Region Archives: US East

Hurricane Ian is slated to build significant momentum in the coming days as it crosses the western side of Cuba and barrels towards the west coast of Florida. By mid-week, Ian will likely become a Category 4 hurricane packing sustained winds between 130 and 156 mph, which are capable of causing catastrophic damage in combination with flooding rains and storm surge. The silver lining is that Ian is forecast to lose strength quickly before approaching the Florida panhandle as a Category 1 or Category 2 hurricane. While diminished, a storm of this strength can still cause widespread devastation not only to coastal communities, but also to valuable timberland holdings across the region. This particular wood basin has experienced a great deal of supply- and demand-side pressures over the last five years, and Ian could further impact those challenges in the near term.

NORTH CAROLINA — In 2015, Apple teamed up with an environment group to buy 3,600 acres of forestland bordering the Green Swamp in Brunswick County, NC. The purchase, funded by Apple, was the smaller component in a deal that also included the group buying 32,000 acres of forest in Maine. Apple said the purchase was part of its broader environmental push to assist in maintaining the nation’s working forests while managing them in a sustainable way. The goal was to keep the forests in production, using the timber as packaging…, with a long-term plan of rehabilitating the pocosin forest and eventually turning it over to a third party for management. …The “Brunswick Forest,” is being managed under the “Sustainable Forestry Initiative.” That work has included planting 185,000 trees across 300 acres, including Atlantic white cedar that provides a home for the rare Hessel’s hairstreak butterfly.

University of North Carolina Wilmington’s efforts to sustainably manage and preserve its natural areas and to replace lost trees due to storms and construction have earned UNCW the Arbor Day Foundation’s “Tree Campus Higher Education University” certification. “UNCW actively maintains our natural areas for the benefit of our students, faculty and staff as well as the community,” said Roger Shew, senior lecturer in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences, who applied for the designation on behalf of the UNCW Sustainability Program. “The natural areas serve as outdoor classrooms for students and educators, recreational areas for walkers and bikers, and habitats for wildlife.” …The Tree Campus Higher Education program “celebrates the unique role that anchor institutions play within their community forest,” according to the foundation. UNCW is one of 27 institutions to join the program in the past year; overall, more than 400 universities nationwide are participants.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University has received $12 million of a $35 million project led by the American Forest Foundation and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities to help family forest owners practice climate-smart forestry in Indiana and eight other states throughout the eastern half of the U.S. The project’s other partners are The Nature Conservancy, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation, and Women Owning Woodlands. The project could sequester an estimated 4.9 million tons of atmospheric carbon—a greenhouse gas that affects climate—over a 20-30-year period. “Our digital forestry group has been working on various tools and thinking about how to apply these tools to real-life problems,” said Songlin Fei, who directs Purdue’s Integrated Digital Forestry Initiative. “This is an opportunity to apply our expertise to solving part of the climate-change puzzle.”

NEWRY – The Maine Forest Products Council awarded A&A Brochu Logging with the organization’s Outstanding Logger Award at its 62nd Annual Meeting on Sept. 19. The award, presented by MFPC Board Member Chris Fife, recognized the company for exemplary on-the-ground performance while conducting early commercial thinning, its commitment to the well-being of its employees, the community and Maine’s logging profession. …A&A Brochu has nine crews cutting for landowners across Maine. A&A Brochu trucking has grown to over 60 trucks with 25 dedicated to hauling logs to mills in Maine. “For their professionalism, safety and important contributions to the Maine forest products industry, it was my pleasure to present the Maine Forest Products Council’s 2022 Outstanding Logger of the Year Award to A&A Brochu Logging,” said Board Member Chris Fife.

The logging industry plays a critical role in the Northwoods economy, and a new bipartisan bill in Washington would recognize October 12 as National Loggers Day. The goal of the resolution, introduced by Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Republican Susan Collins of Maine, is to highlight the many contributions and economic benefits of the logging industry in the country. Baldwin said in announcing the resolution, “I’m proud to…spotlight the importance of logging businesses and workers who keep our forests healthy and support our Made in America forest products supply chain.” She added, “Wisconsin’s logging economy provides good-paying jobs and revenue for rural communities and the National Park System. Healthy forest management also provides public recreational opportunities that make the Wisconsin way of life a national treasure.” …This resolution is supported by the American Loggers Council and Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association.

