Necessary Forests: Why Forests Matter

Why Forests Matter

For several years now, I’ve been asked to do a presentation on winter tree identification for the local chapter of Tree Stewards. It’s an honor to be in the company of a roomful of people who are actually paying to learn more about trees in order to volunteer their time in planting and caring for them. The very name is a pleasure--Tree Stewards--because stewardship captures so clearly the idea of responsibility detached from ownership. We are responsible for many things we have no title or claim to. Unfortunately, we have entered an era where the fence of personal possession too often serves as the boundary for responsibility.

But the idea of stewardship also pleases me because it gives me a chance to point out ways that trees—these tall, stately, benign beings that surround us—themselves act as stewards of the world. They care for it—and for us—in ways so sweeping, so numerous, and so profound that we can hardly grasp the depth and breadth of their responsibility for our well-being.

That is my perspective. But in this chapter I’ll be talking about a wide range of reasons forests matter to people. Forests matter to many people for reasons that I don’t personally subscribe to, but this discussion would be incomplete without them. I’ll begin by switching metaphors, from a steward’s role to one even more responsible, and more intimate: a mother. My mother. Our mother.

Why forests matter: Relationships and our natural context

Why did my mother matter?

We could say she produced a range of products—a daily stream of cooked, canned, and baked goods. Clothes she made on her sewing machine. Halloween costumes she whipped together. Slippers and sweaters she crocheted. Games she fashioned out of things like bottle caps and clothespins.

And the services she rendered? Seemingly without end. Cleaning house, cooking meals, washing windows, mopping floors, scouring the sink, doing the laundry, hanging clothes out to dry, ironing, bathing us when we were small, changing diapers, wiping our bottoms, removing splinters, nursing us when we were sick, reading stories, teaching us songs and counting and the alphabet, helping with homework, comforting, encouraging, buying gifts, celebrating birthdays and holidays, visiting relatives, and on and on.

Like forest services, none of these had any cash value attached; they were simply what mothers did.

But as critical as those products and services were, they were among the least important reasons my mother mattered.

She mattered because she knew me before I knew myself, and loved me before I emerged to blink my eyes at this Earth. She mattered because she was genetically and historically my link to people who came before me, those who have surrounded me, and those who will follow after. She mattered because I could neither have come into being nor survived without her; I was utterly dependent on her milk, her attention, her feeding, her shelter, her warmth, her protection. She mattered because our bonding gave me calmness and security, and a deep foundation for my development. She mattered because our love was a two-way process, affecting how I see myself and how I have related to others for the remainder of my life. She mattered because of her beauty, her voice, her teaching, her stories, her example. Like the rest of us, she was far from perfect, but the things that mattered most about her were irreplaceable.

So, I am suggesting, forests—and nature in general—have a comparable role in our lives. Like our mothers, the natural world existed before we did, and greets us at our birth. It too knew us before we knew ourselves; forests have been home to humans dating back as far as our Homo genus can be traced--2.5 million years--and beyond that to Australopithecines and their predecessors. And for all our near-worship of “self-made” men, we are as utterly dependent on forests as an infant is upon its mother. We depend upon them for the oxygen in every breath we take, the fruit that we eat, the shade in which we take our rest, the purity of the water that we drink, the books that nourish our minds, the homes that shelter us, the furnishings of our lives.

If we don’t know why forests matter at this point, what do we know?

To say that a mother or a forest matters because we are loved and love in return is not a tautology. It is to refer something from one level of relationship to a higher, entirely different plane. Seeing nature as the mothering force for us all reinforces the perception that we are siblings--all right, maybe distant cousins--with all other living things--the oaks and the pines and the ashes, as well as the sparrows and spiders and field mice and groundhogs. The mothering role of the Earth isn’t speculation, or interpretation, or the playful embroidery of imagination, or retreaded mysticism. It is actual, factual, and paramount.

Yet we’ve lost that sense of being mothered by the world, and our lost connection with nature resembles being bereft of our mother. We have lost a vast yet intimate relationship with a natural world that is literally, genetically, and historically kin to us. Our frequent references to “Mother Nature” have been stripped of even metaphorical force. “Mother Nature” is simply a cliché, a meaningless, quasi-humorous phrase.

As humans relentlessly deforest Earth at a dizzying pace, and as millions of us no longer see forests unless we’re flying over them or driving between cities, bringing the mothering qualities of forests back into our awareness may be one of the most critical needs of our time. We gallop through life like horses fitted with blinders.

People no longer know they’re related to the beings around them. They don’t know that we’re surrounded by brothers and sisters and cousins many, many times removed. They buy a tree and it's little different from buying a lawn ornament or firewood.

The truth is that evolution is a miser. It hoards its genes, keeping the same gene for similar functions as two sisters set off on separate paths of generations that eventually evolve into different species, genuses, families, and beyond. Humans stepped into that journey after genes had traveled an unimaginable distance along one of those paths.

Craig Venter describes addressing a conference before molecular biology had advanced too far in its work with genomes, and being confronted by a Catholic priest who told the group that patenting human genes was immoral. Venter asked the priest if patenting genes from non-human species is immoral, and the priest answered “no.” Venter then described how his team had recently sequenced a human gene that was in every way identical with a gene from a rat.

Mammals—including humans—share over 90% of their genes, most of them in the same sequence on their chromosomes. I’ve read that there is a 55% genetic overlap between humans and oak trees. The bottom line is that humans share genes with every living organism. We are family.

Before someone reacts to my thoughts on mothering nature by deciding I’m a hopeless sentimentalist, I’d best say that I’m all too aware of poisonous mushrooms, typhoons, stinging nettles and stingrays, sharks and deer ticks, avalanches and landslides, earthquakes and rattlesnakes, mosquitoes, black widows, and volcanoes. Nature is not always a sweet old lady. For that matter, neither—bless her heart—was my mother.

I already touched upon a second reason why forests matter in the previous chapter: a spiritual conviction of the sacredness of the natural world. Silvanus, the Roman god of forests, is the source of our words “silvics” (the study of forests) and “silviculture” (the art of growing and maintaining forests). The Buddha was enlightened under a bodhi tree; Buddhists still consider the bodhi sacred. In Norse mythology, a large ash tree formed the center of the world. Druids performed their religious ceremonies while wearing a garland of oak leaves. Tane Mahuta, a giant kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest in New Zealand, bears the name of the Maori god of the forests. Tane is the son of the sky father and the earth mother, and clothes his mother in vegetation, and his own children are all the trees and birds of the forests. These mythic figures are a small sampling from what was once a world-wide reverence for forests.

That reverence isn’t just a primitive, prehistoric world view, now outgrown except in isolated indigenous communities. Even in contemporary U.S. society, it survives in some places. Writers as different as Wendell Berry, Thomas Berry, and Gary Snyder come from wildly different religious backgrounds but end up spiritual brothers, harmonizing voices, trying to call us back to a rapport with and reverence for all ecosystems and all living beings.

The worthiness of everything that exists is established in the Book of Genesis. The Bible’s very first chapter details the six days of creation, repeating after each, “and God saw it was good.” The last verse in the chapter shows God surveying his completed work, and sums up his pleasure with his work: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

The goodness of creation is not simply a matter of being well-made, or useful, or pretty. The goodness of creation is an active spiritual force. Spiritual force isn’t something we invest in forests; it is theirs inherently.

That message still lives in some of our communities, and implies a binding obligation on our behavior.

Many Christians feel an obligation to be stewards of creation, including forests, based on a reading of scattered Biblical texts, including verses 28 through 30 in the first chapter of Genesis: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

A third compelling reason why forests matter lies in ethical standards and requirements. Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1933 that “A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow-men....” Forests are communities of living beings, as autonomous as anything is autonomous, with the same right to exist as humans. Like all other creatures alive at this moment, trees are no less evolved than “we the people,” sharing the same billions of years of evolutionary development. Though we have taken divergent paths, our histories can all be traced back over the same time span to our common ancestors.

As the Bible tells us, we did not make ourselves; nor, as Joyce Kilmer wrote, did we make a tree. Just as politicians portray themselves as “servants of the people” while exercising the hubris of potentates, so we sometimes call ourselves “stewards of Creation” while consuming and degrading it on a planetary scale. Recognizing the natural world’s autonomy can be compared to respecting another person’s autonomy, or another nation’s autonomy—both things we honor in the abstract, but have a great deal of trouble with in performance.

