Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Woods Wisdom

Notes From All Over

By: Jim Peterson

“I’d recommend the Forest Products Lab to anyone. They do a marvelous job. They’re problemsolvers. And they have the country’s best interests at heart. If you had to go out and buy the professional services the lab offers free of charge it would cost you millions of dollars. No startup venture could get to first base in a small wood utilization business without their help.”

Phil Archuletta, P&M Signs, Mountainair, New Mexico, from an Evergreen Magazine interview, August 30, 2003

An essay by Jim Petersen

This laminated beam is constructed from curved, lowvalue, small-diameter lodgepole pine harvested from Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest. It is the end product of a joint venture between the Forest Products Laboratory, Wyoming Sawmills, Sheridan, Genesis Laboratories, Batavia, Illinois and the University of Wyoming. Wyoming Sawmills is marketing the beam as a door and window header. The Forest Service estimates that a mill using this process could consume between 8.5 and 17 million board feet of low value wood annually.

Phil Archuletta is a man on a mission. He aims to return New Mexico's high country to its former glory, but first he needs 100 good workers, about a million pounds of wood a day and most of the used plastic milk jugs in Albuquerque. Oh yeah, he needs $5 million too. See, there's this used extruding machine in Chicago that turns junk wood and recycled milk cartons into really nice all weather road signs.

So, pretend for a moment that you are a bank loan officer. Would you lend Mr. Archuletta the $5 million he needs? Or would you suddenly have to take an urgent phone call from a customer in Cleveland? Before you put Mr. Archuletta on hold consider this: He is already a very successful sign maker. Moreover, he has the full technical support of the federal government's Forest Products Laboratory, the oldest and most respected forest laboratory of its kind in the country. In fact, Mr. Archuletta and the lab jointly own patents on both the process and the product. Now, about that $5 million.

Welcome to the dead-serious highstakes world of forest and rangeland restoration. The faint of heart should not enter. But if you can stomach considerable financial risk and cancope with the uncertainties of the bare-knuckles political brawl for control of the West's fire-ravaged forests, there is probably money to be made here if, as Mr. Archuletta counsels, you are patient and do your homework. For those interested in following his lead, this story is your first homework lesson. Study hard.

Much has been written and said about the West's wildfire crisis over the last decade. The science here is pretty straightforward: there are too many trees in our forests and they are dying by the millions. The listed causes of death are drought, Insects, diseases and nutrient starvation. But in truth they are victims of a head-on collision between two conflicting government policies - a policy to preserve forests in no management or minimum management reserves and, concurrently, a policy to exclude wildfire from forests the public loves.

What we have failed to recognize is that preserving forests requires that we care for them. As an old Tennessee forester friend once observed, "The problem with leaving forests to nature, as so many seem to want to do, is that we can't control the outcome. We get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times. But with forestry we have options, and a degree of predictability not found in nature."

Between 70 and 90 million acres of federal forestland in the West are now in Condition Class 2 or 3, meaning the risk of catastrophic wildfire is moderate and getting worse, or the acres in question are ready to burn. It is worth noting that most of the acreage in ready-to-burn Condition Class 3 includes critical habitat for salmon, steelhead, bull trout, grizzly bears, northern and Mexican spotted owls and marbled murrelets, species listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act.

Of the dozens of scientists who sense the urgency of the West's wildfire crisis, none seems to feel it more keenly than Wally Covington, a soft-spoken, self-effacing Ph.D. fire ecologist whose credentials and research have thrust him into the forefront in the debate over what-if anything-to do about the West's wildfire crisis.

"The current rate of acceleration in the severity and size of in the West indicates that average annual losses over the next two decades will be in excess of five to ten million acres per year," Dr. Covington tol members of the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health at a March 7 field hearing in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Using the reasonable assumption that preventive restoration treatments should at least be at the pace and scale of losses to severe stand replacing fire, one would conclude that we should be treating five to ten million acres per year. Our current pace and scale is woefully inadequate given the scope of the problem."

No kidding. Only about 3.26 million acres were treated last year. At this rate, the government will never get ahead of the wildfire crisis. Worse, a good deal of 2002 and 2003 allocations for hazardous fuels reduction were sucked up to subsidize a woefully inadequate firefighting budget, leaving too little money for the kind of preventive action Dr. Covington and other scientists have been urging for years.

