Region Archives: US East

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.”

Andrew Egan

In the north woods, Maine loggers have felled trees, fended off foreign competition and navigated a major change in the woods product industry.  Former University of Maine Professor Andrew Egan has written a new book, “Haywire: Discord in Maine’s Logging Woods And The Unraveling of an Industry.” He’s now a professor of forest resources at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia.  Morning Edition Host Irwin Gratz spoke with Egan about the threats, both physical and financial, that have faced Maine loggers for decades.  …It’s not just about sort of Yankee loggers; it’s about sometimes some of the tensions between the Maine loggers and those loggers who are often bonded labor coming from Quebec.  And that’s ongoing, I think, probably sort of resentment toward the Quebec loggers taking American jobs or deflating the pay rates that a lot of Yankee loggers feel are unfair. So, yeah, I think that’s a persistent issue here.

WISCONSIN — The Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association is bringing back the annual Great Lakes Logging and Heavy Equipment Expo; it will be held Sept. 8-10 in Green Bay. It’s the first time since 2010 that the event has been held. Wisconsin’s forests and paper-making industry generate more than $24 billion in economic output. The state’s Brown County and Fox Valley are home to the nation’s leading paper producers. They’re supported by raw material harvested from forests in the Great Lakes Region. The expo is designed to showcase forest products used for daily life and how modern techniques are used in the sustainable management of forests. Exhibitors will showcase their products and services. Also featured will be wood carvers, portable sawmills, firewood processors, the BARKO Log Loader Competition, The Forwarder Challenge and a mini-excavator competition.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Maine suggests that artificial intelligence could be a cost-effective and energy-efficient tool to monitor and manage Maine’s forests. Researchers from the university, in collaboration with the University of Vermont, used the University of Maine’s Wireless Sensor Networks laboratory to devise a way that artificial intelligence and machine learning could be used to assist soil moisture monitoring practices. Monitoring soil conditions can typically be a time-consuming job, with soil conditions changing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Forest management practices have relied on expensive monitoring systems that were not adequate to assess soil quality on a large scale, according to Aaron Weiskittel, the director of the Center for Research on Sustainable Forests. …The new software can learn to react to environmental and network conditions, and report only the data points that are most necessary to generating meaningful information about forest health. 

ILLINOIS — Environmentalists are trying to spare the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois from loggers. The Shawnee Forest Defense’s efforts are detailed in the documentary “Shawnee Showdown: Keep the Forest Standing.” The 2021 film was produced by Cade Bursell, a professor of film at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The documentary will play during a free showing at the Normal Theater at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Activist John Wallace helped stop logging and oil and gas drilling in the forest decades ago through a court injunction. Since then, the Forest Service won a court battle to resume logging in Shawnee. Now, Wallace and the Shawnee Forest Defense want Congress to remove forest control from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. …“They are used to producing crops, and unfortunately the Forest Service looks at our national forest in many ways as a crop,” Wallace said.

Rick Bass

In the real-time here-and-now, however, though also operating in broad daylight, is another kind of sedition. Climate change — the nation’s and the world’s number-one national security threat. On Earth Day, President Biden issued an executive order to the Department of Agriculture, which includes the U.S. Forest Service, as well as Department of Interior, to inventory for protection all old and mature forests on the public lands. Old forests are carbon-storing miracles, and in the fight to slow climate change, we don’t have time to cut them down and wait centuries for the possibility of such giants arising once. How great are these old forests at keeping carbon in the ground? The largest 1% of trees in a forest can hold up to 50% of the forest’s carbon.

Experts have said coastal forests absorb floodwater, curb erosion, lessen heat and trap carbon dioxide that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere. But there are many threats to these forests — both right now and likely accelerating in the years to come. They include sea-level rise, invasive pests, development, storms and more, according to a recent report. The Virginia Department of Forestry and nonprofit Green Infrastructure Center spent several years studying the coastal forests …along the Virginia Peninsula. …Higher sea levels bring salt water into forests that aren’t prepared for it, which can kill or stress the trees, creating what are known as “ghost forests,” Matt Lee, a community landscape forester said. …Trees stressed from salt water are more at risk of pests and disease. Dead debris then creates a fire risk, which threatens encroaching urban areas.

For decades, the mountain pine beetle has caused an unprecedented amount of forest mortality in western North America, tearing through pine stands from the Pacific Coast all the way to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Now, researchers at the Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center (MITPPC) are preparing for the impending arrival of one of the top threats to Minnesota’s trees.  Brian Aukema answers questions about the species and why they pose a threat to Minnesota pine forests.  ….A warming climate, unprecedented population of beetles, and firewood and timber transport could help this destructive forest pest make its way across the prairie divide. That’s why, even though researchers have yet to find mountain pine beetle in the state, MITPPC has ranked it as the No. 1 invasive insect priority for research funding.

Thirty years ago, as a paper company undertook a massive, 15,000-acre clear-cut near Moosehead Lake, a team of bird researchers had an idea.  They wanted to document how songbirds are affected by commercial forest practices across a large landscape.  The results surprised them. They found that birds and logging can coexist with different ages and types of trees. Now, with the population of U.S. birds plummeting, the team is back to document how Maine’s North Woods may offer hope for their survival.    …“Birds have declined continentally by like 30 percent since we did the original study,” Hagan said. “The forest has changed a lot. Used to be we talked about a lot of clear cutting going on at the time. There’s not much at all now.”  There are fewer paper companies now and clear cuts are limited to 250 acres in size. 

David McRae

MISSISSIPPI — You may have heard … about the ESG movement. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. In business and investing, ESG is supposed to be a method of rating and evaluating how sustainable and ethical various companies are, but in practice, it is a political football that unjustly cherry picks winners and losers. …an ESG assessment of a company reviews its policies related to the environment, such as waste management…; its social policies, such as how employees are treated…; and its governance policies, such as how leaders operate the company…. …ESG standards are being applied subjectively, often according to perceived political ideology rather than hard facts. …What if Mississippi’s timber industry gets blacklisted by the ESG crowd? That industry alone supports thousands of Mississippi jobs. …The fact of the matter is that ESG is nothing more than a feel-good agenda written by liberal elites.