntary carbon
offsets from projects are a common part of corporate goals to
address their ESG. We currently lack the means to turn private-
sector interest in carbon offsets into significant investments
to improve our public forests. If we could offer those offsets,
it would be a game-changer for restoring our forests. The NFF
has piloted similar work in the past, and we have experience
and relationships to work closely with the Forest Service. We
are currently developing a first-of-its-kind methodology for
generating offsets from restoration projects in higher-fire-
frequency forests.
National Forest System lands offer an unparalleled
opportunity for natural climate solutions, healthier
communities, and resilient forests. This work creates common
ground with shared benefits for local contractors, rural and
regional economies, corporate partners pursuing climate goals,
and the long-term health of our nation's forests. Thank you for
this opportunity to share the National Forest Foundation's
mission and our work. In closing, forest restoration, tree
planting, and wood products are three great ways to store
carbon.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Mitsos follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Mitsos.
Next, we are going to go to Dr. Crowther for his opening
remarks.
Dr. Crowther.
STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS W. CROWTHER, SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR, UNITED
NATIONS TRILLION TREES INITIATIVE
Dr. Crowther. Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso,
thank you for the opportunity.
I am an ecologist living in Zurich, in Switzerland, where
there is an online coffee shop that I use, that I really like.
They, like many shops, get their beans from Ethiopia, but the
shop is a bit different because they get their beans from trees
that are planted in an agroforestry plantation. These trees are
planted in sunny patches within a beautiful tropical forest. If
you flew over the area with a plane, you wouldn't see a
plantation, you would see a flourishing forest. And because the
surrounding ecosystems trap water and nutrients, the coffee
grows really well without irrigation or fertilizers. So
business is booming and that obviously benefits the local
community. Even schools in the area are now starting to protect
patches of nearby forest, setting up their own agroforestry
plantations within.
We have obviously all got stories about the value of nature
and how integral it is to human well-being and happiness and
the quality of life, and there is an ever-growing scientific
body of literature showing this strong correlation between
ecosystem health and the stability of local economies and human
well-being. But the value of nature is obviously important
globally as well because they store huge amounts of carbon. We
are obviously beginning to learn the full extent of this
potential. By building a new generation of models, we have been
able to see that the Earth is home to about three trillion
trees, which is about half of what originally was here; and we
lose about 10 billion trees each year, which is contributing to
our annual emissions. However, our maps also reveal that
outside of the urban and agricultural land, there's about 2.2
billion acres of degraded lands where forests could naturally
regrow. If we could protect and revitalize such areas around
the world, we realize there's room for just over a trillion new
trees. And if those trees can be supported in the long term and
grow to maturity, those ecosystems could capture up to 30
percent of the excess carbon that's in the atmosphere right now
as a result of human activity.
This revealed a massive potential, but honestly, it's not a
new idea. Scientists have known that forests have this huge
potential for a long time. So, why have we failed to act until
now? Well, first, the maps are useful for guiding
decisionmaking, but much more importantly, it's because there
are huge risks that come with the process, and many scientists
still have massive concerns about the potential for large-scale
restoration because these concerns come from the idea that tree
planting is an easy way out, and nothing could be further from
the truth. First, it's clear that this is not a silver bullet.
We can't just plant a few trees and ignore emissions cuts,
which are so vital. But second, restoration is far from easy,
and it is not just about planting trees. This idea is so
tempting, but it encourages people to invest in mass
plantations of fast-growing trees that are maybe good for rapid
carbon offsets, but those plantations are often comprised of a
single species that lacks the thousands of interacting species
of plants, animals, and microorganisms that are necessary to
maintain clean air, clean water, and soil fertility for local
people.
It is estimated that almost half of restored projects
around the world are massive monocultures like this. Now, many
can be important for sustainable timber production, and when
managed well, they can contribute to economic sustainability.
But when planted just for carbon offsetting, they can often
lead to the degradation of forests, grasslands, and other
wetlands that are equally important for life on Earth.
Restoration is not just about trapping carbon. Even if climate
change stopped right now, the protection and revitalization of
Earth's nature would be a top priority because it underpins all
life on Earth and protects us against all other global threats.
That is why a recent Pew poll suggested that nine out of ten
Americans do support the idea of a ``trillion tree'' movement,
but this idea is not just about planting one trillion trees.
The trillion tree idea is about creating the conditions--the
economic and the ecological conditions--where ecosystems can be
protected and a trillion trees can regrow, either naturally or
with human assistance, for the benefit of local communities
everywhere. And that is the single most important key to
successful restoration.
Restoration cannot come at the expense of local people's
land use. In fact, it works only when we find the innovations
that make biodiversity an economically viable option for local
people. That is what the coffee farm in Ethiopia had figured
out, and there are examples like this in every region across
the world, ranging from sustainable harvesting of timber, to
the protection of forests to improve soil fertility, to the
sale of carbon credits from naturally regenerating forests. The
restoration of nature is not inherently a global challenge, it
is a local one for the local biodiversity and the people that
depend on it, and as the network of collective action grows, it
benefits all of us.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Crowther follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Crowther.
Now we have Ms. Cover.
STATEMENT OF MS. JENNIFER COVER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, WOODWORKS--
WOOD PRODUCTS COUNCIL
Ms. Cover. Good morning Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to support and submit testimony to you today about
the role of innovative wood products and carbon storage. My
name is Jennifer Cover and I serve as the President and CEO of
WoodWorks. WoodWorks is a nonprofit program staffed with
engineers and architects committed to a more sustainable built
environment. We help our peers gain the technical design skills
needed to successfully build wood structures that are up to 18
stories. Last year alone, we directly supported 400 building
projects that resulted in an impact of over one billion board
feet of incremental wood product demand.
The use of wood products from sustainably managed forests,
particularly mass timber products like cross-laminated timber,
or CLT, is an incredible proactive climate mitigation tool. As
a tree grows, it absorbs carbon dioxide from the air like a
huge sponge and locks it away in its cellular structure. When
that tree is harvested and converted into a wood building
product, that carbon remains stored in the wood fiber. Wood is
about 50 percent carbon by dry weight. I'm sure everyone here
has picked up a two-by-four for a home project. Think about
that weight. Almost half is carbon that was pulled from our
atmosphere and physically stored in the wood. When wood is used
to construct buildings, those buildings become giant carbon
sinks, while a new tree is replanted beginning the cycle of
carbon sequestration again.
The building industry is responsible for 40 percent of
global carbon dioxide emissions, with 11 percent of that coming
from embodied carbon of the building materials. With mass
timber, wood solutions can now play a sizable role in
alleviating U.S. carbon emissions. Not only does wood sequester
its stored carbon, but the manufacturing process to produce
wood products uses far less
fossil-fuel-based energy than other building material, and is
100 percent renewable. Mass timber, such as CLT, are large,
structural panel products. A typical panel might be 30 feet
long, constructed from built-up pieces of smaller lumber or
veneers. They're revolutionary because their strength allows
them to be used as the main structural material in high-rise
apartments, offices, schools, and warehouses. Building codes
have evolved to recognize these capabilities. The most current
code provides guidance on how to safely build mass timber
buildings up to 18 stories. These tall wood code provisions
have already been adopted by several jurisdictions, including
Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, California, and Denver,
Colorado, and many others are in the process of adoption.
Builders are choosing mass timber to improve the carbon
footprint of their projects. One example is a five-story office
building in Denver. The engineer wanted to understand the
impact of using mass timber, so they undertook a comparative
life-cycle assessment of the same building designed in wood as
well as more traditional materials. All three of the designs
had a very similar cost impact, but the carbon footprint of the
wood building was less than one-third of the other two. The
overall potential carbon impact of having chosen to go with CLT
was equivalent to taking 630 cars off the road for an entire
year, and that is just one building. There are 17,000 buildings
built in this country every year that could, under the building
code, be built with wood solutions, but they currently are not.
Mass timber is good for the environment and good for rural
communities. Increased demand for these products will create
high-quality jobs in these communities. There are six mass
timber plants producing building-grade material operating in
the U.S. so far, with three more about to start up. There are
about 1,000 mass timber projects in the U.S. that are either
built or are in design. The momentum is clearly there, but
we're still at the beginning of this building revolution and
support is needed from government leadership.
Here in the U.S., we have been playing catch-up with the
rest of the world on the concept of embodied carbon. Europe and
the United Kingdom have a number of policies focused on
reducing embodied carbon in buildings. That is why it is really
exciting to see the interest on this topic from leaders like
yourselves. WoodWorks is a small program, and having the
support of the Softwood Lumber Board, an agricultural check-off
program, and the U.S. Forest Service is critical to our
success. Under Chief Christiansen's leadership, the Forest
Service has been a strong supporter of the WoodWorks program.
