The world’s appetite for energy is growing exponentially, with each year’s new electricity demands exceeding Japan’s entire annual electricity consumption. In the United States alone, electricity demand is projected to rise by as much as 50 percent by the year 2040 due to growth in manufacturing, data centers and mass electrification. Amidst this surge, the need for affordable, clean energy has never been more critical. 

Solar energy is playing a growing role in shaping conversations about the future of sustainable energy.

Why Solar is a Strategic Fit for Rayonier’s Land-Based Solutions Approach

With more than 2 million acres of sustainably managed U.S. forests and nearly 100 years of land stewardship, New England Forestry is uniquely positioned to strengthen the U.S. energy grid through strategic solar development.

Driven by our commitment to land-based solutions, we lease high-potential properties for solar energy development and storage.

Our expert team collaborates closely with solar developers to optimize these projects, delivering clean energy and strengthening surrounding communities through the creation of local jobs, increased tax revenue and significant economic investment.

“Renewable energy is a good fit for Rayonier,” says New England Forestry Vice President of Energy Resources Rob Fancher. “Our timberlands provide a lot of environmental benefits, and renewable energy does the same thing. They’re both very long-term, focused projects. They’re both quiet, good neighbors.”

Why Solar is Important to the Growing Demand for Renewable Energy

On a macro level, solar energy enhances both the United States’ energy independence and its pursuit of energy dominance. This reliable source of domestic power reduces the nation’s need to depend on volatile global energy markets, bolstering its strategic position and global influence.

Increasing U.S. energy independence also provides more price stability for both consumers and businesses. As companies strive to meet sustainability goals and reduce operating costs, locations with robust renewable energy resources are becoming increasingly desirable for new facilities.

This trend is particularly evident in the advanced technology industry, including AI. The manufacturing industry is also a key driver of this shift, drawn to renewable energy’s cost-effectiveness and lower emissions.

​​What Research Shows About the Role of Solar

Countless studies point to clean, renewable energy as the key to meeting energy demand and reducing the impact of CO₂ in the United States:

• “After decades of innovation and cost reductions, solar is rapidly maturing, and with continued research, development, and deployment, it could potentially serve 40% or more of U.S. electricity demand.”—U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Futures Study
• “A net-zero pathway hinges on renewables capacity tripling between now and the end of the decade.”—Bloomberg’s New Energy Outlook 2024
• “Renewable energy technologies like solar and wind are the key to reducing emissions in the electricity sector, which is today the single largest source of CO₂ emissions.”— International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 report

Rayonier’s First Solar Project

The first solar project on New England Forestry land became operational in 2023. Longroad Energy’s 150 megawatt Umbriel solar project in Polk County, Texas, delivers enough clean energy to power roughly 30,000 homes, avoiding an estimated 250,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions annually (the equivalent to taking 55,000 cars off the road). The project also is expected to generate about $13 million in tax revenue for the community.

Project Highlights:

• Clean energy output: Powers ~30,000 homes annually
• CO₂ reduction: Offsets ~250,000 metric tons of emissions each year (equal to removing 55,000 cars from the road)
• Community impact: Expected to generate ~$13 million in local tax revenue

“Solar is the fastest-growing source of energy in the U.S.,” says Longroad Energy Vice President of Origination & Development Adam Horwitz, who led the project for Longroad. “It’s an abundant source of energy…and it’s economical.”

Advancements Driving Solar Forward

Thanks to advances in technology in both building and generating solar power, the levelized cost of solar electricity dropped by more than 80 percent since 2008, according to this Berkeley Lab study and Lazard’s 2024 Levelized Cost of Energy study. Even without national and global emissions reductions targets and federal tax incentives, market forces alone are projected to propel solar and other clean energy technologies forward. Solar is also established more quickly compared to alternatives, such as gas-powered turbines, which have a 7-8 year waiting list.

How the Umbriel Project Came Together

Longroad purchased about 1,900 acres of land needed for the Polk County project and leased the remaining 583 acres from Rayonier. The energy developer developed the site, found a long-term energy buyer for the solar project, secured financing, oversaw construction and brought the project into operation.

Advantages of working with New England Forestry on a Solar Project

Working with New England Forestry offers advantages to solar developers, including:

• Our company’s long history as a landowner and careful stewardship of our properties.
• Strong relationships with local and state leaders as well as neighboring property owners.
• Extensive records on the land, including topography, soil types, wetland delineation, any presence of vulnerable plants and wildlife, and other data.
• A large landbase to work with in order to optimize the plan.

Our team of experts works with the solar developer to identify ideal locations that meet their needs, buildable land at scale with access to strong power markets and transmission. The team also supports the development process by assisting with site design, layout and identification of sensitive environmental areas.

Working with a single, large landowner streamlined the process for the developer, explains Longroad Landman Cody Walker:

“When you deal with multiple landowners in one area, you have different personalities, you have to manage different needs and different histories with properties to manage,” he says. “When it’s one landowner, one use, you can easily work together to make the project work for both parties.”

Taking neighbors’ concerns into account

Cody worked closely with neighbors to ensure their concerns and expectations were taken into account during the project, as well. Kim Mueck, whose family owns nearby property, says they were at first skeptical about the project.

Kim says she expected noise and traffic, but was pleased that wasn’t the case after the solar project was built.

“We got Cody’s number and, any time we needed anything, the weekends, the holidays, if there was a problem, they were there,” she says. “It turned out to be a great relationship. The road to get to our own property is way better. They did leave a tree buffer there between our property and the solar farm, so you don’t really see it.”

“Once the construction’s done and it’s here, it’s just here,” she says. “You don’t see a lot of people. It’s not noisy. There’s not a lot of traffic. Like I said, you pass through it to get to our property, but once you’re back there, you really don’t know it’s there.”

Optimizing Land for its Greatest Sustainable Purpose

The New England Forestry team is trained to look carefully at all of our properties, striving to find the best possible purpose for every acre. The majority of Rayonier’s land base is best suited for forestry activities, but our business development team is trained to recognize special sites and unique characteristics that are ideal for solar, wind and other critical land-based solutions.

Only Select Land is Right for Solar

“As we evaluate the properties that are best for solar, we find that to be a very small percentage of our portfolio overall,” explains New England Forestry Business Development Landman Jose Villarreal.

New England Forestry estimates that only a low, single-digit percentage of its forest land may ultimately become active solar projects.

Rayonier’s properties that are especially attractive to solar companies have proximity to a population in need of the energy and convenient access to power transmission infrastructure.

While the recent ramp up in solar projects across the nation may seem expansive, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Futures Study states that the most aggressive growth in solar energy development would use, at most, 10.3 million acres of land across the entire U.S. by 2050. That equates to less than 5 percent of land in all U.S. states (except for Rhode Island, which comes in at 6.5 percent).

Working with Sustainability-Centric Companies to Deliver Clean Energy

New England Forestry uses a careful vetting process in determining which companies to work with to deliver clean energy. We choose to work with companies that, like us, put sustainability first; go well beyond the minimum standards to protect the environment; and treat our neighbors and communities with respect.

Choosing the Right Partners for the Long Term

“We want to work with solar development companies that share in our core values and our long-term commitments to environmental stewardship,” says New England Forestry Energy Resources Manager Zan Frederick. He says his team was pleased with the steps Longroad Energy took to protect the environment around the project site.

Designing Solar Projects with a Commitment to Environmental Stewardship

While the project site encompassed about 2,500 acres, only 1,300 were developed for solar, allowing Longroad to work around sensitive features, such as streams and wetlands.

“The project from the very beginning was sited and designed to avoid and protect wetlands,” says Longroad Environmental Manager Lindsey Kester. “We had wetland ecologists survey the project area to identify those boundaries in coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers, and then our engineers sited and designed the project to avoid those boundaries. It’s a thoughtful process and it doesn’t just end with a plan. We have a whole team that ensures that that plan is in compliance through construction and operation through the life of the project.”

Construction of the solar project included the development of reservoirs, silt fences and other modalities to prevent impacts on wetlands and the surrounding area. The Longroad team also planted seed lots designed to ensure there will be vegetation such as flowering grasses on the ground year-round, stabilizing the soil.

“That vegetation includes native pollinator plant species that help enhance that environment and provide new habitat where wildlife can thrive,” Lindsey says.

You can learn more about Longroad’s approach to environmental stewardship by visiting their website here.

High Standards for the Life of the Project

Our solar leases typically span 30 years or more. When the projects come to a close, the developer will remove all materials, enabling us to resume use of the property for whatever its next highest and best use is, such as forestry.

By leasing land for solar projects on select sites, New England Forestry ensures the land will be held to the same standards we hold all of our properties to: sustainable land management that will benefit our communities and planet for many years to come.

The post Solar Powers a Sustainable Energy Future on New England Forestry Land appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

For decades, most city skylines have been composed of skyscrapers and tall buildings made of concrete, steel and glass.

But what if there were a building material that was strong enough to construct an 18-story building, came from entirely renewable resources, didn’t make cities hotter and helped sequester carbon and other pollutants?

Meet mass timber, the durable, beautiful, fire-resistant and environmentally-friendly building material that is changing the face of skylines. This wood-based building material has a considerably lower carbon footprint, generating fewer carbon emissions during and after construction.

In fact, one study found a 19 percent reduction in emissions when comparing a mass timber structure with an equally sized steel structure.¹ Mass timber also comes from a renewable, naturally-growing resource: trees.

In this guide, we’re looking at the benefits of mass timber and how it is reshaping the commercial building industry. We’re also taking a close look at the story of 619 Ponce, an entirely locally-sourced mass timber structure championed in part by the Georgia Forestry Foundation in the heart of Atlanta.

• What is Mass Timber (and why is it important)?
• Types of Mass Timber Products
• Why are Mass Timber Buildings Gaining Popularity?
• What Type of Trees is Mass Timber Made From?
• What are the Benefits of Mass Timber?
• Examples of Mass Timber Buildings
• 619 Ponce Mass Timber Building Success Story
• Rayonier’s Role in the Mass Timber Revolution

What is Mass Timber (and why is it important)?

Mass timber is made from prefabricated, multilayered, solid wood panels that create solid timber building materials, such as:

• Beams and columns,
• Floor, roof and wall panels,
• Tall wall framing studs and roof rafters,
• Door and window headers, and more.

Types of Mass Timber Products

Mass timber products, like those made with New England Forestry timber, come from renewable and sustainably-harvested wood products. Types of mass timber products include:

• Cross-laminated timber (CLT): Layers of wood stacked and glued at right angles, creating strong, stable panels ideal for walls, floors and roofs.
  
  
• Glue-laminated timber (glulam): Long beams made from layers of wood bonded together, often used for load-bearing columns and arches. It can be curved or bent for unique architectural designs during its construction.
  
  
• Nail-laminated timber (NLT): Panels made by nailing or screwing layers of wood together, a cost-effective choice for floors, walls and roofs. This material also can be customized for a variety of textured appearances and unique forms.
  
  
• Structural composite lumber (SCL): Engineered wood made from wood strands or veneers, using a moisture-resistant adhesive. SCL can come in panels as much as 8 feet wide and is designed for use in beams, headers, columns and other structural components.

Why are Mass Timber Buildings Gaining Popularity?

Using mass timber is a tremendous win for builders, architects, designers, consumers and environmentally-responsible cities seeking healthier and more eco-functional building materials to benefit their cities and citizens.

Until recently, mass timber was used only in residential homes and smaller buildings no larger than six stories or 85 feet. This was due in large part to outdated building codes, which were established with more traditional lumber materials in mind.

However, in light of the specific qualities that make mass timber different, such as its fire resistance and sturdiness even against natural disasters, changes to International Building Codes in 2021 deemed it safe to use mass timber in buildings up to 18 stories high.

What Type of Trees Is Mass Timber Made From?

Common species used in mass timber include Douglas fir, pine, and spruce—all of which are known for their strength and renewability. 

One of the biggest misconceptions about modern timber materials is that they are sourced from forests in a way that will deplete timber resources.

Today, the majority of timber products are sourced from sustainably managed forests grown for the purposes of harvesting.

These forests are then replanted, beginning the process of growing timber all over again.

What are the Benefits of Mass Timber?

Mass timber offers specific benefits across three main areas: the environment, the economy, and human well-being.

Environmental Benefits of Mass Timber 

When you compare the impacts of building with sustainably grown trees to traditional building materials, like steel and concrete, the environmental benefits are significant. For instance:

• Renewable resource: Trees used to manufacture mass timber products are grown in sustainably managed forests and replanted after harvest, making mass timber an entirely renewable resource.
  
  
• Minimized waste: Sawmill residues are typically used in mass timber manufacturing, helping reduce waste associated with production.
  
  
• Reduced resource extraction: Unlike concrete and steel, mass timber does not require mined materials or fossil fuels.
  
  
• Biodegradable and repurposable: Mass timber is biodegradable or, in some cases, can be repurposed—like barn wood.
  
  
• Water efficiency: Mass timber production uses far less water than concrete and steel.
  
  
• Carbon storage: Studies have also shown mass timber can help store carbon and other pollutants for the life of the building.²
  
  For example: A 2024 study showed mass timber materials have the potential to store between 9.9 and 16.5 million tons of CO₂ per-year, spanning 50 years, from 2020 to 2070. These carbon benefits equate to 12-20% of the total U.S. harvested wood products carbon storage for 2020.³
  
  
• Long-Term Carbon Impact: Experts and advocates have even suggested mass timber can help the North American construction industry store more carbon than it emits by 2034.⁴

All of these characteristics contribute to making mass timber a low-carbon material compared to concrete and steel.

Economic Benefits of Mass Timber

Research has shown building with mass timber has economic benefits for builders and construction companies, including:

• Faster Construction Time: Mass timber construction can be faster than traditional methods.
  
  For example: According to reports from builders of mass timber structures, such as the Ascent, a 25-story mass timber hybrid building in Milwaukee, mass timber can speed construction time by 20-30%.⁵ Studies have also shown mass timber shortens construction time.⁶
  
  
• Improved Project Efficiency: The use of prefabricated mass timber products requires less on-site assembly, streamlining the construction process and enhancing overall project efficiency.
  
  
• Increased Safety: In addition to improved building time, project safety is improved due to the prefabrication of the materials, which requires less on-site construction in high or precarious places.
  
  
• Reduced Labor Needs: Using mass timber requires half the amount of workers, saving companies and their clients money.
  
  
• Cost-Competitive with Traditional Materials: Mass timber is often cost-competitive with conventional materials, as outlined in a case study by the University of British Columbia.⁷
  
  
• Job Creation in Diverse Communities: The growing, harvesting, processing and manufacturing of mass timber products also creates substantial job opportunities in rural and urban communities for people with various skill sets.

Human Benefits of Mass Timber:

Mass timber has numerous benefits to human health and well-being, including:

• Improved Air Quality: Mass timber is one of the only commercial building materials shown to store carbon while not creating extra heat, unlike concrete or steel buildings.
  
  
• Noise Reduction and Tranquility: Research from the University of British Columbia in 2016 showed mass timber buildings provide excellent sound insulation and absorption properties⁸, promoting a peaceful indoor environment.
  
  
• Excellent Fire Resistance: Mass timber’s natural fire resistance makes it a safer building material for homes and offices. When ignited, the outer layers form a char layer, which protects and insulates the inner layers of the material.
  
  
• Overall Health and Wellness Benefits: Ample research has shown exposure to nature and the natural elements, including natural building materials, supports various aspects of health, including: cognitive function, blood pressure, stress response, immune function, faster recovery and healing, and psychological well-being. ^{9 10 11 12}

Bottom line: research has shown mass timber benefits the planet, its people and its economies.

Examples of Mass Timber Buildings

Mass timber buildings, also known as Tall Wood Buildings, are still dwarfed by their steel and concrete predecessors.

However, several cities worldwide have been early adopters of this type of construction. Some North American examples include:

• Carbon 12 building in Portland, Oregon: This eight-story mass timber building includes residences on the upper floors as well as commercial space on the ground floor. Architects Kaiser + Path worked with local and state officials to waive building codes limiting the height of wood buildings. Learn more about how it was built at kaiserpath.com/carbon12.
  
  
• The Brock Commons at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This 18-story dormitory residential building is the largest mass timber building in the world to date.
  
  
• The Ascent: A 25-story, 285-foot mass timber hybrid building in Milwaukee featuring luxury rentals, the Ascent became the tallest hybrid mass timber building in the world when construction was completed in 2022.
  
  
• The Kendeda Building of Sustainable and Innovative Design at Georgia Tech in Atlanta: The first building in Georgia and 28th in the world to earn Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification, the world’s most ambitious and holistic green building achievement. Used for education, research and outreach, among the building’s accolades are zero carbon construction, net positive energy and net positive water, thanks to a design that incorporates mass timber, a solar canopy and rain capture.
  
  
• The High Line Timber Bridge in New York City: This 260-foot-long bridge is set amidst a lush garden-like landscape in the heart of Manhattan, allowing pedestrians to travel above busy streets.
  
  
• The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library: The design of this 93,000-square-foot library in Medora, North Dakota, was inspired by Roosevelt’s personal reflections on the landscape, his interest in environmental stewardship and periods of quiet introspection and civic engagement in his life.
  
  
• 619 Ponce: Located in Atlanta next to the popular Ponce City Market, this office and retail space is Georgia’s first building constructed using locally-sourced mass timber.

Supporting Atlanta’s 619 Ponce: A Mass Timber Building Success Story

For an insider’s perspective, we talked to Matt Hestad, Vice President of the Georgia Forestry Foundation (Foundation), about their participation in spearheading the mass timber building, 619 Ponce in Atlanta. Matt noted that the Foundation’s focus on mass timber not only served to support Georgia’s working forests by promoting new markets for locally grown sustainable wood products, but it has also built an important thought bridge between people living in urban Atlanta and the rural parts of Georgia, where sustainable forestry happens every day.

“We can’t underestimate the importance of everyday Georgians knowing where the wood products that they depend on every day come from and the trust that is built from knowing that it is sustainably produced and sourced,” he says.

Georgia’s Forestry Leadership in Mass Timber Production

It is commonly presumed that tree-adorned Washington State or Oregon are the country’s largest source of timber. 

However, as Matt told us, Georgia is the #1 forestry state in the nation, with 22 million acres of commercially available private timberland.¹³ Georgia also leads the country in annual timber harvest volume, forest product exports and seedling production for reforestation.

But the Foundation hasn’t been alone in its quest to support mass timber development.  Since 2017, through the work of its parent organization, the Georgia Forestry Association (GFA), several pieces of legislation have been passed by Georgia’s Legislature to advance opportunities for mass timber construction in the state.

These include stopping a ban on the use of lumber in buildings over 3 stories, adopting international building codes that allow construction with mass timber up to 18 stories, and creating a sustainable development carbon registry that allows builders to register and monetize the carbon stored in mass timber buildings.

Anticipating the impact mass timber could have on community sustainability

“As the top forestry state, we have an abundant supply of available timber that can be locally sourced for mass timber construction projects,” Matt says.

“Mass timber can play a significant role in the sustainability of our communities because more than 40 percent of the world’s emissions come from the built environment. When you think about the fact we can replace carbon-emitting materials like steel and concrete with mass timber where, as trees grow in a forest, it’s sequestering carbon and releasing oxygen,” he says. “It’s also holding carbon as 50% of the dry wood, so that’s locked up in the building materials. We have a huge opportunity to start shifting the emissions portfolio of our communities from a really carbon-intensive process to one where we’re storing carbon.”

Benefits for Timberland Owners and Local Economies

GFF also sees mass timber benefiting private timberland owners and local economies: 

“From a markets perspective, we understand that forestry and land management investments follow the demand for forest products,” Matt explains.

“If society values the products that come from working forests, it will value the land as a real estate asset. If the land is valuable, landowners will be incentivized to continue using their own dollars to invest in forest management and reforestation.”

Making timberland investments even more valuable

“Mass timber layers on another value proposition for society, and therefore is an opportunity to further incentivize those forest landowners, which makes their timberland even more valuable,” Matt says.

A New Market for Mass Timber Beyond Single-Family Homes

In addition, GFA sees mass timber as a solution to the lack of demand for new construction single-family homes, which has plagued the forestry market since the housing collapse in 2008.

“The forestry sector has traditionally relied on single-family homes to drive the need for lumber. Since 2008, that market has been lagging,” Matt says. “I think mass timber shows a lot of promise in introducing a new market for forest products in which we have the opportunity to increase demand for mass timber as a primary structural material for multi-family and mixed-use developments.”

Expanding Mass Timber’s Role in Mid-Rise Buildings

Many experts believe that the most significant opportunity lies in mid-rise (Type IV) buildings. These traditionally four- or five-story buildings are ideal uses for mass timber, as they replace the need for concrete and steel and can be built faster and more efficiently.

One such example is the aforementioned 619 Ponce, a showcase mass timber building  developed by Jamestown LP next door to the iconic Ponce City Market in Atlanta. The Georgia Forestry Foundation launched its Seedlings to Solutions Initiative to tell the story of mass timber and the benefits of sourcing it locally. One feature of the project includes the Torus Arch, a mass timber education feature. The video below shows how it was made:

“On this project, Jamestown was told the best, most cost-effective way to obtain the mass timber was to import it from Austria because the market is much more mature in that part of the world.

“Right now, the only mass timber facility in the U.S. South is in Dothan, Alabama. So, unfortunately, it is more expensive, in some cases, to source mass timber locally, but that’s changing,” Matt explains. “We hope that, with people like Jamestown investing in mass timber, it will bring more mass timber manufacturing to the U.S. South, and developers will be able to greater realize the cost savings with faster construction time and less labor.”

The project went forward using mass timber sourced locally from West Georgia on Jamestown-owned land.

Per a U.S. Forestry Service Forest Inventory Analysis, Georgia grows enough wood to supply a mass timber building of the scale of 619 Ponce every 16 minutes.¹⁴

Andres Villegas, Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications at Rayonier, has been on the Georgia Forestry Foundation Board since 2015 and currently serves as the Vice Chairman. He recounts his experience watching the construction of 619 Ponce in comparison to a traditional concrete and steel building happening simultaneously:

“It was surprising to see an entire building go up quickly with only 8-10 workers and a crane on the worksite. Mass timber has clear advantages in terms of the speed, efficiency and beauty compared to traditional construction projects that is measurable from a profit and loss perspective. That is important because the buildings not only have to be appealing to consumers, they also have to be competitive for the developer to build.” 

Far-reaching aesthetic and environmental benefits

“Today, 619 Ponce is a beautiful, warm and inviting space,” Andres says.

“It’s interesting to see, when you take people on tours, they automatically want to hug one of the mass timber beams! You can’t deny the biophilic benefits of being in this natural environment, and developers tend to do a good job making sure there’s plenty of sunlight. It is a key differentiator of the space. It feels different.”

“At the end of the day, that allows investors to realize an appreciation in their rent,” he says. “They can charge a little bit more to folks leasing these spaces because they know that their tenants are looking for a sustainable option that gives them a competitive edge with recruiting great talent and retaining great customers.”

Exploring Carbon Credits with Mass Timber

Matt also mentioned the benefits of mass timber for acquiring and selling carbon credits.

“In 2022, we asked ourselves: ‘What if we supported developers for investing in a building material that reduces carbon emissions rather than emitting them?’ GFA worked with elected officials to pass a bill that expanded Georgia’s existing carbon registry to consider the embodied and embedded carbon in materials—like mass timber. It’s really a first-of-its-kind registry, where developers—if they choose to list their embodied and embedded carbon—can get it third-party verified and listed.

“We’re hoping 619 Ponce will be the first one listed on that registry. Once the carbon is listed, the owners can do whatever they want to with it. For example, they can monetize it and turn it into carbon credits they’d sell to someone trying to offset their emissions.”

Matt acknowledges it’s a long-term play, but projects like 619 Ponce serve as a critical learning environment and a prime example of what’s possible with mass timber sourced within a 600-mile range.

Click here to learn more about GFA’s mass timber projects and initiatives.

