Revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people
There are 751 million acres of forest lands in the United States. More than half of it – 56% – is privately owned. Some of that land is owned by big timber companies. But the majority is owned by individuals and families. The American Forest Foundation represents those private landowners. Until last week, Larry Wiseman was CEO of the group. Lester Graham talked with Wiseman just before he left the organization. Wiseman says privately owned forests are at risk.
There are 751 million acres of forest lands in the United States. More than half of it – 56% – is privately owned. Some of that land is owned by big timber companies. But the majority is owned by individuals and families. The American Forest Foundation represents those private landowners. Until last week, Larry Wiseman was CEO of the group. Lester Graham talked with Wiseman just before he left the organization. Wiseman says privately owned forests are at risk.
Larry Wiseman: “One of the great paradoxes that most folks don’t quite get is that the largest part of the productive forest land in the United States is owned by families and individuals. Some 5 million folks who own more than 10 acres of land, some of them as long as 300 or 400 years – land has been in their family since before the United States was actually created.”
Lester Graham: “There’s a lot of concern these days because as the demand for things like newsprint, the demand for lumber is down because of the economy, there’s some concern that some pretty large tracts of land might be sold for things like development, just simply because they’re not making as much money off of this land. Is there a real risk of that?”
Wiseman: “Absolutely. The risk of conversion of forest land to development has accelerated over the past decade, to the point that we’re losing a little bit over one million acres a year. To put that in perspective, that’s about the size of the Everglades National Park every year. One of the primary pressures on forest owners, whether they own 1,000 acres or 100, is that they can’t do the kind of conservation work they want to do unless they have some cash. You know, cash is really the cornerstone of conservation when you’re talking about private property. People have to pay taxes, people have to buy liability insurance, people have to invest in the future of their forests, and if there’s no cash flow at the end, then it becomes very hard for them to say ‘no’ when a developer comes calling. This isn’t to say that all of these 4 or 5 million folks are growing timber for profit – very few of them actually do. But, by the same token, most of them have to develop cash flow, or, over time, it becomes very hard for them to keep their land as forests.”
Graham: “There has been suggestion that carbon offsets by planting more forest land, or that forest land owners should get some sort of compensation for the service that a forest would do – but there’s a lot of debate about the net-gain of a forest sequestering carbon dioxide. I’m wondering what your members feel about that issue?”
Wiseman: “There’s no doubt that on a net-net basis the forests in the United States currently absorb about 10% of the carbon dioxide upload as a nation.”
Graham: “Should your members be compensated for that?”
Wiseman: “Well, let me get to that in a minute. I believe they should be compensated. But our organization takes the position that healthy growing forests that are being managed for a suite of values – including carbon sequestration, water quality, wildlife habitat – provide a wide range of services to the public that the public doesn’t understand that it’s getting. These folks are volunteers; they’re providing clean water, cleaner air, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and green space – for free! And, the great paradox is that the public doesn’t understand that they have a stake in the future of these forests, just as the owners do. Accordingly, that’s why our organization has long stressed the need to create streams of income that reward people for the stewardship investments they make that benefit the public as a whole.”
Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute of Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. He spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.
Most people probably don’t enjoy
cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it.
And if you’ve ever looked at the household
cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you
know there can be some pretty strong
chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports
on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:
(sound of store)
I’ve just arrived at my neighborhood grocery store with a plan: to find what I
need to make my own household cleaners.
I head over to the cleaning aisle and pull out a list of ingredients I got off the
internet.
I see borax and
washing soda on the shelf.
They`re both made from naturally-occuring minerals and cost about five bucks
each for a 4 to 5 pound box.
I look around for soap flakes – to make my own dish soap – and find a big bar I
can grate myself.
The only thing missing is castile soap. It’s a biodegradable soap used in a lot of
these recipes.
I’ll grab that next at the natural foods store.
To be honest, I never paid that much attention to the ingredients in household
cleaner – until I used something with dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride on
my bathtub. It comes with warnings.
I rinsed it and took a bath. My 4-year-old also took a bath.
And we both ended up with a very itchy skin rash.
That convinced me. I had to find a safer way to clean the tub that, number one,
worked. And number two, wasn’t too expensive.
Which pretty much meant I’d have to make it myself.
We decided to start with the all-purpose cleaner.
Karen Kelly: “Okay. We need borax, which we have, castile soap, hot water.”
Child: “We have that! We can just turn on the sink and make hot water!”
Kelly: “And vinegar.”
Child: “We have, do we have vinegar?”
Kelly: “Yes.”
Child: “And Mom, we have hot water.”
We mix up a recipe I found on the David Suzuki Foundation’s website.