Supporting mass timber means supporting an innovative building
solution that turns our cities into carbon sinks and brings
increased jobs to rural communities.
Thank you again for supporting innovation and job creation
in the forest and construction sectors. I hope you will
consider encouraging government entities in your states to
utilize mass timber for their buildings, and if they need help,
WoodWorks is available to provide that support. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Cover follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Cover.
Now we have Mr. Wudtke.
STATEMENT OF BEN WUDTKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERMOUNTAIN
FOREST ASSOCIATION
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Barrasso. My name is Ben Wudtke, and I am the Executive
Director of the Intermountain Forest Association. Our members
are
primarily forest product companies, many of which are
multigenerational family businesses, who rely heavily on
national forest lands in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and
Nebraska to meet their timber needs. I appreciate the
opportunity to provide testimony on this important topic today.
Our national forests are not currently meeting their full
potential to sequester and store carbon. Large-scale mortality
caused by insect epidemics and catastrophic wildfires is
producing carbon emissions while limiting further carbon
sequestration. Forest management is necessary on our national
forests and must be both proactive and reactive--implementing
forest management actions to reduce wildfire hazards and risk
of insect epidemics before they occur and also aiding recovery
from similar disturbances. Proactive management on national
forest lands that are not otherwise withdrawn from timber
harvest is vital to the health of our forested watersheds, to
the protection of communities and meeting societal needs for
forest products, and reducing the likelihood of future carbon
emissions.
The need for active management on the millions of acres of
national forests at risk of wildfire and disease has been
acknowledged by successive Forest Service Chiefs, Committee
Chairs, Secretaries of Agriculture, and Presidents for over 20
years. Although the Hazardous Fuels Reduction account at the
Forest Service has been steadily increasing, and there is some
good work being accomplished through those funds, the Forest
Service is only able to treat a fraction of the acres needed to
effectively reduce fire danger and assure long-term forest
health. Reforestation on our national forests is essential to
their long-term sustainability. It is critically important for
the Committee to understand that deforestation by wildfire is
the leading cause of the growing reforestation backlog in the
national forests. The unprecedented 2020 fire season
exacerbated the reforestation needs on our national forests.
Conservation groups such as American Forests and the Nature
Conservancy estimate that national forests have over seven
million acres requiring reforestation. Successfully reforesting
these acres could sequester an additional nine million tons of
carbon from the atmosphere each year.
But time is of the essence for reforestation efforts.
Research is increasingly finding that burned forests are
regenerating to non-forest ecotypes. If forested lands are
type-converted, reestablishing green and growing forests
becomes exponentially more difficult to accomplish due to
competition among seedlings and other vegetation, and a poses
significant hazard for reburns. Prompt timber salvage can
improve reforestation success and should be part of an overall
reforestation and restoration strategy whenever possible.
Increasing the use of salvage as a tool can also help generate
revenues for reforestation efforts.
As the Committee knows, trees are natural carbon sinks.
They remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in
wood fiber and roots. Young trees remove carbon quickly, and
large trees can store considerable amounts of carbon.
Unfortunately, as each fire season illustrates, forests do not
store carbon indefinitely. Looking only at California, the
wildfires in 2020 released an estimated 110 million metric tons
of carbon into the atmosphere, the carbon equivalent of more
than 24 million cars.
Wood products also store carbon, and they can do so for
long periods of time. By putting wood products into service,
the carbon is effectively locked up for the duration that
product is in use. Advanced wood products such as CLT and
glulam can also have a solid carbon return on investment
because they can substitute for high-carbon-intensity materials
such as concrete and steel, and should complement traditional
forest products that are already successful in sequestering
carbon. Much of the work that I am discussing and that others
are discussing today isn't possible without forest product
companies. In parts of the U.S., the Forest Service is using
longer-term contracts and other mechanisms to entice new
companies to areas where previous forest companies have been
forced to close. Throughout Region 2 and other regions of the
Forest Service, forest product companies depend on the Forest
Service to sell timber, just as the Forest Service depends on
those companies to perform the prescribed work. In the Black
Hills, the forest industry has been operating sawmills for over
a century, historically at much higher volumes of timber sold,
and has been a critical part of the care and management of the
national forests. Forest product companies in the Black Hills
rely on the Forest Service for approximately 80 percent of
their timber, and although we are fortunate to still have some
of those companies remaining, their future is at risk.
Currently, there is a tremendous demand for forest
products, and the markets are reflecting that. Companies that
operate on national forest lands can help the Forest Service
treat more acres and also bring needed lumber to consumers. I
thank you for the opportunity to speak today regarding the
health and resilience of our national forests and the role they
should play in sequestering carbon. Our national forests
deliver numerous goods and services, and efforts to improve
carbon sequestration and storage on national forests should
focus on sequestering more carbon through active management and
storing carbon in wood products. As the nation confronts the
need to sequester more carbon while producing needed lumber to
meet our needs, the national forests can continue to meet these
diverse requirements if we craft policies carefully and
realistically.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wudtke follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you.
And now we have Mr. Irving.
STATEMENT OF JIM IRVING, CO-CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, J.D. IRVING, LIMITED
Mr. Irving. Thank you, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member
Barrasso, and other Committee members for the opportunity to
testify on the role of forests in the fight against climate
change here today.
Myself, along with my brother Robert--we're co-CEOs of J.D.
Irving, Limited. We are stationed in New Brunswick, Canada, and
we are a diverse, family-owned business, and one of our key
parts of our business is the forest products business. The
value chain we have today goes from pre-seed to the consumer
shelf. In our forest products business we have a seed orchard,
a genetic lab, two nurseries, ten sawmills, a pulp mill, two
paper mills, and four tissue mills, plus 5.9 million acres of
timberland under management. We own in Canada fee land that is
roughly 1.9 million acres; we own in Maine roughly 1.3 million
acres; and we manage for the Province of New Brunswick
approximately 2.6 million acres. We're the second largest
private landowner in North America and the largest private
landowner in the State of Maine.
The forests are the foundation of our value chain for our
forest products business. We have a healthy, vigorous forest as
a result of a growing wood supply. Since 1957, we've planted
over one billion trees, and that's a record for a private
Canadian company. Our forest products business is based on the
following philosophy, ``Do what's right in the forest to ensure
it remains healthy, vigorous, and growing. Look after our
people and our communities. Look after the environment and
ecosystems, run efficient operations, and treat the resource
with respect.'' Our philosophy is to continuously add value to
all of our products that our forest provides. As a result of
our long-term commitment to forest management, our current
planted stands will grow four times the volume and sequester
four times more carbon than a forest regenerates naturally over
the life of approximately 50 years, which is the typical
rotation cycle here in the Northeast. Because we maintain a
healthy, vigorous forest--through stand tending, and with
treatments like thinning, we have lower occurrences of fire and
pest outbreaks than the national averages in Canada and the
U.S. Loss to pests, for example, is 0.001 percent and loss to
fire is 0.004 percent. Our forest and forest products operate
at a net carbon sink, absorbing the equivalent of approximately
350,000 cars per year.
Trees provide different products, and some of those are of
higher value, and some are lower value. And forest products
differ in different mixes of products depending on their age
and treatment, but to us, a healthy forest is a working forest.
Removal of mortality and fuels, less risk of fires and pests,
and higher carbon sequestration rates and lower carbon
emissions are the result. In addition, to make sure that
happens, we invest in forest protection against fires and
pests. We own four fixed-wing aircraft, two helicopters, 37
fire trucks, and seven privately owned and outfitted air strips
to make sure we can combat the problem of fire and pests. That
type of forest management requires markets, sometimes for
lower-grade products like pulp wood and biomass that are
generated from pre-commercial operations, and we have to put
the capital in to make sure that happens.
However, the forest products industry in North America has
been, in some segments, declining for a number of years,
especially for some of those products that use low grade value
wood. And landowners, to make these kinds of investments,
require stability of markets and policy to make sure that long-
term investments in silviculture like tree planting and
thinning are able to be carried out. Forest management--good
forest management--is dependent on a healthy industry and vice
versa. It's a virtuous cycle, good for jobs and economy, the
people in the communities, carbon sequestration, and
conservation, and we need policymakers to ensure that
landowners are incentivized to make long-term investments like
tree planting and thinning. Policymakers should ensure that the
industry is balanced--with the forest being healthy--and is
investing in production capacity as well as research on new
products like cross-laminated timber. It is difficult today to
make sure we have the right amount of research, and this is
quite important that it's properly funded both at the
universities and by industry.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you
today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Irving follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Irving.
And now we will start with our questions.