But the political landscape is beginning to change in ways that favor a more scientific approach to caring for the West's beleaguered national forests. Polling and focus groups results from six major cities reveal strong bipartisan support for the forest thinning and fuels management initiatives President Bush proposed during a visit with firefighters near Medford, Oregon in August 2002. Last March, a Memphis focus group composed of 12 Gore voters, 12 Bush voters and one independent voted 23-2 for the President's forest restoration strategy.

Phil Archuletta, P&M Signs, Mountainair, New Mexico, makes about 70 percent of the highway signs in New Mexico. He credits the lab with helping him develop a wood-plastic composite that makes an excellent sign material. Mr. Archuletta’s initial interest was in making posts, but testing revealed the material made a much better sign. To help spur federal interest in the process, he makes Forest Service ensigns using an extruded blend of finely ground juniper and recycled plastic milk jugs. P&M will open a new manufacturing facility in Mountainair next summer.

Small wonder then that in May the House of Representatives ratified the Administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act on a bi-partisan 256-170 vote, giving Mr. Archuletta reason to hope that he will eventually recoup his 10-year half million dollar investment in a unique blend of composite and biomass technologies he says hold great promise for federal agencies now confronting the reality of the West's forest health crisis. And the reality is simply this: minus huge infusions of public and private capital, that can be used to develop new infrastructures and markets able to profitably absorb significant quantities of small diameter wood fiber and biomass, restoring the West's desperately ill national forests will remain an impossible dream. That possibility does not set well with a public that has no tolerance left for stand-replacing wildfires that continue to sweep the West's national forests, polluting watersheds, wiping out fish and wildlife habitat and filling normally blue summer skies with thick yellowish smoke that has hospitalized hundreds from Arizona to Montana.

Yet at this writing political observers aren't sure the Senate will ratify its version of the House-passed forest restoration bill. Proponents of the measure are still a few votes shy of a filibuster-proof 60 votes. But assuming the Senate bill is approved and conferees are able to reconcile the two bills in committee, it will take a year, maybe two, for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to ramp up forest and rangeland restoration strategies that have rested largely on a string of pilot projects and scientific experiments, some of which date back nearly 30 years.

Phil Archuletta knows the sign business very well. His company makes 70 percent of the road signs you see on New Mexico's highways. But he will tell you point blank that he could not have come as far as he has with his latest innovation without the able assistance of a cadre of
scientists, engineers and marketing specialists based at the Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. So will several other entrepreneurs who, like Mr. Archuletta, are pioneering innovations that rest onconverting small-diameter trees and woody biomass into marketable products, laying new economic cornerstones in rural western communities devastated by the collapse of the federal timber sale program ten years ago.

"Had it not been for the lab's help I would probably still be trying to make sign posts out of a blend of ground wood and
cement," Mr. Archuletta recalls of his decade-long quest to find uses for juniper and pinon pine that clogs New Mexico's forests and high chaparral. "When the lab saw what I was trying to do they recommended an extrusion process that blends ground wood and recycled plastic, then
they helped me engineer the process, free."

As it turns out, the process Mr. Archuletta pioneered with the lab's help isn't much good for making  sign posts, but it yields an all weather sign that impresses testing laboratories that have put it through its paces. If everything goes according to plan, P&M Signs new 16,000-square foot extrusion facility will be hiring next July.

Mr. Archuletta's story repeats itself in small businesses scattered all across the West, from Ruidoso, New Mexico to Hamilton, Montana and Hayfork, California, a remote logging community west of Redding hard hit by the collapse of the federal timber sale program and the subsequent loss of its last sawmill, also its largest local employer.

"I remember going to Madison to talk with Sue LeVan in 1994," recalls Lynn Jungwirth who, with husband Jim, founded the Watershed Research and Training Center and later Jefferson State Forest Products, a maker of hardwood fixtures for Whole Food stores and suppressedgrowth Douglas-fir flooring. "For the first time I sawhope in someone who understood that Hayfork wasn't going to become a mecca for tourists and that we needed to find a way to put economic legs under ecosystem management."