Rayonier’s Role in the Mass Timber Revolution

New England Forestry has been an early adopter and thus has a long history of environmental responsibility and stewardship in forestry.

We practice a land stewardship ethic that integrates reforestation, managing, growing, nurturing and harvesting trees as an economic enterprise with the conservation of natural resources and energy, wildlife and fish habitats and aesthetics.

To date, our working forests sequestered 13 million metric tonnes of carbon in 2023, removing approximately seven times more carbon than our efforts emitted. That’s the equivalent of removing over 3 million cars from the road.

Our commitment to environmental stewardship goes hand in hand with our passion for producing raw materials for environmentally friendly building products from our SFI-certified, sustainably managed forests, such as mass timber.

Wood products have always been used to create beautiful, functional and sustainable structures—long before concrete and steel came along.

We see mass timber as the next generation in sustainable wood construction, and we will continue investing in these innovations through forestry programs and sustainability programs, as well as our continued collaboration with organizations who champion working forests and the sustainable wood products that come from them.

Forests have always provided incredible inspiration and resources for humanity, and we see mass timber as an integral part of shaping a brighter and healthier future.

1. Hemmati, Messadi, Gu, Seddelmeyer and Hemmati. (April 2024.) “Comparison of Embodied Carbon Footprint of a Mass Timber Building Structure with a Steel Equivalent.” MDPI.  https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/14/5/1276

2. “Review of the Performance and Benefits of Mass Timber as an Alternative to Concrete and Steel for Improving the Sustainability of Structures”. Sustainability

3. Nepal, P., Prestemon, J. P., Ganguly, I., Kumar, V., Bergman, R. D., & Poudyal, N. C. (2024). “The potential use of mass timber in mid-to high-rise construction and the associated carbon benefits in the United States”. PLOS ONE, 19(3), e0298379. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298379

4. “2024 Mass Timber International Report”. https://masstimberconference.com/report/

5. “Mass Timber”. American Wood Council.

6. “Review of the Performance and Benefits of Mass Timber as an Alternative to Concrete and Steel for Improving the Sustainability of Structures”. Sustainability.

7. Case Study: An 18-storey tall mass timber hybrid student residence at the University of British ColumbiaStudent residence Brock Commons Vancouver (18 story hybrid building). https://events.forum-holzbau.com/pdf/37_IHF_2016_Fast.pdf

8. Eighteen Storey Hybrid Mass Timber Student Residence at the University of British Columbia. Journal of Structural Engineering International. DOI: 10.2749/101686617X14676303588553

9. Interior wood use in classrooms reduces pupils’ stress levels. Conference: 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology At: Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

10. Appearance wood products and psychological well-being. January 2007. Wood and Fiber Science.

11. View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science. 1984 Apr 27;224(4647):420-1. doi: 10.1126/science.6143402. PMID: 6143402.

12. Zhong, W., Schröder, T., & Bekkering, J. (2022). Biophilic design in architecture and its contributions to health, well-being, and sustainability: A critical review. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 11(1), 114-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2021.07.006 

13. Georgia Forestry Commission. (2011). Georgia Forest Facts. Web; accessed: March 2020.

14. Based on U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory Analysis Data: Georgia timberlands took 989.8 seconds to grow the 1,845 cubic meters of wood.

The post A Guide to Mass Timber Construction: The Future of Sustainable Architecture and The Role of Forestry appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

As our world seeks to transition to a low-carbon economy, the demand for land and renewable forest products is on the rise. We believe these resources will play a key role in addressing the impacts of climate change and the excess carbon in the atmosphere.

Many strategies to enhance and sustain the health of our planet will come from the proper use of land. As a landowner responsible for millions of acres of forests, New England Forestry is eager to deliver the land-based solutions our assets can provide.

These land uses address some of the key environmental needs of the world. We believe it’s our responsibility to lead, innovate and collaborate with others to ensure a healthy and sustainable future. We are working closely with community and business leaders to leverage our forestlands to make the greatest positive impact.

New England Forestry views land-based solutions through the following broad categories:

• Positioning land for alternative and additional uses
• Elevating the role our forests play in capturing carbon
• Producing the wood fiber needed to fuel bioenergy and biofuel systems of the future
• Embracing environmental and biodiversity conservation

Positioning land for alternative and additional uses

Alternative uses include solar and wind farms, which produce clean energy, powering homes and businesses while drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions required to produce that energy.

“Renewables produce energy with a lot less carbon emissions than other traditional forms of power production, such as coal and gas,” explains our Vice President of Energy Resources Rob Fancher.

Renewable energy producers support a healthier environment by reducing air pollution, mitigating climate change, conserving water compared to fossil fuel plants and minimizing noise pollution. They also provide local jobs, increase tax revenue and make communities more attractive to new businesses.

“Many businesses are interested in lowering their carbon footprint and they’re looking to relocate their facilities to areas that have options for renewable energy,” Rob explains.

Leasing land for wind and solar farms

Sites with strong solar and wind potential are plentiful across Rayonier’s ownership, which is attractive to solar companies because of our large land base and proximity to power substations.

Thanks to advancements in technology, solar power has become one of the most affordable energy sources, with the levelized cost of electricity declining more than 80% from 2008 to 2022, according to this Berkeley Lab study.

Solar makes up more than half of new energy

Due to its relative affordability and positive impact on climate, solar is now making up more than half of all new energy being introduced into the grid, as reported here by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In 2023, the first solar farm on New England Forestry land came online in Polk County, Texas. Longroad Energy’s 150 megawatt project produces enough clean energy to power 30,000 homes, avoiding an estimated 250,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions annually.

“When we’re looking for solar developers to pursue a project, we really want a reputable, trustworthy company that shares our core values and our long-term commitment to environmental stewardship,” says Business Development Manager Zan Frederick. He says his team was pleased with the steps Longroad Energy took to protect the environment around the project site.

The solar farm, which includes about 600 acres of New England Forestry land, implements water quality protection measures such as reservoirs and forest buffers. It also was built around wetlands to protect the ecosystems within its boundaries, with solar panels on only 1,300 acres of the approximately 2,500-acre site.

The first wind farm lease on New England Forestry land became operational in 2019 in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma. Established on a high ridge that overlapped our property at the time and a neighboring landowner, the wind farm delivers enough clean energy to power 40,000 homes while the trees continue to grow around it. Our team carefully monitored the construction process to ensure waterways were protected at the same high standard our foresters adhere to when managing our timberlands.

Providing pore space for carbon capture and storage opportunities

In addition to green energy sites, New England Forestry owns land that is well-situated to provide carbon emitters, such as factories and power plants, access to pore space for carbon capture and storage—or, CCS—for their emissions. 

CCS begins with the CO₂ producer, who captures the CO₂ from the atmosphere or the point source of the emissions and pipes them into an underground pipe system. This system transports the emissions to our land in liquid form. The CO₂ is then sent deep underground—a half mile or more—and injected into a rock formation that is intended to store it permanently.

With more than half of the world’s 2,000 largest companies committed to net zero emissions, CCS is expected to be a major contributor to decarbonization. CCS demand is projected to grow rapidly, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 6.2 percent annually from 2023 to 2030, reaching more than 300 Mtpa (million tonnes per annum), according to the World Economic Forum.

Our southern land base includes large tracts of land with geologic capacity for CCS. Many of these properties are within close proximity to high-purity emissions sources as well as existing pipelines and rights-of-way.

As of 2024, New England Forestry has granted 75,000 acres of underground pore space lease agreements. These leases allow emitters to use our land for CCS. By making land available for CCS, we are facilitating a critical solution for reducing carbon emissions, while still preserving the primary use of our land for timber operations.

“By providing CCS pore space while continuing to sustainably manage the forests above, we’re able to deliver even more environmental benefits through our land resources,” said New England Forestry Executive Vice President and Chief Resource Officer Doug Long. “We’re committed to advancing these types of land-based solutions to combat climate change.”

Elevating the role our forests play in capturing carbon

Trees capture and store carbon not only while they’re growing, but also store carbon in the products they become, such as lumber and plywood for housing construction.

Beyond these direct product uses, we are able to leverage our foresters’ expertise and change how our forests are managed to maximize the carbon captured. These management changes produce carbon credits to be sold in offset markets.

In New Zealand, we participate in the nation’s regulated carbon offset market, known as the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. Through this market, registered forests generate credits known as New Zealand Units (NZUs). Companies looking to offset their emissions purchase the NZUs and “retire” them once they claim that credit. In 2023, New England Forestry generated $23 million in NZU sales.

Across our U.S. lands, where carbon markets are voluntary, we are exploring opportunities to elevate the carbon sequestered within the forests we manage.

Improved Forest Management (IFM) projects currently under consideration could maximize our carbon sequestration using science-driven forestry techniques. This might include extending how long timberlands grow before they’re harvested, establishing alternative native species, or managing the land in a different manner. 

Carbon credits can also be generated from afforestation activity, in which land that has been used for different purposes, such as cattle grazing, is converted into forests.

New England Forestry is currently working on both IFM and afforestation carbon credit projects in the U.S.

Producing the wood fiber needed to fuel bioenergy and biofuel systems of the future

There is a rising need for the wood fiber we grow as manufacturing facilities seek to become more environmentally positive. Wood-based biofuels for airplanes, ships and vehicles as well as electricity generated through wood-based bioenergy reduce carbon emissions. Using these products in place of traditional fuels can significantly reduce the carbon intensity of the energy the world needs.

One specific area of opportunity is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facilities. BECCS is a growing area of interest to address manufacturers’ emissions, especially in the U.S. South, where a large portion of our timberlands are concentrated. BECCS facilities burn woody biomass for energy production and then capture and store the emitted carbon—aiming to create a carbon-negative cycle.

The demand for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, known as SAF, is also on the rise. Air travel is currently responsible for 12% of all transportation-related CO₂ emissions, according to this article by the U.S. Department of Energy. Existing aircraft can use a blend of SAF and jet fuel to reduce emissions. 

Members of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), representing more than 80 percent of global air traffic, have committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions from their operations by 2050.  IATA’s Fly Net Zero strategy relies on SAF for 65% of the emission reductions, which will lead to significant increasing demand for SAF in the future.

Embracing environmental and biodiversity conservation

We are committed to sustainable land management practices that balance various uses while ensuring the protection of critical natural habitats. This includes implementing conservation strategies, maintaining or enhancing biodiversity and adhering to environmental regulations to conserve the ecological integrity of significant areas under our stewardship.

We’re actively involved in conservation easement solutions that permanently preclude certain activities such as high-density development or mining from taking place on those properties. These solutions make larger conservation efforts possible in areas near our ownership.

Through biodiversity enhancement efforts, such as the afforestation of lands from other uses to forests, we can prioritize habitat for vulnerable wildlife species, as well as help create continuity of wildlife corridors and sensitive areas, all in an effort to contribute to environmental conservation.

Proud to be Part of the Solution

At Rayonier, we’re proud to continuously seek more ways to be part of the solution. Through the land-based solutions we work with stakeholders to deliver, as well as our timber business’s climate-smart forest management, we can play an important role in advancing the transition to a low-carbon economy and addressing the risks posed by climate change.

The post What are Land-Based Solutions? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

ABERDEEN, Wa.— Plywood is crucial in construction, but have you ever wondered how plywood is made? In this article, we explore how trees are transformed during the plywood-making process at a veneer mill in Aberdeen, Washington and the significance of the forest lifecycle in maintaining a sustainable supply of this essential resource, including:

• What is plywood and what is it used for?
• What type of wood is used to make plywood?
• What are the steps to make plywood?
• What happens to the wood scraps in the plywood-making process?
• What happens to the land after trees are harvested for plywood?
• What is the importance of sustainable forestry in plywood production?

What is plywood and what is it used for?

Plywood is an incredibly important forest product used in the construction of all kinds of homes and buildings.

This versatile material is made by bonding together many layers of thin sheets of wood veneer. Consumers choose plywood over other wood building materials such as solid lumber for several reasons:

1. Value: A sheet of plywood is more affordable than the same amount of solid wood.
2. Strength: Plywood is a very durable wood product thanks to the manufacturing process, which layers wood veneer at varying angles.
3. Uniformity: Because of the way they’re made, plywood panels can be depended on to come in the width, length and thickness expected without major defects.

What type of wood is used to make plywood?

There is softwood plywood, hardwood plywood and plywood made up of a combination of both. Firs, pines, oaks, maples, birches and other woods are all commonly used to make plywood.

At the Pacific Veneer Mill in Aberdeen, Washington, hemlock, Douglas-fir, spruce and sometimes pine are all types of wood used to make veneer sheets.

Troy Kalinoski, who purchases timber for the mill, says he prefers to buy hemlock wood, which is more affordable and helps the mill keep the overall cost of its product low. In this part of the country, hemlock also has less knots than Douglas fir, making a better quality wood.

“We’re probably anywhere from 80 to 85 percent hemlock,” he says. “Because of that, our product is coveted by certain customers in our marketplace.”

The veneer mill purchases wood from landowners like Rayonier; manufactures it into sheets; and then sells those sheets to a plywood mill. The plywood mill then fastens each thin layer of veneer together into the final product, using a powerful laminate material.

Finding the right wood for the veneer mill

“We try to grow the best logs for the mills that we possibly can,” says our Senior Timber Marketing Manager Kevin Pilemalm, who sells New England Forestry timber to Pacific Veneer. “Our silviculture team has worked really hard to get good, straight, clean logs that grow fast. There’s not really a technique to grow every log on the job to a veneer quality. We have to go out on those jobs and find the veneer quality logs that are there.”

Veneer mill logs are more valuable than, for example, lower quality logs New England Forestry would sell to a pulp mill. It’s the timber marketing manager’s job, along with the logging crew, to determine the best use for each log.

“Our guys in the woods are really crucial in picking those logs out and putting those sorts together,” Kevin says. “Then, when they come in here, we have the right product and the mill gets what they need.”

Kevin says fostering good relationships with customers like Pacific Veneer is key to the role of a timber marketing manager:

“We work really hard to maintain the relationships New England Forestry has with our local mills. It’s a long-term relationship to keep this industry running.”

What are the steps to make plywood? A veneer mill tour.

To make plywood, a tree has to be debarked, steamed in a vault and then peeled into a long, thin sheet at the veneer mill. Those sheets are then graded and cut down to size, dried and stacked. Once the stacks are delivered to the plywood mill, the plywood manufacturing process continues. The veneer sheets are covered in a powerful glue called laminate and then stacked with the wood grain facing in perpendicular directions, which ensures the wood will be extremely strong.

The team at Pacific Veneer provided a tour in the video included with this article, showing the step-by-step process to making plywood sheets. Some manufacturers will make veneer and plywood at the same site. Pacific Veneer specializes only in the veneer manufacturing process.

Below we go into more detail about each of the following steps in how plywood is manufactured, including:

• Step 1: Prepare the logs for peeling in a steam vault
• Step 2: Peel the logs into thin sheets of veneer using a lathe
• Step 3: Clipping and assessing the veneer sheets
• Step 4: Drying, grading and banding
• Step 5: Creating the final product at the plywood mill

Step 1: Prepare the logs for peeling in a steam vault

The first step is to prepare the log for peeling. The mill removes the bark, cuts the logs down to 100.25-inch-long blocks, and places them in steamy vaults.

“Once the vault is full, they go up and turn the water on and shut the door. We’re going to cook those blocks at 165 degrees for 16 hours,” says Plant Superintendent Dave Newberry.

The steam helps to break down the wood fibers, ensuring a smooth peel and a better-quality end product.

Step 2: Peel the logs into thin sheets of veneer using a lathe

Once the logs are properly steamed, they’re ready to peel.

A charger digitally assess each log, locating the perfect place to hold the log to produce the most veneer. A pendulum then swings back, picks up the log and places it in the lathe, rapidly spinning it.

The machine can peel anywhere from a 7-inch to a 27-inch diameter log. The resulting sheets will be anywhere between 1/200th and 1/10th of an inch thick. The machine can peel up to 14 logs per-minute.

The peeler operator listens to the sound of the lathe cutting the log to determine whether it is working properly.

Every two-and-a-half hours, at break time, the lathe blade is replaced with a fresh, sharpened blade. The mill employs a full time grinder operator, whose sole job is to re-sharpen blades for the lathe.

Step 3: Clipping and assessing the veneer sheets

Once the logs have been unraveled into long, thin ribbons of wood, they are moved by a conveyor belt into a rotary clipper.

A digital scanner assesses the wood for defects and directs the clipped to cut the wood into 54- and 27-inch sheets.

Smaller pieces with defects like large holes will drop off the conveyor into a pile that will be used either as plywood filler or it will be processed into wood chips.

A moisture meter scans the 54- and 27-inch sheets to guide how the wood veneer is sorted. There will be heart wood, sap wood, and super sap wood.

Each will be stacked in a separate pile because each will require a different amount of time in the dryer.

Step 4: Drying, grading and banding

The veneer needs to dry in order to prevent decay and improve the properties of the finished wood.

While some plywood mills purchase the veneer at this stage and dry it themselves, others want the veneer sheets in a dried condition.

“It’s basically like an oven,” Dave says of the industrial dryer. “Once the sheet comes through, it needs to be 8 percent moisture or less.”

Once they come out of the dryer, each sheet is graded and sorted depending on the size and quality of the wood.

The mill places a band around each stack of veneer wood and prepares it for the plywood manufacturing customer that will transform it into the final product.

Step 5: Creating the final product at the plywood mill

Once a plywood mill purchases the veneer sheets, they will be transformed into the final product found in lumber and hardware stores.

First, the veneer sheets will be glued. The sheets run through a “glue curtain” that coats them with the laminate, then they’re stacked together. The wood grain is rotated between layers, which gives the plywood strength and prevents splitting and shrinkage.

Next, the assembled layers of veneer will be pressed and heated. Using pressure and heat presses the glue into an even, thin layer.

Finally, the plywood panel will go through the finishing process, where it is cut to size, edges are squared and the plywood may be sanded into the final product.

What happens to the wood scraps in the plywood-making process?

Nothing goes to waste in the process of making plywood. For example, bark and wood scraps from the logs are used to fuel the wood-fired furnace that heats the steam vaults and the dryer. The peeler “cores,” which are small cylinders of leftover wood once the logs are peeled, are also put to good use:

“Our customers do various things with the peeler cores, from making pallet stock to possibly landscape timbers, and there’s various other products they might get used for such as fence posts,” Dave says.

What happens to the land after trees are harvested for plywood?

On New England Forestry land, harvesting trees for products like veneer is just one step in the forest lifecycle.

Typically within the next one to two years, crews will replant the forest, placing several trees in the ground for every one tree that was harvested.

The next generation of trees will grow for about 40 years — capturing carbon, providing a home for wildlife, and countless other benefits — before it reaches maturity for the veneer and other products the next generation of people will need.

Why is sustainable forestry important in plywood production?

The sustainability of our world’s forests is paramount in ensuring we continue to enjoy all the benefits of the forest as well as a continuous supply of fiber for products like plywood.

We use 1000s of forest products in our everyday lives, including lumber but also lesser-known items that rely on tree fiber, such as medicines, phone screens, and bath products including toothpaste, shampoo and moisturizers. You can learn more about products made from trees and why trees are the best raw material for so many items in our ongoing #ItStartsWithTrees story series.

Through responsible forest management practices, we can strike a harmonious balance between meeting the demands of industry and preserving the ecological health of our woodlands.

Want to learn more about the process of making plywood?

Watch this long-form video by Engineering World of how the plywood manufacturing process works in “mega factories.”

The post How is Plywood Made? A Veneer Mill Tour appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

New England Forestry has been in the sustainable forestry business for almost 100 years—that’s a lot of time that our foresters, scientists and business leaders have been working with the land, monitoring the weather and managing the planting and harvesting of trees.

We’ve witnessed a lot of changes in the past century, not least of which has been the shifts in our global climate.

We know that the Earth’s surface temperature is changing, influenced by greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, and we know this will have an impact on regional and global weather patterns.

Knowing that climate change will continue to impact our world, we have to be more informed than ever.

Protecting Our Forests for the Future in a Changing Climate

When we see the forecast for heavy rainfall or drought or see yet another headline of record-breaking temperatures, we are looking through the eyes of a land manager.

We think: are we prepared? What can we do to make our forests more resilient if these trends continue?

As forest managers, we believe that we can adapt to these changes to ensure that our company—and our forests—will thrive in the next 100 years.

Our in-house scientists and foresters have looked at data from organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to help us define climate smart forestry practices.

In this article, we will explore the concept of climate smart forestry and the strategies we will use to protect the long-term health of our forests given the climactic conditions that will exist in the future.

• What is Climate Smart Forestry?
• Climate Smart Forestry Principles to Guide Rayonier’s Decision-making
• What is Carbon Capture and Storage in Sustainable Forest Management?
• The Role of Working Forests in Carbon Capture
• Climate Smart Forestry Beyond Carbon Capture
• The Importance of Climate Smart Forestry
• Benefits of Climate Smart Forestry Practices
• Resilient Forests Will Help Us Adapt to Climate Change

What is Climate Smart Forestry?

Climate smart forestry refers to the sustainable management of forests with a focus on mitigating, reducing and adapting to the impacts of climate change. 

Using a climate smart forestry approach allows us to implement strategies that increase forest resilience and productivity, enhance carbon sequestration, and ensure the health of forest ecosystems.

In many cases, climate smart forestry practices will enhance our forests’ ability to capture (or “sequester”) and store carbon, a critical part of addressing global climate change.

Climate smart forestry practices also employ techniques to prevent the loss of carbon sinks, such as wildfire prevention techniques.

Climate Smart Forestry Principles to Guide Rayonier’s Decision-making

Our in-house teams have defined four key principles to help us grow healthy, productive forests in the coming decades:

• Flexible planning
• Sustainable forest management
• Strategic portfolio management
• Environmental contribution

Here are a few examples of how we are putting these Climate Smart Forestry principles into action:

Flexible Planning: Using modeling to plan for changes

In a rapidly changing climate, it will be important that we stay flexible in our planning.

Our foresters already use modeling, a forecasting tool to predict our trees’ growth over time. We use these models in many areas of our planning, including our harvest schedules.

By incorporating climate change data into our calculations, we can update these models as new information is available. This will help us respond to the needs of our forests and support healthy tree growth.

Sustainable Forest Management: Considering climate data when making planting decisions

As part of sustainable forest management, in the U.S. we already use our in-house genetic research team’s findings to select the best native tree families and species to plant on a particular forest site.

Going forward, we also will look at climate data to make sure we’re planting what’s best suited to the changes expected in that location.

For example, if an area will see droughts over the long term, we will plant drought-resistant trees there, and our research scientists will guide us in making these decisions.

Strategic portfolio management: Considering climate change impact in new timberland acquisitions

While climate change is a global phenomenon, its effects are likely to be felt more in some regions of the world than others.

Fortunately, New England Forestry forests are located in regions expected to be less impacted by climate change. Temperature variations predicted for the U.S. South, U.S. Pacific Northwest and New Zealand, where we’re located, are less extreme than variations predicted in other parts of the world, such as much of Europe, as reported here by the IPCC.

We will employ strategic portfolio management when considering new timberland acquisitions—looking at the likely impact of climate change in a region before deciding to expand there.

Environmental contribution: Continually improving our own impact to reduce emissions even further

We know that to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, we must enhance our environmental contribution by reducing Rayonier’s carbon footprint.

Because our forests capture carbon as part of the growing process and store it in trees, we are already carbon negative. That is, we emit less carbon than we store. But we also plan to reduce our emissions as new technology is developed.

What is Carbon Capture and Storage in Sustainable Forest Management?

Forests act as natural carbon sinks, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and storing it in trees, soils, and other organic matter. This process is known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) in forestry.

Climate smart forestry emphasizes the importance of sustainable practices that maximize the carbon capture and storage potential of our working forests.

The Role of Working Forests in Carbon Capture

Working forests are critical to this mission because of their ability to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere.