Mr. Wudtke, I would like to ask you about salvage logging,
where land managers try to recover the economic value of dead
trees that have been killed through fires and other types of
things before they rot to a point where they lose their
economic value. Different groups clearly have different views
on this practice, as people debate where this might be
appropriate and where it is not appropriate. Lawsuits are often
filed and as decisions are being sorted out, the trees rot to a
point where they have no value whatsoever.
So I believe everyone should be entitled to voicing their
opinion, but I cannot help but wonder if these discussions
would be more productive if they took place in advance of the
trees dying. So my question would be, do you believe that it
would be possible for land management agencies, like the BLM
and the Forest Service, to solicit public input to make the
necessary decisions ahead of a devastating wildfire or an
insect outbreak so they could not have the time constraints
they face now and lose that value of the product?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, as you said, there are different viewpoints and, of
course, salvage logging should be undertaken on a case-by-case
basis. It makes sense in many areas, certainly makes sense
following a lot of disturbances. It's not a one-size-fits-all
tool. But you hit on a key point there, and that's that salvage
logging, when you're salvaging trees that are already dead,
your time is limited. And oftentimes we see where agencies get
hamstrung by a lengthy environmental analysis process, and
they're not able to actually salvage that material in time. And
there's----
The Chairman. Do you know if there is any practice
whatsoever evaluating beforehand, knowing we are going to have
fires, we are going to have insect outbreaks--we are going to
have all this. Is anybody doing this in advance, or do they
wait until after it happens and then try to catch up, and by
then it is too late?
Mr. Wudtke. There are a few examples where they are trying
to do it in advance, but by and large, it is reactive. Folks
are doing the analysis, agencies are doing the analysis after a
disturbance, after a wildfire, after mountain pine beetle
mortality, after a hurricane.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Wudtke. And I do believe that there are opportunities
to do that in advance, either through forest plan amendments,
or having large landscape-scale projects already NEPA-cleared
and when they know what they need to do, following a
disturbance that they've seen before.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke.
Mr. Irving, in your testimony you talked about how J.D.
Irving thins approximately 10,600 acres annually of its 3.3
million acres of private timberland. When I compare that to the
information that Mr. Wudtke provided, it appears that the
percentage of your land that you thin every year is five times
more than the percentage that the U.S. Forest Service thins
annually. We also heard from Ms. Mitsos that the U.S. Forest
Service spends around $1,000 per acre on its thinning projects.
So is the primary reason that you have such low mortality rates
from insects and wildfires due to the amount of thinning that
your company does each year, and how does the cost compare to
the Forest Service?
Mr. Irving. Well sir, I can't compare, I don't have the
right evidence to compare against the Forest Service. I'm not
familiar with those operations. All I can tell you about is our
operations. I would say there's no question about it though,
thinning is paramount, for a couple of things. One is you have
to get rid of the low-value
trees if you're going to let the higher-value trees grow.
That's fundamental. We have two types of thinning--what we call
precommercial thinning, where we have approximately 10,000
stems per acre in a natural forest, and we'll thin that back
down to about 700 trees per acre. And that will cost us
anywhere between $250 and $400 an acre at the average age of 15
years of age and the wages per man is about $20 an hour.
The Chairman. Then why is it so much----
Mr. Irving. Then we have commercial thinning.
The Chairman. Why is that so much more cost----
Mr. Irving. Excuse me, sir.
The Chairman. I'm sorry, sir. It is so much more cost-
effective. It is costing the U.S. Forest Service $1,000 per
acre, and I do not think they are doing what you are doing. Is
it just government?
Mr. Irving. Sir, well, I'm not going to criticize the
government there, Senator Manchin, but I don't know the local
conditions. But I can tell you our conditions and you know,
it's the Northeast, it's Maine, particularly if you want to
take Maine as an example. Those are the facts that we have, and
I'm not sure the reason why the Forest Service treatments cost
what they do, but I can tell you, it's like any other business,
you have to pay careful attention to your costs and work very
hard at it to make sure you're automated and very efficient.
In our commercial thinning, which is where we try and take
the very small commercial trees out of the forest, we'll go
from about 900 trees per acre to 350 trees per acre--which is
the second step after we've done the pre-commercial thinning.
Those are approximate numbers at an age of 20 to 25, and that
cost is a premium over our normal logging cost of about $150
per acre, and the operator doing that work would be paid $20 to
$25 to $30 an hour. That's automated, Scandinavian type of
machinery, logging equipment, highly productive. We work day
and night, all the technology with computers and the machines
to make sure nobody gets hurt or does anything environmentally
incorrect. And then we retooled our mills to make sure that we
can handle all this small wood because, as you know, very small
pieces have to be processed very, very quickly and efficiently.
So there's a range of things that happen, but there's no
question--technology and an attitude that you have to treat the
forest when it's time to treat it. There's no point in thinning
a forest when it's too old because you waste your money. It's
inefficient. Thin it at the right time, and you can do it
efficiently, and you can do the best thing environmentally for
the forest and for the commercial side of this as well.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir, very much.
Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, and I
appreciate the testimony from all of you.
Mr. Wudtke and also Ms. Mitsos, a question for both of you.
Let me first ask Mr. Wudtke. I'd like to hear more about some
of the benefits of mechanical tree thinning, timber harvesting,
and other hazardous fuel reduction treatments. In your view, is
the U.S. Forest Service carrying out enough of these projects
in order to reduce wildfire risk and increase the health of our
forests?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
Where the forest service is carrying out treatments, they
are being proven to be highly effective. As a federal agency,
they are bottlenecked by certain issues. One is certainly
staffing and funding. Others are finding efficiencies to help
them accomplish more with what they have. And I think there are
some options--they've recently gone through rulemaking
processes. We've seen a lot of legislation being introduced in
the last few years that I think would help the agency out. But
really, when you perform these fuel-reduction activities, you
are taking carbon off the landscape, you are locking that into
forest products most often, and you are preventing high-
severity fires that would come through and kill those trees and
release that carbon on the landscape in the future. Those
efforts are resoundingly effective. And in places where there
isn't enough happening, we're seeing the evidence.
As was mentioned earlier, numerous western states are now
carbon sources. Their forests are carbon sources and not carbon
sinks anymore. And when you think about the scale, the scope
that that must be occurring on the landscape tells you a lot
about the health of our forests and the need that we must be
doing more on the landscape.
Senator Barrasso. So for you and then for Ms. Mitsos. Does
it make sense to target or incentivize mechanical tree
thinning, timber harvesting, and other hazardous fuel reduction
treatments in areas that we really know are high-risk for
catastrophic wildfires?
Mr. Wudtke. Absolutely, whether it is incentivizing or
prioritizing, I think there are a lot of different ways. And
again, it would vary by where you're talking about doing those
treatments, but we have to be doing something different than
we've been doing the last 20 years. We have to be looking at
landscape scale treatments. We have to be thinking about the
forest as a whole and not just isolated slices around
communities because while that may do a lot to protect homes,
it doesn't do a lot to protect atmospheric carbon sources or
wildlife or water resources or the forest itself.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Ms. Mitsos.
Ms. Mitsos. Yes, it does make sense to target those
treatments in high-priority areas. And the Forest Service is
now on a path to do a national map for those priority areas.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Now, Mr. Wudtke, again, as well as Mr. Irving. For both of
you, from a carbon storage perspective, does it make sense to
focus active management activities in older tree stands that
already have diminished or no ability to sequester additional
carbon and in areas with hazardous levels of fuel?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator. I can start with that. And
you know, really, it makes sense to target and prioritize our
efforts where they're going to have the most impact, whether
that's old stands or modern-age stands, that certainly has to
be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. But again, it's where you
have the most impact to prevent future carbon emissions. But I
will say that there's kind of a belief out there that when you
cut into a tree it somehow deflates like a balloon, and the
carbon is released. And that there's a lot of pushback on
harvesting older trees because they store a lot of carbon, but
they continue to store that carbon when you put it in forest
products as well. And that's something that has to really be
recognized is that if you cut a larger tree or older tree,
you're not emitting that carbon into the atmosphere in the same
way that you would when it dies naturally or from insects or
disease or from wildfire--you're effectively locking that
carbon up into products.
Senator Barrasso. Mr. Irving.
Mr. Irving. Thank you, Senator. I think there's a couple
things. One is, trees are like people. They get to a certain
age and they die, eventually. So, you know, depending on the
species, and where they're located, you want to harvest the
tree at the right age. Notwithstanding, I know in the Northwest
there are very grand stands of trees, very old trees, and in my
world that's a different species, you know, something to be
greatly respected. But in our part of the world, we know the
rotation time. Some are around 50 years or so, and then we'll
have a transition to a new generation of trees.
