Carlton Owen

Kate Gatto

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The chief strategy officer for the National Alliance of Forest Owners presents the 2024 Carlton Owen Lecture, an annual event presented by Mississippi State’s College of Forest Resources held in anticipation of Earth Week. Kate Gatto will lead the April 16 public program “It’s Not Easy Being Green: Forestry as a Bipartisan Solution” at 2 p.m. in Tully Auditorium, Thompson Hall. “Forestry is one of the unique areas of society where economic and environmental values are inextricably linked,” Gatto said. “No other sector of our economy has such a strong story to tell about what happens when economic and environmental values align.” …The Owen Lecture Series was established more than 30 years ago in MSU’s CFR by Carlton Owen, a Greenville, South Carolina, resident and 1974 MSU graduate. The program focuses on natural resource conservation issues.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Despite the recent rain it still is fire season in New York State, and crews from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and other agencies remain hard at work managing forests – performing what are known as prescribed burns. Forest Rangers with the DEC, like Captain Ryan Wickens, use these controlled burns as they’re also referred, to maintain forests and remove excess burnable material that could help a wildfire spread. That’s not always the primary goal. In many cases these burns can help pave the way for a healthier ecosystem. “What that fire does is, right before those warm season native grasses start to grow, we set fire to the old organic material. And any weeds that would have popped up early in that cooler weather, they get burnt,” said Captain Wickens. “It dumps the nutrients back into the soil. So you get a lot of nitrogen. Phosphorus, things like that.”

HARRIS, Michigan — The Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association — the same organization that unites members and aficionados for the Great Lakes Logging and Heavy Equipment Expo — brought its Spring Celebration to the Island Resort and Casino Tuesday. The convention featured speakers, 50 exhibitors, a luncheon, an award presentation and prizes. …With the industry in a slump, the gathering of loggers and truckers discussed the state of the sector. Marty Ochs from the Green Bay Innovation Group addressed the perceived need to bring saw mills and logging jobs back to local hands. Ochs spoke specifically about Wisconsin, mostly, but the American Loggers Council (ALC) said the problem isn’t restricted to the Great Lakes Region. Nationally, within the last 15 months, 50 mills have closed, resulting in the loss of 10,000 jobs, reported Scott Dane, executive director of the ALC. “We’re not having any less demand for wood products; we’re just importing it from other sources,” Dane said.

With rows of trees stretching for more than 2,000 acres, individual pine trees blur into the next at UF’s Austin Cary Forest off Waldo Road in Alachua County. But on roughly 10 acres nestled in the middle, Aaron Smith keeps track of each tree, individual branches on the trees and the specific strobili on each branch. From January through March, Smith gets face-to-needle with the trees using a mechanical lift. He carefully selects a labeled bottle of yellow pollen, covers a branch with a special-made hood and fertilizes the strobili with the pollen. The male pollen and female strobili were matched long before Smith climbed the lift as part of the Cooperative Forest Genetics Research Program (CFGRP). The program has worked to enhance the quality and quantity of loblolly and slash pines through genetic breeding since 1953. The CFGRP now estimates that 99% of southern pine seedlings planted in Florida are products of the program.