As forests grow, they capture carbon via photosynthesis and store that carbon. Forests planted for timber are managed to grow quickly, maximizing their photosynthesis and thus their carbon capture.

Once they have matured and the growing process slows, they’re harvested—and the carbon remains stored in the products they become, such as lumber and furniture.

At the same time, the land where they grew is replanted with the next generation of trees, starting the fast-growing trees’ carbon capture process all over again. 

Today, forests capture about 24 percent of the carbon emitted each year in the U.S. and about three-fourths of that carbon is sequestered by working forests, as shown in this report by NCASI.

Climate Smart Forestry Beyond Carbon Capture

Beyond the capture of carbon, climate smart forestry aims to reduce the loss of carbon.

For example, in the case of drought and wildfire, the best forest management plan is to reduce the number of trees. This allows the remaining trees to be more hydrated and reduces the amount of dry fuel on the ground.

These practices drastically reduce the likelihood of loss from a natural disturbance caused or intensified by climate change.

Working forests also play a role in providing the wood fiber needed for other efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Nature Based Solutions, a collective term for natural features and processes used to tackle socio-environmental issues, will generate increasing demands for timber.

For example, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, made from renewable biomass, has the potential to replace petroleum-based jet fuel with a fraction of the carbon emissions.  

The Importance of Climate Smart Forestry

To curb the worst effects of climate change, the U.S. needs to reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. This means that, as a nation, we need to emit less carbon than we capture and store.

Climate smart forestry is an important tool in the global quest to address climate change.

One tangible example: the recent increase in catastrophic wildfires has weakened forests and limited their ability to sequester carbon. As part of our climate smart forestry plan, our foresters will use firebreaks, thinning, and understory vegetation control to limit wildfire threats.

When we implement these and other climate smart forestry practices, we will maximize our forests’ capacity to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere, contributing to the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Benefits of Climate Smart Forestry Practices

Implementing climate smart forestry practices brings numerous benefits, including:

• Climate Change Mitigation: By capturing and storing carbon dioxide, our working forests contribute to mitigating climate change, helping to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• Biodiversity Conservation: Sustainable forest management practices promote biodiversity conservation by preserving and enhancing the habitats of various plant and animal species. Learn more about the importance of forest biodiversity.
• Ecosystem Services: Forests provide a range of valuable ecosystem services, such as clean air and water, soil conservation and recreational opportunities. By practicing climate smart forestry, we ensure the preservation of these essential services for present and future generations.
• Sustainable Livelihoods: Rayonier’s commitment to climate smart forestry creates sustainable livelihoods for local communities. By managing our forests responsibly, we support jobs in the timber industry while protecting the environment.

Resilient Forests Will Help Us Adapt to Climate Change

As forest managers, we believe in the resilience and adaptability of our forests and we know the value of working with—rather than against—nature.

As we learn more about the coming changes in regional and global weather patterns, we will do our part to prepare our forests and keep them healthy and productive over the long term.

To learn more about our climate smart forestry plans and how we are continually adapting as new science emerges, you can view Rayonier’s in-depth Climate Change report here.

The post Climate Smart Forestry: Is Forest Management a Climate and Carbon Solution? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

LAKE CITY, Florida—When asked whether sustainable forestry certification makes a difference, Richard Boitnott can recall more than 20 years of providing feedback through audits that resulted in companies throughout the U.S. better-demonstrating their sustainability.

As a third-party auditor with Bureau Veritas, Richard Boitnott determines whether forestry companies are meeting the requirements of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (or SFI). He has scrutinized hundreds of forests.

On rare occasions, there are perfect audits. More often, they are excellent, but there are opportunities to improve—and that’s what certified companies are looking for. Rather than reaching one level of sustainability and staying there forever, certified companies want to continuously improve and strengthen their efforts to protect and sustain the forest ecosystem.

“Those are really the best audits: the ones where you have a finding that you know you’re helping them improve their system, and they recognize it, and they recognize the fact that you helped them improve their system,” Richard says.

There are also times when a company seeking sustainable forest certification may need a lot of guidance before they are initially certified. Richard takes pride in the impact that kind of guidance can have on the way the land is managed.

“If there was not forest certification, a lot of land would be managed without that push to reach higher sustainability standards,” says Richard, who has been an auditor for 22 years. “Forest certification is what forces a change.”

In this article, we will explore various aspects of sustainable forestry certifications, including the certification process, objectives, audits, and the importance of continually raising the bar for environmental and social sustainability in the forestry industry.

• What is a sustainable forestry certification?
• What are the SFI sustainable forestry certification objectives?
• How do timber companies become certified for sustainable forestry?
• What happens when a sustainable forestry certification entity audits a forest owner?
• What happens when a sustainable forestry certification audit identifies something that went wrong?
• What happens when a company does exceptionally well, reaching far beyond the minimum SFI standard?
• How to know if a company is certified for sustainable forestry?

What is a sustainable forestry certification?

Sustainable forestry certifications such as SFI, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) are standards used to ensure the highest environmental standards in the forestry industry.

There are standards that address forest management all the way from preparing the land for planting to the way the trees are harvested. There are also standards for mills that process logs and the companies that make forest products you buy in the store. You can look for sustainable forestry certification labels when you buy forest products such as wooden, paper, and cardboard items to ensure they come from a sustainably-managed source.

In forest management, the standards ensure the entire forest ecosystem will thrive.

The SFI guidelines verify that forest owners are only harvesting a small percentage of their overall land base. With well over 90 percent of the company’s forests in some stage of growth, this practice ensures a continuous wood supply as well as a plentiful array of forest ecosystems in different stages of the forest life cycle. The standards also enforce methods to protect waterways from sedimentation and chemicals.

Protecting vulnerable habitats

Forest certification standards also ensure that the habitats of vulnerable species are carefully protected. For example, foresters set up and protect a large boundary area around bald eagles’ nests as long as the nest exists. To learn more about that, watch our video, How Foresters Protect Bald Eagles.

There are also species you may have never even heard of that foresters are trained to recognize and protect. In the Red Hills region of Alabama, New England Forestry foresters protect the extremely rare Red Hills Salamander, which was only discovered in the 1960s. You can learn more about this unique creature and the work we do to protect it in our video story, Foresters Protect Rare Salamander Found Only in Alabama.

Standards evolve

Newer standards under SFI are aimed at climate smart forestry, which are forest practices that will help prepare forests to better withstand future changes in climate; fire resilience and awareness, which ensures the use of practices to protect forests from wildfire and educating the public about it; social measures, such as having a diversity, equity and inclusion policy; and collaboration with indigenous peoples.

For companies like ours, we were implementing best practices long before we became certified, but the certification proves from an outside perspective that we are sustainably managing our forests. New England Forestry has been certified by the SFI standard in the U.S. since 2001 and the FSC and PEFC standards in New Zealand since 2004.

What are the SFI sustainable forestry certification objectives?

SFI has more than 40 performance measures and 130 sustainable forestry indicators in the forest management certification standard, which are categorized under the 17 objectives below:

1. Forest management planning
2. Forest health and productivity
3. Protection and maintenance of water resources
4. Conservation of biological diversity
5. Management of visual quality and recreational benefits
6. Protection of special sites
7. Efficient use of fiber resources
8. Recognize and respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights
9. Climate smart forestry
10. Fire resilience and awareness
11. Legal and regulatory compliance
12. Forestry research, science and technology
13. Training and education
14. Community involvement and landowner outreach
15. Public land management responsibilities
16. Communications and public reporting
17. Management review and continual improvement

To view the entire SFI standard, visit forests.org/standards.

How do timber companies become certified for sustainable forestry?

If a company wants to be certified for sustainable forestry, it must apply to the certification body, pay an annual fee based on acres managed and net sales and show that it meets certain requirements.

Once the application is accepted, the company must incorporate all of the certification body’s standards into the way it does business.

Once the standards are implemented, the company will then undergo third party audits of its documents and forests to ensure it measures up to the standards.

When the company is officially certified, the external audit reviews will continue annually.

The goal of each audit is to verify that the company is doing a good job protecting its forests, but it is also a way to uncover ways to do even better. Every certified company is looking to constantly improve and fine-tune its practices to ensure it is doing the best it can possibly do with its forests.

Companies also conduct internal audits more frequently. Additionally, many state forest divisions periodically audit the companies’ forests for Best Management Practices (BMPs) compliance. BMPs are guidelines established by the state to ensure waterways are protected. Reports from each of these audits are also a part of the annual third party audit.

What happens when a sustainable forestry certification entity audits a forest owner?

During a sustainable forestry certification audit, there are two segments: auditing documents and auditing forests.

What happens during the document portion of an SFI forest audit?

On a recent annual audit at Rayonier’s Headquarters in Wildlight, Florida, Richard spent the entire day in a conference room reviewing about 500 documents with New England Forestry employees. He screened the documents for compliance with more than 130 different SFI indicators.

The requirements include everything from the technical way forests are planted, managed and harvested to social standards such as indigenous relations and DEI policies. The employees were expected to be able to quickly locate the documents and expound on any details Richard asked about.

What happens during the field portion of an SFI forest audit?

The second portion of the audit included several days in the forest. Each day, Richard would select specific sites he wanted to see in person. An auditor often examines documents to find an example of something that didn’t go as planned, such as a weather event or a miscommunication with a contractor.

The auditor will then go to the location to observe what happened and question the responsible foresters about the decisions made relating to that incident. The auditor will also ask general questions to test the expertise of the forester.

During the 2023 New England Forestry audit, Richard went into a Lake City, Florida, forest with several New England Forestry foresters. He quizzed them about what they would do to protect an eagle’s nest if they were to find one. He asked them about soil types and their methodology for choosing which tree species to plant on each plot. He checked to see if an herbicide aerial application had ceased where the forester had designated.

Protecting properties of special importance

The SFI standard also calls for forestry companies to protect properties with special importance. Forester Joe Geisel, a Resource Land Manager at Rayonier, explained that one location within that forest had been the site of a tragic accident. Two wildland firefighters had been killed while battling the Blue Ribbon Wildfire of 2011.

Joe showed the auditor two memorials that had been established honoring the men where they had passed. He maintains the site in their honor. The memorial is included in an annual staff ride in which the Florida Forest Service honors the memory of the firefighters and teaches staff what can be learned from the accident. You can learn more about the staff ride in this article by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

Foresters also protect sites believed to have historical significance, sites where there is habitat for threatened or endangered species, special trees, water features, cemeteries and other geologically or culturally important sites.

An example of a protected site on New England Forestry land is Brooks Sink, Florida’s largest sinkhole. New England Forestry partnered with the Suwannee River Water Management District to divert more water into the sinkhole, which replenishes the Floridan aquifer. Read more about the project and watch a video in our article, Working Forests Protect Water Quality Across the U.S.

Research is a component of good forest management

The SFI forest management standard also requires certified organizations to be active in research efforts. At Rayonier, we have an in-house research team and also participate in cooperative research with other forestry organizations and universities.

One recent cooperative effort between Rayonier, the University of Florida and the Suwannee River Water Management District is seeking ways to improve water flow in streams by changing how we manage the forest. New England Forestry is also working internally and with partners to delve deeper into ways forest managers can identify climate risks and mitigation efforts, which aligns with SFI’s 2022 additions to the Forest Management Standard.

You can learn more about some of the work our research team does in our video and article, New England Forestry Scientists Bring Deep Knowledge to Forest Management.

What happens when a sustainable forestry certification audit identifies something that went wrong?

While every company hopes to perform well in an audit, there is usually room for improvement because the audits are intentionally rigorous.

“All you want is honest feedback,” says Ben Cazell, Rayonier’s Senior Manager of Sustainable Forestry. “Folks have a passion and self-ownership of the ground they manage and make decisions on. They want to ensure that they’re doing things correctly. So, perfection, it’s not always going to happen. It’s nice to hear, ‘Good job. Well done.’ But it’s also good to hear, ‘You could do a little better in this aspect of one thing or another.’”

For example, SFI has new standards around climate smart forestry that have helped companies develop new ways to address and anticipate climate change.

When something is seriously out of alignment with the SFI standards, an auditor deems it to be either a minor or major “nonconformance.”

“A minor nonconformance means the system is bent. A major nonconformance means the system is broken,” Richard explains. “Now, most people have been in this business long enough where they don’t get majors. They know what to do to avoid a major. A minor is more common.”

The difference between a minor and major nonconformance in an SFI audit

An example of a minor nonconformance might be one mishap in which sediment went into a stream, Richard explains. A major nonconformance would be 3 or more instances of sediment seeping into waterways.

There is also a milder level of feedback called an ”opportunity for improvement.” Richard explains:

“Not everything we do in this business is black and white. There are lots of shades of gray. And I only call something if it’s clearly a nonconformance. If it’s not, and I think, ‘Well, you ought to pay attention to this,’ that’s an opportunity for improvement.”

Richard says, for him, the best audits are when his findings bring about a positive change in a company.

“When I get to the end and they tell me, ‘You’re right. We could’ve done that a little bit better. We will do better.’ I like to hear that, because that means they accepted it, they agreed with what I found, and they’re going to work to get better. Those are really the best audits.”

What happens when a company does exceptionally well, reaching far beyond the minimum SFI standard?

On rare occasions, a company will receive recognition for a practice that goes well beyond the SFI standard and sets an example for peers to follow.

This recognition, called a “notable practice,” is a special honor to those who receive it.

Ben recalls one example in which New England Forestry was recognized for using winch-assisted logging on steep slopes in the Pacific Northwest. The winch machine anchors into the ground on a stable, flat landing area and using a powerful cable to support heavy equipment on the steep ground below. The machinery improves safety for the logging crew. It also decreases the impact on the environment, often replacing the need to build a road on the slope.

The notable practice we received was for the reduction of road construction by using this newer technology. You can read more about winch-assisted logging and watch our video of a winch assist machine in action here.

How to know if a company is certified for sustainable forestry

Forestry companies share their sustainability certification information on their websites and often in their reports and investor documents.

You can also verify their membership on the website of the certification body, itself. For example, SFI has a database of its member companies at sfidatabase.org, PEFC has a database at pefc.org/find-certified and FSC has a database at search.fsc.org/en/. Each website publicly posts members’ third-party audit reports.

The post How Forestry Companies Prove They’re Sustainable appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

It’s always fascinating to learn about the unique ways our contractors use New England Forestry pine trees. Who would have thought trees made their way into cell phone screens? Or medicines?

One company we work with, Derby Gold Pine Shavings, makes and recycles pine shavings in Williston, Florida.

The shavings, made after logging our forests and others in the area, make excellent horse bedding. The soft, absorbent lining is ideal in horse stalls. When it’s time to remove the bedding, Derby Gold collects it and then uses it to fertilize the company’s own land.

Derby Gold’s business model forms a “complete circle,” the result of years of organic development.

Humble origins and heartbreak

Derby Gold is the brainchild of Florida businessman Eddie Hodge. But horse bedding wasn’t part of the original plan when he and his brother, Johnny, got their start working as loggers in the 1970s.

The Hodge brothers founded Williston Timber Company, building it on sweat equity with rented equipment and a small logging crew. Early on, they reinvested all of their profits, adding more workers and a trucking company.

Eventually, they shipped logs throughout the state. And as they expanded the business, other family members came on board.

Eddie says he and Johnny played to each other’s strengths. Eddie was the “business visionary” while his brother was a self-taught mechanical engineer—he even invented specialized forestry equipment.

Tragically, Johnny was killed in an accident in 2003.

“We lost more than a brother,” Eddie says. “We lost a loved one and a best friend. Our loss of Johnny struck to the very heart and soul of our business as well.”

Adapting to life without Johnny wasn’t easy. But Eddie and other family members who worked at Williston Timber carried on with the business in Johnny’s honor. Today, the company is still very much a family affair.

Using pine shavings to adapt to slowdowns in the logging business

Eddie has seen many ups and downs in the economy and the logging industry since he started in the 1970s. During one slowdown, he realized it was time to diversify.

He found the idea for his next business venture in the stalls of nearby horse farms.

“There’s a big horse farm community in our area,” says Phil Parker, marketing manager for Derby Gold. “Eddie saw the need for bulk wood shavings and they’d load them up on a semi and take them around to the local horse farms.”

Now, when there wasn’t a strong market to sell the logs for others to make products, the new pine shavings business could use the logs from Eddie’s logging company and sell them to local horse farms.

Florida horse owners were glad to have a local bulk supplier and the business has grown steadily for 20 years.

Derby Gold expanded the bulk business into the bagged shavings market and is currently one of the largest producers of manufactured shavings in the Southeastern U.S.

Eddie’s resourcefulness in finding ways to get the most out of every tree he harvests helped the business thrive during uncertain times. As it turns out, it was better for the environment, too.

Completing the circle

Next, Eddie realized he could provide his local customers with another benefit. Instead of hauling the used pine shavings 60+ miles to a Class 1 waste facility, Eddie allowed the shavings to be brought back to his land that adjoins the shavings manufacturing facility. It would minimize the carbon footprint associated with disposal and provide another step in the full-circle business: a natural enrichment for the soils.

Eddie and his crew spread the shavings out on his land, allowing them to decompose naturally.  Much of the lands treated were recently surface-mined for sand. The addition of the shavings over time made the soils rich, improving them naturally.

“After six years, it looked like some of the richest soil we’d ever seen,” says Phil. “We did soil samples and found that it was very, very rich.”

Phil says the lands are greatly enhanced and will be more productive for growing timber and sod in the future.

We look forward to the next chapter in the Williston Timber / Derby Gold story and wish the family many more years of healthy and sustainable growth!

You can learn more about Derby Gold by visiting their Facebook page here.

The post Florida company gives multiple lives to logging “leftovers” appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

There’s no doubt that forests are one of the most important resources on earth. But can working forests–where trees are planted and later harvested for their timber–provide the same environmental benefits as a wild forest? And can an operation that includes the removal of trees from the land be considered sustainable?

Thanks to sustainable forest management practices, working forests play an extremely important role in protecting and preserving the environment. These practices are designed to maintain and protect forests for generations to come.

In this article, we’re going to look at what it means to sustainably manage a forest, why it’s important and how it impacts the environment.

• What does sustainable forestry mean?
• What are sustainable forestry management practices?
• How do clearcuts and harvests fit into a sustainable forest management plan?
• Why is sustainable forestry important?
• How does sustainable forestry impact the environment?
• How can people support sustainable forestry?

First things first: What does “Sustainable Forestry” mean?

When something is sustainable, it can be maintained or continued into the future. Forestry is the science as well as the art of managing forests. When you put them together, sustainable forestry is the perpetual cycle of caring for and managing forests through generation after generation of the forest lifecycle.

Simply put, in sustainable forestry we plant trees, allow them to grow, harvest them and replant, all while protecting the ecosystems they are a part of. 

“When you think about it from a business standpoint, of course we want [to replant] to have a sustainable business,” says New England Forestry Public Affairs Manager Shawn DeRome. “But also from a conservation aspect, we want to make sure that we’re being good stewards of the environment and maintaining a healthy ecosystem.”

What are sustainable forestry management practices?

Forestry companies like New England Forestry take careful steps to ensure our forests will thrive for generations to come. With a stand of trees growing for at least 20 years in some parts of our ownership and more than 40 or 50 years in others, we always have our forests’ long-term sustainability in mind.

Foresters follow guides called Best Management Practices, which ensure they’re protecting the environment while they work. Also known as BMPs, these practices include setting up protected areas for vulnerable species; creating protected boundaries around waterways; and carefully monitoring the use of any chemicals in the forest.

We also voluntarily adhere to the highest sustainability standards in our industry, which include the sustainable forestry initiative in the U.S. and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) in New Zealand. Each of these programs has a rigorous set of guidelines and regularly audits its members’ documentation, foresters and forests to ensure they are meeting the standards.

Here are some of the specific forest management principles that ensure our forests are sustainable:

• Creating a balance of forest ages
• Ensuring a mosaic of different habitat types
• Setting up Wildlife Corridors around waterways and wetlands
• Protecting vulnerable and endangered species

Creating a balance of forest ages

In sustainable forestry, we follow a carefully-managed process of ensuring the right balance of tree ages across our land base. There should be baby trees, young trees, mature trees and trees ready for harvest in each region where we own land. Whenever one stand of trees is harvested, a new generation of trees is typically planted in its place within one to two years, ensuring that balance of ages will continue.

The average sustainable forestry company only harvests a very small percentage of its trees each year. Over the past five years, New England Forestry cleared less than 4 percent of its forests per-year.

This balance of ages ensures there is a plentiful supply of different habitats for wildlife on our land. It also ensures we will have a “sustainable yield” year after year, which is a harvest rate in balance with the growth rate of the forest. In other words, if we continue to harvest and replant at this rate, we won’t run out of trees—ever.

Our forests serve as living examples of the sustainable process: some have been planted and replanted for more than 150 years! Pope Resources, a forestry company New England Forestry purchased in 2020, owned more than 250,000 acres of forests in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula by the 1870s. Today, we continue to manage many of those same forests.

Ensuring a mosaic of different habitat types

The balance of forest ages coupled with a mix of other forest types, such as wetlands and hardwood forests, creates what foresters call a mosaic of habitats. Viewed from above, the forest looks like a patchwork quilt. This rich variety of habitats supports a myriad of wildlife and plant species.

As we explain in detail on our forest biodiversity website, which immerses viewers in a wide range of habitat types within our forests, different plants and animals need different types of forests. While some graze on the plants that thrive in open, sunny areas, others need the protection of a more mature forest. Many need both!

“Something that’s important in biodiversity is edge effect,” explains Ben Cazell, Rayonier’s Senior Manager of Sustainable Forestry, referring to the border between an older forest of tall trees and a young, open forest. “Different species can be on the edge. They can go into the older forest for cover, they can come out into the open forest and feed, and they can go back into the older forest for cover. That’s very important.”

Even protected species like the Northern Spotted Owl, which lives in old growth forests, also need younger, open forests for visibility when hunting for food.

Setting up Wildlife Corridors around waterways and wetlands

Have you ever noticed there are many more small creatures in the forest than there are large ones? For example, there may be countless bees buzzing around, but only one or two bald eagles. You may come across dozens of squirrels during a forest hike, but you may only see one or two deer.

The reason for this is that larger animals have a larger range. They need that larger area to get the food they require. All species—but especially these larger species—benefit from a large wildlife corridor.

In sustainable forestry, these corridors are provided along the streams and waterways within the forest. Foresters set up boundaries around these waterways called streamside management zones or riparian management zones. We choose to protect these areas and do not actively manage them the way we would manage a commercial timber forest. This ensures that sediment and chemicals stay far from the water, as explained in our article, “Working Forests Protect Water Quality Across the U.S.” It also creates a protected area where animals can safely move from place to place.

“About 30% of our land is this kind of setting,” says Ben Cazell. “Think of it like your blood vessels. They’re all over the land base. They provide good food resources and protection from predators.”

He said the corridors also strengthen the health of the forest animals by allowing exposure to other populations.

“If we have a deer population in the south and we have a deer population in the north, if they’re separated by something and they don’t have these corridors, they can’t really mix and create a stronger herd,” Ben explains.

Protecting vulnerable and endangered species

There are special guidelines within our Best Management Practices to protect vulnerable, threatened and endangered plant and animal species. Foresters are trained to recognize the signs of these species’ habitats and protect them.

For example, when a forester finds a bald eagle’s nest, a 330-foot range around the nest will immediately and permanently be protected as long as the nest exists. During nesting season, that area becomes even larger—-660 feet—to ensure the eagles are not disturbed. You can learn more about how we protect eagles’ nests and watch a video of a baby eagle in a nest in one of our forests here.

Other species we protect include the extremely rare Red Hills Salamander, found only in a small region in Alabama; the hairy rattleweed, a plant once believed to be extinct that continues to grow in our forests; and gopher tortoises, a keystone species more than 300 other forest species depend on.

How do clearcuts and harvests fit into a sustainable forest management plan?

Believe it or not, even clearcuts play an important role in protecting the health of the forest.

How can harvesting trees be good for the environment?