So the job is cut those trees--harvest those trees at the
right time, then replant them right away with the same
genetics, same species of tree, but an improved tree. So, we'll
improve the carbon absorption. We can do both. We can get the
tree, take the tree at the right time at the most economical
age and replant it so we have no disruption, and we don't let
any wood die or rot to create fuel that will emit carbon or
fires. It's like anything else, but you know, you're raising a
subject about how do we keep management--you know, forestry is
a long-term business, very long term. The rotation time in
Brazil is six years. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, maybe
it's 80 years. In the southeastern United States, maybe 25
years. In the Northeast, it's about 40 to 50 years.
So somebody has to be able to say to the Forest Service, I
would say, and I don't know all the details of the Forest
Service. But if they're going to encourage the operators to
make the investment in equipment, in management, in technology,
they have to know that I have 10 years, and I can go out, and I
can do a good job, and I can amortize my cost over a certain
period of time and hold me accountable. We call it outcome-
based forestry in the Northeast, where you work with the
government and the State of Maine, what are the objectives,
what are we trying to do, what would they like to accomplish?
And then let us go do it. Come and audit us, manage us, check
on us, and we have to be held to account for performance. But
we have flexibility, which is very important in terms of
keeping the cost and being competitive and getting the outcomes
everybody wants.
Thank you.
Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
And I think it would have helped to actually have a Forest
Service witness here because that seems to be a perspective
that we are missing that might have some of the answers to some
of these issues. And in particular, you know, one of the things
that has occurred to me is that there is a big difference in
cost. We see a wide range of treatments between the sort of
private land treatments and federal forests.
The Chairman. We reached out to them, Senator Heinrich, and
they said it would take weeks in advance for them to be
prepared.
Senator Heinrich. That's absurd.
Because there is a big difference in treating an acre of
relatively flat deciduous forest in a place like Maine or
eastern Canada versus the cost of treating a steep, mixed
conifer forest on a 40 percent grade.
Senator King. Did you say flat in Maine?
Senator Heinrich. Yes. No, I mean it's all relative, Angus.
[Laughter.]
Senator Heinrich. Forty percent grade on the side of the
Rocky Mountains in a very remote area. And so that is part of
the reason why we see these giant differences in the cost to
treat an acre. And I guess the lesson there is just like--a
forest isn't a forest. The local conditions really drive many
of these differences. And I think we need to get to that.
One of the challenges I have in New Mexico, and this
question is really for any of our witnesses who want to chime
in, is that most of the trees that we need to remove in
treatments from our forests are not trees that are easily sent
to market. They are small-diameter, ladder fuels that currently
do not lend themselves to traditional forest products. And I
guess I would like to ask folks what progress is being made in
finding ways to turn those small-diameter trees into value-
added products so that right now it costs a lot to treat those
acres and then, hopefully, if we had markets for those
products, that treatment cost could be mitigated or at least
reduced?
Mr. Irving. Well----
Senator Heinrich. Ms. Mitsos, did you----
Mr. Irving. I'm sorry.
Senator Heinrich. No, go ahead sir, and then I think Ms.
Mitsos wants to answer that.
The Chairman. Mr. Irving, go ahead.
Mr. Irving. Okay, no, I just say in terms of processing the
small trees, you raise a good point that you have to be very
efficient. We've spent millions of dollars on our own sawmills
processing trees. Sometimes we'll take out just one piece of
two-by-three or one piece of two-by-four that, you know, it
will supply to the Home Depot, for example, but we have a
mindset--we say it's, look, it's just like the butcher. We have
to sell everything in the pig, including the squeal. So we have
to make sure we save everything and really be efficient.
It takes capital to do that, but it can be done, at least
in our part of the world.
Senator Heinrich. And I guess the challenge we have is many
of the trees we need to remove are not big enough for
dimensional lumber. So what do we do with those?
Ms. Mitsos, you look like you wanted to answer that.
Ms. Mitsos. I think there are a number of options. Some
still need more investment, but biochar is one option. Biomass
is another. There are promising signs with CLT about the size
that they can use. We're doing some work in Arizona on Bill
Williams Mountain, where the small timber that's coming off is
given for fuel to the Hopi and Navajo Nations.
Senator Heinrich. Right. Yes.
So you mentioned biochar. Talk to me more about that. It is
a product that has enormous potential, but it has been
difficult to find ways to scale that in these landscapes,
especially, you know, in landscapes where there are vast
distances and much of what determines whether something pencils
out at the end of the day is the distance to market and the
fuel cost for a product like biochar.
Ms. Mitsos. Yes, well there are some folks up in Montana
who have mobile portable facilities that are proving to be
really useful, and oftentimes the biochar is immediately put
back into the soil, which also helps the soil retain more
carbon as well.
Senator Heinrich. That is very helpful.
Mr. Wudtke, one more question for you before my time is
out. Talk to me about the role of prescribed fire in the active
management of western North American forests, particularly
those that are evolved for regular fire cycles such as
ponderosa pine.
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
Prescribed fire plays a critical role in forest management.
It should be implemented on more acres. I think federal
agencies should be looking at prescribed fire as a tool in a
lot of places. The one caveat to that is that, just in the
sense that there are forests burning unnaturally during
wildfire season, those same unnatural conditions make it very
difficult to implement prescribed fire safely and to meet the
objectives of those burn plans in a lot of areas. And so it's a
little bit of the chicken and the egg. You need to really first
go in and create forest conditions that are conducive to
promoting prescribed fire use. Oftentimes, looking at historic
forest conditions and tree spacing and making sure that the
fuel is removed from the area before putting that needed fire
back on the landscape, and fire can certainly be used as a
maintenance tool once those conditions are in place. But it's
very difficult to just go in and use prescribed fire as the
first step in any kind of treatment plan.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
And that is exactly what we found in many of these places
where it may cost $1,000 an acre to treat something. To
maintain it with prescribed fire is dramatically cheaper. And
so creating those conditions for healthy maintenance really set
the stage for decades into the future.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Next, we have, if he is in, Senator Lee on WebEx, if he is
there.
If not, we have then Senator Marshall. And I think he is
coming back, probably.
And then, we'll go to Senator Daines, and I think he had to
step out, and we'll go down to Senator Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy? Senator Daines?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Is there any Republican that we know on
WebEx?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Senator King.
Senator King. I could make a lot of jokes now, Mr.
Chairman, believe me.
The Chairman. I know, it'd be best if you don't.
Senator King. Best not, yes.
I also want to mention that I think we need the Forest
Service on this subject, and here is what I want from the
Forest Service. I want three things--data, data, and data. And
I want a comparison of fire rates on Forest Service land versus
privately managed land. I want output per acre. I want to know
the kinds of comparisons. I want expense per acre because I
have a sense, and I am perfectly willing and hopefully will be
proved wrong that we basically do not manage our lands anywhere
near adequately, and it is one of the things that contributes
to wildfires. If you do not do the pre-commercial thinning that
Mr. Irving was mentioning, you are building up a base for
wildfires. If you leave a lot of forest products on the floor
of the forest, you are going to aggravate the forest fire
problem. Plus, we are not getting the value from our forests
that the public owns as we should.
So I hope that we can either do questions for the record or
inquiry from the Committee to the Forest Service, but I think
we really need--I feel the need of data to compare public land
ownership with private land ownership in terms of productivity,
fires, and all the rest.
Mr. Irving, I am fascinated by your comments about output-
based forestry which, I think, makes a lot of sense rather than
prescriptive forest regulation. The problem that I see is how
do you know the output-based is working without a lot of time
passing? In other words, if you are assuming that you are going
to measure the output over a period of years, there could be a
lot of damage done, not by your company, but by another
operator that then is--the damage is done. Do you see what I am
saying? Output-based regulation, to me, is the way to go, but
the measurement has to be in such a way that you can be sure
that it is, in fact, reaching outputs that are desired by both
the public and the private sector.
Mr. Irving. Well, Senator King, there's a couple of things
on that, and you raise the right points. In the case of Maine,
and I know you're very familiar with this, we do an annual
audit with state employees. They're independent experts who
come up and look at our operations, and that's fine. That's
sort of a visual, and they check the numbers. Then every five
years, we will do a very prescriptive, okay, hard-line
measurements--did we do what we said we were going to do? And
then today, with technology, Lidar, for example, we can detect
progress. We get satellite imagery. We get it every two weeks--
we'll have pictures of our forests, if we want, and somebody
can compare this year versus last year or whatever you want to
compare.
So today, with technology, there's no reason why we should
have any mystery about what did we say that we were going to do
because right today we can count every tree with Lidar. It's
that precise, that good.
Senator King. I appreciate that. I think that is an
important point--that we have the technology today to measure
on an ongoing basis so output-based regulation as opposed to
prescriptive regulation can work.
