Preservation efforts focus on private land
[New York] A new program being launched by the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation is designed to preserve imperiled habitat on private land like this, although Morgan, who’s coordinating the program, says it’s unlikely to help when a landowner is intent on selling to developers, as this one is. The state program is funded by a $600,000 grant from the federal Landowner Incentive Program, initiated in 2002 by the Bush administration and overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In exchange for a five-year commitment to preserve the habitat, landowners will be paid $55 to $60 per acre and given a customized land-management plan. Landowners who aren’t chosen to receive reimbursements still can receive guidance on how to enhance their land for wildlife. “The financial incentive can help influence a landowner who’s already leaning toward conservation,” Morgan said. “But it probably won’t help when a landowner is just looking to cash out and get off the farm.”

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

The objective of this standard is to provide a framework for the procedures to be followed by certification bodies when auditing forest managers and FMUs for compliance with FSC Controlled Wood standards for forest management enterprises FSC-STD-30-010, and integrating the observations to come to a reliable certification decision.

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www.southernsustainableforests.org

[New Hampshire] Maintaining and improving the world’s working forests is key to slowing global warming, but climate change will accelerate if the current rate of forest loss continues, according to scientists and policy experts who will speak at a conference in Concord this week. ”Development is really outpacing forestry as the highest and best use of forest lands, and finding ways to deal with that will have significant climate benefits,” The keys are preserving existing forests through conservation easements; storing more carbon by increasing the average age of the trees and selecting for more hardwoods than softwoods _ which also increases the wood’s market value; and making sure such measures produce an economic return for landowners. ”Climate is a forest product,” she said. ”We can leverage that to increase the net stocks of carbon that these forests are taking up and holding … in a way that puts a higher-value forest industry back on the landscape.”

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

[Washington, DC] In a decision broadly affecting field trials of genetically engineered crops a federal district judge ruled yesterday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must halt approval of all new field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted. Citing potential threats to the environment, Judge Harold Kennedy found in favor of the Center for Food Safety that USDA’s past approvals of field trials of herbicide tolerant, genetically engineered bentgrass were illegal.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

[Washington, DC] The Administration’s proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 2008, released Feb. 5, deeply cuts funding for land conservation programs and further threatens this country’s decades-long commitment to protecting public lands. Despite…enormous need, the Administration’s FY 2008 budget proposed only $29 million for 14 Forest Legacy projects…a cut of more than 50% from the president’s request last year ($61.5 million)… Despite the president’s earlier pledges to “fully fund” the highly popular and effective Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), the budget released today further accelerates a trend of deep cuts to the program.
Not available online. For more info, contact Mark Shelly, Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, 828-252-9223

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www.southernsustainableforests.org

Ohio tree farmers’ cooperative seeks better markets, prices for ‘King of Pines’
[Ohio] “We’re a group of landowners who thought that by banding together we could more effectively market pine,” explains Woyar, a forester and secretary for the cooperative. Pine trees are actively marketed, Woyar explains, but it is a relatively low-value market in which most of the trees are used for wood pulp. Many of these pines, however, yield good lumber and with a better marketing effort can net higher value when sold as material for furniture, wainscot siding, log homes and timber frames. That desire is what led to the formation of OPPC. [Page 14 of the PDF Newsletter]

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www.southernsustainableforests.org

For well over 20 years the wood products industry has been asking the question: “Do customers really care about green?,” And, more recently, making the statement: “No one is asking for certified wood, so why should I offer it?” Consistently, underlying the industry reticence to embrace green practices is the primary excuse that “customers aren’t requesting it, so why should I offer something they so obviously don’t want (otherwise they’d ask – right?).” Perhaps, however, the truth is that customers rarely request new products and waiting for them to do so puts your company out of the running.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

In stark contrast with President Bush’s rosy economic reports, the U.S. economy has actually stagnated since the late 1970s as income inequality, environmental degradation, and our flailing international position take their toll on real economic progress. This is one of the key findings the 2006 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) update. The GPI is an alternative economic accounting system that takes into account the costs associated with lost forests, farmland, and wetlands, pollution, disappearing family time, and capital exported abroad. …the 2006 update adds new sub-accounts tracking the economic benefits of higher education and the costs associated with carbon emissions and loss of primary forest cover because of the increasing importance of these factors.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

More issues need coverage on Duke Energy’s Cliffside power plant. What is the rationale for Public Staff approval? Has there really been any serious study of conservation/efficiency/alternative energy routes? With the attorney general skeptical, something is really wrong with this picture.