A harvest that clears an area of trees all at once mimics something nature has done on its own throughout history. It’s an important part of sustainablle forest management because it encourages new growth, provides sunlight for plants many forest insects and animals need, and gives predators in the air and ground an open place to hunt.

This practice is one of the only activities in our modern world that replicates what used to happen naturally with fire. Long ago, forest fires naturally occurred after lightning strikes, clearing large areas and allowing a rebirth of the forest. Today, those fires are quickly extinguished to protect the human population.

“In the past, wildfire played a key role in the renewal of forest resources,” explains Rayonier’s Alabama Director of Operations Phillip Smith. “Since we’ve controlled that, we’ve taken away that tool or that opportunity to do that. Harvest actually mimics that. It allows an opportunity to create openings within the landscape, which we go back and promptly replant and create a new forest.”

The openings in the forest created by a harvest allow sunlight to reach the forest floor. Soon, berry bushes, flowers and other plants appear, providing a rich food source for pollinators and foragers. Small animals come to forage among the plants, such as mice, rabbits and deer. Soon, larger birds and animals arrive to hunt for small prey, such as owls, who take advantage of the high visibility in the open area.

In addition to the forest edge, which is an excellent place for birds to perch and view the open area, foresters also leave what they call “perch trees.” These tall trees left in the forest ensure there is a place for birds to land as they travel across the open area.

The open forest will eventually fill in with a new generation of trees, but with our approach to forest management, another area nearby will open as harvesting, replanting and other stages of the forest lifecycle continue.

“A stand of timber is very dynamic,” explains Timber Marketing Manager Casey LaCasse. “It grows and basically evolves. And the habitat underneath? It does as well. There are numerous wildlife species that benefit from that change over the long term. What you see today isn’t what you’re going to see two years from now.”

Why is sustainable forestry important?

What if we no longer managed forests sustainably? So much would be at risk. 

“Sustainable forestry is very critical,” explains Casey, “because if we were to harvest without replanting and nurturing the next generation of trees, we risk destroying not just the wood supply, but entire ecosystems—all the plants and animals that depend on these trees. 

“Sustainable forestry is a key that provides a continuous supply of wood, but at the same time maintains harmony within ecosystems.” Working forests make up a large portion of the world’s forests. In the U.S., 67 percent of the nation’s forests are working forests, according to ForestCarbonDataViz.org, a website that takes a deep dive into the data on working forests’ impact on our world. Imagine how the world would be impacted if these forests were not managed sustainably!

How does sustainable forestry impact the environment?

So what role does sustainable forestry play in protecting the environment? In a word, its impact is massive.

Sustainable forestry impacts the environment by rapidly capturing carbon, protecting habitats for a variety of fauna and flora, providing recyclable raw material for thousands of products and ensuring the lifecycle of forests continues for generations. 

Thanks in large part to companies that manage their forests sustainably, there are as many trees in the U.S. today as there were 100 years ago.

“To grow, a tree uses a process called photosynthesis, which is taking the carbon dioxide out of the air, storing the carbon as wood, and releasing oxygen for us all to breathe,” explains Forest Estate Manager Acacia Farmery from our New Zealand team. “Just by being there, a tree is actually helping to fight climate change and reduce the carbon dioxide in the air.”

Rapidly capturing CO2

Because timber forests are optimized to grow trees quickly, they sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) quickly too. In fact, according to ForestCarbonDataViz.org, private working forests like Rayonier’s account for nearly 75 percent of the carbon sequestered in the U.S. each year. Likewise in New Zealand, the carbon sequestration of working forests is significant, with an estimated 25 million tonnes of CO2 removed from the atmosphere annually according to the nation’s Forest Owners Association.

But what happens to that carbon when after a harvest? It actually stays in the trees for the lifetime of the product they become. For example, if a tree becomes lumber and that lumber is used to build a house, the carbon will continue to be stored in the wood. Forest products are also one of the most commonly recycled materials on earth: when a tree is used to make paper or cardboard, chances are that material will be used several times over.

Sustainably managed forests have also provided a haven for many different plant and animal species to thrive. Without our vast array of habitats, certain species would struggle to find an appropriate habitat. But our process naturally provides for many different plants’ and animals’ unique needs. Rare and endangered aquatic populations are also protected through our best management practices. For example, the leopard darter, a small freshwater fish, is carefully protected in the streams that cross our Oklahoma forests.

And it’s not just the wildlife that needs the forest, explains Research Biometrician Stephanie Patton:

“Our forests provide a lot of social benefits to society,” she says. “For example, you can come out here and recreate, going on hikes, hunting, birdwatching, looking for insects, looking for wildlife, collecting sheds in the forest from the deer that are all around. It’s also an opportunity to educate folks on just natural resources in general. We’ve got this great resource that’s available for people to come out and learn about different plant species or different ways that we manage forestry. That’s what we want to utilize the forest for, to share that education as well.”

How can people support sustainable forestry?

We all know trees are in wood and paper products, but they’re also in thousands of other everyday products: medicines and bath products; toothpaste and toothbrushes; makeups and paints; helmets and hard hats. Even touchscreens rely on wood fibers. Diapers, the frames on eyeglasses and the casings on sausages all contain materials produced from trees too. In other words, you use forest products every day. 

You can learn more about the products made from trees and the reason trees are a good resource for so many products in our article series, #ItStartsWithTrees.

Choose products from sustainably managed forests

So how can you ensure the products you use come from sustainably managed forests?

Look at the labels. Products sourced from sustainable forests will include a designation such as the SFI, FSC or PEFC label. In order to have that label, the forest products used to make the item have to be sustainably sourced—not just in the way they were produced at the mill, but even all the way back to the way the forester planted the tree that made that product decades ago.

To see examples of these labels, visit the organizations’ websites: 

• SFI: https://forests.org/labelsandclaims
• FSC: https://fsc.org/en/what-the-fsc-labels-mean
• PEFC: https://pefc.org/what-you-can-do/look-for-the-pefc-label

Sustainable forestry plays a critically important role in our world, and you can have a part in supporting good forest management by purchasing only sustainably sourced forest products!

The post What is Sustainable Forestry? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

YULEE, Fla.—It wasn’t bad for first-timers: a group of about 50 New England Forestry support employees came together to plant thousands of trees in a matter of hours just down the road from Rayonier’s corporate headquarters in Wildlight, Fla.

But the employees from fields such as human resources, IT, accounting and legal were shocked to find out that a single skilled professional planter can plant just as many trees—about 4,000— in a single day.

The team-building event, dubbed More Than Planting Day, was a great opportunity for field employees to educate coworkers about how our most important resource gets its start. New England Forestry plants more than 30 million trees annually to reforest our land.

“One of the most important activities we do in the forest’

“Of all the many activities we do in the forest, planting’s perhaps one of the most important,” said Coastal Resource Unit Leader Jeremy Flood, who leads a team of foresters in Northeast Florida. 

“When you see a log truck going down the road or you’re purchasing a piece of lumber at the store, that’s the result of a tree that was planted many decades ago. And the trees we’re planting today are going to be trees that we’re going to use, our children are going to use, and we’re just planting that resource for the future.”

It started with a lesson from the foresters

Foresters from Rayonier’s Coastal Resource Unit team kicked off the event by explaining to their coworkers the basics of planting: how to dig a small hole, carefully place the seedling deep into the ground, and then firmly press the soil back over the roots. Then they demonstrated how to walk the correct distance from the seedling before planting the next one to ensure even spacing.

“Your job today is to plant these 8 acres,” announced Senior Resource Land Manager Ed Carter. He held a seedling up for the group to see and added, “This is out of our nursery in Elberta. This is a typical loblolly seedling.”

Trees we can call our own

In fact, not only were some of the seedlings grown for 6 to 7 months in our nursery in Elberta, Alabama, but also the seeds were harvested from pine cones in our seed orchard. In other words, these were definitely baby trees we could call our own! To learn more about how we control-pollinate our pinecones and collect their seeds, watch our video, “Breeding and Collecting Pinecones By the Truckload for Future Forests.” And you can take a virtual tour of our pine tree nursery here to watch how we grow 30 million seedlings a year.

Once they received instructions, the “trainees” paired up and chose bedded rows to plant their seedlings in. (The bedded rows of soil were prepared in advance to ensure better survival and growth of the young seedlings. You can learn more about that planting method in our article, Site Prep Essential for Southeastern Forestry.)

Quality time with coworkers

There was a lot of laughing as well as a lot of sweating and hard work as the team began planting. 

“There was a lot more to it than I expected,” said Brean Thompson, Senior Marketing Coordinator for the Wildlight community (a part of Rayonier’s Taxable REIT subsidiary). “I didn’t realize that so much of our planting is done by hand rather than by machine.”

“It was hard work!” agreed Michael Noonan, Rayonier’s manager of Timberland Investments. “The seedlings were smaller than I expected. I was expecting to see a 2-gallon tree or something, but we were out there with little containerized seedlings.”

Despite the seedlings’ small size, just inches in height, they should be taller than the people who planted them within 2 years.

In the years to come, New England Forestry employees will be able to return to the forest, which is close to A1A, a main thoroughfare in Nassau County, to see the progress of the trees they planted.

The Concept Originated with Our New Zealand Team

The idea for the event originated with Rayonier’s New Zealand team, which invites guests by the 1000s to plant trees in some of the forests we manage there.

“We wanted to do it over here because they’ve had such success over there with team building and bringing everybody together through these events,” explained Senior Executive Assistant Alyssa Hightower, one of the event organizers. It lets [participants] see the forest from the beginning and become a little bit more invested in watching the company grow to its future success.”

A reminder of the role our industry plays in the world

Alyssa said the first annual U.S. event was a great success.

“I love building experiences for other people and that, in itself, is so integral to a successful culture, to a successful business because you need to know your people,” she said. “You need that face-to-face interaction and that’s what builds the community within Rayonier. It’s also so important to have that actual connection with the forest, the core of our business.”

She said it was a powerful reminder of the important role our industry plays in the world:

“The forestry industry is vital to the world because when we plant new trees, these baby trees, they provide habitat for wildlife, they provide us clean air, they provide clean water, it just keeps going.”

And when the trees reach maturity—about 20 years from now—they will also support many jobs in our local economy as they become products.

“I grew up here, but until I actually came to Rayonier, I never really understood how diverse forestry is, number one, but how many wood products in general are just in our everyday life. It’s important to see that we provide that resource sustainably and that we’re planting trees, we’re not just cutting them down.”

To learn more about the many products that come from trees—including lesser-known products that rely on our industry such as medicines, bath products, and even many health foods—check out our #ItStartsWithTrees series here.

Many More Planting Days to Come

With the successful event coming to a close, it was agreed more employee planting days would be arranged in the future. 

“New England Forestry has a great support staff,” Jeremy said. “When you talk to folks that work with us and support us in the field each day, they have a lot of energy around what we do. So, this was a great opportunity to get our team members in the field with us, to get their hands in the dirt and see what we do on a daily basis.”

While our support teams will have to wait a year for the next More than Planting Day, our professional planters will continue planting vigorously throughout the winter months in the U.S. and planting will resume in what the U.S. considers summertime months in New Zealand. (You can learn more about our professional planting operations across our ownership here).

New England Forestry has planted almost 1.5 billion trees since our inception, and we’ll continue adding to that number every year.

The post New England Forestry Support Employees Plant 4000 Trees at Planting Day appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Love or loathe them: screens have become essential to our lives.

According to the Pew Research Center and Statista, approximately:

• 97% of Americans own a cell phone
• 85% own a SmartPhone
• 50% own a tablet
• 74% own a home computer 
• And 122.4 million own televisions. 

But did you ever stop to think about what goes into your SmartPhone, television, computer or tablet?

If you have researched this topic, you know it’s a bit of a downer. 

The hard truth is, device components often require non-renewable materials and, with so much plastic incorporated, they aren’t exactly biodegradable.

However, there is a potential bright side in the use of trees—specifically tree fiber known as nanocellulose—in screen technologies.

To learn more, we talked to a research material engineer for the USDA’s Forest Service, Ron Sabo, Ph.D., about nanocellulose in tech, how it’s used in screens and other technology, and why it may offer a more sustainable choice for the future of tech.

What Is Nanocellulose?

You may have heard of cellulose, the natural fiber found in wood (and all plants) used in various applications including: 

• As an FDA-approved anti-caking and thickening agent in foods
• A binder, coating, filler, or slow-release agent in medicines 
• And in the production of paper goods

Nanocellulose is a smaller, more refined version of cellulose.

Dr. Sabo explains, “Nanocellulose is a wood fiber that’s made smaller either through chemistry or mechanical grinding. It’s so small you can’t see it. One of the first uses of nano-type cellulose was as an anti-caking agent in cheese, ice cream, and [medicine] tablets.”

So, what does teeny tiny wood pulp fiber have to do with screens and tech? Dr. Sabo explains:

“If you pour it [nanocellulose] into a dish and dry it, it creates a transparent and flexible film. It’s almost like plastic in some ways, but from trees. We’ve studied it for about 20 years and have learned a lot about its properties.”

Dr. Sabo continues, “To put it simply, it’s just another wood fiber that’s smaller. It’s not a magic bullet, but it has some neat properties. Seeing transparent wood, that’s what got me!”

A Little History About Wood In Tech 

Nanocellulose isn’t the first component of wood to be used in technology. In fact, wood has been used in various technological devices for decades.

“Generally, wood has been used in circuit boards for a long time,” Dr. Sabo explains. “If you look at the circuit boards in computers, they are made of pulp or fiberglass and coated with metal, and that’s low-tech; it’s more for structure. So it’s not unheard of for wood to be in your computer.”

Since those early days of mega-circuit boards, researchers have been refining their understanding of how wood pulp can be used to enhance technologies. 

Nanocellulose is the brainchild of those years of study, trial and error.

Top 5 Properties That Make Nanocellulose Viable For Use In Screens And Other Technologies

Three things make nanocellulose viable for use in screens and other technological applications:

#1: Strength 

Per Dr. Sabo, “This is one of the things that really attracted people in the beginning. If you measure the crystalline version of cellulose, you’ll find that it’s stronger than steel and other particles.”

#2: Transparency

As previously mentioned, nanocellulose creates a transparent and flexible film when dried. This makes it a potentially more eco-friendly candidate than plastic for creating clear, flexible screens and other technologies.

#3: Low-thermal expansion

“We’ve learned nanocellulose has a low thermal coefficient of expansion. This means if you heat it up, it doesn’t expand—like plastic,” Dr. Sabo says. “This is what technology companies need, materials that don’t expand. And that’s a property people like.”

#4: Flexibility

Films made of nanocellulose are flexible, which, according to Sabo and other sources,  make them appealing as next-generation flexible devices.

#5: Sustainability

Since nanocellulose products can be sourced from sustainably-managed forests and are biodegradable, they offer a more sustainable material than plastic, polymer-based products.

Additionally, researchers have found more eco-friendly ways of manufacturing cellulose using algae (vs. other chemicals), which doesn’t present the same threat to the environment and waterways.

Different Types Of Nanocellulose Have Unique Applications In Tech

There are several different types of nanocellulose, each with different properties and applications. 

Two examples are nano-crystalline cellulose (CNC) and nanofibrils (CNF). 

Says Dr. Sabo: “The nano-crystalline cellulose has some other properties that the nano-fibrils don’t have. In water, they can act as liquid crystals. Dried films of CNCs can also have color attributes, which gives them the potential to be used in devices. 

“The point I’m trying to make is there are all different types of nanocellulose, so we’re still trying to figure out which materials are best for different applications.”

How Nanocellulose Is Used In Screens Today

In an unexpected interview twist, when asked if he could tell us the types of screens and devices in which nanocellulose is used, Dr. Sabo said he didn’t know.

“The last I heard, a Japanese company was supposedly able to make it work. But I don’t know if it’s on the market or not. Certain countries and companies tend to be quite secretive about these things.”

As a forestry company that interacts with various suppliers, pulp mills, wood product manufacturers, trade associations, and end-users, we know nanocellulose is used in screens. 

However, the companies who build the screens use proprietary techniques to which we’re not privy. What we do know is that all of these qualities in nanocellulose could contribute to its usefulness in screen technology.

To prove it, we did some more digging.

In a research paper entitled “Electrochromic Displays Screen Printed on Transparent Nanocellulose-Based Substrates,” the authors explain how they are using different nanocellulose-based substrates to make electronic device manufacturing more sustainable.

“Manufacturing of electronic devices via printing techniques is often considered to be an environmentally friendly approach, partially due to the efficient utilization of materials. Traditionally, printed electronic components (e.g., sensors, transistors, and displays) are relying on flexible substrates based on plastic materials; this is especially true in electronic display applications where, most of the times, a transparent carrier is required in order to enable presentation of the display content. 

“However, plastic-based substrates are often ruled out in end-user scenarios striving toward sustainability. Paper substrates based on ordinary cellulose fibers can potentially replace plastic substrates, but the opaqueness limits the range of applications where they can be used.”

Dr. Sabo added there are also challenges within nanocellulose technology that must be overcome. Including its affinity for moisture, its brittleness, and the costs associated with manufacturing.

“That’s a challenge we have: how to get the properties you want and keep it sustainable.”

Closing Thoughts On The Future Of Sustainable Forestry Products In Tech

Based on our conversation with Dr. Sabo and the literature referenced here, it is clear that the science and tech communities are invested in creating more sustainable products.

And sustainable forest products are already playing a significant role in next-generation technologies.

When asked about his thoughts on the future of forest products in tech, Dr. Sabo shared this:

“I do expect that in the future, more and more materials will come from sustainable sources, including trees. The research community is making major efforts to find an economic or viable method to produce new materials from wood. 

“Just recently, I read in a paper that they’ve developed a new bioplastic extracted from wood. If we can get cheap, easily processed, biodegradable and renewable plastics, that would do a lot to alleviate some of our greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think we’ll have a lot more bio-based economy in the future. We can make basically anything out of wood. It’s just the cost. As we figure out new ways and tricks to process the tree, stuff will get a lot cheaper, leading to increased use and environmental benefits.

My hope is one day we have this circular economy where everything is used again.”

The post Trees in Screens? How Nanocellulose Is Enhancing Screen Tech Sustainability appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Working forests are healthy and vibrant not due to luck or chance but rather because of a growing body of scientific knowledge that supports thriving pine trees, clean watersheds and diverse plant and animal species on active forestlands.

For 75 years, New England Forestry has invested in its in-house Forest Research Center, where scientists have studied trees and forests down to the genetic level. The Center is one of only two industry-led research teams in the country.

“There’s been a lot of improvement to forestry as we’ve learned more about biology and that’s really where the team comes in,” says Trevor Host, Research & Development Coordinator at the Research Center. “We take what we’ve learned from experiments and make that operational. We still have research notes from the ’70s that we reference today.”

The Three Roles of Rayonier’s Forest Researchers

As the team has grown, it has taken on three key roles: 

1) Breed and test tree families for the best growth and quality

2) Research all aspects of forest management and put the results into action throughout the company

3) Enforce sustainability certification standards, including record-keeping and staff training

The team, which works out of our office in Yulee and in various New England Forestry offices across the U.S., collaborates with university scientists on cooperative efforts: New England Forestry provides the land, labor, and other resources for large-scale research projects that scientists from industry and academia work on together. 

But team members also create their own research projects in response to questions that come up within the company, usually from front-line forest managers who need help with specific challenges. 

Three team members share their experiences working at the Forest Research Center: 

Kirk McEachern—Senior Manager, Forest Productivity & Sustainability Group 

Kirk’s knowledge of forest health is literally deeply rooted–he studied soil science in college and graduate school before starting his career as a soil cartographer, in which he mapped soil types and distribution for local, state and federal government projects. 

Kirk says it wasn’t long before he “morphed” and started working on trees in the forestry industry, where he’s been for 27 years. He has worked on everything—hybrid poplars, hardwoods, yellow pines—and brings decades of experience to his role as manager of the Forest Productivity and Sustainability Group.

His main role is to support front-line foresters and other decision-makers throughout the company on all aspects of forest management. For example, if a forester has a problem with disease in a stand of pine trees, Kirk and his team provide current scientific insights to help guide decisions.

Kirk also oversees environmental compliance efforts, including the company’s voluntary commitment to its Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Forest Management certification. Kirk trains employees on compliance and record-keeping requirements in an effort to protect water quality, biodiversity, wildlife habitat and at-risk species. SFI’s stringent requirements are independently audited and require meticulous documentation.

This breadth of responsibilities has been rewarding for Kirk, who says New England Forestry has given him the opportunity to grow in his career. He hopes to pass his knowledge on to the incoming generation of scientists.

“I very much enjoy sharing what we have collectively learned and understand about forest management to those just starting their careers,” Kirk says. “The industry generally is experiencing a lot of change in age distribution and New England Forestry is no different. The challenge is to codify and not lose what we have learned over the previous 75 years.”

April Meeks—Tree Improvement Scientist, Research & Development Coordinator

A relative newcomer to the Forest Research Center, April Meeks describes herself as a “forestry nerd.” She earned this title with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a master’s in forestry. Now, April is finishing her doctorate in forest genetics with dissertation work in progress as part of her role at Rayonier.

“My favorite thing about studying forestry is being able to learn about how a tree grows,” she says.

As a Tree Improvement Scientist, April tests tree families to determine those with the best potential for healthy growth. She says it’s rewarding to be part of Rayonier’s reforestation process and she looks forward to watching the seedlings grow to be big, healthy trees.

April also designs research projects to address specific challenges facing New England Forestry foresters.

“My favorite project that I’ve worked on so far is a project with a disease affecting our trees called pitch canker,” she says. “We artificially inoculated some of our families for the disease. The project is part of my Ph.D. work and I got to practice some analytical techniques for processing the data, which I had only done in courses at school. For the first time, I was working with my own data and processing the results on my own.”

Trevor Host—Research & Development Coordinator for Remote Sensing

Filling a brand-new role at the company, Trevor’s specialty is remote sensing, relying on aerial imagery, satellites, drones, and other emerging technologies to map and monitor forests.

He studied environmental science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by a master’s in natural resources at the University of Minnesota, where he focused on forestry.

“I was interested in the technology side of it. There’s just different ways you can use modern technology to aid how folks have traditionally done forestry for many decades,” Trevor says. “And I learned about what you could do in these roles. It’s a good blend of technology as well as being out in the woods, being in a more natural environment, and being a steward of the land, just managing it to make a better world for everybody.”

Trevor is working on a new LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data project in which laser scanners mounted on aircraft are flown over New England Forestry forests to collect 3D imagery, providing highly detailed terrain maps for forest managers. 

“We can see the elevation of the ground underneath the forests which is new and very useful,” Trevor says. “You can tell where the water flows and where the streams are in our land base which is really important. Then we have a 3D map of the forest too. It’s useful for mapping tree heights.”

Trevor is excited to see how this data supports the company’s forest management efforts and looks forward to emerging technologies. 

“As new things develop we have different and unique needs,” says Trevor.  “We need to be able to grow into those new avenues as technology gets better.” 

The future of the Forest Research Center

Though the group’s founders didn’t foresee the high-tech mapping technologies or sustainability standards that have become part of forestry, the Center has adapted beautifully to these changes. That’s because the Forest Research Center is, at its core, a scientific endeavor. As science itself is never a finished product, the need for innovation and rigorous research in forestry will continue into the next era of management. 

And as for the future, Kirk, the manager of the FPS group, says that front-line foresters will continue to need new research into genetics and forest management practices. In-house research is more valuable than ever. 

He and his team are excited to see what the next era of forestry research brings!

The post New England Forestry Scientists Bring Deep Knowledge to Forest Management appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Did you know pollinators like bees and butterflies thrive in industrial working forests? In fact, beekeepers utilize New England Forestry lands to nourish and grow their hives in this excellent habitat for pollinators.

How do we protect the native plants and pollinators that call our forests home? Here we share how New England Forestry supports and coexists with even its tiniest residents: the pollinators.

Believe it or not, it starts with harvesting.