Let me follow up another question involving your company
and your management. You are a family-owned company. You do not
have to report quarterly profits to Wall Street. Talk to me
about the structure of ownership that could affect the type of
forestry that you are doing. You are obviously doing a lot of
things right. You are making a lot of investment. You are
looking at a 40-year time horizon. My concern is that the sort
of structure of the capital markets in terms of public
ownership of stock ownership and having to report to Wall
Street pushes toward shorter-term profits, higher harvests,
less long-term investments. Talk to me about the difference
between family ownership and quarterly profit reports.
Mr. Irving. Sure. And you summed it up right. If we were a
public company, we'd have probably a very hard time explaining
to the shareholders that we're doing some of these things,
taking this long-time horizon, but there's a couple of things
that might ease that problem a little bit. When it comes to
tree planting, for example, we advocate, we think and I know
it's not the purview of this Committee, but things like being
able to expense your tree planting in your taxes. In Canada, we
can expense our tree planting in the year we take it.
So, it's a form of--it's depreciation, if you will. You
take it up-front. So we diminish the cost this year, but
there's no question about it, it's a long-term business. It's
well-suited--better suited for private enterprise. And so the
transition from one generation to another in terms of
inheritance or rollover or whatever you want to call it is very
important because continuity, you know--if you're in Brazil,
you grow the trees in six years. If you have a potato field,
you know, the crop in 120 days. But in the Northeast, you know,
it's 40 years. So you have to have a different mindset. And
it's tough for the public companies to create high hurdle rates
to accomplish what you've just described.
Senator King. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, could I follow up on one point?
Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Please, go right ahead.
Senator King. On a different subject, Ms. Cover, I am very
interested in CLT. I think it is a natural. It makes so much
sense. It is a natural--that is kind of a redundancy, isn't it?
But what are the obstacles? Are they building codes? Is it
architect reluctance? Is it just unfamiliarity with the
technology? How do we really stimulate the growth of CLT usage
across America?
And I know, ironically, in Europe where they have much less
forest than we do, they are ahead of us in the utilization.
What is the barrier to the expansion of the use of engineered
wood products for major building projects?
Ms. Cover. That's a great question, Senator, thank you.
Yes, and you hit the nail right on the head in terms of the
main hurdle is education and understanding. It is really
helping the architectural and engineering community understand
how to design these projects and also understanding the value
of working forests. I think helping folks understand what we
are all discussing here today, the strong markets for wood
products, which is really under-utilized species and materials,
you know, there's a lot of research being done even in
materials that have insect damage that can go into CLTs. So
this is an opportunity for some of these materials we are
talking about that are creating hazardous fuels, and the hurdle
is really understanding that and helping architects and
engineers have the tool to design with it.
Senator King. Well, it seems to me one thing would be
examples of buildings. The Portland Jetport has a beautiful CLT
ceiling that is a manifestation of how this can work, and maybe
we need to talk about public buildings. I am sure the Federal
Government builds thousands of buildings across the United
States on a five-year basis. We need to show people how this
can work, including architects and building inspectors.
Thank you very much. Thanks to all of our witnesses.
Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Senator King.
Senator Lee.
Senator Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Crowther, Mr. Wudtke mentioned in his testimony that 98
million acres of our national forests--98 million acres--that
is representing more than half of the total acreage, are in
restrictive land-use designations, including wilderness or
inventoried roadless areas. The restrictions in these areas can
make access really difficult for forest treatments to be
conducted. In wilderness, even if access could be achieved,
mechanized tools used to harvest timber are generally
prohibited. Dr. Crowther, if addressing climate change and
mitigating wildfires are to be among our nation's top
priorities in this area, do you think Congress should
reevaluate the laws prohibiting timber harvest in these areas,
and can you explain a little bit about that?
Dr. Crowther. Thank you, Senator, for the question.
I think wherever possible, timber harvest needs to be a
part of the process to be considered. Wherever it is physically
possible, I think, finding economic values from nature is going
to be a central part of the process. And as everybody has just
discussed, the greater that we can find the benefits from non-
target species and the more investment we can have in those
technologies that can improve the utilization of those species,
the better. You know, the thinning of species is incredibly
valuable in natural forests as well. It can promote the
regeneration of nature. It can promote the carbon sequestration
rates and the long-term sequestration of that carbon as well.
And it was mentioned earlier about biochar being a
spectacular opportunity. Obviously, limited by the availability
or by the accessibility of those products, but again, these
sort of lower-quality timber products can be so valuable for
biochar--that then also has a knock-on potential benefit on
agricultural settings where you can massively improve carbon
sequestration in soil.
Senator Lee. Right.
Dr. Crowther. So, I--sorry.
Senator Lee. No, just agreeing with you. It sounds like a
win to me.
Dr. Crowther. I think the other benefit is it comes with
the access to tourists. You know, tourism is a huge benefit
that comes from nature--it comes from forests, it comes from
regenerating and protecting ecosystems. And so, access to that
has potential benefits. Obviously, it also has potential
downsides, as poor management or deforestation rates can
obviously be associated with increased access. So as an
ecologist, my own personal motivation is always try and keep as
much nature as physically possible. But as I mentioned, the key
to any successful activity is those economic incentives.
Senator Lee. Yes, I think that is very well said, and the
point of wilderness, of course, is to keep untrammeled land
untrammeled. But, from time to time, in order to protect the
environment and maintain wilderness in a pristine condition,
sometimes access needs to be granted for reasons related to
protecting the environment.
Mr. Wudtke, there are a number of constituents in my state
who would love to be able to harvest timber, but who have been
reluctant to do so because of administrative, or in some cases,
structural obstacles. For example, while Forest Service
stewardship contracts for timber harvesting can extend for
periods that are up to ten years, timber sale and service
contracts are commonly offered for much shorter periods of
time, more typically in the range of three years. With shorter
work commitments, we tend to see decreased certainty for
industry partners, and installing the infrastructure to
facilitate work may not be worth the cost under a three-year
commitment.
So Mr. Wudtke, in your opinion, what could Congress or
federal agencies do in order to increase business certainty and
thereby foster greater interest in these programs?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
You know, utilizing stewardship contracts and particularly
longer-term stewardship contracts and longer-term contracting
mechanisms, it's something that should be looked at and is
trying to be utilized in parts of the U.S., particularly in
areas where you're trying to entice forest products companies
into the area. You give them something that they can invest in
or you're trying to bolster your current forest products
infrastructure that you have there to meet other objectives.
In other parts of the country, you already have forest
products companies. Some places are very well cross-integrated,
where some companies use soft timber, some companies use post
and pole-size material. Other companies use wood chips. And in
those areas, really what the companies need in order to invest
is some certainty that the Forest Service or Department of
Interior is going to be putting up the timber to sustain their
company year after year. When you already have a forest
products industry there, you don't need a 20-year contract, and
in some places that can favor certain companies over others
when you already have infrastructure in place.
But I think you're right-on. The companies need some level
of certainty that they're going to have timber this year and
next year and 10 years from now because investments into forest
products infrastructure are on the order of tens to hundreds of
millions of dollars, not small-scale.
Senator Lee. Thank you. That is very helpful.
Mr. Chairman, I see my time is expired. Thank you.
The Chairman [presiding]. And now we have Senator Cortez
Masto.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the
panelists, great conversation.
Let me talk a little bit about invasive species. I would
love your input here. Controlling invasive, non-native species
in our forest ecosystems represents another key component for
enhancing carbon capture. So my question to the panelists is
how can we best work with local landowners to reverse the
negative effects that we see from invasive species and preserve
our forest ecosystems? And maybe, Mr. Wudtke, we can start with
you?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you. Certainly, private landowners have
their own incentives to reduce invasive species. If you're
talking about forest lands, oftentimes a private landowner may
intend to utilize grazing in the understory on herbaceous
vegetation, oftentimes looking at long-term timber harvest
schedules. Private landowners have a lot of incentive to reduce
invasive species. Invasive species are certainly playing a
larger role in the landscape for all ownerships as we're seeing
increased acres of wildfires. We're even seeing invasive
species issues following other disturbances, such as insect
epidemics.
How we coordinate more with landowners, you know, kind of,
across the fence, with federal and private--I'm not sure I have
the answer on that, but I think that it warrants a lot of
further discussion.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Mr. Irving, or does anyone else have any input on this? So
let me give you an example, because we have a lot of rangeland
fires in Nevada, and cheatgrass is an invasive species, and it
is, unfortunately, something that needs to be controlled. And
so there is a role, I think, for the Federal Government and our
local landowners to work together to address the types of
invasive species that we are seeing in forests or rangeland,
wherever that is. I think it is important that we have native
trees, we have native plants. Those thrive. They are unique to
the ecosystem there and important to the ecosystem. When we
introduce a native species, we are seeing really negative
consequences of that.