In the U.S., both John Muir and Thoreau advocated biocentric or ecocentric thinking , calling for an expansion of ethics that would embrace not just human behavior but all the components of our ecosystem. Christopher Stone, writing in 1972, took the next logical step, in a groundbreaking article entitled “Should Trees Have Standing? — Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects.” Ethics and the law are not necessarily the same thing, by any means, but they often travel parallel courses. By standing, Stone meant the conferral of legal standing—the right of trees and other parts of the natural world to initiate a lawsuit when they are being harmed.

He argued that this is a natural progression. Husbands and fathers once had complete authority, even life-and-death power, over their wives and children. Gradually the rights of those family members, as well as those of prisoners, the insane, animals, municipalities, and even corporations were encompassed in legal standing.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, effectively underlining the “personhood” of corporations, was a controversial step expanding standing. If corporations, non-living creations of our legal and economic systems, can systematically ravage the natural world, one could argue, then the natural world, which teems with living creatures sharing our genes, should also acquire sufficient legal standing to defend itself.

Bolivia has taken that giant step forward, with a landmark law that confers just such standing. It’s entitled “Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra,” the Law of Rights of Mother Earth, and is rooted in the belief system of indigenous Bolivian people and their reverence for the Earth goddess Pachamama. It is also the most radical (in the sense of getting to the root of the matter) environmental legislation on our planet. The law ties together the mothering nature I wrote of above, spiritual traditions, ethical stances, and legal status.

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A fourth reason why forests matter is their sheer number and size, multiplied by the good performed by each tree. If we had a proper sense of humility, we would enter a forest with the respect we enter a cathedral. In 2005, the last date for which I can find NASA figures, there were over 400 billion trees on the planet—approximately 61 trees for every person alive, each silently shading, cooling, enriching, and cleansing the Earth. In the intervening years the human population has grown and the number of trees has declined, but the figures would still indicate that by quantity, volume, and kindness, trees are benevolent giants on our planet.

A fifth reason forests matter has to do with a peculiar effect trees have on us—what I think of as their ability to tune us to a different frequency.

When we enter a forest, our inner chatter stops. Perhaps it’s simply the disappearance of glare, the movement from exposure to shelter, the sense that even though we are “outside,” we have indeed entered something—a refuge, a place deserving of our respect and attention. Perhaps it is the presence of still beings whose age, bulk, and stature dwarf us. But whatever it is, the result is immediate and palpable; forests have a power of place.

I think of them as inviting flows of Alpha waves, and am reminded of Stephanie Mills’ description of people going to the wilderness “to get their awe.” As tired as I am of hearing everything from toys to toilet paper labeled “awesome,” I believe that we need awe to remind us of what we are, and of what we are not. Forests are places where we can readily experience the holiness of life. Awe is at hand, easy to access, no training or self-mortification required. Only a willingness to be there and give time over to becoming aware.

Why forests matter: Psychological and Spiritual Benefits

Conventional foresters and ecologists tend to focus on the kinds of physical benefits I list below as “ecosystem services”—things like forests’ impact on water quality and soil erosion. Urban planners, psychologists, and others point to the psychological benefits of trees as well. Trees provide humans with a sense of privacy and security. Akira Miyawaki calls them “living green sanctuaries.” Their flowers and forms, their colors and textures, their scents and their soft murmurs enrich our surroundings. They calm us, leading to a sense of relaxation and even serenity in which depression, anger, and aggressiveness all begin to fade away. They promote mental and physical health. In the words of the 23rd Psalm, they “restoreth the soul.”

Psychologists have lately come to an interest in what they have labeled “restorative environments,” settings which help people recover from stress, improve their moods, restore their ability to pay attention, and in general inspire a sense of well-being. Not surprisingly, they have identified as helpful factors such things as our sense of “being away” from our human-structured world and our fascination with the rich details of natural surrounding--what they call “soft” fascination. But their professional focus was anticipated by many who voiced and acted upon the same beliefs.

Thoreau, ever the prophet, referred to “the tonic of wildness” more than one hundred and fifty years ago, a tonic being something that restores our wholeness, that creates a sense of well-being or new vigor.

Stephen Mather, who made his fortune with the Pacific Coast Borax Company (he is credited with the idea of marketing their product as “20 Mule Team Borax”) suffered from bipolar disorder and was periodically beset by depression. Nature drew him with its power to comfort and restore his spirit, an experience that led him to become a friend of John Muir and a powerful advocate for conserving wild places in our national park system.

Early national parks and monuments were managed by a hodgepodge of Army officers and political appointees; after voicing sharp criticism of the condition of the parks, Mather was appointed the first director of the National Park Service. He dedicated himself to making the benefits of wild places available to more people by improving road and rail access and by spurring the creation of more national parks, breaking with the fixation on the glories of the American West and extending their reach into the eastern portion of the country.

I have seen the calming, restorative power of nature firsthand. Perhaps you have as well. I have an autistic grandson. My daughter has talked about days when he was very young and would cry without ceasing, on and on, despite her holding him, rocking him, singing to him, shushing him, feeding him, checking his diaper, and all the other things mothers do to comfort a wailing child. She discovered, when she was at her wit’s end, that if she took him to a nearby woods, he would stop crying as soon as they entered the woods, and look around, quiet and calm and content. Other mothers of autistic children have told me similar stories.

Autistic children are hypersensitive to the world around them, yet I think many of us have a similar reaction upon entering a forest. As soon as we step into the company of trees, it resembles being part of an orchestra, and moving from the cacophony of tuning up to starting the music. Within a few seconds, jangling and discord cease, and we are enveloped by melody and harmony. We respond by ourselves becoming peaceful—full of peace.

We might think of these as benefits to our “state of mind,” but of course that is a dualistic way of looking at our lives. Our bodies and our minds are inseparable parts of one another. And so the benefits of being calmed by forests and the natural world can be documented in measurable physical changes. Heart rates drop. Blood pressure falls. Stress hormone levels are reduced. Muscles relax, losing the tension that we often carry around us so long we’re not even aware of it—until we try some yoga postures, and realize how stiff we are. Or until someone massages our neck or shoulders, and remarks on the tightness and knots.

As we humans transform more and more of the world around us into our own industrialized image, forests become a touchstone for a differently-organized reality. David Abram has written that majestic forests and rivers enable us to distance ourselves from our technologies, to understand their limitations, and “to keep ourselves from turning into them.”

Wendell Berry has said that “the news of eternity” can come at any time, in any place. He is right. But few settings match a forest’s ability to prepare us to hear the news of eternity and meditate on it in silence.

Why Forests Matter: Refuges and Hiding Places

Forests serve as another, very different, kind of psychological realm as well, something that I didn’t fully appreciate until this afternoon.

I was hiking a stretch of the Rivanna Trail and met a woman who asked me if I was homeless. Homeless folk frequent the trail—especially along this stretch, which is close to a shopping center that contains both a liquor store and a grocery that tosses out food in its dumpster. It was a reasonable question. I was wearing faded jeans, an old jacket, and a cheap hat, and the truth is I look pretty worn and battered myself. Like most of the homeless in this area, I wore a pack on my back, and the long cloth case I was carrying could easily have been holding a tent and poles--standard equipment for the homeless here. (In this case, my pack held my camera and an extra lens; a tripod was in the cloth case.)

The woman was homeless herself, and said she had been camping in the woods along the trail since January—nine or ten months. She was blonde and still attractive, despite her missing front teeth, the cigarette in her hand, and the beer on her breath. (“I’m a little drunk.”)

We talked for a while. She told me her last boyfriend had tried to set her afire—”like a witch, you know?”—and then she unexpectedly veered off into talking about fellow creatures in the woods, about watching crows repeatedly drive off the three hawks in the area, about goldfinches and cardinals eating seeds from the tall weeds, about deer feeding in the nearby soccer field at dusk. “Come sit in the bleachers just as it’s getting dark,” she promised me; “you’ll see half a dozen, maybe more.” She stared at me intently, reached her hand out slowly, and touched my cheek. Then she pulled her hand down and showed me bloody spots on her thumb and forefinger. “Mosquito,” she said. “He was making a meal of you.”