(sound of stirring and banging)
They’ve got a whole bunch of do-it-yourself recipes for bathtub scrubbers,
laundry soap, furniture polish, you name it.
Lindsay Coulter is the person who devised these concoctions.
She says a lot of people forget that you don’t need fancy products to get your
house clean.
“You know, if you talk to your grandmothers or your great-aunts, you’ll find that
they too used things like washing soda, baking soda, white vinegar, and a basic
castile soap. Things like vinegar – it’s acidic and helps lift grease and
deodorizes. A lot of the things you’re cooking with anyways, so you probably
already have it in your kitchen. And the benefit? Just peace of mind that you
know what goes into it.”
But does it work? It’s time to find out.
(sound of spraying)
We spray. We wipe. The bathroom sink shines.
Next, we try the bath tub scrubber. It’s a mix of castile soap, vinegar – which is
a natural disinfectant – baking soda, and water.
(sound of cleaning the tub)
The tub looks great, actually. And you know what? This is a lot cheaper.
Brand name all-purpose cleaning sprays are about 4 bucks a bottle where I live.
It cost me just a dollar – and about 5 minutes – to fill that same bottle with my
own mix.
So it’s cheap, it’s easy to make, and, best of all, I don’t have to worry about chemical reaction after a soak
in the tub.
For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.
Child: “Is it recording? Okay.”
In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks
and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than nine-thousand
acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their
land. Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made that difficult choice:
At a busy intersection in a newly suburban area, a red barn and white house sit back
off the road. Lush green pasture land hugs the old farm buildings. But the days are
numbered for this bucolic scene.
(sound of construction)
Across the street dozens of condos are under construction… and farmer Roy Jackson has
put this 216-acre farm in Central Ohio under option for development. As soon as the
developer gets approval to build, Jackson’s farm will be no more.
“I’m a third generation farmer and you put your roots down and to see your land be
developed is something I have seen coming, but to actually see it happen across the
road; it’s a sad thing, but it’s progress.”
Sitting on his front porch, Jackson looks our on a neighborhood where once there were farms.
Jackson: “At one point we farmed over 1500 acres and now we’re down to about 300.”
Keith: “What happened?”
Jackson: “We’ve lost a lot of it to development. In the estate of my mom and dad
we had to sell that to settle the estate and that was part of it as well.”
Like many in agriculture, Jackson didn’t own all the land he farmed. He was leasing
it and when the owner decided to sell for development, Jackson was out of luck. Now
he says there’s not enough land left to farm profitably.
“I have a son that wants to farm with me and to do it here, there just isn’t enough
land to sustain two families and make a living for both.”
So, he’s found a big piece of land down in Kentucky, in an area where land is still
plentiful and development pressures are distant. He’s leasing it with an option to buy.
Soon Jackson and his son will have the cattle ranch they’ve been planning for years.
It just won’t be in the state where his family has farmed for three generations.
(sound of heavy machinery)
Workers operate backhoes to grade the ground in an open field that will eventually
be home to some seven-thousand people in a new development. Retired farmer and
agriculture educator Dick Hummel recently sold a portion of this land, allowing
the project to move forward.
“I had some people critical of me because I was going to sell farmland, but on
the other hand, I really didn’t. I traded. You just have to accept that in this
community because that’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has happened. Plus
the fact, it’s been pretty tough farming and this has given a lot of farmers a
chance to sell some land for some excellent prices.”
Hummel sold about 100 acres of farmland and bought some new land – 77 acres –
farther out in the country. His father had bought what Hummel calls the “home farm”
in 1935, and that family history weighed heavily on Hummel when he was deciding what
to do.
“It was harder to decide to sell that land because it had been in my family for many
generations than it was the agricultural part.”
His father bought the land for 100 dollars an acre and Hummel was able to sell it
for a whole lot more. Asked why he sold, Hummel’s answer is simple.
“The offer. I hadn’t thought about selling at all. I didn’t even know that they
would want any of this particular land ’till all at once there were others that
were selling for a price. I heard about that, and first thing I knew, a heck of
a lot of land in this area was selling. So you compare notes as to prices, et
cetera and so forth, and that’s how it happens.”
Hummel says he wasn’t pressured to sell. He’s well past retirement age, and
he says it was the right decision personally. And such is the case for most
farmers who sell their land for development, says Sara Nikolich, Ohio director
with American Farmland Trust.
“You’ve got acres of farmland that can be sold for 20, 30,000 dollars an acre at times.
For a lot of farmers that’s their retirement they’re sitting on, and when you have
development surrounding you and you don’t have any public policy to promote agriculture
and perhaps you don’t have any heirs, you don’t have any options available to you other
than development.”
And so, the personal decisions of individual farmers are transforming some of the
nation’s rural landscape into suburban landscapes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamara Keith.