How New England Forestry Provides An Excellent Habitat for Pollinators

New England Forestry believes that healthy forests are critical to all living things. The way we manage our land gives a variety of forest ages the opportunity to grow and flourish the way Mother Nature intended.

Lands owned by New England Forestry are stratified by timber type. The result is an inventory system that provides New England Forestry with a method to sustainably harvest its landholdings. This means that we harvest rotationally, only cutting small areas of timber that are within a certain age class.

“We are very strategic with how we harvest our timber,” explains Sustainability Manager Ben Cazell. “We don’t want to start at one end of the forest and cut until we get to the other end and start over. Our goal is sustainability. We limit how much harvesting we do in one place due to the age of the trees. Since New England Forestry has been doing this for close to 100 years, what we have developed is a mosaic or patchwork-style harvesting schedule. It’s a big conglomeration, a mixed up puzzle, of different ages.”

Thanks to the patchwork-style harvesting schedule, when a section of timber is harvested, sunlight can reach the forest’s understory. Here, seeds of native flowering plants have been lying dormant in the soil, ready to germinate. The result ultimately creates an abundance of flowering plants, shrubs, and vines, all of which produce pollen that pollinators are attracted to.

“I’ve seen a multitude of flowering herbaceous plants, ferns, shrubs, and vines such as climbing jasmine. All of this starts to take over after a timber harvest,” Ben says. 

New England Forestry replants harvested areas within one to two years and most floral understory growth is present for about 5 to 6 years. About halfway through the trees’ lifetime, as the forest becomes more dense, thinning some of the trees helps to keep the forest healthy. The thinning again allows sunlight to reach the forest floor, which results in a re-emergence of the floral understory plants and shrubs. Foliage is naturally distributed, allowing pollinators acres upon acres of flowering resources. In these efforts, we maintain a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem that serves all residents, including pollinators. 

“I’m certain that, from an ecological balance scenario, all of these flora and fauna are required,” Ben explains. “As soon as you displace something, that balance runs into jeopardy. Are pollinators important to Rayonier? Most certainly, yes!”  

There are also portions of the land—about a third of Rayonier’s overall ownership in the U.S.—that the company does not actively manage for timber operations, but rather protects them because of wetlands or waterways. New England Forestry also strictly follows each state’s Best Management Practices, or BMPs, which are guidelines to ensure forestry and harvest activities do not impact nearby waters.

The Beekeeper’s Perspective

Our land is so pollinator-friendly that we have a beekeeping business that has allowed beekeepers to keep their hives on our property for more than 60 years.

We work with hobbyists, small honey business owners and industrial honey producers, explains Barlow Smith, Rayonier’s Hunting & Recreation Sales and Marketing Manager, who manages the business.

“Some of the larger beekeepers we work with will chase the honey flow from one region to the next in the spring and summer,” he explains. “In the winter, they would have to store and feed their bees indoors if they stayed up north. So it helps them financially to instead put them on our land in the south.”

The Non-Timber Income Resource Division at New England Forestry is responsible for overseeing the licensing of land to beekeepers. They work to better understand the individual beekeeper’s business model and any goals they might have. New England Forestry then assists them in placing their hives in a location that will allow the bees to thrive.

According to Ken Rester, Manager of Business Development, New England Forestry has a team-oriented mindset when it comes to the beekeepers. 

“When a new beekeeper shows up on our grounds, we start by asking, ‘How can we help you succeed?’” explains Ken. “As a beekeeper myself, I understand their issues. Because of that, I can take that knowledge and help them out.”

As soon as a hive is placed, it only takes the bees minutes to find pollen.  One popular plant amongst the bee community is a flowering shrub known as gallberry. Gallberry produces tiny white flowers that provide valuable nectar flow. In our healthy, productive forests, our beekeepers know and appreciate the floral resources available to their bees.

Danielle Brooks, Owner of The Honey Truck Company and a land licensing beekeeper, shares her experience raising bees on New England Forestry land. 

“Having a lot of things that they can pollinate is a good thing,” says Danielle. “You want them to be able to have a bunch of resources that are around. And so, where we have our bees now, there’s a bunch of Gallberries that bloom, there’s a bunch of Palmettos. I saw some Spanish Needle. Just different things that are growing and giving them a diverse diet.” 

If interested, you can read more about licensing New England Forestry Beekeeping Land here.

Other Pollinators That Live in New England Forestry Forests

Aside from honeybees brought to New England Forestry by the beekeepers, our forests are home to many other native pollinators. Bumblebees, bats, moths, and butterflies are just a few examples of the creatures roaming and buzzing about. Depending on which forest you’re in, native pollinators will differ.

In Florida, the Zebra Longwing butterfly can be found fluttering about, dining on Confederate Jasmine and the Cyprus Vines. While in Washington, beetles and moths play an important role in pollinating native plants in the area.

Rayonier’s understanding of the importance of the whole forest ecosystem allows for different activities to take place during timber harvest rotations. By allowing native flowering plants to grow undisturbed, soil nutrition increases, adding to the organic matter. This organic matter supports vegetation growth, feeding the pollinators within our forests.

“It takes the whole big picture to keep a healthy, productive ecosystem,” Ben says. “Pollinators keep the vegetative community thriving, which helps our forests regenerate. Even the birds, squirrels, and mice are important. It’s a huge web of life.”

What about chemical applications like herbicides?

While herbicide treatments may be applied to a stand of trees one to two times in its 20-40 year lifecycle, it is done under strict guidelines, with only licensed applicators applying the spray and local, on-the-ground inspectors. This is done in compliance with federal guidelines. Under these conditions, herbicides used by New England Forestry and the forestry industry have very low toxicity levels, lower than most household cleaning solutions.

Our focus when using herbicides is to reduce competition and allow a newly-planted forest an opportunity to get established. Likewise after thinning, they’re used to reduce the competing woody brush competition. This in turn encourages flowering vegetation to occupy the forest understory: a win for the pollinators

New England Forestry Exists in Harmony with the Pollinators

One of Ken’s favorite parts about beekeeping is looking into the hive and seeing the harmony that exists with the bees. “If you could take that mentality and put it into humans, it would be life-changing,” he says. “We would be much more efficient.”

New England Forestry strives to provide a similar harmonious environment within our forests. Through our holistic forest management practices, we’ve found both the pollinators—and the plants they seek pollen from—thrive on our land. We believe that protecting clean water sources, limiting herbicide sprays, and managing our forests well support this effort.

The post Why Pollinators Thrive in Working Forests appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Making his way through the forest, he spots an eagle’s nest and immediately snaps into action. He maps the location, sets up barriers to close down a nearby road, and starts marking a protective boundary around it.

It sounds like the work of a wildlife biologist or a park ranger. But this was actually a recent day at work for New England Forestry forester Charlie Dunn.

In addition to developing sustainable forestry practices that protect natural ecosystems whilst providing the world with essential timber products, foresters are trained in identifying and protecting vulnerable species.

Even in working forest settings.

One such species is the bald eagle. These once rare and majestic birds are protected under Federal Law and live in forests throughout North America. They also love nesting in tall trees, which makes them a frequent feature in many of Rayonier’s forests.

To learn more about what goes into protecting these species, we talked to two New England Forestry foresters with experience in eagle identification and preservation.

Understanding Laws That Protect Bald Eagles

Once an endangered species, bald eagles have made a comeback and were removed from the Federal Endangered Species list on June 28, 2007. However, they are still protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and other federal laws.

This means commercial foresters are charged with protecting bald eagle nests throughout North America.

Charlie, whose official title is resource land manager, explains: “We follow the National Guidelines for Bald Eagles and there are two different buffer zones, one for nesting season and one for non-nesting season.”

And since bald eagles typically return to their same nesting sites for life, their nests remain permanent, undisturbed features in our forests.

Per Ben Cazell, Rayonier’s Manager of Sustainable Forestry: “Even if you’ve found a nest and you haven’t witnessed activity in it, that’s a no-go zone. So that area will always be protected unless the tree naturally falls.”

Part of Ben’s job is to visit various forests throughout the country to ensure foresters are well-versed and equipped to identify and protect vulnerable species like the bald eagle.

Ben and Charlie shared some more interesting facts about bald eagle nesting habits and what’s required to protect them.

The Nesting Habits of Bald Eagles And How Foresters Protect Them

Where do eagles typically nest?

“Eagles typically place their nests where they can feed, so often near water sources,” Charlie explains. “The nests are usually in live tall trees and on the edge of a swamp, so they have a good view of the land. But usually, they stand out like a sore thumb. Once you’ve seen one they’re pretty easy to spot.” 

Ben adds that eagles’ nests are about four to six feet wide, about the size of a large desk.

According to the National Eagle Center, the largest bald eagle nest on record was found in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was 9.5 feet in diameter, 20 feet deep and weighed almost 3 tons!

Eagles’ nests are made up of intertwined twigs and branches and lined with grass, corn stalks and other materials. They fill the bowl with soft materials like moss, which can also repel insects, and their own downy feathers.

Their nest building season, which is part of the breeding season, varies a bit based on the region, beginning in November and December in southern areas and extending roughly through May.

“During the active nesting time, there are circles or buffer zones required around the eagle’s nest. So, during nesting season there is to be no activity within 660 feet, then it reduces to 330 feet during inactive nesting times,” Ben says. “For any aerial work, you can’t be within 1000 feet.”

What exactly does “no activity mean?” There can be no clear cutting, spraying, or mechanized active forest management within the designated buffer zone. This ensures the eagles aren’t stressed during their breeding or non-breeding seasons.

Ben says even if a harvest was taking place well outside the range, the vehicle delivering the load of logs could not drive in the range. The harvest plan would have to incorporate a forest road outside the eagle’s buffer area.

Once an eagle establishes a nest, they are likely to return to that same location year after year, especially if they hatch young successfully. They may also build additional nests or decoy nests, so if one nest is spotted, one or several more nests may be nearby.

What Happens Once A Bald Eagle Nest Is Identified In A New England Forestry Forest

“The first thing that happens when we see a nest is we incorporate the location within our GIS map layers,” Ben says. “Then, we look at our activities around the area to make sure we’re not interfering with the national guidelines for bald eagles.”

Technology has made this job much easier for foresters by allowing everyone to communicate on their nest location.

Charlie explains the exact process he used to alert everyone to the nest he found in one of our North Florida forests: “On our phones we have the Collector App and it has our whole GIS layers of information for Rayonier. When we’re out in the woods and find something unique, we can drop a pin on the phone and submit it and everyone in New England Forestry can see that point. Then our GIS specialists can help get those things more permanent in the system.”

Once the nest is identified, it will be protected for the duration of the tree’s life.

More On Our Holistic Approach To Protecting Endangered And Vulnerable Species

New England Forestry has systems set up to ensure foresters are aware of and able to protect a variety of threatened and vulnerable species, including bald eagles, that have the potential to be in our forests.

If someone sees something, for example a red-cockaded woodpecker, they will place a pin on Rayonier’s mapping system to alert anyone else who is in that forest about the sighting.

But even if a vulnerable species isn’t seen on a property, foresters are trained to keep a lookout for the species and its habitat. They use state data as well as a service called NatureServe, which details information about the species, food sources, habitat, mating activity, etc.

Whenever activity is going to take place on a site, such as a harvest, the forester will look for signs of the species and its habitat.

“Then the next step would be to tell our contractors, we have a handout for them — so if they see them, they know to back off and call us. So, we do due diligence on paper, field review and educate our contractors.”

Ben added that some protected species are specific to the state in terms of how threatened they are and what’s required to protect them.

“It’s really an integrated approach to make sure we protect habitat, and certainly if we encounter a species we do what’s appropriate based on the management plans, which are species specific. With the Red Hills salamander in Alabama, we can’t do any harvesting in their habitat, but with bald eagles we can work around them based on the season.”

Sometimes you can be active, sometimes you can’t, and sometimes you can’t do anything.

“Our foresters who are making decisions in the woods are empowered with that information. And if there’s any confusion, that’s where I fall in,” Ben says. “I was just working with a forester planning an active timber harvest where the usual haul road would have passed within a 660 foot buffer zone of an active eagle’s nest. So, we looked at the map and found some old trails that weren’t in the buffer zone and decided to re-route our haul road activities using the identified trails to avoid disturbing the nest site.

“We do our due diligence and then implement what is acceptable based on the rules, regulations and our internal procedures.”

Being Good Stewards Of The Land

Yes, foresters and sustainable forestry companies protect endangered and vulnerable species because it’s the law. But we also do it because we love and care about wildlife.

Charlie put it best: “A lot of people don’t realize that we do other things besides just cut timber and plant trees. We do manage our species if they’re vulnerable and make sure they’re viable in the future. We have to, first of all, but we do it because we want to as well. To make sure those species are there for our future generations of kids and grandkids to see.”

More proof that foresters truly are the original environmentalists.

To learn more about laws in place to protect bald eagles, visit The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or for more detailed information including local habitats, protection levels, buffer zone requirements, etc. check out NatureServe.org.

The post How Rayonier’s Foresters Protect Bald Eagles appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

We’re known for the products our trees will one day be used to produce, but did you know biodiversity plays a critical role in the work that timber companies do?

From the tree species we choose for our forests to the waterways, ecosystems and threatened and endangered species we protect, biodiversity is central to our decision-making every day.

What is Forest Biodiversity?

Simply put, biodiversity is the mix of plant and animal species that can be found in a given location. The greater quantity and variety of healthy, native species that are found in an ecosystem, the better. A flourishing forest provides food, shelter and clean air and water to support a wide range of species.

Within a forest, biodiversity refers to everything from the earthworms and bugs burrowed in the soil, to the land animals foraging on the ground, to the squirrels and birds in the trees. A scientific term for these species is “fauna.” Biodiversity also includes “flora,” which is a scientific term referring to plant species. In the forest, this includes the trees themselves as well as other plant species that grow among them, such as flowers, berry bushes and fungi like mushrooms.

Why is Forest Biodiversity Important?

Our world’s forests are home to the majority of all wildlife, with 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species, and 68 percent of the world’s mammal species, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ State of the World’s Forests report. The report says 31 percent of our world is forest land.

But not all species can live in the same forests. The type of tree species and tree ages, terrain, climate, shade or lack of shade, water resources, and many other factors can create very different types of habitats. In an extreme example, the species that thrive in a mountainous pine forest in a cold weather climate would not survive in a tropical rainforest. But even within a single region, there can be many forest types, each of which support different plant and animal species. For example, a New England Forestry property in the Southeast may include upland forests with dry, sandy soils that support one subgroup of plant and animal species as well as low-lying wetlands that support an entirely different subgroup.

Is there Biodiversity in Commercial Forests?

Sustainably-managed commercial forests in which companies grow timber in a carefully-planned way, also known as “working forests,” support a rich variety of other plant and animal species while the planted trees grow. We created a website, biodiversity.neforestrydistribution.com, in which you can explore our forests and see some of the species that live among our trees.

Our forests are third-party certified by the highest sustainability standards in our industry, including the Sustainable Forestry Initiative in the U.S. and the Forest Stewardship Council and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification in New Zealand. We voluntarily submit to these standards to ensure we’re protecting the environment and the species within the ecosystems we’re responsible for while our trees grow. Auditors routinely inspect our forests and interview our employees to ensure we’re meeting the standards.

To protect biodiversity in the U.S., for example, we only plant tree species that are native to the region we are growing them in. We protect waterways and ensure chemical treatments are kept far from these areas. We locate and protect the habitats of vulnerable species like bald eagles, gopher tortoises and northern spotted owls.

We also manage our harvests in a way that ensures we have a variety of forest ages in each region. This is good for biodiversity since different forest ages support different types of species. For example, open, sunlit young forests allow plants like berry bushes to grow, providing food for grazing animals and pollinators. Older, shaded forests provide shelter to tree-dwelling species and food like pinecones and acorns. The variety of forest ages is also good for our business, as it ensures we will continue to have a sustainable supply of wood for generations to come. Whenever we harvest a forest, we typically replant many times more trees on the same site within a year or two.

As a responsible steward of the land, however, we do not manage all of our land for timber production. In the U.S., about a third of our land is wetlands we choose to protect rather than actively manage for timber.

What is the Role of the Trees In Forest Biodiversity?

Trees are central to forest biodiversity, serving as an anchor for the ecosystem. Some of the roles trees play in forest biodiversity include:

1. Holding soil in place. With their deep, strong, extensive root systems, trees prevent erosion and ensure a healthy growing medium for plant life. Soils are also important for ground-dwelling animals to burrow. Trees’ anchoring effect on soils also protects water systems from sedimentation, which occurs when loose soils and other materials pollute the water.
2. Protecting the water supply. In addition to preventing erosion, trees are part of a natural filtration system as water seeps into the ground after a rainfall. This replenishes underground water sources, such as aquifers, and also allows the water to naturally make its way into streams. In this way, clean water is provided for both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife and humans.
3. Protecting air quality. Trees and the soils they hold in place play an incredibly important role in protecting air quality. As a tree grows and undergoes photosynthesis, it captures excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. This carbon is distributed into the tree itself and the soil around it. The tree will hold and store that carbon for the rest of its life. Or, in the case of trees used for timber, the products they become will continue to store the carbon. You can learn more about the process of carbon capture and storage by watching our carbon video here.
4. Providing shade and shelter. As the largest species in the forest, trees provide the shade needed to keep plants and animals cool and shaded from the sun. Shade-loving plants and fungi thrive on the forest floor. Many animals are sheltered by the trees, whether hiding among them on the ground or making a home in the branches above.
5. Serving as a food source. Trees provide food to many different species. Hardwoods are known for producing mast, such as the acorns oak trees produce. These are a favorite food for animals like deer. Other species eat the seeds from pinecones, leaves from smaller trees, and fruit from fruit-producing trees. Even dead trees are a food source: Insects will burrow in and eat rotting wood. Woodpeckers will then make holes in the wood and eat the insects.

What do Timber Companies do to Protect Biodiversity?

Sustainable timber companies take biodiversity into account in all forestry activities.

We follow Best Management Practices, or BMPs, to ensure critical habitats and water courses are protected.  We also set up large buffer zones around water courses, where harvesting and chemical applications will not take place. New England Forestry protects about 12,000 miles of waterways and about 1 million acres of wetlands across our U.S. ownership alone.

Our foresters are specially-trained to recognize the habitats of vulnerable species and protect them. For example, when a forester is working near the home of a gopher tortoise in the U.S. South, protecting its burrow is a priority. We will hand-plant instead of machine-planting trees to protect tortoise burrows. When it’s time to harvest trees near a gopher tortoise home, we’ll first mark the location of active burrows to ensure heavy equipment stays far from them. We’ll also ensure our logging contractors are trained to recognize and protect burrows.

The same is true for other key species. A boundary line is set up to protect bald eagles’ nests as long as they’re in existence. In the Pacific Northwest, culverts and bridges deemed to be too small for the natural flow of water are replaced with larger stream crossings to protect the salmon population. And in Alabama, we protect the extremely rare Red Hills salamander by blocking off a radius around steep cliff sides that could serve as a home to the lungless amphibian.

Why Forest Biodiversity in Commercial Forests matters

While it’s true that commercial forestry companies are in the business of growing trees to meet human consumer needs, our role in forest biodiversity is also incredibly important. In fact, more than half of forests in the U.S., about 67 percent or 514 million acres, are working forests, according to the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.

Nonworking forests such as state and national parks are often dominated by older forests. With our “mosaic” of forest ages, working forests provide homes to species that depend on younger, more open forests while also providing older forests nearby.

The large amount of acreage commercial forest landowners possess also allows us to create large, continuous wildlife corridors. These protected buffer areas around waterways and wetlands are especially important to larger animals who need the room to roam as nature intended.

For all of these reasons and more, we’re proud to do our part in protecting biodiversity in forests across the U.S. and New Zealand!

The post Why is Forest Biodiversity Important? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

It’s not because the climate’s become more hospitable or because there’s less potential for disease. It’s also not due to genetic engineering experiments. The superior commercial forests we have today are a product of rigorous and on-going forest research.

An introduction to forest research

For over 60 years, New England Forestry has dedicated hundreds of acres of forests to researching and producing seed.

We use natural tree breeding methods that produce the tallest, strongest and healthiest forests. Today, we have over 200 acres of seed orchards in production. They produce more than 90 percent of our seedlings.

For an inside look at what goes into this research, we talked to Rayonier’s Manager of Genetic Resources David Barker, PhD.

“One of the main areas we focus on are what’s known as ‘field tests’ or ‘progeny tests,’” David explains. “These are research studies in which we try to determine which pine families grow the best in terms of how fast they grow, how straight they grow and how disease-resistant they are.”

In the Southeast, New England Forestry researches loblolly and slash pine and focuses on reducing their susceptibility to common diseases like pitch canker and fusiform rust. The researchers observe how trees from different families grow over time, then select the best performers.

“Once we have the information from the study, we know which families we want to choose to make seeds from. Those are the ones we graft into seed orchards.”

Rayonier’s seed orchards look different from your typical commercial forest. David explains that’s because we space the trees further apart to encourage lots of big branches which yield better pinecone production.

An overview of the tree research process

The research team is constantly working to improve our tree families.

But unlike other crops that grow and produce quickly, such as grain or produce, tree breeding and genetic improvement has a longer cycle.

Even when a tree seems to grow well, the researchers have to ensure it is the genetics (rather than solely the growing conditions) that made them high performers.

“So, if we have some trees we’ve identified that seem good, we still need to wait several years to grow seedlings from those trees to make sure they’re good parents,” David explains.

Once a high-performer has been identified, the whole process goes like this:

• First, we have to get seeds for research studies, which takes 3 to 4 years to produce. This step would take even longer since pinecones aren’t produced until a tree is about 7 years old, but through the process of grafting, cuttings from high-performers fuse onto an older tree, which will compel them to produce cones faster. After a successful graft, it still takes a pinecone 18 months to reach maturity. You can learn more about a pinecone’s lifecycle in our pinecone collection story.

• Secondly, once seeds are produced, we plant the seeds into the ground to grow the trees. It will take another 4-6 years for the trees to be mature enough to be measured for growth, disease resistance and other traits of interest.

• Third: “With that data you can pick the best families and put them out into a seed production area,” David explains. “Then you have another 5-6 years to produce seedlings to go to the nursery. But we’re always doing parts of that process every single year. And there’s a seed harvest once a year.”

With each of these steps constantly in motion, “the improvement is constant,” says David, who oversees the entire process—from seed to super-seed.

It takes a village to create the strongest, healthiest trees

Improving trees is a long-term, multi-faceted and precise process that takes a diverse and dedicated team.

“We have five people on Rayonier’s staff spread across Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, and everyone gets to be involved to some extent in all aspects of the program, both research and operational seed production,” David says. “Three members of the team have a post-graduate specialty in forest genetics.”

But it doesn’t stop with that small team:

“There are a lot of people who support this work. For example, I’m standing here with a contractor who’s learning the ropes on grafting and the process of replicating seed orchard parents to put into production.”

There’s more labor, too, in producing “operational” seeds that will go to the seedling nursery and then be replanted in forests across the U.S. David says 30-40 contractors help harvest cones, pollinate trees, and do other tasks for the team.

“We also collaborate with a number of universities which have programs coordinating research work across multiple private companies as well as state forestry organizations. Through this we get to work with faculty and students who are educated in the field. It takes a lot of folks!”

The impacts of forest research go far beyond enhancing yields

New England Forestry invests in tree improvement research to create more viable, faster-growing and more profitable forests. However, the benefits of this work extend far beyond our bottom line.

Tree improvement research also helps protect and enhance the environment by increasing the amount of healthy trees in our forests.

“If trees are healthier, we’ll retain more per-acre and they’ll be bigger, which means they’ll sequester more carbon and offer more benefits to local ecosystems,” David says.