I had headed out on the hike as a break from working on this chapter, and on the way back home, my head swirling, I realized that these woods were fulfilling a function that I hadn’t touched on earlier, yet it was one which woods and forests have performed historically, again and again. They serve as places where people can retreat and lick their wounds, where the hunted can conceal themselves, where outcasts can live outside society, where the poor can retreat from rent or house payments and utility bills and eke out a living. The always-moving, always-disappearing western frontier long served in these ways in the U.S.

In my part of the country, moonshiners made their way through the woods at night, toting hundred pound bags of sugar on their backs. During World War II, partisans fleeing from Nazi forces often hid in forests. Survivalists in the U.S. and the United Kingdom have headed for the woods out of fears of economic collapse, hatred of the government, or anticipation of a nuclear war. White supremacists and militant groups have used forests as organizational centers and as training camps, concealed from the eyes of the rest of the world.

We hide when we feel rejected. When we are endangered. When we’re weak or defenseless. When we feel guilty or ashamed. When people disapprove of us. When we’re embarrassed or humiliated. When we’re misunderstood. When we’re acting illegally. When we are predators waiting to strike. When we are the hunted. Whatever the reason, individually or collectively, forests are often the hiding place of choice.

Why forests matter: Preventive power and medicines for healing

Forests are good for us in ways other than psychologically and spiritually. They both act to prevent illness and restore us to what we think of as our physical wellbeing. A study initiated by the U.S. Forest Service created some stir when it was published January 2013 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The researchers had explored the connection between the death of over 100 million ash trees and spikes in human deaths from cardiovascular and lower respiratory disease.

What they found was that the counties hard hit by the emerald ash borer did indeed suffer more deaths from cardiovascular and lower respiratory disease than counties that had so far been untouched by the emerald ash borer, and that, furthermore, the rise of such deaths coincided with the deaths of massive numbers of ash trees. The rise in human deaths also took place within an 18-year period during which overall respiratory-related death numbers had fallen, and the magnitude of the effect coincided with the progress of the ash borer infestation.

After controlling for all the demographic factors they could come up with, the researchers were left with only one plausible explanation, which they advance with the traditional academic caution: that there was a direct causal relationship between the deaths of the trees and the deaths of humans.

While there may have been psychosomatic elements to the relationship between tree and human deaths—stress and depression triggered by watching favorite trees die; the loss of natural psychological buffering afforded by nature—it is also likely that there was a direct physical trigger as well: a drop in air quality. Trees filter particles and pollutants from the air in large, measurable quantities, especially in urban areas—things such as dust, ash, pollen, smoke, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide.

One study in Bellingham, Washington, discovered that leaves from the trees lining bus routes were as much as 10 times more magnetic than leaves on less-traveled streets. The enhanced magnetism came from the leaves’ capture of pollutant particles, especially the iron oxides in diesel exhaust. Trees also lower urban temperatures and put more moisture into the air through evapotranspiration. It’s not hard to see how losing a significant portion of all of these benefits would have health consequences.

The medicinal qualities of particular trees were once much better known than they are now. I remember the amazement I felt after chewing on willow twigs as a boy and learning that their bitter taste came from salicylic acid, the main ingredient in aspirin. In fact, the word “salicylic” comes straight from the Latin name of the willows--Salix. There are records on Egyptian papyri of pain relievers derived from willow bark being used as far back as the second millennium BCE.

Birch also contains salicylic acid, and folk medicine practitioners chewed birch twigs to combat pain, headaches, and fevers. How did people learn these thing, I wondered. How many twigs do people sample to find something that has a healing effect? How many berries and roots and barks to find which ones could be used as human foods and poisons and medicines? How many generations to winnow through the vast repertoire of plants around us?

Most of us have probably used, or are familiar with, forest-derived healants. Off the top of my head, my own family’s experience includes not just aspirin, but the camphor ointment my mother used to apply to my sore muscles (from Cinnamomum camphora) when I had rheumatic fever, and paclitaxel, tradenamed Taxol, one of the chemotherapy drugs used to treat my wife’s breast cancer (derived originally from Pacific Yew, Taxus brevifolia).

Other forest health items include tincture of benzoin, made from the Benjamin tree (Styrax benzoin), used in inhalers to help relieve bronchitis; and Balm of Gilead, from Balsam Poplar buds, an expectorant and healing topical skin treatment. Topotecan (used to treat ovarian and lung cancer) and irinotecan (used to treat colorectal cancer) are analogues of camptothecin, a compound extracted from Campotheca, or Happy Tree (Camptotheca acuminata).

Quinine, a medicine first used by the Quechua people of Peru and Bolivia, comes from the bark of the Cinchona Tree. It was the first effective remedy against malaria, and is still used in some areas because of its low cost. For those of us in the eastern U.S., it is interesting that bark extracts of the Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) have also been used as a substitute for quinine in treating malaria (although quinine is considered more effective), and were used by Native Americans to treat fevers in general. Xylitol, a sugar alcohol derived from hardwoods, reduces cavities, lowers the number of ear infections, is safe for diabetics and people suffering from hyperglycemia, and effectively inhibits some strep infections.

Drug firms now approach forests as “bioprospectors,” seeking to develop methods to screen the chemical compounds in thousands of plants in order to find those with potential medical benefits. The prospecting metaphor calls up, quite fittingly, the image of hordes of men swarming to California to pan the gravel of stream beds for nuggets of golds—is fitting because “bioprospecting” is primarily about striking it rich with a discovery, and only secondarily about healing.

The sick who recover because of new medicines found won’t care why the search for natural medicines took place (although they may think twice when they receive their pharmaceutical bill). Still, the bioprospecting enterprise, even while emphasizing yet another reason why forests matter, shares the mindset that is everywhere degrading the natural world: What can we extract and how can we exploit it?

Why Forests Matter: Home

I’ve talked about forests as our home in a broad way—through the long march of evolution and in the wide sweep of our place within ecosystems. But for some people, indigenous forest dwellers, forests are home in a very local and specific way. They have, from time immemorial, been a part of the forest, living by fishing, hunting, and gathering the forest’s bounty, drawing on it for their food, homes, medicine, and inspiration. Everywhere they are in retreat, with both their forest home and their traditional culture being overrun by the forces of commerce and modern civilization—two things so intertwined they sometimes seem one and the same.

It’s really difficult to figure how many people belong to this group. The lines get so blurred. For one thing, many indigenous peoples have adapted, in varying degrees, to a hybrid lifestyle, trying to merge some of the benefits of modern living with their familiar, traditional life in the forest. For another, outsiders have moved into the forest--sometimes as part of deliberate colonization efforts sponsored by national governments, sometimes to exploit the forest’s resources, sometimes as missionaries seeking Christian converts, sometimes as nearby people looking for new farmland.

Africa is the area I’m most familiar with. Much of the continent is in a transitional state, rapidly becoming urbanized, Still, many people remain in the “bush,” farming on a short “slash-and-burn” rotation, which itself has been a long transitional state between ancient forest hunting/gathering culture and settled agriculture. In slash-and-burn farming, a patch of woodland is burned and farmed, then left to grow up while the farmer moves through a series of other patches, eventually working back to the first and then repeating the cycle. A few forest people still follow the old tradition, but their number has dwindled to perhaps 150,000 or so, concentrated in Zaire, the Congo, and southern Cameroon. Even they live a hybrid existence between the old ways and the new, spending part of the year near a village where they can do some trading.

In Asia, with its dense population packed into any land even marginally tillable, forest people have been relentlessly driven into ever smaller and more remote locations. The last remnants survive in New Guinea, parts of the Malay peninsula and the Philippines, the Andaman Islands, Sumatra, and Borneo. Millions of people live in forests in India, but their culture has been seriously diluted and compromised. This includes members of so-called “scheduled tribes,” historically disadvantaged people also known as Adivasis (original inhabitants), who make up about 7.5% of India’s population.

South America’s Amerindians have undergone a similar displacement. When European empire builders arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries, the rainforests held a population estimated at between 7 and 10 million people, concentrated along rivers because of their plentiful fish and the rich alluvial soil. The same rivers, however, became the primary routes of the European conquest, driving the surviving indigenous population (which has been reduced some 90%) to remote, hard-to-reach portions of the interior. Development of all kinds is rapidly penetrating these areas now, with native peoples often robbed of their land or pushed off it, and their cultures everywhere threatened.