Harvard Forest scientists study tree rings to track extreme climate events —which are growing more common — over centuries. Four teams of researchers, led by Harvard Forest ecologists, searched for a patch of ancient trees deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania this summer as part of a project to study how climate changes affected trees over the centuries.  The project goal is to find and core the oldest trees in the Northeast. Studying the color and size of their rings offers scientists a glimpse into the past, allowing them to see how trees and forests responded to extreme climate events, like droughts or late-spring frosts in the past. …They presented evidence that droughts and harsh spring frosts from 250 years ago affected different forests across hundreds of miles in the Southeast. The disturbances abruptly killed some trees but accelerated the growth of others.

Greenville, SC and Bethesda, MD – The Enviva Forest Conservation Fund (the Fund) today announced the recipients of its 2022 grants. The projects funded this year will help conserve more than 3,000 acres and protect ecologically sensitive bottomland hardwood forests in the Virginia-North Carolina coastal plains. Including those announced today, the Fund has awarded 29 projects totaling more than $3,100,000 in grants over the past seven years. An estimated 33,000 acres will be protected when these projects reach completion. The forests conserved as a part of the Fund help clean drinking water, purify the air, buffer structures from storms, and provide habitat for many species of wildlife, while at the same time, providing jobs and economic opportunity for rural families and private landowners.

The lawns are dead. Trees that should be green have turned brittle and brown. And highway signs caution drivers not to flick cigarettes out the window. These conditions have become the norm of summer and its high fire risk in the western US. But this is not California. This is New Jersey.  Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor show that roughly two-thirds of the United States is facing unusually dry conditions ranging from abnormally dry to extreme drought. …With climate change, the destruction is in the details. The Northeast is now primed for more frequent droughts that will harm agriculture, intermittently reduce drinking-water supplies, and increase wildfire risk. The East will not emerge unscathed from the infernos that are quickly becoming a hallmark of western summers. …Because of climate change, small risks will become larger risks. And somehow, we’re going to have to prepare for them all.

Environmentalists warn that hundreds of thousands of acres of forest are being torn down each year in the U.S. southeast to make wood pellets to fuel European power plants in a deluded bid to fight climate change. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and other groups say logging in woodlands stretching from Texas to Virginia is ravaging a biodiversity hotspot, including century-old hardwood trees that will take decades to replace. More than two dozen pellet mills operate across the so-called North American Coastal Plain, which has already lost some 70 percent of its historic vegetation thanks in part to a $11 billion global industry that is set to grow to $20.5 billion by 2030. The European Union this week voted to phase out the multibillion dollar subsidies that make wood pellet fuels economically viable, but environmentalists say it is too little, too late.

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s College of Forest Resources is partnering with the Mississippi Forestry Association to create the George M. Hopper CFR/MFA Student Development Endowment Fund in honor of the retired dean. The Mississippi Forestry Foundation is a nonprofit organization started by the MFA, which aims to promote and execute programs in the state to advance forestry and natural resources. The organization recently presented a check for $50,000 to create the George M. Hopper CFR/MFA Student Development Endowment Fund. …Hopper, the longest serving dean in the college’s nearly 70-year history, made student success a cornerstone of his tenure. While his leadership resulted in accomplishments across all aspects of the university’s land-grant mission, he made it clear that students always came first. During his time as dean and director of MSU’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center, he saw student enrollment double, along with a 75% increase in degrees awarded and a 20% increase in scholarship funding.

SALISBURY, NC — Catawba College has entered a five-year partnership agreement with all U.S. Forest Service units in North Carolina: Croatan, Nantahala, Pisgah and Uwharrie National Forests. These four units cover approximately 1 million acres and stretch from mountains to coast. These National Forests include some of the most visited and iconic spots in North Carolina, such as Sliding Rock, Uwharrie National Recreation Trail, Roan Mountain, Cradle of Forestry and Linville Falls. Catawba College students of all majors can participate in the program, with special interest in recreation, GIS, forestry, communications, marketing, IT, conservation, natural resources, archeology, environmental education, and more.  It is a great opportunity for anyone interested in starting a career with the Forest Service, its partners, or other federal agencies, such as the National Park Service. …This will give Catawba College graduates a leg up in moving into federal government positions.