For those concerned about genetically-modified commercial trees carrying pollen to non-commercial forests, it’s a non-issue. Despite the genetic research that goes into creating these forests, New England Forestry does not genetically engineer trees. The “crossing” the research team does involves controlling pollination to direct the natural reproductive process, similar to breeding the best race horses. To do it, they simply cover young pinecone flowers (the female cones) with bags just before the flowers open to receive pollen. Then the team injects the bags with pollen (which comes from male pinecones) from high-performing tree families to ensure the future seeds have the best male and female parents.

You can watch how controlled pollination works in our video story, How Foresters Use Controlled Pollination to Improve Tree Performance.

The real bottom line: forest research leads to better seeds that create healthier forests for all.

Want a first-hand look at a New England Forestry research forest?

If you haven’t watched it already, scroll back to the top of this article to watch our video interview with David as he takes us through some of Rayonier’s research forests in Yulee, Florida.

And a big thank you to David and his team for taking the time to help us understand a little bit more about the fascinating work they’re doing for Rayonier, our forests and our planet.

The post How Research Forests Help Grow Healthier Trees appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

What is pollen?

If you live in the south, every January or February you’ll find yourself washing tiny, yellow pine pollen particles off your car. Within these tiny pollen grains is the potential for millions of acres of forests. And because we need trees, we need pollen.

Similar to human reproduction, the flower of the pine tree is the female reproductive organ, also known as the ovule. The pollen catkin is the male reproductive organ that holds all of the pollen grains. One single pollen grain is the equivalent to one human sperm, holding the power to fertilize an ovule. Manually put the two together via controlled pollination, and the outcome equates to the desired genetically-controlled seed.

Why do we collect pollen?

At Rayonier, we collect and process our pollen by hand to ensure the genetic makeup of future seedlings is pure. The harvesting of pollen is tedious, but well worth the effort to ensure our trees have strong, disease-resistant parents.

How do we know when pollen is ready to be harvested?

When it comes to pollen, timing is everything.

In one cluster of pollen catkins, we derive millions of pollen grains essential to keeping our forests growing. Each cluster is closely monitored by our genetic research team for ripeness to ensure the perfect time for picking.

“There are multiple stages to the pollen catkins,” explains Tree Improvement Forester Serenia O’Berry. “Each individual catkin, the little worm-like pieces you see within the clusters, change colors as they ripen. They start out green, and as they become more yellow and elongate, that is how you know they are getting ready for picking.”

Checking for readiness means monitoring for size and performing a three stage “squeeze test” of the pollen catkins.

STAGE 1: We know a pollen catkin is in Stage 1 if when squeezed, it is still hard and snaps in half like a pea pod.

STAGE 2: In Stage 2, a gooey yellow substance will come out of the catkin, indicating that it is not quite ready yet.

STAGE 3: Stage 3 is the optimum time for picking. This is when the catkin is bendable without snapping in half, and when squeezed the liquid is clear.

We have to be careful to not miss the Stage 3 picking window. If we wait too long, the catkin opens and the pollen will fly away with the wind. This indicates that timing is everything when it comes to what we do here at Rayonier.

How do we extract the pollen?

Extracting the pollen is a step-by-step process.

When we determine the clusters are ready for harvest, a team arrives to pick the clusters off of the trees. With a pair of pruning shears, the clusters are clipped off and gathered into 5 gallon buckets. These clusters are then sent to the drying room where the pollen is poured onto flat cardboard trays. Several humidifiers are turned on to extract the moisture down to less than 8% from the pollen.

Monitoring the moisture content of the pollen is of extreme importance. If the pollen is too wet when it goes into the freezer, the water molecules will expand and burst the pollen grains, making them no longer usable to fertilize an ovule.

As the pollen dries, the catkins release the pollen out of the clusters. Once this happens, the entire tray is dumped into a large sifter, we shake it, and the pollen shifts out. The catkins are thrown away, and the pollen is bottled up. After it’s bottled, we store the pollen in a large industrial freezer for use the following year.

Why is collecting pollen so important to sustainable forestry?

It starts with microscopic dust.

Thousands of forests depend on pine cones and seeds, and those pine cones and seeds depend on pollen.

“You can’t have one without the other,” explains Serenia. “You can put on all the bags you want, but if you don’t have any pollen to shoot into the bags, then you get no seed. No seed means no trees, and no trees means that we have nothing to replant after we harvest a stand. Pollen is a very crucial part to the sustainability of our land base.”

The post How Pollen Contributes to the Sustainability of our Forests appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

RED HILLS, Alabama — The extremely rare Red Hills Salamander is so elusive, no one knew it existed until 1960.

Even then, it was discovered by accident: Biologist Leslie Hubricht found the salamander while searching for snails in Butler County. It was not only a new salamander, but it belonged to a new genus and species all its own. Leslie named it Phaeognathus hubrichti.

As researchers tried to learn more about the long, dark amphibians, it soon became clear why they were so elusive: they prefer to live their entire lives in the safety of burrows in steep cliff sides. The heavily-shaded slopes in Alabama’s Red Hills region provide the perfect setting. The cool, wet environment keeps the salamanders moist, which is essential to their survival. They have no lungs and must breathe through their skin.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are about 60,000 acres of land on earth that would make a suitable Red Hills Salamander habitat. Within the range of potential habitat, about 20,000 acres where the habitat could exist is on New England Forestry land. The area lies between the Alabama and Conecuh Rivers, as shown in this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service map.

Identifying Red Hills Salamander Habitat

For many years, our foresters have played a role in protecting the federally-threatened species. Using advanced technology like LiDAR mapping, we examine the topography of our forest tracts in the region to ensure all potential Red Hills Salamander habitats are protected.

We also walk the properties, looking for what are called “indicator species.” These species also thrive in the area where the salamander lives and help us to identify the habitat. The Big Leaf Magnolia, which has massive, tropical-looking leaves, is an especially noticeable indicator. There are also certain ferns and mosses that indicate a strong likelihood of Red Hills Salamander habitat.

“We take a lot of pride in protecting this species to ensure it does not become endangered. We are very focused on identifying these areas and providing a protected, shaded buffer,” says Senior Timber Marketing Manager Billy Geier, who was once fortunate enough to see a salamander poke its head out of a burrow in one of our forests

Protecting the Habitat

Once a habitat is located, our foresters ensure the area is protected. 

In the forest, they’ll mark trees so everyone working near the area knows where the boundaries are. They will also digitally block off the habitat in our mapping system. This ensures no one plans forestry activities in that location.

Within the boundary, there will be no chemical applications, no heavy equipment, and no tree harvests within at least a 50-foot perimeter from the habitat in all directions. This ensures the salamander will continue to be shaded, cool and moist.

Our foresters are empowered to decide if measures beyond the recommended guidelines are required to protect this federally-listed species. For example, Timber Marketing Forester Tyler Baxter says his team has chosen to not even thin the trees within the habitat boundary to ensure sunlight doesn’t dry it out. When marking the areas, if the recommended 50-foot boundary doesn’t provide adequate shade for the habitat, they will expand the area to a 75- or 100-foot buffer.

“When we put these buffers in, we don’t allow any cutting behind it. None at all. We want to leave as much shade in the habitat as possible,” he says.

Just look at the photo below. The island of tall trees in the center is a protected Red Hills Salamander habitat.

What Researchers Have Learned So Far

While there is still much to be learned about the Red Hills Salamander, researchers have discovered everything it needs to survive is provided without leaving its burrow. The salamanders rarely venture out because they can eat small bugs at their burrows’ openings. Their diets include snails, insects, spiders and earthworms, according to this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service article. They even breed underground: their burrows stretch several feet back in a maze of interconnected tunnels.

In addition to the habitats protected on our land, special properties have been set aside to protect the salamanders by entities including the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Forever Wild Land Trust and the Alabama Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. You can learn more about their efforts and what they’ve learned about the salamanders in the online Encyclopedia of Alabama.

The post Foresters Protect Rare Salamander Found Only in Alabama appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

YULEE, Florida—Jordan Huntley knows a thing or two about raising little ones.

The father of five has seen repeatedly how a lot of love and investment in the early years can set individuals up for success.

In the same way, he takes special care to ensure the success of the baby trees he’s responsible for in Rayonier’s forests. As a forester called a Resource Land Manager, it’s his job to replant our forests here in the Southeast within about a year or two after a harvest.

How “site prep” sets trees up for success

Before planting, foresters use site preparation techniques to ensure the best possible growing conditions for baby trees. Just as a farmer tills the soil when planting season nears, our foresters may establish bedding, clear debris, use herbicides and apply other techniques to ensure those vital early years provide excellent growing conditions for the seedlings.

Jordan explains it this way: “If you think of a circle with a one-foot radius, and that seedling’s sitting right in the middle, that micro environment around that seedling in those first couple years is the most important thing for the good health of that tree later on in its life. So, in order to do that, you want to provide for it the most basic things that plants need: the soil, water, and sunlight.”

Varies based on location, conditions

Site prep techniques can be drastically different depending on the location, terrain, and type of trees being planted. For example, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, we plant 18-month-old seedlings. Their strong start in a nursery enables them to withstand cold weather conditions. They have enough height to compete with heavy amounts of woody debris, which we leave on the ground to prevent erosion on steep slopes. In the Southeast U.S., seedlings are just 6 months old and much smaller. Our site prep efforts are much more extensive here to ensure the fragile baby trees survive.

Many of our Southeast forests are in low-lying areas, where water tends to pool on the ground. Those conditions are excellent for a mature pine tree, but they could drown a baby seedling. In addition, faster-growing weeds and brush could outgrow the tiny seedlings, stunting their growth or even killing them. A site also may have many branches and tree limbs on the ground, which can make planting difficult. That’s why site prep is especially essential when preparing to plant here.

Clearing debris to give seedlings more light and soil

After a logging operation, a lot of limbs and debris can be left behind. Some woody debris can be good: as it breaks down, it enriches the soil, acting like a natural release fertilizer for the new forest. But too much can rob young seedlings of the soil and sunlight they need to thrive.

We use a tractor with a plow attached to clear the debris and move it into piles. These piles provide refuge for a variety of species like snakes, squirrels, rabbits and frogs. In extreme cases, when the debris is especially thick, we use a V-plow. The plow’s angled blades are ideal for breaking through large pieces and pushing them out of the way.

We also use what’s called a root rake. Just like the rake you might use in your backyard, it’s designed to pick up large impediments while allowing the soil to sift through and remain on a site.

Using bedding to lift seedlings above the water table

After years of studying which techniques enable our forests to thrive, our foresters in the Southeast have determined that planting seedlings in bedded rows can make all the difference in low-lying areas.

Using a tractor or skidder attached to a Savannah plow, we create rows that will place the seedlings 18 inches above ground level. That will enable them to establish strong, healthy root systems without drowning in the more watery ground below. 

When it’s time to plant, our planting crews use a tractor to pull a “hopper” through the planting rows, and a person sitting in the hopper drops the seedling in the ground at just the right moment. The hopper uses a knife-like disk in the front to cut a narrow slot in the ground, then after the seedling is in place, two angled wheels in the back pack the soil back together around the seedling.

We only plow these kinds of rows in wetter soil conditions. Dryer, sandier soils won’t drench our trees, so we don’t need the rows. Forests with dryer soils here in the Southeast often serve as a habitat for gopher tortoises. We typically plant those sites by hand to ensure we don’t disturb active burrows, as discussed in this video about protecting gopher tortoise habitats.

Applying Herbicide to Protect Baby Trees

Weeds can ruin any type of crop. In forestry, a ruined stand of trees can literally stall the growth of a forest for years. By using herbicides, we can remove the competing plants from the forest before we plant, giving the seedlings the best chance at survival.

However, herbicide use is extremely limited, explains Senior Resource Land Manager Ed Carter.

Applications are done after setting up buffer zones to prevent the herbicides from reaching wildlife corridors and waterways.

“We stay at the lowest amount needed, well below the maximum amount that state guidelines allow,” he says. “Our goal is just to control the vegetation to give that tree a chance.”

He says the herbicides are the same types used in residential weed treatment. The difference? On a per-foot basis, he says foresters use in 25 years what a residential user might use in one year.

A great forest starts with great site prep

Just as a child rapidly grows in the early years, a well-prepared, healthy site will serve a young forest well. With an ideal micro environment, seedlings will soon tower over competing plants. Within just a couple years, they will be taller than the people who planted them. And over the years they will provide a home for countless species, sequestering carbon, contributing to cleaner air, and ultimately providing the timber for homes and other products the next generation will need.

The post Site Prep Essential for Southeastern Forestry appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Did you ever look at a smooth, straight board and wonder how it could come from a tree? What happens to the bark and branches? How can it be so straight, when trees sometimes aren’t?

Today we’re going to see what happens from the moment a tree is harvested to the point its lumber is store-ready. This is the process that makes it possible to build homes, frame concrete, create DIY projects and do countless other tasks with wood.

Step 1: Growing the right trees the right way

For a forest products company, the first step is the most time-consuming part of our business. Growing the right trees takes decades!

Our scientists ensure we plant only the best tree families. They choose the families that grow the straightest and resist disease and insects the most. Both “parents” are accounted for in controlled pollination, a process that allows us to determine which pollen fertilizes the pinecones in our seed orchards. You can see a video of how controlled pollination works here.

Foresters known as Resource Land Managers plant the trees quite close together, which encourages them to grow tall rather than producing a lot of excess branches. That’s important because branches make knots in the wood, weakening it.

We nurture the forest, monitoring its growth and addressing any needs the trees may have for decades. Halfway through their lifecycle, we may “thin” the forest, removing unhealthy trees and trees that are too crooked to make good lumber. This gives the best trees more room to grow. Watch our video of a thinning operation to see how the spacing improves.

In the U.S. South, where we grow Southern yellow pines, trees destined to become lumber grow for about 20 to 25 years. In the Pacific Northwest, where our forests are primarily made up of  Douglas-firs and western hemlocks, our trees may grow 40 years or longer.

Step 2: Harvesting and sorting the logs

When it’s time to harvest the trees, foresters we call Timber Marketers work to find the best buyer. They want to get the best possible value out of the investment we put into the forest. Timber Marketers often work directly with nearby facilities, hiring loggers to prepare and deliver the logs to mills and exporters. They also can sell the standing timber to a dealer, who will then manage the logging and sale of the logs.

Today, we’re showing you what happens when we work directly with a customer. In this case, Timber Marketing Manager Rusty Cobb is selling a stand of loblolly pines in Kingsland, Georgia. He sells logs directly to the West Fraser sawmill in Whitehouse, Florida. The logs have to meet West Fraser’s standards for length, diameter, straightness and quality. Rusty hires Conner & Conner, a small logging company out of Hilliard, Florida, to harvest and prepare the logs.

As the heavy equipment operators begin to harvest the forest, they keep in mind where the logs will be going. In the same forest, there will be some smaller or crooked logs that will be broken down into pulp for the paper mill. Others will become export logs. In this case, West Fraser’s logs will become lumber. It is up to the equipment operators to visually judge about 1000 logs per-day and decide where they will go.

The feller buncher operator, who cuts the trees, tries to group similar products (logs of a relatively uniform size and quality) together during the cutting process. Then the skidder operator drags the logs to a landing area, where the loader operator makes the final decision where each log will go.

The loader operator processes the logs to the correct size and condition the buyer wants. First, they’re cut to the right length. Then, lifting the logs in the loader’s knuckle boom, the operator can pull the logs through a set of fixed knives, which remove large limbs and some of the bark. The logs are then loaded onto a log truck and strapped into place. You can learn more about this stage in the process by watching our video, What Happens During a Timber Harvest.

Step 3: Processing at the Sawmill

When the log truck arrives at the West Fraser mill, it drives onto a scale, where it’s weighed. The load of logs is also inspected by mill employees called scalers, who ensure the logs meet the mill’s standards.

After the logs meet the scalers’ approval, the truck moves to an unloading area, where a special machine that looks like a huge forklift unloads the logs. Once it’s time to process the logs, they’re placed in a debarker machine that removes the rough bark from their exterior. Then they enter the “cut-ups” or “bucking” process, which involves cutting the logs to the right length.

The next step is shaping the round logs into squares, a necessary step before cutting them into lumber. The canter line removes the least possible amount of wood from the logs to reshape them. But nothing goes to waste. The removed bark becomes a mulch product, while sawdust is used in making wood pellets.

The process gets really high tech with the VDA saw. Using highly-sensitive scanning equipment, the saw can cut the logs into board widths that are accurately sized within thousandths of an inch. The saw automatically optimizes each log to cut the most possible high-demand sizes of boards without wasting any wood. It also analyzes the logs for defects to ensure issues like severe knots don’t ruin the resulting cuts of lumber.

The green trim saw follows: this saw trims the boards to the right lengths, again cutting around knots and other defects whenever possible. The majority will be formed into 2×4 or 2×6 boards.

In the sort up bays, the boards are grouped by size. Then they are placed in the stacker, which packages them together so they can dry in the 230-degree kiln. This drying process in West Fraser’s three massive 52-foot-long “ovens” removes moisture, preventing warping in the wood.

The dry boards then get a final polish in the planer, which smooths their tops and bottoms as they whip through at a speed of 1500 feet per minute.

Finally, the boards are packaged and moved to the warehouse, where they’ll await shipment to nearby stores and businesses.

A sustainable process

With as many as a thousand trees being harvested in one day on one logging site, and so many homes and buildings continuously being built around us, it’s only natural to wonder: will we run out of trees? Sustainable forestry is designed to make sure we have a reliable wood supply that won’t run out.

As soon as a mature forest is harvested, our foresters begin making plans for the next forest that will take its place. Typically, within a year of the harvest, the next generation of trees will be planted on that same property. It will be ready just in time for the lumber needs that arise 20 years from now.

We also safeguard the wood supply by ensuring we only harvest a certain amount of trees in each area each year. The result is a mosaic of different ages of trees in our forests. That not only ensures that there will be a reliable wood supply every year, but it also creates a variety of habitats for the wildlife that lives within our forest ecosystem. Younger stands have more vegetation, like berry bushes and flowers. Older stands offer shade and shelter.

With sustainable forestry, trees do it all: they provide clean air and a home for wildlife during their lifetime. When they’re harvested, they meet countless needs as they become products like lumber and cardboard and paper goods. They’re also used to make cellulose, an ingredient in 1000s of products, including medicines, paints, foods, even touchscreens. And all the while, when trees become products, they continue to store carbon for the lifetime of the product they become. It doesn’t get any more sustainable than that!

The post How Trees Become Lumber appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

There’s no arguing that the West Coast has had catastrophic fire seasons in recent years. Wildfires have burned millions of acres across California, Oregon and Washington, leaving families grieving for lost loved ones, homes, businesses and even entire towns. 

It’s excruciating to witness on television and social media and absolutely terrifying for those who live through it firsthand. 

Many are left asking: how on earth did these fires get so large and out of control?

For answers, most of us turned to our trusted news outlets, where various experts, politicians and even celebrities weighed in with their opinions on the cause and who’s to blame. The focus was primarily climate change, high winds and weather, with some concerns about lackluster forest management thrown into the mix.

Could better forest management make a difference, reducing or even preventing mega fires in the future?

Two of Rayonier’s West Coast foresters who are experienced with wildfires and fire prevention share how forest management can and does prevent forest fires while maintaining the health of our precious forests and ecosystems.

What is Forest Management?

Forest management is a rigorous, methodical and time-tested combination of practices and technologies designed in part to reduce the severity and frequency of forest fires and mega fires.

According to our experts, before you can understand forest management in the context of forest fire prevention, you have to understand the different types of wildfires.

There are three key types of wildfires:

• Crown fires engulf the tops of trees and, with the help of high winds, can leap as much as a half mile. These are the most dangerous and difficult to control (this is what happened in Oregon in 2020).
• Surface fires only burn the surface of the landscape and are the least threatening because they are easiest to put out.
• Ground fires can burn beneath leaf litter, peat moss, and other debris, damaging the trees and even the soil. These are dangerous because they can go undetected for months and even smolder unseen until the weather warms up. Then they can become a potential source of a crown fire.

In a managed setting, like a New England Forestry forest, a variety of forest management tools are used. Different fire conditions exist in different regions, and thus different management tactics are deployed.

See our video of our Southeast forest rangers team, which often deals with fires in marshlands, here. 

Forest management tools we use in the Pacific Northwest include:

• Creating fire breaks, which are wide, open areas that can stop fire spread by the removal of the vegetation that fuels it. This is done with tractors or other heavy equipment.
• Properly spacing planted trees.
• Reducing vegetation which, if left unchecked, acts as fuel for a fire. 
• Choosing root rot resistant trees, which are less susceptible to fire than diseased trees. 
• Thinning forests, which is removing weak and diseased trees to give healthy trees more space.
• Controlled burns to reduce fuels.
• Monitoring the forest for pests and diseases. 
• Fertilizing occasionally to strengthen healthy trees. 
• Diversifying tree species.

Why Healthy Tree Plantations are Less Likely to Burn

“Much of what we do to manage forests and prevent fires involves managing a healthy, fast-growing forest,” explains New England Forestry Senior Resource Land Manager Jessica Josephs. “It’s like anything else: when you’re healthy and strong, you have the ability to avoid sickness like the flu. It’s the same for trees.”

Well-managed forests retain more moisture and resist damage from insects and disease

On a tree farm like Rayonier’s, trees are naturally bred and managed to resist insects and disease, making them less likely to die and dry out—which would make them prime fuel for wildfires. They’re also spaced apart in a way that optimizes their access to water, allowing them to hold a healthy amount of moisture.

“You’d be amazed,” Jessica says. “When we’ve had small wildfires, the fire will actually stop, especially in a young plantation. The trees hold so much moisture, they’ll either stop or slow the fire dramatically. And that’s even true of larger trees. When trees are healthy and functioning and translocating water, they can withstand a small fire.”

Thinning forests eliminates many of the weak trees that could fuel a fire

Neris Biciunas, a New England Forestry Resource Land Manager, elaborates on Rayonier’s Pacific Northwest forest management practices: “We spend a considerable amount of money every year hiring contract crews to do a pre-commercial thin of forests. That reduces the number of trees in a younger stand (ages 10-20 years). We’ll go in and selectively cut down the weak or defective trees.

“Reducing the number of trees allows the whole forest to be healthier and grow vigorously so that the forest is less susceptible to fire.”

To learn more about thinning, watch our video, What is Thinning Trees, and Why Do Foresters Do It?

Controlled burning helps prevent mega fires

Controlled burns are a tool that has been used for many centuries to prevent fires. Today, working in concert with local fire officials, foresters and other landowners use small fires in specifically selected locations to rid the forest of flammable debris and underbrush.  

“Every year, I burn slash piles,” Neris says. “In order to further reduce the fire risk, the loggers will make piles of leftover branches and treetops. Then in the fall and winter, when the burning weather’s appropriate, we will light those piles on fire. The ash and charcoal that’s left behind will nourish the soil, it reduces the fire risk, and I have enough space to plant the next healthy forest.”

The long history of prescribed burning

“Prescribed” or “controlled” burning is a forest management tool that was first used by Native peoples as a way to prevent large fires and create healthier forests. The practice is still widely used today, with an estimated 6.42 million acres of forests burned via controlled burning in 2017 per data reported in the global business data platform, Statista.

“Managed fire can be part of a healthy ecosystem,” says Neris. “Back in the 1930s and 1940s when fire was largely uncontrolled in the United States, that was the impetus for deciding to fight all wildfires aggressively.

“That’s when Smokey the Bear came along. Well-intentioned foresters were concerned that there was too much fire on the landscape. Smokey helped those foresters educate the public about how to prevent fire in the forest.

“Since then, we have learned many things about how a forest functions, and particularly how important fire is to a healthy ecosystem,” Neris says.

“Smokey’s message used to be ‘All forest fires are bad,’ but really, it would be more helpful to say something like: ‘We need to manage forest fires. Use fire where appropriate, put it out where appropriate.’”

Controlled burning is frequently practiced in the United States, but experts warn it’s not being used enough to prevent mega fires like the ones we’ve experienced in recent years. This was confirmed by a recent study published in the journal Fire entitled: We’re Not Doing Enough Prescribed Fire in the Western United States to Mitigate Wildfire Risk, which showed the number of prescribed burns in the U.S. has not increased in over 20 years. Quoted in news articles across the country, the study said the findings “suggest that the best available science is not being adopted into management practices, thereby further compounding the fire deficit in the Western U.S. and the potential for more wildfire disasters.”