Occasional bright spots do appear. One is Bolivia’s “Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra,” mentioned earlier. Another is Ecuador’s Yasuni-ITT biosphere reserve, which plans to use ecotourism to generate income while leaving an enormous oil reserve untapped, preventing greenhouse emissions and preserving biodiversity as well as their people’s forest home.

There is a temptation to invariably see indigenous cultures as the environmental good guys, the people whose culture is invariably threaded through with values and awarenesses that insure sustainability. But like most temptations to take up absolute positions, that generalization doesn’t always hold true. The Nasca civilization of southern Peru collapsed around 500 AD, and researchers have now postulated that the downfall was caused by a combination of major El Niño flooding and the clearing of Huarango trees which once covered the region.

In a forerunner of what was to come, the Nasca cleared the Huarango forests to make way for crop land. But the Huarango turned out to be a keystone species—one which was central to and supportive of the entire ecosystem. It fixes nitrogen, building soil while retaining moisture, and anchors soil with one of the deepest tree root systems known. Before its destruction, the Huarango’s canopy shielded the earth from the sun’s burning heat. With the forest gone, the land became vulnerable, and wind and El Niño flooding stripped the exposed, unanchored soil, carrying it away. Nasca civilization vanished, and the land converted to desert. It’s almost impossible to read about the giant geoglyphs the Nasca left in the now barren desert plain without hearing an echo of Shelley’s “Ozymandias”:

“`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Why Forests Matter: Ecosystem services

Many of us have seen a friend or relative on life support—IV tubes supplying blood and electrolytes and glucose, tubes keeping their airways open, oxygen masks and respirators keeping them breathing. Forest ecosystems furnish life support for the entire planet. Their services are not just essential to civilization, but to the entire biosphere. They are natural, indispensable, and irreplaceable. Machinery and technology could not begin to perform the smallest fraction of what forests, with no input and no direction from us, do minute after minute, day in and day out, year after year. To perform all of these ecosystem services requires healthy forests with countless species and huge populations--underscoring how essential biodiversity is, and why it is critical to half deforestation.

Here is a sampling of what are often called “ecosystem services” provided by forests (as if they existed to be our servants):

Their multi-tiered structure cuts wind velocity across vast areas; this reduction in wind speeds protects crops and buildings from damage and soils from wind erosion.
They filter air, removing dust, ash, pollen, smoke, and other harmful particles.
They absorb air pollutants such as carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.
They modulate noise.
They save energy by cutting both heating and cooling costs.
They act as natural air conditioners in a broader sense, cooling the air by giving off water vapor; they moderate the “heat island” effect of urban areas.
They act as the planet’s lungs, absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off the oxygen we and other animals breathe.
They generate moisture leading to rainfall that is distributed both nearby and at great--even intercontinental--distances.
They regulate water flow, control storm runoff and snow-melt, and reduce flooding.
They protect stream and river banks from erosion by runoff and coastal shores from erosion by waves.
They reduce the amount of sediment in rivers, preventing damage to fisheries and the clogging of reservoirs.
They filter water, removing pollutants and particles, helping provide clean, safe drinking water.
They increase ground water recharge.
They cool rivers and streams, making life viable for aquatic species.
They reduce the rate of water lost by crops through evapotranspiration.
They help prevent soil compaction.
They moderate soil temperatures.
Their understory vegetation and litter layer provide protective cover for soils, preventing sheet erosion.
They stabilize slopes.
They recycle nutrients, creating deep, rich soils.
They decompose and detoxify wastes.
They furnish an enormous variety of pollinators for wild plants as well as gardens and crops.
They play a key role in the dispersal of seeds, especially in tropical forests, where wind-dispersed seeds are minimal and animals spread most species by eating their fruits.
They provide natural enemies (birds, wasps, spiders, fungi, etc.) which control an estimated 99% of potential agricultural pests.
They are vast storehouses of biodiversity at all three levels--gene pools, species, and community types.
They transfer nutrients to food.
They provide food and shelter for countless species and populations of wildlife, housing over two-thirds of known terrestrial species.
They provide corridors for animal movement and migration.
They harbor the largest share of threatened species.
They provide protection from the sun's ultraviolet rays
They help moderate weather extremes and their impacts in a host of ways, by acting as insulators, blocking wind, cooling air, shading surfaces, affecting albedo and cloudiness, and more.
They act as salt breaks in coastal areas, reducing salinization inland and curtailing damage from flooding and tide surges.
They help maintain the necessary environment for successful farming.
They prevent desertification and stabilize sand dunes.
They store vast amounts of carbon, helping stave off even more drastic global warming; a single acre of close primary forest, for example, holds more than 113 tons of carbon. Because of their different layers and the variety of plants crowding into each, the total green surface of forests is anywhere from five to twenty times that of the same square area of a meadow or lawn.

There is something self-defeating about a list like the one I just developed. The sheer number of items almost guarantees no item gets sufficient consideration; a reader scarcely registers one item before jumping to the next. And yet each is of enormous importance. Take away any single “service,” and the world would be a less inviting, less livable place. Take away a half dozen—any half dozen—and much of the life on Earth would struggle to survive. It would take too much space to elaborate on each of the “services” listed, so I’ll allow them to speak for themselves, with the exception of the last item on the list, the relationship between forests and global warming. That issue is so critical that it will be examined in two chapters following this one.

I have a feeling that what’s needed when going through the list is something to slow us down and make us reflect on the various items. Imagine, perhaps, each service standing alone, on an otherwise-blank page, and consider it carefully before turning to the next page. Then it just might be possible to hold all of these services in mind and envision them simultaneously at work.

If we can step back far enough mentally to get a global view of the functioning of forests—one of those “astronaut viewing the beautiful planet” moments—we can begin to appreciate that forests are the great “coordinators,” in Akira Miyawaki’s term, of the planet’s key natural cycles and vast range of biological communities. Forests, we could then see, are prime drivers in Earth’s three central cycles of life—the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, the water cycle, and the soil cycle. Sky, water, land—our matrix, our womb, the irreplaceable context of our being. They existed long before us, they will outlast us, they are immeasurably greater than us, and we depend on them utterly for every element of our lives.

The current die-off of Eastern Hemlocks (and its equally vulnerable sister species, the Carolina Hemlock) provides a grim example of what it means to lose the ecological services performed by trees. When hemlock wooly adelgids (HWA) invade a hemlock forest, over 95% of the trees die, and the survivors suffer extensive defoliation, losing half to three-quarters of their leaves.

Hemlock forests have few seedlings and a poor seed bank in the soil, and the defoliated trees neither resprout nor produce seeds. So by the time the adelgids finish their work and move on, there is very little chance that the devastated landscapes it leaves behind will re-emerge as hemlock forests. Instead, rhododendron will come to dominate some sites, while in others hardwood communities of various sorts will take hemlock’s place. Gaps created by the massive death of hemlocks will be an open invitation to invasive species to become part of the new mix.

The hemlock is a keystone species in this southern Appalachian ecosystem. Here, its natural home is the countless coves tucked into the mountains’ folds, where it is especially suited to life along creeks and streams. Eastern Hemlock is among the most shade tolerant of all trees, its shallow root system thrives in the streamside settings, and it has a life span of up to 800 years. As an evergreen, its needles pump water vapor into the air via transpiration year round—nearly 50 gallons a day for large trees.

Entering a forest dominated by Eastern Hemlocks is near other-worldly, because of the coolness, the rich mingled scents of needles and damp earth, the low light that penetrates its dense canopy, and the palpable moisture in the air. No other conifer—nor any hardwood, for that matter—is capable of creating the same conditions. We fool ourselves if we think that tree species are interchangeable, that if one declines or disappears its place can readily be assumed by another. Eastern Hemlock—not to put a fine point upon it—is irreplaceable.

And its loss will be felt. It will be felt by the more than 120 species of mammals and birds that call hemlock forests home, and are sheltered by its many-layered branches from harsh winter storms. That rich biodiversity will decline. It will be felt by the trout and other fish and aquatic creatures that depend on hemlocks for the cool, pure, regulated stream flow managed by the trees. Many of them will die off.