It is well known that the United States is far less efficient in energy use than Europe or Japan. It is less risky in a climate of uncertainty to do things to reduce demand, as these are quick to implement and do not involve 30-year investments that have to be paid off regardless of whether your forecasting was good.

Further, it is morally wrong to subsidize electricity by ignoring real costs like air pollution and mountaintop removal. Polluters should pay, and full costs of their operations should be reflected in the cost of their product. This is the only way the “market” gets good price information so consumers can make informed choices.

We should take a go-slow approach while these things get sorted out and the Public Staff does a good least-cost analysis looking at a longer-term future. It seems clear that Duke’s urgency is being driven by fear of more regulation rather than by current need.

Bill Thomas

Cedar Mountain
The News Observer

NO SINGLE BILL under consideration in Virginia would
have an impact so
widely and personally felt as legislation setting
rules under which Dominion
Virginia Power would operate, provide electricity
and set rates for the
state’s 2.1 million paying customers. Yet the
legislation before the General
Assembly, which will govern how much the large
majority of households and
businesses in the state pay for electric power, has
been a stunningly rushed
and closely held affair. Originally drafted by
Dominion itself, then pored
over by a handful of stakeholders for 60 hours over
13 days in a conference
room in the state capital, the measure has been
subject to no statewide
hearings, limited public scrutiny and little outside
analysis. What,
exactly, is the rush?

Part of the explanation is that Dominion, despite
its vast influence (and
heavy political contributions) in Richmond, feared
that the political mood
was turning sour. Spooked by drastic rate increases
in Maryland, a few
Virginia lawmakers were drafting bills that would
resurrect the rules under
which Dominion and the state’s other utilities did
business before
deregulation began in 1999. (Electricity
deregulation, which failed to yield
the much-promised competition, has been a flop.)
Seizing the initiative,
Dominion offered up its own plan which, after
negotiations under the
auspices of the state attorney general’s office, was
unveiled at the end of
January. Given that the General Assembly adjourns in
two weeks, that left
little time for lawmakers, consumers,
environmentalists and other interested
parties to get a handle on it.

The resulting legislation is touted as
“re-regulation.” In fact it is a
hybrid that bears scant resemblance to the pre-1999
regime that did an
adequate if imperfect job of providing safe,
efficient and dependable
electrical service at reasonable prices. In place of
the old, cost-based
regulation that ensured reasonable earnings, the
Dominion-backed proposal
holds out the prospect, if not the promise, of much
larger, and possibly
massive, profits. What’s more, the state’s
regulatory muscle — to turn back
proposed rate increases, for instance — would be
severely limited.

The question is whether this is justified. Dominion
and its allies point to
dramatically surging electricity demand in Virginia,
which the firm says it
can meet only by building major new generating
capacity (meaning nuclear
power plants). To provide the risk incentives for
such huge infrastructure
investment, Dominion contends that it (and its
lenders) will need something
close to a guarantee of handsome profits in the
future. Its earnings under
the old regulatory system just won’t do, says the
firm.

We can’t say flatly that’s wrong. It’s true that
demand is growing at a
dizzying pace. But whether Dominion’s legislative
proposal is fully
justified is a question that should invite more
scrutiny. Virginia has
subjected legislation of much less consequence to
far greater review. This
bill deserves at least as much.

Washington Post Editorial

[Montana] Blakely works as a contractor for a small Missoula-based logging operation called Woodland Restoration Inc. On Monday, the crew is working on a project to thin about 50 acres of both private land and property owned by the National Wildlife Federation. “This isn’t old-time traditional logging,” he said. “It’s not about getting the cut out. Nearly all the people we work with are conservation-minded. They just want to do what’s best for their lands.” The average cost of thinning forestlands around the Missoula area is somewhere between $700 and $800 an acre, Arno said. In some cases – when the job is close to houses or far from mills – the price tag can run as high as $2,000 an acre. “On a larger-scale ecosystem type of thin, the costs are quite a bit less. It might cost $200 an acre.” “But one thing is for certain. If we don’t keep our milling infrastructure in this state, then all of this work is going to become so expensive that probably hardly any of it will get done,”

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org

[Idaho] Some landowners in the Pacific Northwest are planting new forests of trees to consume greenhouse gases and potentially buffer climate change, in a business called carbon forestry. The Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho recently planted 5,000 acres of new forest along the Clearwater River and is in the process of selling carbon credits from the land. The state of Idaho also is exploring the idea as a way to get more value out of its timber. The trees can be worth money to energy companies and other businesses under increasing pressure to offset the carbon dioxide they emit, said Ted Dodge, director of the National Carbon Offset Coalition of Butte, Mont. “We believe this is going to be the largest commodity market in the world,”

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org