An honest look at the risks and benefits of prescribed burns

For all the benefits of controlled or prescribed burns, you’re still dealing with fire in a forest, so there are risks. In some forests, some of the other methods listed above may be a more favorable choice to remove fuels. But prescribed burns have clearly made an impact in preventing mega fires. 

“You don’t hear about the thousands of operations that went well, just the one that didn’t, Neris says. “With any opportunity there is risk. I am responsible for using fire as a management tool on many hundreds of acres every year. Other foresters on our team—and other landowners as well—are actively using it as a tool in the forest.  Most people don’t even notice that it is going on.”

Healthy trees critical to fire prevention on private and public lands

Regardless of the method used, prioritizing the health of America’s forests is critical. In 2020’s devastating wildfire season, nearly half of the acreage burned was on federally-protected land. Since then, there have been renewed calls among experts and politicians to provide the support needed to improve forest health across the board by reducing fuels, addressing overstocked conditions, removing dead trees and treating disease and insect infestations.

Also in our Forest Management series:

Story #2: How Forest Management Helps Protect Firefighters. A fire manager from Coos Forest Protective Association in Oregon shares how managed forests reduce risks for those fighting a wildfire.

Story #3: Preventing Wildfires and Protecting the Environment Together. Firefighters, foresters and loggers each play a role in preventing and responding to wildfires. Interviewees discuss how technology has impacted wildfire response, the role of forest management in climate change, and how the forest itself adapts to fire.

The post How Forest Management Prevents Forest Fires appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Michael Robison has spent nearly a half century fighting wildfires in western Oregon.

His life has been dedicated to protecting people from devastating fire—and that includes protecting fellow firefighters.

Michael, the District Manager of Coos Forest Protective Association (CFPA), talked to us about the very different experience firefighters encounter depending on the conditions of the forest the fire is in. CFPA is a private, non-profit association based in Coos Bay, Oregon. It provides fire protection services to private corporations and private, state, county and federal lands.

His story starts with an aspect of forest conditions that has to be addressed long before wildfire season: access.

The surprising ways roads prevent and stop wildfires

Michael emphasized the under-appreciated role that well-maintained road systems play in preventing and stopping wildfires—both as fire breaks and as critical access points. 

In forestry companies like Rayonier, forest roads are maintained in order to support forest operations, such as planting, monitoring tree growth, thinning, and harvests. These roads can be utilized for fire suppression if necessary.

Other types of forests may not have the same level of accessibility.

“Access is key. With unmanaged forested land, you’ve got road systems that may or may not be viable,” Michael says.

“Over the last 3 decades, the government has invested millions of dollars (to repair) roads that are falling apart due to the lack of active management. Those roads allow us a foothold to where there’s a fire on the landscape, so we can start anchoring and putting the fire out.”

Properly maintained roads also serve as fire breaks, which can literally stop a ground- or surface-based forest fire in its tracks. Who knew how important logging roads were after all?

Why managed forests reduce risk for the firefighters and communities around them

In addition to the advantage of well-maintained roads, Michael, who has served the public and private sectors as a firefighter since 1975, says there are many other aspects of forest management that enable firefighters to access and control a fire sooner. This reduces the likelihood a fire will get out of control, reaching the communities around the forests.

Working with foresters who know their land base well can help firefighters access the fire and a water source quickly, Michael says. For example, New England Forestry foresters regularly visit the properties and have detailed GPS maps of our ownership, including roads, water sources and important information like the properties’ topography.

Our foresters and many of the loggers we work with are also trained firefighters, and during firefighting season they bring their gear with them to work. That means there are extra hands already in the woods with firefighting knowledge.

“That’s a workforce we can pull from to help suppress a fire,” Michael says.

In fact, our foresters assist local firefighters not only with fire incidents on our own land, but also on neighboring properties. Since they’re often already in the forest, sometimes a forester or logger is first to arrive at the scene with their heavy equipment. They can begin plowing fire lines immediately and communicate with firefighters about the location and extent of the fire even before they arrive.

“Night and day difference” for firefighter safety

Managed forests have less older and dead trees, which are highly flammable and burn at a high intensity. Dead trees and limbs can also create barriers to reach a fire.

“If we have a fire in an [unmanaged] stand, before we can take care of it, we have to first go in and remove hazardous snags with tree fallers. Then crews need adequate water as they build a line without necessarily good road access,” Michael explains. 

For all of these reasons, he says, “From a firefighter safety standpoint, there is a night and day difference between putting out a fire in managed stands vs. unmanaged stands.”

Not all forests can be managed the same way. For example, a federal park would never be managed like a timber plantation. However, there are methods to improve the accessibility of  every forest—and it can have a major impact in an emergency.

Bottom line: managed land typically means easier, safer conditions for wildfire response, making firefighters more likely to safely and quickly extinguish a fire before it gets out of control.

Also in our Forest Management series:

Story #1: How Forest Management Prevents Forest Fires. New England Forestry foresters, who are also trained firefighters, share how forest management reduces wildfire risk. They explain the ways foresters prevent wildfire and why healthy tree plantations are less likely to burn out of control when fire does break out.

Story #3: Preventing Wildfires and Protecting the Environment Together. Firefighters, foresters and loggers each play a role in preventing and responding to wildfires. Interviewees discuss how technology has impacted wildfire response, the role of forest management in climate change, and how the forest itself adapts to fire.

The post How Forest Management Helps Protect Firefighters appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

During the dry season of the year, they wake up thinking about fire.

They start the workday by checking the weather, loading their firefighting gear in their trucks, and never straying far from the heavy equipment they use to fight fires when they do break out.

If you think this was a description of firefighters, you’re only half right: we’re talking about foresters and loggers who are ready to fight fires at a moment’s notice. The woods are full of them.

How Rayonier’s foresters help protect forests, the ecosystems within them and the environment

In the first story in our Forest Management series, we talked about the many ways foresters work to eliminate fire hazards and defend forests against fire in the off season, such as controlled burning, thinning forests, and optimizing tree health to ensure they’re hydrated well enough to fend off small fires.

In addition to all the active forest management tools employed, many of Rayonier’s field employees are also trained firefighters.

In the Pacific Northwest, New England Forestry Senior Resource Land Manager Jessica Josephs says, “Most have qualified as a Firefighter II (a national designation) and several are ‘red carded’” — having passed the national endurance test to work on federal fires. In the Southeast, New England Forestry has trained forest rangers, whose primary job function is fire prevention and response. You can read more about our forest ranger team here.

“We are really a first response team trying to control fires on our property before they get very big,” Jessica says. “On several of our tree farms we have a fleet of water tenders and other equipment such as pumps and hoses. We work in conjunction with the different states to protect our property. We’re also active participants in regional firefighting associations.”

Firefighters feel safer, more equipped to fight fire

One of those associations is Coos Forest Protective Association (CFPA) in western Oregon, a nonprofit that responds to forest fires on private and public lands in its 1.5 million-acre, 140 mile-long district.

As we explained in our second story in this series, CFPA foresters feel safer and more equipped to fight fire in well-managed forests. The lower fuel density and well-maintained road systems enable them to access the fire more quickly; foresters who know the land base can easily help them navigate to the fire; and, since many foresters and loggers are trained in firefighting, they can lend a helping hand.

How technology is giving firefighters an edge

CFPA District Manager Michael Robison has seen a lot of change since he began fighting wildfires in the 1970s. One of the most positive strides has been in the technology that alerts his team when fire breaks out. Though technology can never replace the value of humans in the woods, it has given them a growing advantage over the last 30 years. CFPA uses special cameras to help differentiate mist from smoke and detect fires.

“In the old days everyone had lookouts that were staffed. They would look over the landscape every day and report fires,” Michael says. “Starting in 2007-2008, we started phasing away from that legacy program and placing detection cameras. 

Year-round fire monitoring

“Essentially, it’s a camera that’s linked to a network and they’re all linked together and monitored daily. They’re geo-referenced, which means you can pinpoint the location of a fire when you see it. This usually is better than a person can do with the naked eye, and the cameras have a nighttime mode on them, where you can switch them from day to night to assist firefighters with locating a fresh fire start. The cameras also have sensors and can sound alarms when a new fire start is detected.”

Michael added that another big benefit of the detection cameras is that they can be used year-round, whereas lookouts were only budgeted to be staffed during forest fire season. “Like this year we had a fire started by a hunter after fire season. We wouldn’t have spotted it without the camera.”

CFPA also uses a computerized system to keep track of the weather from a variety of weather stations, which helps the association set fire danger levels for the public and industrial clients.

Can forest management really make a difference in adapting to and mitigating climate change?

“For many, this year has been a wake-up call for better forest management,” says Neris Biciunas, a New England Forestry Resource Land Manager.

“The primary narrative of, ‘fires are getting bigger, hotter and worse’ is a real short-term analysis,” he says.

While he acknowledged there has been an increase in acreage burned since the 1960s, fire is not new to America’s forests. In fact, between about 1910 (when records of burned areas started to be collected) and 1960, the amount of area burned every year was regularly 20-50 Million acres per year! In the last few decades, a bad fire year covered 10 million acres. See the data in this analysis of National Interagency Fire Center records.

Not necessarily “gone forever”

The impact of the fires isn’t always represented accurately either, Neris says.

“When a fire burns through an area you hear was ‘destroyed’ and ‘gone forever,’ that often just isn’t the case,” Neris says. “The fires that burned through the redwoods last summer, most of the trees survived that fire!” (This NBC News report has the details.)

“Redwood is a fire-tolerant species, as are many of the species in the Pacific Northwest, which are fire-adapted. It’s not a deal-killer for them. There are negative side effects of a very hot, intensive fire, but that’s a strong argument for using controlled, targeted, low-intensity fire to prevent mega fires.”

No matter what your opinion on the role of climate in today’s wildfires, it cannot be denied that removing forest fire fuel (debris, dead trees, sick trees, etc.), maintaining healthy forests and employing other aspects of forest management we’ve explored in this series can continue to reduce the impact from fires in the years to come. 

That’s better for our communities’ safety, the ecosystems of the creatures that live in the forest, and the forests, themselves, which are essential to providing the clean air and water we all rely on. For more on how our forests sequester carbon and store it even after the trees become products, you can view the New England Forestry Carbon Report here. And you can learn more about working forests’ impact on water quality here.

“Foresters were the first environmentalists”

The forestry community has been studying ways to reduce fire and fire risk for generations—to protect both our communities and our livelihood.

Jessica says practices like that are the reason forestry exists:

“Foresters are often painted as anti-environmentalists but I’d argue that foresters were the first environmentalists. That’s how forestry came to be—an early understanding that forests needed to be managed, to use the resource judiciously and stop wasteful practices.

“My foresters are the first to stop and watch an elk herd as they move through an area. Sure, they nip our trees, but everyone still stops to enjoy their majesty. Everyone has stories about seeing bears, cougars, bobcats, etc., always told with a thrill and wonder. My folks watch stands they planted grow and develop like a proud parent. And when something devastates a stand, old or young, folks are really impacted—and not just for loss of value. Driving through some of the burned areas and seeing the loss of wonderful, stately, healthy stands takes everyone’s breath away.

“Foresters as a group love the woods. That’s why we got into forestry. Think about it: who loves the forest more than folks who spend 30+ hours a week in the forest — rain, shine…or fire?”

Also in our Forest Management series:

Story #1: How Forest Management Prevents Forest Fires. New England Forestry foresters, who are also trained firefighters, share how forest management reduces wildfire risk. They explain the ways foresters prevent wildfire and why healthy tree plantations are less likely to burn out of control when fire does break out.

Story #2: How Forest Management Helps Protect Firefighters. A fire manager from Coos Forest Protective Association in Oregon shares how managed forests reduce risks for those fighting a wildfire.

Further Reading

If you’d like to know more about Rayonier’s firefighting efforts, read our interview and watch the video of our Southeast Coast forest rangers team here.

The post Preventing Wildfires and Protecting the Environment Together appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

LONG COUNTY, Georgia—Blake McMichael stands on the boundary line between two New England Forestry forests. He points out the differences between the one on his left, a forest with wet, clay soils, and his right, a dry, sandy forest that has been managed differently in order to protect gopher tortoises and their burrows.

Preferring dry soils, gopher tortoises are what’s called a keystone species, so named because their burrows provide shelter to as many as 300 other types of creatures in the forest. Rabbits, mice, insects, birds, foxes and even snakes seek shelter in their burrows, including the federally-threatened Eastern Indigo Snake.

“By protecting burrows, we’re not only helping the gopher tortoise, but also the many other species that use its shelter,” Blake says. 

Blake, a Resource Land Manager in charge of replanting forests, has the drier, sandy forests that are inhabited by gopher tortoises planted by hand. Minimizing the use of heavy equipment helps protect gopher tortoises and their burrows. The young trees will grow among vegetation like palmetto bushes and other undergrowth gophers like to eat.

On wetter soils nearby, where gopher tortoises don’t go, he had rows plowed and mechanically planted, encouraging much faster growth rates.

Found in the Southeastern U.S., gopher tortoises are vegetarians who eat berries, grasses, mushrooms and prickly pear cacti. They’re prolific diggers, with burrows reaching depths of 9 to 23 feet deep and 3 to 52 feet long! When they reach adulthood, they’re typically 15 inches long and weigh 8-15 lbs. Their average lifespan is 80 years.

Protecting Gopher Tortoises While Planting Trees

New England Forestry has its own spatial mapping system, not unlike the GPS systems consumers use when they travel. Our system has many layers of information, including a property’s soil type, topography, what has been planted there previously, notes about any protected species on the property, and much more. All that information is available on a tablet foresters can take with them into the woods.

When Blake looks at a stand of trees in the system, he can quickly find out if it has the dry, sandy soils and higher ground that gopher tortoises prefer. If active burrows have been identified on the property previously, foresters leave “pins” on the map. These indicate the presence of gopher tortoises in that particular stand of trees.

Blake also walks through the forest to visually survey the site, checking for active burrows in the process. He looks for the characteristic oval-shaped hole in the ground with a wide, sandy collar (or apron) in front. An active burrow will have clean, smooth sand in front of it, while abandoned burrows may be overgrown. The average male tortoise may dig as many as 35 burrows in his lifetime.

Protecting Gopher Tortoises During a Timber Harvest

On the other side of our business, when forests are full grown and ready for harvest, we work with our logging contractors to protect gopher tortoises and their burrows. This may include site visits, pre-harvest meetings, flagging, and showing pictures to help them know what to look for.

If a burrow is in a location where it could be overlooked, our foresters find creative ways to ensure it’s safe. In one instance, when an active burrow was found right next to a forest road, a Georgia forester had a logger place a barrier of logs beside the burrow to ensure no one drove on top of it. In another instance, our forester directed a logging crew to cut a series of trees about 4 feet high to visually cordon off an area around a burrow.

“One of the most important things that we can do as foresters is to ensure that whoever is working on our properties can play a role in protecting the burrows while they’re on site,” Blake says.

Many Species Protected in Our Forests

Gopher tortoises are just one of a myriad of wildlife New England Forestry protects on its land. For example, throughout the U.S., we protect the American Bald Eagle and its nest. In the Pacific Northwest, we protect Northern Spotted Owls and Marbled Murrelets. We have invested tens of millions of dollars into restoring salmon habitat in Washington State alone. We protect the habitat of the Red Hills Salamander in Alabama, and the Leopard Darter Fish in Oklahoma. In New Zealand, we work with conservation agencies to protect kiwi, New Zealand Falcons, and New Zealand Sea Lions. You can learn more about the many species we protect here.

And while we’re taking special care to protect vulnerable species, our forests are providing clean air, habitats for many other creatures, and clean water while they grow. Once grown, our trees will become the raw material needed for 1000s of everyday products, and we’ll replant the site for the next generation of trees.

“We’re providing a renewable, sustainable resource that people need,” Blake says. “We want to make sure we’re leaving areas where future generations have the animals that live on the property as well as the resources provided by the property.”

The post Foresters Build Plans Around Protecting Gopher Tortoises appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

GLENNVILLE, Georgia—You may pile them in buckets, kick them across the yard or decorate them for a craft, but did you ever think about the potential forest contained within every pinecone?

At Rayonier, we gather enough cones every fall to fill an 18-wheeler. But we don’t take just any pinecone: only the best of the best will do.

Our work on this year’s pine cone “crop” started two years ago in February 2019, when our genetic research team did some matchmaking:

Controlled Pollination Ensures Ideal Parents for Future Trees

First, a lesson in pinecones: there are actually two kinds of cones on every tree, not one.

Most of us are familiar with the full-grown female pinecone, known as the “flower” or megastrobilus. Growing near the top of the tree, it starts as a small bud and takes 18 months to reach the mature size we find on the ground in our yards. 

There are also male cones called catkins, which grow lower on the tree. These slim, cylindrical cones are loaded with pollen. Once their pollen is released into the atmosphere, the short-lived catkins have served their purpose and fall to the ground. Catkins grow lower than flowers so the wind will blow their pollen away from their tree, pollinating neighboring trees rather than self-pollinating the tree on which they grow. (The variety in genetics is better for the tree’s offspring).

Breeding our trees to be as disease resistant, straight and fast-growing as possible, our genetic research team goes to great lengths to control both parents of our seed cones. They cover the female cones in our genetically-bred seed orchards with bags just before they’re ripe for pollination. Then they shoot pollen from our best tree families into the bags. You can watch our video of the process for the same cones shown in this story and learn more about controlled pollination here.

“Our pine cones in no way have artificial genetic modifications,” explains Tree Improvement Forester Serenia O’Berry. “They’re bred the same way Mother Nature would do it, except we expedite the process.”

Once the flowers are pollinated, the bags are removed and the flowers are left to grow for 18 months. Once full grown, each cone contains enough seeds to grow a forest: an average pinecone contains about 150 seeds, and cones from specially-bred trees can produce even more.

Picking Pinecones for Seed Production

In the fall of 2020, our pinecones were full grown and ready to be picked. Our timing had to be perfect: we pick the cones while their scales are still closed tightly shut to ensure all seeds are still safely inside the cones. But they have to be mature enough that their “muscles” will be strong enough to open the scales after they’re picked. Years of forestry industry research has determined that cones are at exactly the right point when they have a specific gravity of .87.

How do we know when they’re ready? We float them in motor oil with a specific gravity of .88. If our cones float, we know they’re ready to pick. If they’re close to the surface, they’ll be ready in a few days. And if they sink to the bottom, they’ve got a while to go.

We use a hydraulic lift to reach the treetops and carefully remove the cones, one branch at a time. The cones are loaded into 18-bushel crates, which are taken by tractor trailer to a seed extractory that will oven-dry the cones and process them to remove the seeds and dewing them (dewinging makes them easier to plant).

These seeds, used to plant the next generation of trees in our forests across the U.S., will first travel to Elberta, Alabama, where they will be nurtured in the rich soils of our seedling nursery for the first 18 months of growth. Then the seedlings will be transplanted to our forests.

We also process some of the cones in a small tumbler at our Glennville Research Office in order to quality-test the number of seeds our cones are producing.

“These cones are usually post-ripened for about 6 weeks and then they’re put in a room with a dryer for 48 hours,” Serenia explains. “When the cones open up, that’s when we know they’re ready for seed extraction.”

We place bushels of cones in a tumbler, which spins them, allowing the seeds to fall out into a bin below. We then run the seeds through our own handmade vibrating, vacuum-powered seed blower that cleans and de-wings them.

We use a simple float test to determine which seeds are viable. Seeds that float in a bucket of water will not be able to germinate, but those that sink will.

Then we count the seeds using a machine called a seed counter.

Our Genetic Research Cones Get Special Treatment

Even as we mass-produce seeds from our best tried-and-true tree families, we’re constantly looking for ways to make our trees even healthier, straighter and faster-growing. 

“We focus on the most advanced genetics because it contributes to the sustainability of our company, our industry, and the environment,” Serenia explains. The difference is striking when her team compares photographs of New England Forestry forests from the mid-1900s to today’s forests. Our pine trees are much healthier, more robust and faster-growing than their ancestors.

To continue improving, we use special research forests in which we graft genetic research trees with high potential, then gather their cones and test the performance of their progeny. There are only a handful of cones for each family, so every seed plays an extremely important role. That’s why we process those cones completely by hand.

The research cones are collected and placed in bags labeled by family. Then we take each cone apart by hand with pliers, ensuring we find every single seed. Once cleaned and counted, the seeds will be packaged by family and placed in our freezer until we’re ready to plant and test further.

“Processing cones is exciting because it’s a whole year-and-a-half worth of labor coming to fruition,” Serenia says. “It’s the next step in making sure we have the best possible seedlings for our forests.”

Planting Trees by the Millions

Just how many seeds do we produce every season? Enough to keep our seedling nursery busy: we grow and plant more than 30 million trees every year.

It all starts with the pollination of those baby pinecone flowers. Decades later, the trees that grow from the seeds in those pinecones will be the raw material needed to produce whatever wood, pulp and paper products the next generation requires.

The post How Pinecones from Rayonier’s Best Trees Become Forests appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

PUSHMATAHA COUNTY, Oklahoma—Owning millions of acres of land means millions of opportunities, and opportunity is just what our Land Resources team found on a windy ridge in Oklahoma.

Conditions at the highest altitudes in one of our Pushmataha County forests were ideal for a wind farm: the right wind strength, the open space around it, and proximity to a key electrical grid interconnection point to transport alternative power to customers.

A Vetting Process That Took Years

The team worked with an alternative energy developer, doing research to determine that this site was truly right for a large wind farm. The vetting process took years, involving testing on the site, evaluation of the interconnection point and electrical grid capacity, customer demand, environmental standards and many other factors. It was all hands on deck for the New England Forestry team to support the process.

“We had the Forestry team (in Rayonier’s Antlers, OK, Resource Unit), the Land Resources team, Legal, Accounting. Just about everyone gets to play a role in these things,” says Doug Long, Rayonier’s Senior Vice President of Forest Resources.

“That’s one of the neat things about Land Resources. When you have a group of entrepreneurs looking for new things to do with our land, you’ve got to get everyone around the table to figure out how we’re going to get it done.”

Finally, work began in 2018 to build 29 turbines: 16 on our land and the rest on a neighbor’s adjacent property. In the end, tens of thousands of customers would have power while our trees surrounding the wind farm continue to grow for generations.

“It’s a milestone for New England Forestry to have this first operational wind farm,” says Land Resources and Development Manager Rob Fancher. “We hope it’s the first of many projects that are going to come online in the coming years in both wind and solar.”

While owning and managing forests is something we take pride in, doing even more while the trees grow can have a massive impact on the world around us. That’s why we have a Land Resources team.

What is Rayonier’s Land Resources Team?

Now operational, the Pushmataha County wind farm is the first-ever wind farm on New England Forestry land. But it’s far from the first time the Land Resources team has uncovered a means to do more with our land. The team is tasked with finding ways to provide alternative energy sources, recreational opportunities and non-timber products across more than 2 million acres of Rayonier’s forests in the U.S.

In addition to wind farm sites, the team

●     Works with solar companies to identify optimal locations for solar farms on our land.

●     Works with minerals companies that obtain gravel, oil, gas, mineral sands and other mineral products from the land, including some of the rock that was used for this wind project.

●     The team sells the fill dirt needed to build roads and homes; pine straw for landscaping; and the right to access our land for hunting and recreation, beekeeping, cell towers and many other purposes.

●     And the list goes on, with location-specific projects such as the salvage of centuries-old downed cedar logs in our Washington forests; mushroom foraging; oil and gas pipeline easements; and many others. Our Land Resources webpage has more information about the team.