It will be felt by the air over the forest, which will see the moisture given off by forest transpiration decreased by as much as 10 percent—and two or three times that in winter and the spring. It will be felt by the rivers and streams that see their water dynamics altered irreversibly. It will be felt by the soil, which will see soil moisture levels changed. At that point the significance of the label “keystone species” will be driven home, for a “keystone” is the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch that holds everything else in place and makes the arch sustainable. Without it, there is no arch. The arch collapses. And like the arch, these long-established ecosystems will no longer be sustainable. They too will collapse.

The specter of mass extinctions looms over our near future. Our destruction of habitat has greatly reduced the potential homeplaces for numerous species. Pollution of one kind or another has ruined others. And climate changes forced by global warming will change many others so drastically that they will be uninhabitable by their former residents. We are making a grave error, however, if we think of coming extinctions simply in terms of species. What is even more grievous will be the vanishing of entire ecosystems.

When I reflect on the enormous range of contributions forest make, what they come to exemplify is the mothering nature I talked about earlier. Item after item is about feeding, sheltering, protecting, holding, cleaning up messes, making surroundings quieter, more orderly, more stable, safer, and more comfortable. Instead of discrete items, they come to seem different manifestations of a single caring impulse. It’s ironic that we have taken forests’ “services” for granted in the same way a mother’s work has been taken for granted, and one has been as little valued as the other.

Take a close look at the list of all a forest’s contributions to the common good--if such a category were admitted to exist. Which, in the way we now do business--so to speak--is often not the case. Among the things we do not have in common, one would judge by the way some of our contemporaries act, are.... Air. Water. A dependence on biological diversity. Genes. Evolutionary history.

I think of the dismissive remark “We have nothing in common”--usually spoken with a rather haughty tone--with which one person indicates to another that there is simply no basis upon which a relationship between the two is possible. That remark could be the mantra of our self-centered, greed-driven corporate apparatus, and the government it both manipulates and despises.

At our worst, we are members of an economic system, not a community, and our flag is a canceled check. Rights follow money like male hounds trailing a gyp in heat. Because we have nothing in common, there are only my desires, my needs, my satisfaction, and my possessions. You are on your own to fend the best you can. You can be a human, a raccoon, a cranefly orchid, a giant sequoia, or a mockingbird; it doesn’t matter. We have nothing in common.

What kind of ethical social system is that?

It is ironic that just yesterday, as I was working on this chapter, the representative of a lumber company called me, inquiring about buying the timber on our land in West Virginia. It was a cash offer, money for timber. What about all of the critically important ecological functions listed above that would be disrupted? Would he pay for them as well? Who would he pay? What are they worth?

I don’t raise those questions because I think the solution is to put a dollars and cents value on forest functions and convert them to commodities. In fact, I’m appalled at the notion. My point is that in terms of the current economic model, those functions have been worthless. Now, with carbon trading and the corporatization of water supply, they’re starting to be drawn into a system where investors can market, trade, and profit from them. Being in the economic system and commodified is hardly an improvement over being in the economic system and not even meriting a price tag. I wrote earlier about the mothering aspect of forests. In this connection I remember a judgment I once heard a friend back home deliver on someone else in our community: “He would hitch his mother to a dog sled if he thought he could turn a profit on it.”

Why Forests Matter: Water

Water, soil, and air--our three most essential elements for life, and forests are the great force on the planet for providing, cycling, and purifying them. That forests provide water may seem contradictory, because we think of them as consumers of water to support tree growth. But through transpiration--giving off water vapor to cool themselves--they pour enormous quantities of moisture into the atmosphere. That moisture eventually becomes rain or snow, which can fall great distances from the forest where it originated. In this way forests distribute water on a regional and even an intercontinental scale. The corollary is that deforestation, especially on the scale we’re seeing it now, is going to dry out regions as both rainfall and water supply dwindle.

Water also flows from forests as snows melt, as rain trickling down through the canopy and forest litter into streams, and as ground water filtered by all the microorganisms, carbon, and different grades of material in forest soils. Drinking water is one of the indispensable gifts from forests. As we lose touch with our relationship and dependence on the natural world, that water appears to come from faucets and pipes. Maybe from rivers that flow through town, or a nearby reservoir. Too few people have any notion that forests generate most of the water in the country, supplying two-thirds of all the precipitation runoff--the water that comes from the sky--in the 48 contiguous states. Over 180 million people in the U.S. depend on forests to provide their drinking water, and more than 60 million people in 3,400 communities in 33 states rely on national forests for their drinking water.

Water from forests is normally the highest quality water available, since water from other sources, such as agricultural, urban, or industrial landscapes almost invariably contain more sediment and pollutants. Water quality is a potent argument for the preservation of mature forests. Because they have the best and deepest soil, they do the best job of water filtration. They consume less water themselves because older trees don’t require as much for growth as younger, faster-growing trees. Their well-developed layers in a mixed canopy slow down snowmelt and rainfall runoff, releasing it over a longer period and reducing erosion. Of all landscape types, they do the best job of regulating water temperatures and water chemistry. Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and founder of the Society of American Foresters, summed up forests’ contribution this way: “No forests, no rivers.”

Take a close look at the list of all a forest’s contributions to the common good—if such a category were admitted to exist. Which, in the way we now do business—so to speak—is often not the case. Among the things we do not have in common, one would judge by the way some of our contemporaries act, are .... Air. Water. A dependence on biological diversity. Genes. Evolutionary history.

I think of the dismissive remark “We have nothing in common” (usually spoken with a rather haughty tone) with which one person indicates to another that there is simply no basis upon which a relationship between the two is possible. That remark could be the mantra of our self-centered, greed-driven corporate apparatus, and the government it both manipulates and despises.

What kind of ethical social system is that?

I don’t raise those questions because I think the solution is to put a dollars and cents value on forest functions and convert them to commodities. In fact, I’m appalled at the notion. My point is that in terms of the current economic model, those functions have been worthless. Now, with carbon trading and the corporatization of water supply, they’re starting to be drawn into a system where investors can market, trade, and profit from them. Being in the economic system and commodified is hardly an improvement over being in the economic system and not even meriting a price tag. I wrote above about the mothering aspect of forests. In this connection I remember a judgment I once heard a friend back home deliver on someone else in our community: “He would hitch his mother to a dog sled if he thought he could turn a profit on it.”

Why Forests Matter: Water

Water, soil, and air are our three most essential elements for life, and forests are the great force on the planet for providing, cycling, and purifying them. That forests provide water may seem contradictory, because we think of them as consumers of water to support tree growth. But through transpiration—giving off water vapor to cool themselves—they pour enormous quantities of moisture into the atmosphere.

That moisture eventually becomes rain or snow, which can fall great distances from the forest where it originated. In this way forests distribute water on a regional and even an intercontinental scale. The corollary is that deforestation, especially on the scale we’re seeing it now, is going to dry out regions as both rainfall and water supply dwindle.

Too few people have any notion that forests generate most of the water in the country, supplying two-thirds of all the precipitation runoff—the water that comes from the sky—in the 48 contiguous states. Over 180 million people in the U.S. depend on forests to provide their drinking water, and more than 60 million people in 3,400 communities in 33 states rely on national forests for their drinking water.

Moormans River, Sugar Hollow

Why forests matter: Use

There is a perspective rampant in our culture—especially among those who reign over it—that forests matter because people want to use them.

We need to think clearly about use, because it can fall into two broad but very different categories. The first is a respectful, even reverential use we see in its purest form with native people when they acknowledge the power and spirit of the animal whose flesh they will eat, or the tree from whose trunk they will carve a dugout canoe. In their use they take no more than what is needed, waste nothing, and honor the being whose life was taken. Their usage, as much as possible, is harmonious with the natural world. This kind of respect or reverence is not confined to indigenous people, but for those enmeshed in modern culture, coming to that approach and somehow finding a way to be faithful to it are both difficult and complicated, and almost inevitably one is caught in a life of contradictions.

The second kind of use is greedy and self-centered, according no respect to the thing used or the being killed, and no thought to the integrity of the natural world. This is the ultimate human wrecking ball. Things matter only because they are useful in some human project, or because there is money to be made from them. From a spiritual perspective, this is blasphemy--a desecration of what Teilhard de Chardin, in Hymn of the Universe, called “the pure majesty of the real itself.”

To illustrate the nature of this blasphemy, it may help to sketch some familiar non-forest scenarios, and then return to these points more directly.

