Wow... you're one of 150 people from around the country invited to attend the first National Workshop on Sustainable Forestry! The day comes and you arrive in Washington, D.C. The conference organizer hands you a notebook with several hundred Pages about something called the Montreal Indicators. The United States is participating in an
international forest health report of this name.
You look around the meeting room and read the
attendee list.

Whoops! Everyone else, with only a few exceptions, works for one of eight different government agencies. How did you get here, you ask
yourself? You see the agenda, and it is non-stop
meetings... small groups in two-hour segments
from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., with more meetings after
dinner. It looks like it is going to be a long three
days.

One of the introductory speakers is Bruce
Cabarle of Greenpeace, who warns us about the
'wall of wood' that is going to come at this country over the next 10 to 15 years. He says all the
tropical plantations begun about 20 years ago will
mature and be on the market.

There is a tremendous amount of data to discuss about America's forests and decisions about
how to fill in gaps in the data. There is good news
about carbon data. Young trees use more carbon
dioxide than mature trees... much like young
people use more fuel. This is good for the environment, and there are many young trees being
planted in America.

When you return home, you feel like locking
the door, putting on the headphones and tuning
out the world. You know more than you did
before, and you realize how much more there is
to learn. You start to sympathize with your
ancestors. What must they have felt 100 years
ago when major areas of the countryside had
been cleared and the Forest Service had just
been formed?

Today, America's forests are in good condition.
There is 70 percent of the forest cover that was
here when Columbus landed. Replanting is standard procedure. City governments require tree
planting in parking lots. Scientists across the
nation are funded to study rare forest plants and
their medicinal benefits. Foresters are concerned
with the health of the forest workers. If the people who work the forests aren't taken care of, the
forests won't be, they say.

I hope that by sharing my experience, you can
feel some of the energy in that group of foresters,
scientists, policy makers, real estate tax attorneys
and consultants. They care so much about our
nation's forests and about working with other

countries to share what works for us. The team
leaders for each of the indicators have spent their
careers collecting information, which they shared
openly.

People from one part of the country could
hear what another part needed. A lot of collaborative efforts were formed in those three days.
Whereas I initially was discouraged over
whether I could add anything useful to such an
elite group, it turns out that river log ends offer
historical fire data for the South that was completely missing for much of the 1800s. We now
are working with a forester from LSU to study
fire scars in these old logs and date the occurrence of fires.

According to Steverson Moffat of the USDA
Forest Service, Southern Research Station in
New Orleans, "The truly fascinating thing about
forestry in America, especially about the South,
is that it's 90 percent privately-owned. The
lion's share is not industrial forest ownership,
yet we produce more wood fiber, more round-
wood and more lumber than any other place on
the planet. We're smart and lucky to have a
long, productive growing season, a resilient
landscape and trees well suited to the area.
Now focused on a broader definition including
biodiversity, wildlife and water, people are
expanding out from the more narrow focus of
the 50s, 60s and 70s, regarding sustainability of
fiber and lumber."

This meeting has given me even more optimism for our nation and the world's forests.
Countries all over the world are participating in
this same project and others like it for the
opportunity to figure out how to roll up the
data into meaningful indicators. The 67 indicators in the Montreal Process are classed into
one of seven criteria for sustainable forest
management:

• Conservation of biological diversity

• Maintenance of productive capacity of forest
ecosystems

• Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and
vitality

• Conservation and maintenance of soil and
water resources

• Maintenance of forest contribution to global
carbon cycles

• Maintenance and enhancement of long-term
multiple socio-economic benefits to meet the
needs of societies, and

• Legal, institutional and economic frame-
work for forest conservation and sustainable
management.

For more information, visit http://www.mpci.org or
http://www.srs.fs.fed.us 

October/November 2002 http://www.hardwoodfloorsmag.com