Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Forest Facts

By: Jim Petersen

“Our mission is targeted fundamental research. We are not a university. We are a public agency. Our customers are other government agencies, industries and, probably most important of all, our grandchildren. Our job is to look a generation into the future, determine what we will be doing and how it may adversely impact the environment, then design new processes that minimize the anticipated impacts.”

Rajai H. Atalla, Senior Scientist, Chemistry and Pulping Research, Forest Products Laboratory, July, 2003 Evergreen interview

One of the lab’s most exciting innovations is a fiberized structural panel made from low quality, underutilized wood fiber. In their various designs, these panels exhibit high levels of strength and stiffness meaning that they can be used in myriad ways. Among the uses for these panels: bins, pallets, shipping containers, heavy-duty boxes, wall and roof panels, furniture, cement forms and doors

The United States is falling further and further behind in forest product research. Canada, Finland, Sweden and the European Economic Community are setting the global standard now. The economic and environmental implications for America's forests and forest industry are serious and poorly understood.

Last year the Canadian government unveiled a $75 million science and technology initiative "that will ensure that Canada's forest products industry remains prosperous and competitive." Finland is investing $35 million in "Wood Wisdom," a program "to promote the competitiveness of Finish forestry and forestrybased industries in today's changing operating environment."

Meanwhile, Sweden is funding a research center it says will keep the country's forest products sector abreast of competition through development of knowledge that enhances creation of new products, renews production processes and optimally utilizes the industrial potential of wood fibers produced in Swedish forests. Not to be outdone, the 34-nation European Economic Community has committed $1.5 billion to 16 sectors including agriculture and forestry, which will get about ten percent of the fund.

Here at home our federal government budgets about $26 million a year for research work underway at the Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin. A pittance for a country worried about keeping good paying manufacturing jobs here at home. But the symbiotic relationship that links Canadian and European governments to forestry and forest product manufacturers doesn't exist here. So to remain competitive in cutthroat global markets U.S. lumber and papermakers are shelving their own domestic research laboratories in favor of offshore investments, mainly in the Southern Hemisphere where land, labor and regulatory costs are much lower.

Let's be clear here. America's big lumber and paper outfits can take care of themselves. They always have. But the fact that our federal government is apparently surrendering its century-old role as the global leader in forest product research is very disturbing. So too is the not unrelated fact that we have become net importers of wood products manufactured in Canada, Brazil and Europe. A country that consumes nearly 350 million tons of wood annually-as we do-ought to be a lot more self-reliant. Have we learned nothing from decades of reliance on foreign oil?

The long-term environmental implications of our miserly approach to forest product research are even more profound than the more immediate economic impacts. How can we possibly pull treasured national forests back from the brink of ecological collapse if we do not find and develop viable commercial markets for the countless millions of tons of small trees scientists tell us must be removed as a first step toward reducing the ever-worsening risk of catastrophic wildfire?

Small landowners-the caretakers of most of our nation's privately owned forest acreage-face the same problem. Minus more robust markets for annual thinnings good forestry yields, the quality of these habitat-rich forests will begin to decline very soon. But the greatest burden is falling on entrepreneurs who are risking their capital-and taxpayer money-in vitally important efforts to commercialize small-wood product innovations perfected by the Forest Products Laboratory. But theseinvestments are all predicated on a yet to materialize flow of wood fiber from lands needing restoration. That's because the Forest Service has had to rob its restoration budget two years in a row to shore up its grossly underfunded fire fighting budget. Worse, lawyers representing special interest groups that oppose publicly popular forest restoration are using poorly written or conflicting environmental laws to block the work. This situation will change for the better if the Senate approves its version of the House-passed Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Until then our national forests will continue to burn, restoration will remain the exclusive domain of judges and business investment in small-wood technology and markets will lag far behind where it should be.

Meanwhile, countries that are serious about forestry and forest products research are eating our lunch. It's clear the Madison budget should at least match those of competing labs in Europe and Canada. But simply adding more scientists to the payroll won't solve anything. What's needed is a Marshall Plan for forest products research: one that encourages private sector reinvestment in domestic primary and secondary wood and paper plants, keeps us competitive in brutal global markets, solves the biomass-to-energy riddle, shelters impoverished millions in sturdy houses fashioned from molded corrugated waterproof paper, and creates more good paying jobs here at home-all while solving our country's most vexing environmental problem: what to do with millions of acres of trees grown so dense they are sucking the life out of the same forested landscapes they occupy, fueling uncommonly destructive wildfires.

We'd like to see Madison's scientists be given a leadership role in formulating and implementing this plan, not just because it is their tradition but equally because, despite meager funding, they are already making significant progress on all these fronts, including the final frontier: deciphering the gene codes that link cellulose molecules. It is time to finish the job, time for Madison to again soar on the wings of its rich history.

 

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We asked professional photographer Stephanie Steck to photograph several prototype products developed by the Forest Products Laboratory. Our only instruction to her was to “do something that will focus reader attention on the fact that it is possible to make useful products from useless trees.” The quite striking black-lit close-ups you see here are the result.

 

We suppose some readers will object to our referencing “useless trees.” It’s true all trees serve some useful purpose, however small. But reducing the risk of wildfire in fire-prone forests rests on finding and developing efficient and viable markets for small diameter, low quality trees that are fueling increasingly frequent and ferocious wildfires. These photographs leave no doubt about the fact that it is possible to develop prototype products from the trees scientists tell us must be removed. The question is will communities, entrepreneurs, investors and existing forest product manufacturers step to the plate. If they don’t the public’s forest management objectives—clean air, clean water, abundant fish and wildlife habitat and year-round recreation opportunity—cannot be met.

Flooring for a dance floor made from western larch thinned from a privately owned forest in western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley	Lab scientists made this inexpensive fiber mat made from juniper. It is capable of filtering many contaminants from water.
Lab scientists have perfected a wide variety of composite manufacturing technologies including this one: 50 percent ground juniper and 50 percent recycled plastic.	Lab scientists are conducting a series of tests to improve drying techniques for low quality ponderosa pine, which often twists when dried.
So-called “demolition wood” salvaged from old buildings is another lab specialty. Here, re-sawn flooring recovered from an old military depot.	Engineered floor joists made from Douglas fir harvested from Tree Farms in Oregon and Washington are products of ongoing Madison research

"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."