* * * *

Scenario 1: He’d worked for the company for twenty-four years. In all that time he’d never missed a single day of work. His idea for changing a process on the assembly line was saving the corporation $300,000 a year. He was proud of the firm, proud of their products, proud of his role in their growth as an industry leader. Then, to “maximize profits for shareholders,” the company’s workforce was “downsized,” and just like that, he was unemployed. He felt angry and worthless—used and then discarded, like a disposable diaper.

Scenario 2: Last year he’d led the team in tackles from his linebacker’s spot, despite a broken bone in his hand, another concussion, some torn cartilage in his ribs, and chronically sore knees from two surgically-repaired ACLs. They called him the “heart of our defense.” He figured he still had at least three good years left to contribute, and was eager for the next season to begin. But yesterday they tore out their own “heart”; he was a throw-in when they traded up to get a star running back in the draft. Where was all that rah-rah about loyalty and team spirit? he thought bitterly. They’d used him, and now they’d found someone more useful. It wasn’t personal; it was business.

Scenario 3: She thought he cared for her. He telephoned repeatedly; he gazed at her with longing eyes; he sent flowers from the florist’s; he told her she was beautiful, that he’d never met anyone like her. Then she thought they’d made love, but it turned out they’d only had sex. She felt so used.

* * * * *

I’ve come to appreciate the word “use” as it’s employed in these scenarios. Not because it’s an attractive concept, but because it’s an unerring tipoff that something is seen as having no intrinsic value. The only value that matters is the value to the user, and that value often turns out to be reducible to a profit and loss statement. What makes the scenarios so offensive—and most realistic—is that cold-blooded use takes place within cheap talk of loyalty, teamwork, and even love. But we often don’t even bother with those smokescreens when we are using the wild world; we simply dub it “raw materials” and get on with the business of devouring and destroying. Gary Snyder summed up their place in our economic landscape: “Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes: / Animals, trees, water, air, grasses.”

One thing I have been thinking on of late is the connection between “use” and “being useful.” I see the faces and hear the voices of my friends and neighbors in West Virginia who work or have worked in mines, mining supply companies, small timbering operations, forestry, pipelines, and gas and oil drilling and production. Good friends—good people, honest people, hard working people who have pitched in and given me a hand with everything from getting in hay to finding a leak in our water line. They often take enormous pride in their sense of the usefulness of their work. Yet the ugly reality is that their usefulness at work is often built on their being used by profiteers.

You probably know the old story about the group of stonemasons who are questioned about what they’re doing. Most of the men say, “I’m laying stone,” but one says, “I’m building a cathedral.” In a perversion of that story, many extractive industries or government agencies do an excellent job of selling their employees on the idea that they’re building cathedrals. Strip miners, for example, feel pride that they’re supplying coal to heat homes, power air conditioners, keep TV sets and computers running. Frackers believe they’re finding the fuel to keep our economy running. Foresters have it drummed into them during their schooling and in their workplace that management for timber production is the core of their mission. The focus is on the work and the company’ or agency’s goals, never on their large-scale impact on the natural world. West Virginia has been a “mother lode” of exploitable “raw materials,” from timber to coal to gas and oil. Timber barons, coal barons, gas and oil millionaires have all built their fortunes by hauling off that wealth, leaving an impoverished landscape and an impoverished people.

It’s understandable that people whose identity is closely tied to pride in the usefulness of their work will be defensive, offended, even outraged, when the value of their work is challenged. It is understandable that they appreciate their paychecks and the company that provides them with work in a region where jobs are hard to come by. It’s understandable that they resist the message that they’re being used, and resent even more the people who deliver that message. Somehow we must honor workers who are decent people while preventing them and the land from being further exploited and degraded.

Not that long ago, that might have been easier than it is now. The mention of something’s “use” would have been seen as a signpost marking the entrance to Martin Buber’s world of “I - it,” where people or creatures or things become mere objects, existing only to serve our selfish interests.

But in the last thirty years, Buber’s insights seem to have faded out of our culture. And with them went awareness of the alternative kind of relationship he described--”I-Thou,” in which we encounter another in an unqualified mutual, holistic, and even holy way.

People of many lands have had an an intimate “I-Thou” relationship with forests that permeated their mythology. The story nowadays is strikingly different. Our public relationship with our forests is saw-blade deep in the “I - it” mode.

Legislative language seldom sings, but sometimes it hints at a passion for an issue. The primary legislation governing forests, the “National Forest Management Act of 1976,” however, is as flat as a possum run over by a semi-truck. It requires the Secretary of Agriculture to “develop a management program based on multiple-use, sustained-yield principles.” The Secretary must also assure that “the development and administration of National Forest System renewable resources are in full accord with the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960.” And the 1960 Act completes the circle by proclaiming that the Secretary is “authorized and directed to develop and administer the renewable surface resources of the national forests for multiple use and sustained yield of the several products and services obtained therefrom.”

This isn’t language rooted in reverence and awe for the natural world. It is language for and by the bureaucrat who will mangle every wonder in his care. It is devoid of mood, as if a world with reverie, or reflection, or awe, or elegy, or a longing for solitude were beyond the realm of its experience. You might ask, “What do you expect from bureaucracy and legislators?” And that, in effect, is my point. The people who draft the legislation, the people who pass it, and some of the people who must implement it are wedded to a point of view that intrinsically disrespects wild forests.

The entire body of bureaucratic language is infected with toxic notions. Even the phrase “natural resources” is an oxymoron, as odious an oxymoron as “human resources.” Neither nature nor humans should rightfully by viewed as “resources” to be bought, sold, traded, or commodified. The “natural resources” approach denatures nature, just as the system of “human resources” dehumanizes humankind. If you’ve been through a “Department of Human Resources” application process for a government or corporate job, you know the feeling of being processed, like a cow winding its way to the slaughter point. Alienation is a captive bolt to the human spirit. (A “captive bolt” is a pistol used to stun cattle and other animals immediately prior to their slaughter.)

It’s regrettable but understandable that much of our forest management approach is human-centered. What is more galling is that the conception of the humans at the center is so mean, so utilitarian, and so mercantile as to constitute a slander against our species.

Why Forests Matter: Timber and wood products

Timber is big business—over $600 billion of global trade in 2008. Forests matter because people obviously need housing, furniture, cabinetry, paper, and thousands of other wood products that come from that timber. How many houses? The April, 2012 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development showed privately-owned homes being built at the rate of 715,000 per year. That is a lot of wood. We know people need wood; I just don’t have a grasp on how much we use that we don’t actually have a need for, and I’m not sure anyone else does either. There are an awful lot of couples living in a 4- or 5- bedroom house, for instance.

People in the U.S. have consumed timber products derived from between 70 and 80 cubic feet of timber per person over the last twenty-five years or more. To put that in perspective, commercial forestland is defined as an area capable of producing 20 or more cubic feet of timber per acre. The U.S. has been blessed with the soil and climate to hold some of the most productive forests in the world. Our forests average 47 cubic feet per acre; Canada’s 37; Russia’s 19.

To supply the growing international demand for wood, pressure on natural forests—particularly on tropical rainforests—has been enormous and, as world population and consumption levels both continue to grow, the pressure will only increase. It’s not just a matter of a fast-growing population, but also of where the increase is expected to occur.

Major population growth will be in the “developing nations,” which means, for the most part, in tropical forest zones. Feeding the additional billions will invariably lead to the clearing of millions of acres of forest as well as the farming of marginal land that should never be put into cultivation. Right now over 75% of hardwood logs come from rainforests, and those forests are being cut so rapidly that the practical end of the supply is in sight. Between 2000 and 2005, approximately 10 million acres of forest were lost per year in South America. Since almost all tree plantations are focused on softwood lumber, pulpwood, or biofuel, two things are likely to happen.

One is that pressure will rise to cut hardwoods in state and national forests in the U.S., which have been enjoying a respite of sorts while we and the rest of the world have plundered Third World forests. The Environmental Investigation Agency and Telapak recently reported that an oil palm plantation company has bought land in West Papua from indigenous landowners for 65¢ a hectare--or 26¢ per acre. The company is cutting the forest and will then set out oil palms. The land has a projected actual value of $5,000 per hectare. “Plundered” doesn’t seem too harsh a word to describe such exploitation.