So I am curious what we, at a federal level, should be
doing to work with our local landowners or others to address
invasive species. Does anybody have any other comments?
Mr. Irving. Senator, we would say we've got to be very
vigilant. As a landowner you have to be on top of your forest.
Our people in our organization are trained on what to look for
and deal with it quickly and early. We have things like blue
lettuce or jewel weed or other things that we didn't have but
10 or 15 years ago. So in certain cases, where we have certain
very carefully applied biocide, we treat it and then eradicate
it quickly. But if we don't, they're very aggressive species,
as you're aware. They're very aggressive, and they change the
balance of the biodiversity, not only for the forest, but also
for the wildlife. And so, we have to be on that one quickly.
Senator Cortez Masto. Well, absolutely. And because you are
a private landowner, you have the ability to be very reactive
and proactive on it quickly, but when it comes to our national
forests, is there more that we should be doing to address
invasive species is my question. And if anybody has that, we'd
be happy to work with you on that in the future.
But let me jump because I only have so much time. Mr.
Wudtke, let me ask you this--throughout the West and Southwest,
research is increasingly describing burn scars as regenerating
to brush fields. This makes reforestation a time-sensitive
issue. If lands
are lost to brush fields, reestablishing green and growing
forests becomes exponentially more difficult to accomplish.
Brush outcompetes young trees and poses a significant hazard
for reburns. This was in your written statement.
And so, as you know, wildfires are continuing to increase
in frequency and size. What challenges does this pose for
ecosystem regeneration?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
The challenges are abundant, really, and you know, there's
a lot of research coming out of the Arizona-New Mexico area
following wildfires. It's been coming out for years now
actually, where they're seeing long-term eco-type conversions
from the ponderosa pine forest--predominately in that area--to
grass and shrub types of ecotypes. And that's largely because
of the ecology of ponderosa pine forests. They are fire-adapted
species, fire-adapted forests, but they're adapted to low-
severity fires, not the high-severity fires we're seeing as a
product of the high fuel loads in the forest. And when the
ponderosa pine loses their canopy, they can't disperse the seed
very far, and so that's why you're seeing ecotype conversions
there.
But there's new research also in other forests, such as
lodgepole pine, where they've experienced beetle mortality and
then experienced fire following that, and although lodgepole
pine forests in places have evolved with high-severity fire,
they're seeing some of the same effects that you would see in
ponderosa pine systems where that seed source is being
consumed, and you're not getting the regeneration following
fire in those forested ecosystems. Of course, this presents
tremendous challenges when you're really turning the natural
ecology of a forested ecosystem on its head, and then once you
get that grass, there are other herbaceous vegetation on the
surface there, that tends to outcompete young trees, young
seedlings, whether it's natural regeneration or planting. All
of that vegetation competing for resources on the landscape
makes it very, very difficult to do replanting in the future.
There are steps that can help that, but the difficulties
are there, nonetheless.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
I have further questions. I will submit those for the
record.
Thank you, again.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Daines.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to welcome Mary Mitsos from Missoula,
who is here. Great to have another Montanan in the room.
Welcome to DC. Mary, you know firsthand the challenges facing
our forests in Montana. It is really great to have you here--
appreciate it.
I also want to highlight that so many of the challenges we
face in the West, both economic and environmental, can be
achieved through increasing the scope and the scale of forest
management. In fact, growing up in Montana, there were 30
active sawmills that were supporting healthy economies and
healthy forests, once upon a time. Today, we are down to just
seven. During that time, our forests were a carbon sink. Now, I
sadly report, our forests are a carbon source. Wildfire season
is growing longer and more severe, burning some 300,000 acres
in Montana just last year. I am hopeful that this year Congress
will work to enact meaningful forest management reform to
reverse this trend.
The initial COVID-related disruptions and demand for lumber
used in home construction and remodeling far exceeded the
supply being produced by mills, causing prices to more than
triple. In the South, there has been a glut of logs coming from
private lands, which kept log prices low while mills operated
at full capacity. Due to federal land ownership, the situation
played very differently in Montana. While the mills were
generally able to continue operating throughout the year,
lumber production decreased by 11 percent, and that's not for a
lack of forests that are in dire need of management. In fact,
over six million acres are at high risk of wildfire in Montana.
And just last year, Montana's harvested timber from national
forests was just over half--half of the allowable sale quantity
volume called for in our forest plans.
Our national forests are poised to help with the lumber
shortage, and we must increase active management to address
this crisis.
Mr. Wudtke, despite being blessed with abundant forests,
our country isn't meeting our domestic demand for wood
products. What constraints does the timber industry face in its
ability to invest in processing capacity, infrastructure, and
technology in order to meet the growing demand for wood
products from national forests in the West?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
Well, first I'd say, I doubt it's of any comfort, but
you're not the only state that now has forests that are carbon
sources instead of carbon sinks, but I doubt that would be any
comfort to any of us here today.
As we're seeing markets respond to lumber demand and the
supply issue of lumber, there's a lot of discussion and
questions that I hear from folks about why doesn't a company
increase what they're doing? Why don't they build another
sawmill? Why can't we fix this problem? And it comes back to
some of the discussion earlier in that, you know, to start a
new forest products company, whether it's a sawmill or a
biofuels facility, what we're talking about are investments on
the order of 125 million to hundreds of millions of dollars,
and that's not an investment you make lightheartedly. An
investment like that really requires some sense that you're
going to be able to get a return on it.
And in the West, where purchasers and sawmills primarily
rely on federal lands, it's very difficult to get that
certainty. As you discussed, you know, the allowable sale
quantity in forest plans is seldom met. We see cycles where one
year may be good for a forest, the next year may be bad, and
it's very difficult to do any level of planning for a business
to be successful when there's just no guarantee of getting the
materials you need to be profitable to remain running year
after year.
Senator Daines. Yes, I spent a lot of time engaged with our
sawmills across Montana over many, many years, and the reason
we have gone from 30 active sawmills down to seven, and we are
now in the constraint, is there is not enough sawmill capacity
because, just as you pointed out, we have not been able to get
access to logs. Sometimes you bring in logs, and it is from as
far away as Colorado, sometimes coming in from Canada, and that
is why we had to see these mills reduced down to now just seven
across our state. Wyoming has none. I do not think Colorado has
any either.
I want to shift gears here and talk about carbon storage.
The Biden Administration established a goal of reducing
emissions by 50 percent by 2050. While forests should assist us
toward that goal, Montana forests are actually a net positive
carbon source, largely due to catastrophic wildfires and a
decrease in wood products coming from our forests. In the 90s,
when timber volume was much higher, Montana's forests
sequestered--sequestered--20 million tons of CO2 out
of the air each year. But by 2010, we have reversed course. In
fact, our forests in Montana now emit 25 million tons of
CO2.
Mr. Wudtke, what would need to happen to reverse this trend
so Montana forests can once again operate as a carbon sink and
should be a component in the President's climate agenda?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you for the question, Senator.
I think it's clear today that what we've been doing the
last couple decades isn't working. The lack of forest
management, the lack of reducing fuels and insect risk on the
landscape is not helping us now. And to the extent that we're
concerned about atmospheric carbon inputs and the role that
forests can play, I don't think that anybody would call what's
happened in our national forests a success. And to be clear, I
think the answer is relatively simple. Big picture, of course,
you know, it'll vary place by place, but big picture, we have
to be more active on the landscape. We have to be salvaging
material when or where appropriate before it goes up in flames,
before it decomposes on the landscape. We have to be proactive
in reducing those risks for further losses to insects and
wildfires. We have to be doing more on the landscape to have
our forests become carbon sinks instead of sources again.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Cantwell.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Senator Manchin and thank you
to you and Senator Barrasso for holding this important hearing.
I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. So, I guess this
would be to our witness from WoodWorks, Ms. Cover. We included
in the last big lands and wildfire bill, with the fire-
borrowing fix, incentives such that if you are doing CLT-
related thinning projects then contractors could get longer
lead times and contract terms from the Forest Service. Is that
correct?
Ms. Cover. So I'm on the market side of things, so I do
the----
Senator Cantwell. Okay.
Ms. Cover. I work with architects and engineers and help
grow the markets for wood products.
Senator Cantwell. Okay.
Ms. Cover. So I am not familiar with the agreements with
the Forest Service land.
Senator Cantwell. So I am pretty sure what we did in the
last forest bill as it related to CLT is to say to the Forest
Service to give more predictable terms to people who are going
to harvest trees and use them to manufacture CLT. So that way,
a mill could plan, just as our colleagues are discussing here.
A mill could basically have more predictable terms for the
future, longer-term stewardship contracts (up to 20 years).
