Raking the Forest

Here we go again!

President Trump first mentioned “raking the forest” while he was touring the devastation following the 2018 Camp Fire. Seventy-eight had died attempting to flew flames that overran Paradise, California.

He explained that he was paraphrasing a conversation he’d had with Sauli Niinistö, who was Finland’s president from 2012 to 2024.

“I was with the president of Finland and he said: ‘We have, much different, we are a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation. And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

Gales of laughter followed as the Trump hating press explained that Finland did not rake its forests. Actually, Finland’s forests are exceptionally well managed and have been for more than 100 years. More on them in a moment.

Did the Captains of America’s timber industry seize the opportunity to explain that Trump was on the right track but needed help explaining the roles of forest management.

Nope. In their silence, they missed a major public relations opportunity.

But we’re not going to miss it because this time California Governor, Gavin Newsome, who also hates Trump, mentioned “raking forests” in a May 30 press conference. And yesterday [June 11] at an LA press conference he mentioned “reading forests.”

No laughter from Trump hating reporters who are very busy blaming the Los Angeles riots on Trump’s decision to send a convoy of active duty Marines from Twenty Nine Palms into the city to protect public buildings from looters armed with Molotov cocktails.

But since Gov. Newsom mentioned “raking” and “reading” forests we believe this the perfect moment to  explain why Trump was on the right track in 2018 and again at a January 24 press conference in Los Angeles following the disastrous Palisades and Eaton fires – and five days following  his second inauguration.

Let’s start with Finland, which seems to have impressed some Trump-hating reporters. The well managed forest above, is in Finland.

Finland's 54 million acres of forestland are very  managed because about 60 percent belongs to what we call “Tree Farmers.” Families and individuals.

Big industry - and we do mean big - owns about 9 percent of Finland's forests. Other private entities own 5 percent and Finland itself owns 26 percent.      

Mechanical harvesting has been the logging system of choice in Finland for 50 years. There are 135 lumber and paper mills. They employ about 40,000 people and their primary products are lumber, pulp, paper, plywood and particle board.

Stora Enso, based in Helsinki and Stockholm, was founded in 1288 and is the oldest corporation in the world. It’s principle products today are lumber, pulp and paper. Through Tornator, Stora owns 1.75 million acres of forestland in Finland.

Finland’s Forest Law, which dates from 1886, promotes sustainable forestry and product utilization for economic, ecological and social benefits. Harvesting is regulated, replanting is mandatory and diseased trees must be removed to maintain forest health.

About 90 percent of Finland’s forests are third party certified under the aegis of PEFC, the nation’s Program of the Endorsement of Forest Certification.

How might America’s forest industry leaders have helped a Manhattan native explain forestry with Finland as his example?

At the least, they should have explained the ownership pattern and prevalent forest conditions in the U.S.

Something like this:

[1] There are 765 million acres of forestland in the U.S.

[2] That's about 77 percent as much as there was when the first Europeans came ashore 405 years ago.

[3] Some 38 percent of U.S. forestland is owned by about 10.6 million Tree Farmers - small landowners who pursue three objectives: timber production, protecting fish and wildlife habitat and the conserving the beauty of their land.

[4] About 31 percent of all U.S. forestland is federally owned - meaning publicly owned. Some 238 million acres.

[5] The Forest Service is charged with managing 154 National Forests and 20 National Grasslands – a total of about 193 million of the 238 million federally owned acres. The National Forest portion hasn’t been well managed since the the federal government foolishly added the Northern Spotted Owl to its' Threatened Species list in 1990.

[6] Mortality exceeds growth on millions of National Forest acres. This means they these acres are dying faster than they are growing. Because these acres are not sustainably managed our National Forests do not meet the widely admired Third Party Certification standards that are met by thousands of private forestland owners around the world.

[7] The Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management manages about 38 million acres of forestland including the heavily timbered 2.6 million acre O&C Forest in western Oregon - widely viewed as some of the most productive Douglas fir timberland on Earth.

[8] The “other federal forest lands” category spans 54.7 acres and includes some cared for by the National Park Service. Commercial logging is not allowed but salvaging fire-killed timber is occasionally permitted.

[9] To be classified as “forestland” Uncle Sam requires that the forest be capable of growing 20 cubic feet of wood annually. Globally, a similar standard applies.

[10] Many forests in the U.S. grow much faster. Oregon’s public and privately owned forests grow about 1,750 cubic feet per acre per year - about 88 times more than what Uncle Sam requires.

[11] Some 153 million acres of U.S. forestland is owned by major companies and their investors. All of it is third-party certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or the Sustainable Forest Initiative

[12] States own about nine percent and tribes about two percent and, again, it is very well managed. Increasingly, the Forest Service is engaging tribal leaders in its land management decisions

[13] The U.S. forest products industry employs about 935,000 people and the annual payroll is around $50 billion.

We suspect the President’s reference to raking the forest comes from “rake hoe,” a term he probably heard during his Camp Fire tour.

Rake hoes are two-side blades affixed to long wooden handles. One side has coarse points like a dinner fork, the other side is a flat sharpened hoe. So-called "McLeod tools" are named for their inventor, Malcolm McLeod, a Forest Service Ranger on the Sierra National Forest in 1905. They are commonly used in firefighting and trail maintenance.

We have no doubt the President would have used the 13 points on our laundry list if he'd had them because they segue nicely into his main complaint about the fact that federal forestlands in the western United States are poorly managed. Some 100 million acres are dead, dying or burnt to a crisp.

We’ve said this many times on these pages, but before we published First, Put Out the Fire! in 2020 no one was saying much of anything about the West’s wildfire pandemic. Now they make headlines every day for months on end.

Few journalists get beyond parroting wildfire talking points written for them by environmental groups that oppose thinning and prescribed burning in National Forests that hold too many trees for the carrying capacity of the land.

Why?

This certainly isn’t permitted in Finland.

In the U.S. private forestland owners, states and tribes thin and burn annually to minimize wildfire risk and maintain the health and productivity of their forests.

We believe the West’s wildfire pandemic, which spawned Trump’s “raking the forest” comments is the reason why Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz has asked agency retirees to help him steer a course correction. It will take years and cost billions of dollars but a nation that loves forests doesn’t have another choice. Nature doesn’t give a damn about our wants and needs.

We think this is what President Trump is talking about and would say in more definitive terms if someone would help him with his script; help him understand the differences between good fire and bad fire and introduce him to the thousands of reports prepared by the Forest Service’s Forestry and Inventory Analysis group [FIA], the agency’s five research stations or the research lab at Madison, Wisconsin and the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

If you want to take a deeper dive, check out this reading list from The Library of Congress. It will keep you busy for days...

Below is the PDF summary report from the Congressional Research Service.

Also see these Evergreen Magazine PDFs:
FIA the Gold Standard
Giant Minds, Giant Ideas

Our colleague, Michael Rains, who wrote A Call to Action for several years, jumped back into the debate on June 4 with a thoughtful retrospective in which he again explained what should be done and why.

We share his wisdom with you because he worked in leadership positions with the Forest Service for 50-years.

Michael has two forestry-related degrees from Humboldt State: Forest Management [1968] and Watershed Management [1971. In retirement, he volunteered to tutor special needs school kids in his hometown in Pennsylvania.

Always a learner, he subsequently earned a Master’s in Education and in now pursuing a PhD. Why? Because he wants to be “a better math, science and history” teacher.

Congratulations Michael.  If there was a McLeod Award, you’d surely be its first recipient.