"We're looking at a more comprehensive solution that not only gets at the problem of wildfire…but it also is looking at the other controversial and difficult issues confronting the forest, and that's forest health."
Thinning to accomplish wildfire protection generally focuses on cutting trees and taking out trees that might provide a ladder from a fire on the ground to move into the crown. And it doesn't necessarily attempt to achieve a clumpiness, or to even go back to look at what it looked like in the past. It's really focused on thinning trees to provide fire protection. And ecological restoration is looking at achieving the full services that a forest can provide. In other words, we're interested in all the outcomes that relate to the forest ecosystem. We're interested in enhancing the plants that create the real workhorse of biodiversity for the forest. We're interested in thinning to clumps, which was the natural structure of the forest. We're interested in seeing restoration of impacted swales and hydrology—the water aspects of the forest. So we're looking at a more comprehensive solution that not only gets at the problem of wildfire—because ours does, ours diminishes that threat of wildfire—but it also is looking at the other controversial and difficult issues confronting the forest, and that's forest health. We have degraded forests not only because they're—you know, associated problems with a degraded forest are beetle infestations, increased disease, reduced water supply, a whole bunch of important issues that need to be repaired if a forest is going to survive, and if we, as people, are going to continue to benefit and enjoy.
One of my favorite ones, really, is looking at restoring the forest, too, to support the wildlife that uses the forest. If you look at the trends in animal biodiversity, it's just downward, despite the Endangered Species Act, despite many of the things that have gone on in the last thirty years. It's very disconcerting that we keep losing. And the only way we're going to stop losing is if we create the habitat structures that permit those species to rebound. And so we're looking at that tough issue as well.
...There are people that hope that there will be commercially viable products from restoration that can help fund restoration and motivate a new paradigm for businesses that are using smaller—we're not talking about industrial forestry anymore—we're talking about smaller, community-based opportunities for wood product utilization. And what we're discovering in that arena, there are emerging technologies and emerging opportunities, and we're at the cusp. What has happened in the past is that we have not had a guaranteed supply of wood coming out of the forest to allow a private investor, or provide the confidence to a private investor to capitalize something.
But what's happening now with the current congressional interest in forest thinning—and it is important to understand that forest thinning is not necessarily restoration, and there's an important distinction there, and we are always advocating for restoration in most cases, but it relates to the second part of this discussion I'm going to go to. But anyway, what we're seeing this year is a breakthrough in the supply issue. And we think with the breakthrough in the supply issue, we can be looking more aggressively at biomass production, energy production, using forest products, and as well other uses of small-diameter wood. That includes pallet making, various small home construction things. There are even people figuring out how to use a two-inch pieces of wood to create veneer and other things. So what's happening is that as soon as we know there's supply, entrepreneurial interests will beef up—and we're already seeing that.
But the second issue is that of sort of the social, philosophical, and cultural issue that we are at an interesting point in the history of forestry in our country, where there are many people angry about the past model of forestry which was basically an agricultural model of cut trees and replant them. Some would be so narrow as to say with little care for the environment or wildlife resources, the whole gamut. Those people are very concerned about old industrial forestry happening again. And they generally just have taken the tactic that anything commercial—and by that definition, is anything that generates money from removing trees from the woods—should not be allowed. And so what we've bumped up against is that grave concern. And actually, the partnership is working very hard to address that, and to be only thinking in appropriate-sized technologies. But nevertheless, when there are appeals and attempts to stop some of this work, a lot of that comes from the community that is worried about the economic issues, and whether or not if you find a marketplace for the small-diameter timber, you'll just recreate a model from the past that has not worked to restore forest health.