Now, this is important for us in the Pacific Northwest. We have
already made major investments in this. We have one of the
largest CLT facilities in the United States, Katerra, which is
producing nearly one-third of our mass timber, and Vaagen,
which is also a long-standing timber company in Northeast
Washington manufacturing CLT. Just recently, a wood innovation
center in Darrington, Washington, opened to also manufacture
CLT products. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we get this
clear for the record that the Forest Service can give longer-
term contracts and more predictability to harvest related to
CLT. This is one of the reasons why we wanted to do it, because
we wanted to incent this predictability so people would make
the infrastructure investments.
And then secondly, I say, especially to Ms. Cover, Oregon
has really done a pretty good job on this, on the planning and
the development stage. The university there has some leading
experts on CLT, and I don't know why it is, but Oregon has
adopted some of this focus quicker.
Senator Wyden. We just work with Washington. We get
brilliant.
Senator Cantwell. Well, I think we need to keep batting
down some of the misconceptions about wood as a building
material here. People think that it is more flammable, when in
reality it is not. I mean, that these buildings, at a high-rise
level, are being built around the world, and I think they
should be built in the United States. I think probably one of
the largest ones, I do not know how many stories it is, but
definitely 20 to 30 stories, is right across the border in
Vancouver, British Columbia. There are others in London that
have been at this height. So, to me, we should be batting down
these arguments.
Now, in the Pacific Northwest, we have definitely built
schools and buildings and you know, facilities. So we do need
to think about what we need to do to step this up, but Mr.
Chairman, I think, actually, we just need to marry up the
science with the contracting because we have pine forests that
are going to burn down, we know, at least in part because of
climate. And we have fire breaks that we want installed because
it is going to help us preserve some of those forests, and we
have rural communities that could, with predictable
contracting, produce more cross-laminated timber which, we know
now, would help us store carbon.
So we always thought it was a win-win-win situation. Ms.
Cover, what do you think? What do we need to be doing further
to help get that message across? Is it that we are just not
communicating well enough on this, or in places like Washington
and Oregon it is happening, and we should just continue to let
it happen at that pace?
Ms. Cover. I think the leadership in terms of, you know,
forest-dependent communities really helps, and I think that's
why you're seeing advancements in areas like Oregon and
Washington, but it's also across the entire U.S. I mean, there
is a CLT mass timber building pretty much in almost every state
in the United States now, and the building codes have opened a
lot of new opportunities for us. Right here in the U.S., we
have a 25-story mass timber building going up in Milwaukee.
There are 107 buildings that are over the original code limits
that now have been opened up to tall wood. So now mass timber
can be used up to 18 stories with the new code development. So
everything is in place, and we are poised, really, to take this
throughout the entire United States. We're just at the very
beginning and needing to make sure that people understand how
to do this and they have the tools at their disposal to be able
to successfully design these buildings.
And you're definitely 100 percent correct in terms of the
research. All the testing has been done to safely design these
buildings, and I am happy to provide any of that as needed.
Senator Cantwell. Well, I do not think other sectors should
feel threatened by this. It is not like it is going to turn
development on its ear with concrete or other things, but you
know, we love the historic nature of this, that you can still
go to Pioneer Square in Seattle and see buildings that were
built with wood and now we could restore them with wood. And I
could tell you that the feeling that you get from walking into
one of these facilities is great. So yes, why should we--why is
the United States ceding to the U.K.? Nothing against the
brilliant work done by the U.K. researchers and architects
there, but they hardly have the land mass or supply that we do
that would/could be utilized here, particularly because of the
climate implications. So I think we should continue to work and
find out what other incentives we ought to consider, if any. It
sounds like it has already been clarified with regards to the
building codes or the Forest Service's ability to do longer-
term contracts. I just want to keep batting down the barriers
on this issue.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Crowther, in the 2019 study ``The Global Tree
Restoration Potential,'' you and your colleagues report that
approximately 0.9 billion hectares of potential forest plan
exist for potential restoration, could store 205 gigatons of
carbon in concluding that ecosystem restoration is one of the
more effective ways to mitigate climate change. Did you study
the restoration of riparian forest and marshland?
Dr. Crowther. Thank you for the question, Senator. It's a
really important one because one of the main caveats to
recognize there is that this is a global study, and that means
there are major uncertainties around all those things. And what
the model does is, it's trained using millions of data points
of observations of where forests exist now, and it's trained
based on the environment and satellite imagery to predict the
ecosystems that can naturally exist. Now, riparian ecosystems
are moist, you know, riparian regions can be particularly good
conditions for supporting trees. And what we actually find in
continued research is that the impacts of even a small riparian
zone in lowering the water temperatures in aquatic systems can
actually be incredibly important for fish production, for the
survival of macroinvertebrates in the streams and for the
productivity of those streams for fisheries and extended
things.
So, I've sort of extended beyond your question there, but
yes, we evaluated the potential in all global ecosystems.
Senator Cassidy. Thank you for saying that. I have been
told by folks back home at the Water Institute of the Gulf that
aquatic and wetland plants can store three to five times more
carbon in flooded soils than terrestrial forests. And so the
potential is obviously there. I'll make the point that I
continue to push for development of the Outer Continental Shelf
oil and gas to provide dollars for Louisiana to restore its
coastline, and this is one of the many benefits of Louisiana
using that money to rebuild our coastline and one of the many
deleterious effects of choosing not to develop a needed
resource worldwide.
What has your research shown--well, let me put it
differently. I understand that in your testimony you mentioned
that monoculture forest, which will lack diversity, can be
detrimental toward a healthy ecosystem--diversity directly
correlated to resiliency. I want to point out one of my
Louisiana universities, Nicholls State, will take acorns from a
live oak tree, from an area which periodically is hit by
hurricanes and salty air, and replant that and the tree grows.
But if they take a live oak acorn, I am told, from elsewhere,
which has not been bred, so to speak, to survive in this
environment, that tree dies. So I guess my question is, does
that ring true and with your concepts, that we should have
plants selected for the ability to survive in a certain region
as we attempt to rebuild those regions?
Dr. Crowther. Yes. One of the biggest challenges in
effective restoration is knowing that the right species must be
in the right place, and that doesn't just include the species
that can survive in that climate and those soil conditions, but
it's also the full range of those species because a healthy
ecosystem does--the stronger and the more diverse the
interactions among species, the more sustainable the ecosystem
is and the more carbon is captured.
We actually did an analysis across the global forest system
that suggested that if we were to convert the world's
ecosystems from their diverse state into monocultures of the
fastest growing species, the impact on the timber industry
would be a reduction in productivity by about a third. When you
have mixed stands and mixed species you tend to get a greater
productivity and a greater carbon sequestration simply because
they take up different resources. If you're all competing for
the same resource, you have much less efficient access to those
resources, like light and nutrients and water, but when you
have different species with different rooting depths and
different heights, you tend to make more efficient use of those
resources, and you support all the other biodiversity that's
important also for the health of the ecosystem.
So yes, simply put, we do have to get the right species in
the right place. Now, the example you gave is an interesting
one. There's a lot of ecological theory about how you can sort
of move species. Sometimes when you have a species that's not
from there, it can be released from a lot of the competitive
dynamics that it would naturally experience under its parent
tree. But in many cases what we do see is that, yes, we
obviously want to minimize the movement, the sort of human-
driven movement in biodiversity because in most cases, seed
banks have enough biodiversity that they'd be able to
regenerate a very healthy level of diversity on their own.
And so planning for that and also thinking about the
trajectory of those species under a changing climate condition,
those are some of the biggest challenges in getting restoration
right.
Senator Cassidy. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time, but I will
say that all of us stick up for our own state and all of us
have pride in our own state. I am giving a shout-out to
Nicholls State and to the Water Institute of the Gulf, but let
me also point out that the restoration of Louisiana's wetlands
does have national significance, not just for this, but also to
support the energy infrastructure that helps prevent another
Colonial Pipeline problem, not from cyberattacks, but from
natural disaster, as well as preventing damage to the port
infrastructure that allows goods from around the nation to move
around the world at the lowest carbon intensity imaginable
because it travels over water.
With that, I thank you all for your testimony and I yield
back.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for holding the hearing. Having been the Chair of the
Committee, I know it is a challenging job. You have your hands
full and I appreciate working with you.
Let me go to you, Ms. Mitsos. I know of your good work. In
our part of the country, it is already very dry, and there is
tremendous concern that this dryness can really trigger another
round of infernos--what people have first and foremost,
particularly in rural Oregon, on their minds in terms of what
they may have to deal with. We come to this Committee, and so
much of the time is always devoted to a debate where one side
wants to cut everything down in the forest and the other side,
particularly in the West, sometimes says, we do not want to cut
anything down. And so that just is kind of prescription for
gridlock. And my view is this year it would be absolute
malpractice in this country for this Committee and the Congress
to not take concrete steps to do more to reduce hazardous fuels
and deal with the fire mitigation threat, especially near homes
and businesses.