Praise for Ms LeVan- a chemical engineer and program manager for the lab's Technology Marketing Unit-is universal among entrepreneurs and small business peoplefor whom she is a tireless and devoted cheerleader. "Without the creativity and energy of innovative small businesses we cannot begin to address the forest health crisis in the West," she said when we interviewed her in her Madison office. Ms. Jungwirth agrees. "Hayfork is a tiny town on the road to nowhere. No big company is going to come here and solve the environmental problems wildfires are creating. We have to do it on our own. The lab has been a patient and faithful provider of technical services
that are priceless. No one has ever said to us, ‘Gee, sorry, we'd like to help but we can't.' To the contrary, they've been with us every step of the way."

Mr. Jungwirth concurs. "We're trying to add value to wood species that frankly aren't worth very much. The lab has helped us find solutions to a host of pretty complex problems concerning twisting and discoloration, product imperfections we can't tolerate. No one from the lab has ever
laughed at a question I asked or failed to find the answer."

This beautiful softwood floor sample is made from small diameter suppressed growth Douglas fir. Jefferson State Forest Products, Hayfork, California, made it from wood fiber purchased from a private landowner in southern Oregon. The lab helped company owners Jim and Lynn Jungwirth perfect a drying technique that keeps the wood straight and prevents cracking. The West’s federal forests contain millions of acres of suppressed growth Douglas fir that need to be thinned soon. Thinning reduces insect and wildfire risks while stimulating new growth in residual trees.

Since the Jungwirth's set sail Jefferson State-a for-profit consumer of low grade wood fiber-and the Watershed Research Center-a non-profit that teaches locals how to contract with federal agencies for ecosystem-based monitoring and forest restoration services-have created nearly a hundred new jobs in the Hayfork area. That they have been so successful under such tenuous circumstances is a tribute to the quality of the wide array of services the lab offers: grant writing assistance, help writing business plans, market research and a long list of engineering solutions that have been the hallmark of the lab's commitment to applied science for nearly a century.

If the venerable Forest Products Laboratory looks remarkably like a university classroom building it is probably because Wisconsin taxpayers picked up the tab for the building's construction after the University of Wisconsin, which is located just down the street, won out in a spirited three-way competition that also involved the universities of Minnesota and Michigan. The Forest Service selected Madison because they believed their best shot at growing a practical wood science program rested in nurturing a lasting relationship with Wisconsin's faculty. As testament to the accuracy of that vision, many of the lab's present day Ph.D. scientists also teach and lecture undergraduate and graduate level classes at the university-in microbiology, plant physiology, chemistry, bio-chemistry, mycology, forestry, economics, physics, statistics, botany and structural, chemical, mechanical and general engineering.

Just down the lab's front steps-and looking very much out of place in a university setting-stands a two-story three-bedroom home most any family would be pleased to own. But the unoccupied structure's walls, roof, flooring systems and foundation contain a maze of electronic probes for monitoring and studying moisture movement, ageold homeowner challenges. Also under observation: engineered I-joists and beams. Though stronger and more easily assembled than dimension lumber they are less forgiving if used improperly. Also on display, a softwood floor cut from suppressed-growth Douglas-fir, a carpet made of ground up soft drink containers, attic insulation from ground newspapers, panelized roof shingles made from natural fibers and recycled plastic and an inexpensive, handicap-accessible playground surface made from compressed wood fibers.

There is a substantial gee-whiz factor in the growing list of wood-based product innovations and manufacturing processes lab scientists and engineers have turned out under the auspices of the Forest Service's small-diameter and under-utilized wood species program: the composites Mr. Archuletta is using; inexpensive water filters that show great promise for absorbing agricultural and mining wastes; a system for sending sound waves through trees to detect decay, or through logs to measure yield and quality or through old timber, to test for strength; a new family of connectors that make it possible to use small diameter roundwood in structural applications; a fungal treatment for wood chips that should save pulp producers 30 percent on their energy bills while increasing the strength properties of paper; an adhesive for postage stamps that doesn't gum up the works in recycling; promising exploratory work on a new non-toxic pulping process that will allow pulp producers to utilize a mix of smalldiameter wood species; bio-fuels and chemicals to replace non-renewable petroleum-based fuels; a three-dimensional, sandwich-like panel that displays such strength and stiffness that manufacturers think it can be used to make at least a dozen products ranging from pallets to wall panels to office furniture; and an entirely new approach to studying decay in wood, allowing us to speed decay in bone dry forests and, in the reverse, disrupt the decaying process in building materials and systems. And now the final frontier: the quest to disassemble wood at the molecular level, a feat of almost unimaginable importance in a world that consumes as much energy and wood fiber as ours.