The second, more problematic, is that hardwood plantations may become economically feasible. As one of my forester friends said recently, “Nobody plants hardwoods. The seedlings cost too much, they’re more trouble to establish, the return is longer in coming, and they haven’t benefited from the selective breeding programs that provided us with straight, fast-growing Loblollies.”

His “nobody” is an exaggeration, but in our region, certainly not much of one. There are so many additional advantages to the conifers at this point, including their ready availability, their familiarity to landowners and foresters, a known market, and a quicker turnover. Tulip Poplar is sun-loving and fast growing, but it is a relatively soft wood with coloring that is not as attractive as ash, say, or the oaks. The price differential between conifers and hardwoods will have to climb and appear to be steadily growing before people will be interested in making a switch based on economics.

The world’s population is projected to hit 8.2 billion by 2030. Even with the global economic slowdown that started in 2009, deforestation marched on while total consumption of wood and paper products is expected to continue to climb--particularly in China and other Asian nations--at a global rate of 1% to 2% per year. Rising demand for bigger homes, furniture, wood panels, plywood, chipboard, poles, fencing, stakes, containers, pallets, cardboard, paper, and paperboard will be spurred by the mushrooming Asian middle class.

Factors besides deforestation are cutting into the availability of timber. One, in the U.S. especially, is that conservation easements prohibiting timber production have provided tax incentives to take some timberland permanently out of the market. At the same time, many huge timber-to-paper product firms in the U.S., such as Georgia-Pacific, Weyerhauser, and International Paper, sold off their timber holdings. Much of that land has become HBU (higher and better use) property in tax codes and has been broken into countless parcels for homes and cabins surrounded by large wooden lots, and the bulk of those owners will keep their woods uncut. They bought their homes for the woods and the privacy; they’re unlikely to surround their getaway spot with a clearcut.

Another consideration is that the big timber has largely been cut; in the U.S., forested land generally has been through multiple cuttings, some of it since the colonial era. So tree plantations aside, less timber is being harvested per acre because the remaining trees are smaller. The old, fading black and white photos of loggers standing beside, on, and in trees six foot, eight foot, ten foot or more in diameter are the only trace of the marvels our forests once held.

Why Forests Matter: Paper

I come from a family of readers. Nurture, nature, or maybe both. My sisters and I inherited from my mother a love of reading that passed to my five sons and daughters, and some of my grandkids. Our most carefully-selected birthday and Christmas gifts tend to be books. That’s an invaluable trait in a government and economy that are built around the presumption of literacy. To satisfy that literacy, however, requires a lot of paper. In fact, it could be argued that paper rather than petrofuels power the economy. If wood itself is big business, paper isn’t far behind. Personally, we recycle books and every other paper item religiously, but still, our consumption level isn’t something we feel good about.

As one might expect, world consumption of paper is steadily increasing, totaling nearly approximately 818 billion pounds in 2009, averaging out to about 119 pounds per every man, woman, and child. And as we’ll see throughout this survey of uses, developed nations consume a hugely disproportionate share.

North Americans consumed over 500 pounds per capita in 2009, or a ton of paper for a family of four. When I think of how many forms and reports we have to fill out, how much junk mail I haul to the recycling center every week, along with paper and cardboard packaging, and how many books and magazines are stacked around our house, that number actually seems a little low. European Union countries, meanwhile, used 363 lbs. and Japan 473 lbs., while Latin Americans consumed only 97 lbs. per person, and Africans... 17.6 pounds.

It’s sobering to think that we North Americans consumed more than 28 times as much paper as Africans on a person-by-person basis.

According to paper industry sources, it takes between 88 cubic feet and 141 cubic feet of wood to make a ton of paper, depending on the nature of the wood used and the type of paper. A figure of 17 trees to make a ton of paper is sometimes thrown around, but again, the density of a particular wood and the nature of the paper produced make that number a ballpark figure rather than a firm number. But 17 trees per ton works out tidily: since, as we just saw, a North American family of four averages a ton of paper per year—or 17 trees.

What we do know for certain is that if demand continues to grow (in China, especially) and recycling and recovery rates aren’t improved, the result will be serious stress on forests, and a likely boom in illegal logging in countries where enforcement is difficult and ineffective. One good sign: the U.S. paper recovery rate via recycling rose from 46% in 2000 to 63.4% by 2009.

Why Forests Matter: Other amenities

This is a category that often appears in summaries of the “practical” value of forests, usually right after a discussion of lumber, pulp, and other wood products. Humans value forests for other reasons which have no direct connection with ecological functions—their beauty, the chance to learn about plants and wildlife, the privacy they afford, the chance to go sightseeing, hiking, camping, horseback riding, snowmobiling, rock climbing, spelunking, hunting, and fishing. Realtors know that home-shoppers will spend more for property neighboring a forest.

The larger reality, however, is that an ever-higher percentage of our people live in metropolitan areas, and rural populations have fallen not just as a percentage but in absolute numbers. The old connections to nature that were simple outgrowths of the rural life, such as farming, hunting, fishing, and berrypicking have all faded. Connections to the land are far less intimate now. Instead of being driven by necessity and proximity, they have become recreational and escapist—an odd blend of education, exercise, and entertainment.

Outdoor recreation and tourism matter enormously to the public, and to federal and state forest services as well. US Forest Service lands draw 200 million visits a year, plus another 175 million driving visits, making outdoor recreation the largest single use of those lands by a wide margin. Those visits also put more dollars into play than any other use of the national forests--about $11.1 billion per year. The benefits to people’s health and enjoyment through exercise and relaxation are important, and an additional selling point when the Forest Service submits its annual budget request. Folks using the forests for recreation are a huge constituency, and their numbers help justify Forest Service funding.

People with the resources will also go far to experience unspoiled woodlands. Ecotourism shows a strong market for visits to exotic forests in places such as Costa Rica, with a yearly growth rate of 5%, and a global market making up 6% of GDP. The touring industry has even targeted a marketing segment they call “Lohas,” an acronym for a growing group of people interested in “Lifestyles of health and sustainability.” More generally, the term refers to people who have a strong interest in their own heath and fitness, social and environmental issues, and spirituality, and amounts to an estimated 41 million people in the U.S. Researcher Laura Mandala reports that 42% of U.S. tourists claim they are willing to pay more for “green” travel.

There are, of course, negative aspects to sightseeing and tourism, beginning with on-site issues such as disturbance of wildlife, trampling of vegetation, increased erosion, soil compaction, and littering. Off-site issues are probably more damaging, as land is cleared for the building of roads and airports and hotels and restaurants and bars and souvenir shops and clothing boutiques to accommodate the influx of visitors.

The visitors also generate huge amounts of trash and garbage, burn large amounts of gasoline and aviation fuel, require much air conditioning, necessitate new sewage disposal capabilities, and in general contribute to water and air pollution.

But that all has to be weighed against the possibility that, given its chance, the forest will work its magic, and a visitor will receive the beauty, will be touched by wonder, and develop an expanded appreciation of forests.

Why Forests Matter: Firewood and Biofuels

For over two decades, my friend Bill Lankford has been working with communities in Central America, enabling women to join together to build their own solar ovens. Bill’s vision has been not only to ease the financial and environmental burden of families dependent on firewood for cooking and reduce the health risks associated with open fire cooking, but to help empower women and build their community organizing skills.

A number of other solar cooking projects have been launched in warm-weather areas of the world, with the hope of easing the pressure on forests while helping people who live on the edge of survival.

Many of us in the U.S. may not realize how dependent people in poor countries and poor people in developing countries are on wood—even just sticks they can scavenge—or on charcoal, to cook with and occasionally to heat their homes.

A wood-burning fireplace, in the U.S., is often a cozy luxury that provides a nice atmosphere on a fall or winter evening, and a charcoal grill is used for special occasions when we want to grill steaks or chicken or pork barbecue. For others, pickup loads of firewood are a cheap and convenient option for home heating in winter because we have a handy wood supply. But poor countries aren’t fossil fuel economies, with gas piped into almost everyone’s home, or coal delivered to a coal cellar, or an electric range in the kitchen and a heat pump in the basement. About a third of the energy consumption for developing countries is biomass; in India the figure is over 40%.

One of the most common daily sights, when I was in Africa, was that of women and girls walking back to the village with bundles of sticks balanced on their heads, so they would be able to cook their rice or cassava over an open fireplace.