So today, we Westerners, Senator Cantwell and Senator
Feinstein, we joined with our colleague, the Chairman from West
Virginia, to really launch a special effort that is backed by
good science. It is tested policy that would accomplish that
objective of really allowing us to do more to reduce hazardous
fuels and mitigate fire. And what it is all about is increasing
the pace and scale of prescribed burns, and this effort that we
are pursuing is backed by a coalition that you do not see every
single day--Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund
joining major timber industry leaders, Weyerhaeuser, the
National Alliance of Forest Owners, Oregon tribes, tribal
forestry organizations with us as well. So we do not know of
any major opposition now because, as I say, it is science-
based. It really builds on some of the collaborative ideas to
basically do a lot more during that season before it is hot and
dry and before you get to these infernos.
Would legislation, in your view, for purposes of my initial
question, my legislation with Senator Cantwell, Senator
Feinstein, Chairman Manchin--would this prescribed fire bill,
in your view, reduce wildfire risks and contribute as well to
healthy forest management practices?
Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Senator.
Prescribed fire is essential on the landscape. We can do
thinning, and that will help as well, but it needs to be
followed by prescribed fire. So I don't, unfortunately, know
the details of your bill, but I know if it focuses on
increasing pace and scale of prescribed fire and also helps
build the workforce to do that, it is a necessary bill.
Senator Wyden. That is what the bill is all about, pace and
scale, upping our game. We are going to have to really get
serious and get serious quickly about hazardous fuels
reduction, fire mitigation, and following the science, and that
is what our little coalition of members wants to do.
The second area I want to talk to you about is, along with
Congressman Joe Neguse, in Colorado, we have introduced the
21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps, and the idea here is
to establish a larger forestry workforce for planting trees,
removing hazardous fuels, and have more healthy forest
treatments all across the country. The Biden Administration
basically worked closely with us. They have something which is
sort of the other side of a coin--a Climate Corps, but they are
essentially the same kinds of efforts. In your view, does the
United States currently have a sufficient workforce to
accomplish the amount of planting and thinning and science-
based forestry practices that you have been talking about,
because my sense is we need to have some more people and we
have to do it quickly.
Your thoughts?
Ms. Mitsos. We definitely need more people, whether they be
youth or young adults or people just out of college. The number
of people who work in forestry in particular, and natural
resources in general, has been dwindling, and without the
assistance of building up a new workforce, we're going to
struggle with finding new stewards of our lands.
Senator Wyden. Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am out of
time. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Next, Senator Risch.
Senator Risch or Senator Marshall?
If not, I have a couple questions, and then we will wrap up
unless we have any other Senators that come in quickly.
Dr. Crowther, much of what you talked about resonated with
me because we do not do much tree planting in West Virginia.
Instead, after timber harvesting, foresters regenerate stands
of trees using natural regeneration. That said, in West
Virginia, there are currently over 170,000 acres of
unreclaimed, abandoned mine lands (AMLs), and one in three West
Virginians lives within a one-mile radius of an AML site. As
you discussed, I am very interested in bringing economic
activity back to these sites, but I also understand that trying
to reestablish trees on these sites can be especially
difficult. So do these sites represent the types of areas you
are considering in your initiative?
Dr. Crowther. Thank you for the question.
I actually think it's great that you mentioned that because
a lot of people do think of tree restoration, and when we talk
about a trillion trees, they think we're talking about planting
a trillion trees, and physically that wouldn't really be
feasible. That would take all of humanity quite a while, but
natural regeneration presents an unbelievable opportunity for
regenerating ecosystems, and nature always tends to do it
better than we do, more diverse, more resilient ecosystems are
there. But you're right, in some regions, previous human
activity, like mining, can lead to degradation of those
ecosystems. And in those places, there have been many, many,
many examples of how active regeneration can start to tip the
balance, you know, by either managing soils effectively or by
integrating the right mixtures of species and giving them a bit
of a head start. The regenerating ecosystems can start to tip
the balance and make that a more livable environment in the
future.
So yes, degraded lands are absolutely central to this. We
want there to be as much natural regeneration as physically
possible, but where there's not possible, assisting that
process can be incredibly valuable.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Doctor.
And now we have Senator Kelly.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Ms. Mitsos, I want to start off here by thanking you
and the National Forest Foundation for your investment in the
Northern Arizona Forest Fund. Since 2015, NFF has partnered
with the Salt River Project, which is a water and power utility
in the State of Arizona, to restore forest lands and plant
trees along the Verde and the Salt Rivers, both of which are
very critical water supplies for my state, the State of
Arizona. We have had a rather early start to the fire season in
Arizona, and we have already been seeing wildfires and a few
evacuation orders. Behind me is a Forest Service map of lands
that are likely to burn in any given year.
[The map mentioned by Senator Kelly follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4734.062
Senator Kelly. These fires often occur on Forest Service
land and release many tons of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. The data is clear on this. We have to get serious
about ramping up forest restoration and hazardous fuels
projects immediately.
So Ms. Mitsos, if the Forest Service established a carbon
credit program for forest restoration projects, what could that
mean for utilities that are active in forest restoration?
Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Senator Kelly. That's a great
question.
I think it goes beyond utilities and to major U.S.
corporations as well. So many corporations are setting their
public ESG goals--Environmental, Social and Governance Goals--
and carbon offsets are one of the major goals for them. So
water utilities, electric utilities, and public corporations
would all invest in these kind of efforts.
Senator Kelly. But specifically for forest restoration,
what could that mean?
Ms. Mitsos. We are in the process of, right now, of
developing the first-of-its-kind methodology to account for
carbon credits from forest restoration in high-fire frequency
forests, specifically on the far northern forests in Arizona
because they are some of the highest fire frequency forests. We
have probably about nine months to go to finish the development
of that methodology. Once that is accepted, and we can offer
offsets to corporations, the money is going to flow, I believe.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Ms. Mitsos.
I want to turn to Mr. Wudtke for a minute here in my
remaining time. Mr. Wudtke, as the Committee's timber industry
representative for the West, I was in Flagstaff, Arizona
recently, and I met with Northern Arizona University's
Ecological Restoration Institute, and ERI has spent years
studying Forest Service timber policies and identified several
reforms for forest restoration project planning and
implementation in our ponderosa pine forests. Our forests are
similar to those of the Black Hills National Forest, where your
members operate. What do you see as barriers, but also, what do
you see as opportunities to accomplishing this work?
Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
I think one of the first things that we have been hearing
consistently today is that you have to have a forest products
infrastructure in place to be able to do those treatments, to
remove that material from the forest. And Arizona has had some
unique challenges there. They've been fortunate to have the
4FRI project in place that aims to treat 2.4 million acres, but
treatments have been slow, you know, I believe they've been
averaging about 13,000 acres a year for treatment, where the
Forest Service is targeting treating 50,000 acres a year. And
that's not to say that the Forest Service is doing anything
wrong or the company isn't operating correctly, but I think
it's indicative of the hurdles and challenges in starting new
forest products infrastructure in places where it either hasn't
been or hasn't been for some period of time.
Of course, there are opportunities to help the Forest
Service. Some of that is coming online and being used more. ``D
by P'' (designation by prescription), virtual boundaries where
it can save some time for the Forest Service to do timber
cruising and laying out their boundaries, scaling by weight
where the companies have that ability, instead of doing the
full timber cruising, you can actually look at exactly what's
coming across the scales and keep track of making sure that the
operators are meeting their prescriptions in the forest.
And so we're seeing some of these opportunities being
employed more across the nation. There are certainly other ways
that could be helpful as well, and just trying to provide some
of those efficiencies for the Forest Service so they get more
done on a landscape. Sometimes, at the end of the day, it just
takes more--it takes more staffing, it takes more funding to
get those activities done, and in places like Arizona, like
you're seeing, it takes more infrastructure to make that work.
And I'm hopeful that Arizona and many other parts of the West
can hurdle some of those challenges here in the future.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke, and thank
you, Ms. Mitsos, for your testimony today.
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. If we have anybody else on WebEx that I might
have missed, please speak up.
[No response.]
The Chairman. If not, I want to thank all of our witnesses
for joining us this morning for this discussion. It is very
enlightening. I would like to say this, that I have had really
the pleasure of visiting Mr. Irving's operations, and I have
seen proper management compared to so-called ``standard''
management, and there was no comparison. And we can do a much
better job.
With the permission of the Committee, I am going to reach
out to the White House and see if we cannot get the Forest
Service into a different gear to make some practical common-
sense decisions on how we take care of America's forests.
So members will have until the close of business tomorrow
to submit additional questions for the record.
Thank you all. The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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