"On a weight basis, cellulose molecules are stronger than steel," observes lab director Dr. Chris Risbrudt. "But we've never taken full advantage of their strength. Since the Stone Age humankind's quest has been limited to various attempts to modify what nature gives us. Now we believe we can compel nature to give us what we need in cellulose form with the right properties for the intended job."

Many genes carry the information needed to assemble atoms into cellulose molecules. Once researchers figure out how they interact it will be possible to get nature to do much of the costly engineering now done in manufacturing: to grow fiber that possesses the physical properties most desired in a particular product: a piece of paper that doesn't tear as easily, an unbreakable wood beam, a truss that doesn't twist.

The possibilities for capitalizing on cellulose's enormous strength are absolutely endless.

"It will take a decade, maybe two or three," Dr. Risbrudt says. "But we are starting to see and understand the possibilities. In wood, this is the final frontier."

Giant minds. Giant ideas. Yet for all their firepower, Madison's scientists owe much to a long line of foot soldiers who have championed their work where the rubber meets the road: on sawmill floors, in paper mills and, more recently, in communities in search of a future and across kitchen tables where a new generation of dreamers readies itself for a smaller-is better era that seems destined to again reshape the way forests are managed and wood is used.

Ron Porter [top] is an old hand at figuring out how to keep the door open at his post and pole business in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, Montana. But even he concedes he never thought he’d be building kiosks for the 2002 Winter Olympics. But he did it in answer to a call from Sue LeVan, Technology Marketing Unit manager at the Forest Products Lab. With lab technical assistance Mr. Porter has developed several new products made from small diameter trees.

"We are the spokes in the wheel, research is the hub," explains Sue LeVan, program manager for the lab's technology marketing unit. "We go anywhere, anytime to work with landowners, sawmill owners, entrepreneurs, community groups, literally anyone interested in learning more about the product innovations that are the result of basic and applied research in small diameter wood mutilization."

There is an enormous amount of hand holding in the work that Ms LeVan and her well-traveled staff do. Hope is in very short supply in most of the rural western towns on their call list. The economic devastation wrought by the collapse of the federal timber sale programs goes well beyond mill closures. Teacher layoffs, Main Street business failures and the loss of essential social and medical services are commonplace.

"It can be pretty challenging," she concedes. "But the human spirit is very resilient. And we are solution driven. So when we find communities, entrepreneurs or sawmill owners unwilling to accept defeat we go right to work."

The information infrastructure at Ms LeVan's disposal is vast: the lab's library, which holds most of the research done in Madison since 1910, the world's largest wood species and mold collections, a forensics paradise; Internet links to university scientists, libraries and research stations around the world, plus a network of field professionals representing every aspect of forest products manufacturing and energy development. Despite these impressive resources, Ms LeVan concedes her job can be a bit overwhelming at times.

"It's easy when all we have to do is function as a clearing house or a facilitator of small meetings involving a customer and one or two scientists or engineers. But when dealing with entire communities searching for ways to create new employment in forest restoration and small-wood utilization we often start with a blank sheet of paper and try to narrow hopes to a realistic list of possibilities. Though we are charged to solve problems, we often find that our first task involves restoring lost trust." It is not easy. But Ms LeVan and her colleagues have made some significant breakthroughs despite the nearly incapacitating cynicism that grips timber towns pushed off an economic cliff when the federal timber sale program imploded a decade ago. The Jungwirth's and Mr. Archuletta are but the beginning of a pattern that offers reason for hope. So too are Glen and Sherry Barrow. Likewise, Ron Porter.

Mr. Porter is an old hand at figuring out how to keep the door open. He's been in the post and pole businesses in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, Montana for more than 35 years. But he became something of a celebrity during the 2002 Winter Olympics by answering Sue LeVan's call for someone out West to build kiosks the lab could display in Salt Lake City as examples of small wood put to good use.