So energy from the sun is a tantalizing prospect that keeps attracting new people, new ideas, new projects. One solar-power project that has especially caught my interest is the effort by Barefoot College in western India to train Sierra Leonean women in the manufacture of solar units to provide solar-powered electricity to their communities. (A branch of Barefoot College has also been opened in the Port Loko district within the past year [2011] so women won’t have to travel 6,000 miles for the training.)

I spent two years in Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps volunteer half a century ago, and the situation there—especially because of the devastating decade-long civil war—is hardly better than it was in the 1960s. Over 60% of the population still lives in rural parts of the country with no electricity. Even in towns and cities, 90% go without power; Sierra Leone averages 46 days of power outages per year.

Biofuels are also a form of “sun power,” of course. As concerns about peak oil mount, fossil fuel prices climb, and atmospheric CO₂ levels soar, the use of wood as a biofuel draws more and more interest. I’ll simply mention it here; for an extended discussion, see Chapter 11, “Tree Plantations, Genetically Engineered (GE) Trees, and Biofuels.”

Why Forests Matter: Non-wood forest products

Herbal medicines may seem like some quaint but outmoded interest of your great grandmother, but they’ve become big business in the U.S. More than 60 million people in this country use herbal remedies, with $5.1 billion worth sold in 2010. (It’s not clear how much of that is derived from forests, how much from meadows, how much garden grown.) There is a growing interest in natural and holistic health care, and even mainstream doctors and pharmacists now take such treatments into account. Other non-wood products from forests include fruits and nuts, and such odds and ends as craft materials and Christmas greenery.

As with firewood above, there is a huge difference between reliance on the forest in developing nations and elective use in first world countries. For people in third world or developing nations, non-wood forest products are often key to their very survival--the only food available at some times, the primary source for medicines, and one of the few sources of income.

Why Forest Matter: Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife-Associated Activities

For more than 99% of the long span of human history, observing wildlife has been a necessity as well as a pleasure; hunting and fishing, along with gathering, the only means of feeding ourselves. There are still people in this country for whom hunting is an important supplement to the family’s food supply, but for the most part, the numbers represent recreation, not food dependence. That holds true for first world nations in general. And once again, there is a marked difference between first world nations and third world nations, where food that can be had from forests and rivers is often central to the diet.

Although hunting and fishing are increasingly identified with a vanishing rural lifestyle in this country, the actual numbers—which indicate a continuing major interest in this use of forests—may shock some people. Every five years the US Fish and Wildlife Service sponsors a National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. The most recent report available, from 2006, shows that 30 million people fished that year, spending $42.2 billion;12.5 million people hunted a combined 220 million days and spent $22.9 billion; and 71.1 million took part in some kind of wildlife-observing activity, such as bird watching or feeding or photographing wildlife, spending $45.7 billion. Having passed a good portion of my life in rural West Virginia, where the lives of many men seem to consist of deer season and waiting-for-deer season, I’m not surprised by those numbers. But I suspect that this whole field of activity is a blank area for many urban dwellers—at least until deer begin cleaning out their gardens and nibbling on their shrubbery, a raccoon gets into a squabble with their cat over a dish of cat food, or a black bear bowls over their bird feeder.

The Fish and Wildlife Service lumps “wildlife-associated recreation” together with hunting and fishing in its survey and report, but those activities often seem to come from a different mindset. Not that they don’t overlap; I know men who feed wildlife to help creatures make it through hard winters, but with a focus primarily on game animals, for example. Killing things for sport marks a clear dividing line that many wildlife observers and photographers are loathe to step across. People on both sides of the line are passionate. The passion and the sheer numbers involved here, as well as the utter dependence on hunting and fishing elsewhere, mark this as an important category in why forests matter.

Why Forests Matter: Investments and financial incentives

Finally, forests matter, to those who have money and want to use it to make more money, as good investments. This is the last category, the bottom line, where use is commerce, where need meets luxury, where timber meets dollar, where profit meets ecological limit. For a landowner worrying about finding the money to pay taxes on his or her wooded property, or simply work out the most favorable financial strategy for property, there are also important reasons managed timber matters.

Many states now provide a significant discount on property tax to landowners who have a forest management plan and implement it. That discount is often in the 40% to 50% range. Property tax on woodlands can also be a major itemized deduction on an owner’s IRS 1040 form. Additionally, if you hold a property for a year before timbering it, then the income realized is classified as capital gains rather than ordinary income, which can make a huge difference in the rate at which it is taxed.

Landowners can also enter into a conservation easement which limits development, in exchange for substantial state, federal, and local tax breaks. Depending on how the easement is written, the landowner may still be able to harvest timber from the property without losing the tax benefits.

In addition to tax breaks, landowners can take advantage of cost-sharing programs which help pay for a variety of improvements and services. Here in Virginia, for example, cost-sharing is available on a 50/50 basis for tree plantings and stream restoration to improve water quality, as well as for temporary bridges across streams to be used during logging. Money is also available as incentive payments for a wide range of practices involved in pine “reforestation.” Here is a list of current incentives available under that program:

Practice 1: Planting loblolly or Virginia pine - $22 per acre.
Practice 2: Site preparation and planting loblolly or Virginia pine - $48 per acre. Includes herbicide spraying and planting open or abandoned fields.
Practice 3: Planting shortleaf, white, pitch-loblolly, or longleaf pine - $48 per acre.
Practice 4: Site preparation and planting shortleaf, white, pitch-loblolly, or longleaf pine - $73 per acre.
Practice 5: Herbicide site preparation and planting (any species on cutover lands) - $70 per acre.
Practice 6: Aerial Herbicide release application for all pines except white - $20 per acre.
Practice 7: Herbicide release application for white pine - $43 per acre.
Practice 8: Ground release application - $43/acre.
Cost share rates shall not exceed 75% of the total cost of the project.

For a landowner with, say, 150 acres he or she is considering putting into timber, it’s obvious that the money available to subsidize the change can be substantial.

The situation is different for serious investors, including institutional investors looking for strong, safe returns on their portfolios. When timber-to-paper companies sold off millions of acres of their U.S. holdings, a lot of the land went to REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), TIMOs (Timber Investment Management Organizations), and similar financial vehicles.

Timberland investment counselors tout timberland as providing an attractive return with low risk. Timberland investments, they say, have beaten the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index in 11 of the 21 years from 1990 through 2010, with an annual compounded return of 10.7%. From an investor’s standpoint, timberland is attractive because the prospects for profitable timber sales are good, given rising population and consumption levels and the long term uptrend in timber prices.

Beyond its value in timber sales, however, timberland may be more lucrative when converted or sold for other purposes. There is a steadily growing market for second homes and getaway spots. Deer and turkey hunters have also banded together in hunting clubs and bought or leased large woodland tracts as their private hunting grounds. Timberlands located reasonably close to populated areas offer subdivision possibilities, or can be marketed for commercial or recreational development. HBU (Highest and Best Use) tax structures raise the wooded property’s value and act as an inducement to sell woodlands for such purposes rather than keep it solely for growing timber.

* * * *

Attempting a survey this broad and inclusive has presented real challenges—foremost among them that of maintaining any sort of consistent voice while moving through rationales based on very different values. I’m sensitive to the length of the list I’ve worked through, and to the difficulty—maybe impossibility—of reconciling some of the reasons forests matter with one another.

I’m even more sensitive to the drop off in passion as the chapter nears its ending, and I find myself writing about those to whom forests lack any intrinsic value, instead mattering as mere commodities. Obviously I believe that is a way of wrongful thinking. Near the end of this work, in a chapter on overarching values, that topic will come up for more extended treatment, but here I have tried to honor an obligation to inclusiveness.

It’s not just a matter of inclusiveness, of course. When I’m writing about why forests matter, it’s absurd to omit the reasons built into our government and our economic system. Those reasons are legitimized by statute, our business model and real estate system, and a pricing mentality that dominates public life as well as much of our private lives. Jim Harrison once said that our country is one in which “anything not at least peripherally attached to greed is nonsense.” I’ve tried to find the sense in the nonsense, and the nonsense in the sensible.

No doubt there are multiple reasons forests matter beyond those I’ve included, but hopefully there is enough here to make a compelling argument that forest do matter, in ways that have a decisive effect on our present and our increasingly problematic future.

Necessary Forests

Why Forests Matter

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