AUBURN, Alabama — The Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center, located in Andalusia, Alabama, was created by a gift from Solon and Martha Dixon to Auburn University in 1978. The donation, which included 5,350 acres of land and a $500,000 monetary contribution for the purpose of building the educational facilities, was at that time the largest gift in Auburn University history. …It is at the Dixon Center, with its state-of-the-art classrooms and diverse forest habitats, that Solon Dixon’s vision to provide experiential learning is manifested as students travel to the center each year for the college’s summer practicum experience. First established in 1980, the summer practicum allows students the valuable opportunity to immediately practice in the field what is learned in the classroom. It is this unique combination of traditional and experiential learning that makes the practicum experience renowned for preparing students for the fields of forestry and wildlife sciences.

Melinda Martinez

During her four years as a doctoral candidate at NC State, Melinda Martinez ‘21 trekked across coastal North Carolina to study the spread of “ghost forests” — a term used to describe areas of dead trees — due to sea level rise. Now Martinez’s efforts have earned her the distinction of being named the recipient of the Elizabeth Sulzman Award by the Biogeosciences Section of the Ecological Society of America. The award recognizes graduate research that’s published within two years of graduation. Martinez, who now holds a Ph.D. in forestry and environmental resources, received the award for her study, “Drivers of greenhouse gas emissions from standing dead trees in ghost forests,” published in the journal Biogeochemistry in May 2021. 

INDIANA — Indiana just experienced its biggest day ever for land conservation. …On Sept. 6, the Next Level Conservation Trust Project Committee met and decided how to distribute more than $23 million of the $25 million the state of Indiana set aside for land conservation in the biannual budget passed last year. With the help of those funds, portions of the Indiana landscape will be protected in perpetuity by land trusts across the state. To the state government’s credit, when it put out requests for proposals for these funds, it told land protection groups to “dream big.” The conservation community identified swaths of ancient forest, vibrant wetlands, unique geological formations, endangered species’ habitat and other important natural places, many that we thought we might never have the resources to purchase and protect. The requests totaled more than $30 million.

STEVENS POINT, Wisconsin – Working in the forestry industry is the only thing Violet Thielke ever want to do. Thielke was her dad’s “second hand” out in the woods, she said, operating and working on machines for their family-owned business, Thielke Forestry Products. Now, at 23, Thielke works part-time with the Wisconsin Woodland Owners Association, after graduating in December from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She also owns the family business after her dad died last year. …Les Werner hopes that a new program will help more people discover the same passion that Thielke has. The Wisconsin Forestry Center at UW-Stevens Point launched its Forest Industry Workforce Recruitment and Development Initiative, with $8 million from the state through the Workforce Innovation Grant. K-12 students and adults will be able to participate in hands-on programs and explore careers in Wisconsin’s forestry industry, said the center’s director.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Jack Wang is with North Carolina State University’s forest biotechnology program. Wang works in a special lab, where trees are genetically edited to make them more resilient. “We try to ensure that we change the DNA in a beneficial manner,” said Rodolphe Barrangou, a distinguished professor at NC State University. He is part of a team of scientists creating trees that are tailor-made for today’s environmental challenges. “Pest resistance, disease resistance, but also drought resistance, heat resistance,” Barrangou said. “Forests are unique; unique in the sense that they live for a very long time,” research partner Wang said. …”Our desire to optimize the tree genetic pool and make more sustainable forests is not new, but is just more relevant right now, arguably than it’s ever been,” Barrangou said. “And the sense of urgency with which we do that, the sense of awareness of people involved in it, is heightened.”

WISCONSIN — John Bates is a naturalist who sees his professional purpose as enabling people to develop environmental literacy. Since 2003, Bates has been particularly interested in old-growth forests, made up of trees that are hundreds of years old at minimum. Bates shares his Brief But Spectacular take on helping others “fall more deeply in love with the world” and connecting time through old-growth forests. “My interest in old growth took off in, oh, about 2003. I’d been walking in older forests, and found that they were quite rare and wondered why. Why did we cut so many down? They’re a filter for air. They’re a storage of carbon. They provide shade to our streams. …If you’re standing under an old white pine here in Wisconsin that’s 400 or 500 years old, you are standing underneath a tree that Native Americans had stood under.”