"It seemed like a worthwhile project," Mr. Porter says, "so we did it for the chance to get acquainted with the lab. We haven't sold any new kiosks yet but we've certainly learned a great deal more about what we can make from small diameter trees. Their knowledge has become a real asset in our business."

Indeed, Mr. Porter hardly recognizes his old fencepost business. Today his 11 employees and five contractors make everything from engineered roof trusses, fashioned from abundant lodgepole pine logs, to an impressive line of rustic, custom crafted furniture that includes desks, bed frames, winecabinets, china cabinets, chests, rockers and dining room sets.

"After 35 years I thought I knew most of what there was to know about this business, but the lab opened my eyes to a multitude of small-wood possibilities I'd never considered," Mr. Porter concedes. "Add in their technical assistance and help with design engineering and you've got a package of services few small businessmen, including me, could ever afford on their own. I'd recommend them to anyone interestedin starting or expanding a small-wood utilization business."

If ever two photographs told the story of the benefits of forest management these two do. They were taken five miles distant from one another, in southern Oregon, along Highway 138 between Diamond Lake and Diamond Lake Junction. Although the decadent stand looks like a total loss, it still holds many trees that would survive and grow following thinning. Thinning would also reduce the risk of wildfire and disease in healthier nearby forests, while yielding some usable wood fiber.

So would Glen and Sherry Barrow. The New Mexico couple spent a year analyzing the possibilities for marketing fiber the Forest Service hopes to remove from dying forests that abut Ruidoso, a town nearly overrun by wildfire several times in recent years. In the end they settled on livestock bedding and micro biomass power technology the Barrow's believe holds great promise.

"We're new at this, Ms Barrow says of the couple's backgrounds in marketing and horseracing. "Without the lab's research, engineering and marketing expertise we'd still be at square one. With their help we walked backwards from the market to the stump and identified 12 product possibilities. Now we are moving forward but I have to tell you we have taken a huge financial, emotional and personal risk to make this work."

Indeed they have. Although the couple won't say how much they've borrowed from lenders, Ms Barrow concedes that amount is "well beyond" the $400,000 in grants their company has received from various federal sources including the Forest Service and the Four Corners Initiative, a multi-state forest restoration coalition pioneered by Toby Martinez, former New Mexico State Forester.

"We never intended to apply for government grants, but getting them validated our business plan," Ms Barrow explained. "Without federal or state grant monies in the mix no private lender would have touched us. Believe me, it takes a lot of capital to get a business like ours started." Ms Barrow's husband,Glen, concurs.

"I don't want to take anything away from the forest products laboratory because they have been very helpful, but without a tremendous amount of public financing there is little hope for addressing the West's forest health crisis on scales that are economically and environmentally meaningful he says. "Our state's sawmilling infrastructure is gone so, despite our very small size, we've become log buyers where, in the past, we probably would have built a less capital intensive business that purchased residues from sawmills."

Adding to the challenge, the Barrow's are already experiencing the same log shortages that plagued the area's sawmills for many years. But the problem facing SBS Shavings, which needs only 65 cords of wood weekly, isn't the result of timber sale appeals or litigation. In fact, there is quite strong local support for their company and, more broadly, forest restoration. And Ms. Barrow reports local national forest officials have also been very supportive, but in September the forest's entire restoration budget was transferred to the Forest Service's under-funded firefighting budget. Even the lab lost $5 million in already allocated funds.

"At some level the government does not seem to understand there are certain basic costs associated with owning forestland, one of which is the cost of thinning and stand tending," Mr. Barrow observes. "If we don't get some logs by winter, we'll be out of business. Federal logs are our economic lifeblood."

But the Barrow's remain confident this latest crisis will pass as the others have. Market response to their bedding has been good among horse fanciers across four states. And, Ms. Barrows adds, "Around Ruidoso we are all painfully aware of the need for science-based prescriptive forest restoration. There is a group will-a passion shared by the Forest Service, the lab, townspeople and us-to do this work in a way that will win wide public and congressional support. We'll never get rich at this, but we hope to make a decent living and provide some much needed employment in our community,"

So ends Lesson 1.