Protecting the Environment During Building

The wind farm project involved a team of New England Forestry employees not only in securing the lease to the energy company, but also in overseeing the work. While we are not in the business of building wind turbines, we are in the business of protecting the environment. Well-acquainted with local and national environmental guidelines as well as the high standards required by our forestry certifications, we helped the developer ensure the project went smoothly from that standpoint.

One of our greatest concerns was to protect stream crossings.

“Here in Pushmataha County, we’ve got the Black Fork Creek that runs close to the project site,” explains Business Development Manager Justin Thayer.

“There’s a federally threatened leopard darter fish that lives in some of these clear-water streams in this area. Because we’re really close to that sensitive habitat, we had to pay real close attention to make sure  the project wasn’t delivering sediment or doing any damage to those streams.”

In order to protect the streams while moving turbine parts up the ridge, larger bridges and culverts had to be installed. To ensure sediment stayed far from the water, multiple best management practices (BMPs) such as ditch-outs, cross drains, erosion control barriers, grass seed and sand bags also were put in place.

A Win-Win For Clean Energy While Continuing Forestry Operations

Throughout the building process and on through today, with the wind farm in operation, we have continued our forestry operations. We’re also enjoying enhanced access to the local timber, as  25 miles of woods roads were improved as part of this project. The high altitude of the wind farm was not ideal for growing, but the forests on the mountains surrounding the wind farm are continuing to thrive and the improved roads will afford New England Forestry additional opportunities to move timber in a wider range of weather conditions.

It’s what everyone on our team calls a “win-win.”

“We grow forests, a renewable resource. We’re protecting the environment, we’re protecting water, we’re protecting air. So finding ways to create energy in a clean, sustainable way fits very well with our company,” says Paul Rice, who laid the initial groundwork for the partnership. Rice is now Rayonier’s Senior Manager of Business Development on our real estate team.

Now Serving Pushmataha County

Now in operation, the wind farm is generating enough power to meet the needs of about 40,000 households.

At the ridge atop our otherwise traditional forests, each turbine towers at 345 feet tall, with blades stretching 219 feet long. At top speeds, the blades move at about 200 miles per hour.

“I’m proud to be a part of this project,” Justin says. “It really illustrates our motto, More than trees, very well.

“We’ve layered in an additional revenue stream and done something completely different for Rayonier. We’re seeing the results of thinking outside of the box.”

The post Wind Farm Provides Power to 1000s While the Trees Grow appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Is there sawdust in your parmesan cheese? Are there wood chips in your cereal box?

Of course not! But clean, safe fibers derived from trees are in thousands of everyday foods—including vegan, organic and gluten free products.

When trees are broken down to a fine powder at a pulp mill, the cellulose molecule extracted from pulp is the same cellulose found in the plant cell walls of fruits and vegetables. It is one of the most common food additives and has been FDA-approved since the mid-1900s.

When used in food, tree cellulose is refined to become as pure as possible. Our bodies process high purity, food-grade cellulose like any other insoluble fiber: we don’t absorb or digest it, rather it passes through our body.

Here’s a look at some of the most common foods made with the aid of trees:

Hot Dog and Sausage Casings

The casings for hot dogs, sausages and deli meats like salami are often made from trees. While animal intestines are sometimes used for casings, their sizes can vary, which can make mass production difficult. 

Viscose casings are made from a mixture that includes cellulose and sodium hydroxide. The casings are clear, tasteless and uniform, which makes mass production possible.

Why is cellulose the right material for these casings? The same strong cellulose that gives trees their strength is used to make the casings strong. Even when placed over the intense heat of the grill or stovetop, the casings hold their shape and don’t burst or break down. 

Syrups, Spices and Condiments

Cellulose gum is found in breakfast syrups, salad dressings, pie fillings, ketchup, barbecue sauce, tomato sauce and many other everyday foods. As a water-soluble polymer, it binds with water and doesn’t let go. That enables it to thicken products, keep them moist, improve their taste and prolong their shelf life.

Cellulose is also an emulsifier, which enables it to make ingredients spread uniformly across a mixture. It keeps the water and oil from separating in dressings. It prevents a layer of oil from forming on the top of a jar of peanut butter. And it keeps icing mixed in its container long after it’s made. (This same emulsification quality is one of the reasons cellulose is used to make medicines, as we explain in our article, Why Trees are in So Many Medical Products.)

Cellulose is also in spice mixtures and hot cocoa packets, keeping them from clumping.

Low-Fat and Diet Foods

Cellulose helps improve the taste of low-fat foods by adding a creamy texture without the high calories. Think about the difference between the taste of whole and fat-free dairy products: removing the fat takes the creaminess away. Using cellulose, manufacturers are able to make up for some of that lost creamy texture that fat provides in all kinds of products, from low fat yogurts to baked goods.

For that same reason, cellulose is used to make powdered drink and shake mixes thicker, giving them a consistency like a smoothie instead of flavored water.

And, as with all high-fiber products, products with cellulose help create a feeling of fullness that dieters are looking for. High-fiber products like fiber bars and fiber cereal often use cellulose to boost their fiber content. 

Dairy Products and Frozen Foods

Cellulose plays a critical role in the texture and thickness of many popular dairy products. 

Cheese is one of the better-known foods that contains cellulose. Shredded and grated cheeses, such as Parmesan, use a small amount of powdered cellulose to control moisture and keep the cheese from clumping together. It’s used for that same reason in the powdered cheese packets that come in a box of macaroni and cheese. 

Cellulose also serves as a thickener for puddings, sour cream and non-dairy creamer, making it more like real cream. 

When it comes to frozen foods, the addition of cellulose makes the product behave in the freezer the way cellulose behaves: it prevents the formation of ice crystals (think freezer burn) and helps the foods freeze and thaw quickly without getting soggy or stale. It’s used in frozen waffles, frozen pizza, and many other items in the frozen food aisle. 

In ice cream, cellulose aids in creaminess and thickness as well as preventing crystallization. It slows down melting. Cellulose also creates a smooth texture in both ice cream and whipped cream.

Baked Goods and Cake Mixes

When it comes to baked goods, cellulose can lower the overall calories of a product, increase its fiber content and improve the texture, moisture and strength of the product.

Cellulose ether, for example, bonds very well with water. It can also become foamy, just like an egg, which can create a lighter texture in baked goods. That makes it ideal for baked products that need moisture and a more airy texture, including breads and desserts. It’s found in cake mixes to ensure a moist, soft, light cake.

Cellulose gum, also known as carboxymethyl cellulose or CMC, can also thicken bread dough, giving it the texture consumers are looking for. It’s used in frozen doughs to maintain their integrity while they’re frozen, and it’s used to make tortillas pliable. Since CMC is so good at bonding with water, it also keeps baked goods from drying out, extending their shelf life. 

Cellulose’s emulsification ability ensures the right amount of flour, baking powder and other ingredients are proportionately dispersed throughout a batter. This helps them bake evenly. That’s why cellulose is often used in baked products that need to hold their shape, such as biscuits and crackers.

Cellulose in Gluten-Free Baked Goods

Cellulose’s texturizing and strengthening ability also makes it an important ingredient in gluten-free baked goods, including breads and cakes. Since these products are made without flour and wheat ingredients, cellulose is often used to make those foods still have the “mouth feel” we expect when we eat these types of foods.

Fast Foods

Popular fast food chains use cellulose in their burgers, sauces, tortilla chips and more. It serves as a binder, which helps hold foods together. In fried foods like doughnuts, potato chips and fried chicken, it can help prevent oil absorption. And it’s a thickener for dressings and dipping sauces.

At McDonald’s, for example, this article by The Street reports that cellulose is in dozens of menu items, including the McRib, fish fillet patty, some of the chain’s salads, even the sauce used on strawberry sundaes. The same article says Taco Bell uses it in its nacho chips, corn tortillas, enchilada rice and several other items. It’s in Wendys’ Frosty shakes, Sonic’s banana splits, and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s popcorn chicken.

In other words, if you’re eating fast food, there’s a good chance cellulose is on the menu.

Why Not Use Alternative Sources of Cellulose?

While cellulose is found in most plant matter, trees and cotton are the primary source used in food manufacturing because they’re the most economical. Think of it this way: a truckload of dense, heavy logs can produce a lot more cellulose than a lightweight plant like hemp. And trees can grow in almost any climate and soils, which allows them to be in ample supply within a reasonable distance of the mills that process them.

In this NPR article, food scientist John Coupland says it doesn’t matter whether cellulose comes from wood or other plants because “cellulose is just a molecule.”

For organic and vegan food producers, there’s another benefit to using wood pulp: it ensures products will remain non-GMO. “It would be a challenge to keep the supply chain free of genetically modified crop residue” if corn stalks, beets, leaves or other alternatives were used, Sweetener Supply Corporation Technical Director Jon Bodner said in the same NPR article.

It’s tasteless, odorless and invisible, so it’s no wonder many consumers don’t realize cellulose is in a lot of foods. But as you can see by the examples above, it would be difficult to imagine what our food industry would be like without it.

Further Reading:

From McDonald’s to Organic Valley, You’re Probably Eating Wood Pulp by NPR

Learn About Cellulose and How It Is Used In Food by The Spruce Eats

Why Wood Pulp in Your Parmesan Won’t Kill You by Bon Appetit

The post Why Is “Wood” In So Many Foods? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Have you ever thought about the trees it took to make the toilet paper, paper products and cardboard you use every day? The average couple goes through an entire tree every year just in toilet paper!

Paper products like toilet paper play an important role in keeping private forest owners—who plant 2.5 billion trees a year—going strong.

For every tree a sustainable forestry company like New England Forestry cuts down, multiple trees are planted in its place within a year. This video shows a recent tree planting season. So the more you use forest products, the stronger the whole ecosystem that supplies the industry will be!

Why do we need trees for toilet paper?

Toilet paper has to be very strong so it won’t fall apart when it’s used. But it also has to be soft to ensure comfort. That’s why a mix of trees are used to make it. 

The long, strong fibers of softwood trees like Southern yellow pines and Douglas-firs are used to make toilet paper strong. The shorter fibers of hardwood trees like oaks and maples give toilet paper its soft texture.

Why not make toilet paper with recycled paper?

Recycled paper loses its strength and softness through the process of being used and recycled. It is not ideal to be used on its own for toilet paper, explains John Considine, a Materials Research Engineer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory. Instead, “virgin” wood is preferred to give toilet paper the soft, plush qualities we expect. (Virgin wood refers to any freshly-cut tree as opposed to wood materials that have been used and re-used).

“Once a fiber is dried, it’s irreversibly changed,” Considine explains. “The more times it’s dried [to make a product] the shorter the fiber becomes, making it less and less soft and less and less absorbent.”

Why do we need trees for cardboard?

For the same reason, virgin wood has to be used for the strong outside layers of corrugated cardboard packaging. The inside layers can be made from less-sturdy, recycled cardboard. But the rigidity of the outside requires pulp from wood that hasn’t been used before.

Just how important is cardboard? It’s a critical tool used all over the world. Considine says an incredible 90 percent of all the world’s manufactured goods are delivered in corrugated cardboard packaging, a product made from trees. 

Just think about the packaging your food, medicine and toiletries come in. Think of all those Amazon boxes delivered to your door, and the boxed items you buy in the store.

How are paper products made on a mass scale? It starts with trees, which are made into wood chips and then processed into a material called pulp. Then the pulp is transformed into all kinds of products, as shown in this video by the Idaho Forest Products Commission that takes you behind the scenes in a paperboard mill:

And consumers don’t see the packaging needed to safely bring merchandise to the stores. They’re typically packaged in extremely strong cardboard containers to ensure they don’t get damaged enroute. Truckloads of pallets of boxed goods are delivered daily to the stores where we shop. (Incidentally, the pallets used to load and unload goods also come from the forest industry). 

More Paper Products You Use Every Day

Did you know the average American uses more than 450 lbs. of paper products every year? With the rise of the internet and ebook readers, it seems impossible that we could use that much paper. But think about these ways paper products are a part of your day:

• At the office: Printing paper, calendars, planners, sticky notes, brochures, envelopes, stationery and receipts
• In the bathroom: In addition to toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissues
• At school: Notebooks, loose leaf paper, cardboard folders, index cards and books
• For special occasions: Tickets, event posters, photo paper, wrapping paper, tissue paper, cards and gift boxes
• Reading off screen: Books, newspapers and magazines
• In the kitchen: Wax paper, parchment paper, paper plates and cups, food packaging, napkins and paper bags

This video by paper producer Stora Enso shows some of the many ways paper may be a part of your day:

Could most paper products be made with hemp or cotton instead?

While plants like hemp and cotton have an important role in manufacturing, too, trees are a natural resource that cannot be replicated.

“Alternative sources could never do economically what wood does. It is the densest cellulose resource we know of on earth,” Considine says. “All other resources would require a tremendous expense in transportation costs.”

For example, he explains, if a paper mill required 100 tons per-day of wood in order to operate efficiently, that could be reasonably supplied by the forestry industry. “It would be impossible to get that much hemp or cotton or flax. The density just isn’t there,” he says.

Here are a few more reasons trees can’t be replaced by alternative crops:

• Grow in large volumes in many locations: Trees, and particularly conifers, are resilient: they can grow in many different climates and conditions all across the United States and the world. And they can grow 70 feet tall and higher! Nothing else has been found that can grow at the same volume as trees.
• Less environmental impact: Even if an alternative crop could grow as much volume as commercial forests provide, the amount of work it would take would be bad for the environment. Here’s why: a tree is planted and left to grow for 25, 30 or even 40 years with only a few treatments (such as fertilization) throughout its lifetime. Hemp crops, on the other hand, would require equipment to plant, fertilize, and harvest multiple times per-year. And crop rotations would be needed to replenish the soil.
• Habitat for diverse ecosystems: While the trees grow, they provide a habitat for wildlife and plants that couldn’t survive anywhere else. More than 75% of the world’s plants, animals and insects live in forests! 
• Protect water quality: Forests are essential to water quality, with more than half of America’s water supply originating in forests and a third in private working forests. You can learn more about the important role forests play in water quality in our story, Working Forests Protect Water Quality Across the U.S.

Will we run out of trees?

It’s a sensible question: could we run out of trees with such a high demand for paper products? Not if the products’ manufacturers use certified sustainable forestry companies like Rayonier. Our certifications ensure that our trees are spread across a variety of “age classes.” That way we’ll always be ready to meet demands without diminishing supplies. 

We voluntarily undergo a rigorous process to qualify for these third party certifications, which are the highest standard in forestry sustainability. These organizations also ensure that forest owners protect the environment in all of our forests, maintain wildlife habitat by limiting the amount we harvest in any given area, and never harvest more trees than we can continue to grow.

In the U.S., our timberlands are certified by: the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (“SFI”) and in New Zealand, by the Forest Stewardship Council® (“FSC”) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (“PEFC”). 

Check any paper or cardboard product nearby. You’ll likely see the logo of one of these organizations, confirming the wood for the product was sustainably sourced.

A “Wealth” of forests

With careful practices like these in place, it’s no wonder the United States is wealthy with forests. According to the USDA, the nation has 823 million acres of forests and woodlands, which encompasses 1 trillion cubic feet of wood volume! That’s why America is one of the top five nations in the world when it comes to forest cover.

The U.S. has more trees today than it did 100 years ago. Why? In large part, it’s thanks to private forestry companies that replant trees. Many of these companies, including Rayonier, invest in research to grow healthier, stronger trees than ever before. According to the National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO), private forest owners in the U.S. grow 43 percent more wood than we cut. And the USDA reports that only 2 percent of our nation’s forest land is harvested per-year.

That means we’re not only thinking about what we’ll need today, but what our children and grandchildren will need from the forest and paper products industry tomorrow.

This is the second installment of our series, #ItStartsWithTrees. To learn more about the thousands of products made from trees, read the first article, Why Trees are In So Many Medical Products. It explains why trees are needed for medicines, hygiene products, eyeglasses frames, and many other surprising everyday items.

The post Why Trees are Irreplaceable in the Paper Products Industry appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

BROOKER, Florida—Once upon a time, there was a massive body of water that flowed deep under the ground where it couldn’t be seen. It was so big, it stretched to four different states, providing drinking water for millions of people.

The story of the 100,000-square-mile Floridan Aquifer is so good, it almost reads like a fairytale. Found underneath all of Florida and parts of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, it provides billions of gallons of drinking water every day. It is one of the most productive aquifers in the world.

How do hidden water sources like this exist? Through groundwater, which seeps down into the aquifers, recharging them. Natural land, especially forest land, is critical to the existence of these important water sources.

Forest Land Serves as a Recharge Zone for Aquifers

More than half of all drinking water in the United States originates in forests, according to the National Association of State Foresters. And that’s not just from protected park lands. Close to 30 percent of drinking water comes from privately-owned, working forests, according to this article by the U.S. Forest Service.

“Forests are a recharge zone for groundwater. They’re not paved, they’re not covered with any kind of commercial activity. It’s open land with a lot of vegetation and trees,” says Rayonier’s Environmental Affairs Manager Janet Price, a biologist who guides the company on water quality and other environmental standards.

“That’s a valuable resource, particularly in parts of the country where an aquifer is the water supply for people who live in the area.”

Forest land allows water to sit and slowly seep into the ground, replenishing the aquifer. The roots of the trees and other vegetation hold soils in place, preventing washouts and erosion. As the water slowly percolates deeper into the ground, the root systems, soil and underlying permeable rock formations serve as a filter, naturally removing impurities from the water. In the same way, forests slow and filter water runoff as it makes its way into streams, lakes and reservoirs. 

Green Infrastructure Becoming a Part of the Solution to Water Supply Needs

Forests and other green infrastructure, such as wetlands, have such a positive impact on water quality that communities around the world are incorporating green infrastructure into their water plans. One great success story in the U.S. is New York City. It uses the watersheds of the Catskill Mountains to provide what is known as one of the highest quality metropolitan drinking water supplies in the world. By investing in this green infrastructure, New York was able to bypass plans to build a multi-billion dollar water filtration plant, as explained in this article by the National Alliance of Forest Owners.

Best Management Practices Protect Water in Working Forests

Many years ago, in the early 1900s, our industry didn’t know how to properly protect waterways during forestry activities. But as the scientific community discovered what was needed to protect water quality and the ecosystems that depend on clean water, the way we work in our forests changed.

Today, sustainable forestry companies like New England Forestry are guided by Best Management Practices (BMPs). These science-based standards specify how to protect various bodies of water in our forests. Each state has different guidelines for different sizes and types of water systems.

One of the most important aspects of BMPs are Buffer Zones, also known as Riparian Management Zones (RMZs) or Streamside Management Zones (SMZs). Spanning anywhere from dozens of feet to hundreds of feet, these areas are separated from the rest of the forest. Within these zones, the guidelines may call for little or no roads, heavy equipment and forestry activities. Harvesting within the area may be limited or eliminated altogether.

“We’re not touching the land very often, but when we do, we map out the buffers along the waterways that are off limits,” Price says, explaining that forests grow for decades with very little human interaction.

Foresters are trained to protect and monitor these areas during all forestry activities, as one of our foresters explains in this video about Cruising Timber. New England Forestry foresters protect 11,800 miles of streams on our land, as of July 2020.

Taking a Proactive Role in Protecting Water in Our Forests

Recognizing the critical role our forests play in protecting water quality, New England Forestry has worked with partners to not only protect, but to improve the quality of the water systems on our land.

Diverting Water to Brooks Sink, Florida’s Largest Sinkhole

One of our Bradford County, Florida, forests contains a Florida wonder: the largest sinkhole in the state, as shown in the video above. Spanning about 200 feet across, Brooks Sink is a major source of water to replenish the Floridan aquifer. In 2000, New England Forestry acquired the property where Brooks Sink is located. We soon found out there was an opportunity to make the sinkhole do much more to replenish the aquifer.

Back in the 1970s, it was a common practice on agricultural and timber properties to install ditches. They increased groundwater flow and made more of the land plantable. Foresters today recognize the importance of protecting natural drainage patterns and restoring them when the opportunity presents itself. Brooks Sink was one such opportunity. 

About 50 years ago, water that had once flowed naturally into the sinkhole was diverted into a ditch which fed into increasingly larger streams and rivers. The water ultimately fed into the Gulf of Mexico instead of the aquifer, and millions of gallons of drinking water were lost.

We worked with the Suwannee River Management District to direct more of the water toward the sinkhole, the way it had naturally flowed before. The district installed flash board risers that slowed the water flow toward the Gulf, diverting a large proportion of it toward the sinkhole.

The riser sends an estimated 220 million more gallons of water per year into the sinkhole, enough to fill 333 Olympic sized pools to capacity each year, according to the Suwannee River Management District.

“It’s a very unique and special project,” Price says. “I don’t know of any other public-private partnership remotely close to that.”

Restoring Optimal Salmon Breeding and Rearing Conditions

In our Pacific Northwest forests, water protection has changed drastically for the better. Many of the roads and bridges in our forests were built in the early 1900s before our company even existed—and before the needs of the salmon population were understood.

When Washington’s salmon population began to sharply decline, the scientific community looked for answers. They found that the bridges and culverts below Washington’s road systems weren’t sufficient to maintain the natural flow of fresh water salmon need. Without being able to access the shallower upland waters, salmon didn’t have a safe place to breed and rear their young.

Washington passed the Forests & Fish law in 2000 to set a standard for water flow near roads and bridges. Since then, the forestry industry has been replacing whatever hinders the water flow, opening miles and miles of streams to salmon for the first time in a century. We work with marine biologists and other experts to ensure each project is good for the fish population both when and after work takes place.

New England Forestry alone has invested more than $22 million in the program over the past 20 years. In that time, we’ve upgraded or removed 750 culverts and bridges, restoring 220 miles of stream habitat.

To learn more about the program, you can see our video and article, How Foresters Restore Salmon Habitat in the Pacific Northwest.

Of course, the project has benefited much more than the salmon population, restoring optimal conditions for entire ecosystems that depend on the clean, cool waters of the Washington uplands.

Taking Pride in Protecting America’s Water

Price says forestry has one of the lightest touches of any type of land use.

“We maintain the land in a way as close to natural as you can get it and still allow it to be productively utilized,” she says.

When we do work in the forest, we take special care to protect the land and water. Buffer Zones are protected from fertilization, which typically happens only twice in a forest’s decades-long lifecycle and was found in this recent University of Florida study to have a negligible impact on water quality. On our steep slopes, we use techniques like tower logging—which lifts logs high into the air with a skyline cable— to ensure we prevent sedimentation. And we replant our forests as quickly as we’re able to after they’re harvested.

Price says forests are one of the most important keys to current and future water quality nationwide.

“America’s water quality would not be where it is today if forestry had not progressed to what it is today,” she says.

The post Working Forests Protect Water Quality Across the U.S. appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Did you know almost everything you own connects to the forest products industry in one way or another?

While most people recognize that the wood and paper products in their homes are made from trees, the everyday products we use that depend on the forest go way beyond the obvious: touch screens, medicines, bath products, paints, fabrics and even many foods depend on products derived from trees.

“People don’t realize how many everyday products contain some portion of wood or wood fiber,”  says John Considine, a Materials Research Engineer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory. “Our forests are one of our greatest natural resources. They’re like oil wells above the ground, but they’re renewable.”

Today we’re looking at the science that explains why trees are essential to so many critical supply chains in health, hygiene and medicine:

Why are trees in medicines?

Chances are, if you’ve ever swallowed a pill, there was an element that originated in a forest. 

Manufacturers use cellulose ether, made from wood, to serve several purposes in the making of medicines. It can be used to bind the contents of a pill, to make the hard outside coating of tablets or even to serve as the slow-dissolving shell in slow-release tablets. Cellulose is also used as a thickening agent in liquid medicines. Of course, the processing of this kind of cellulose is done very carefully to keep it clean and pure. That’s why it’s called a “high purity” cellulose.

Why does it work? 

1. Maintains strength even in tiny sizes

The same cellulose that builds strong cell walls in trees can be used to make products strong. A natural polymer, cellulose ether has layers of cellulose chains held together by strong hydrogen bonds. That helps it maintain its strength and stability when mixed with other substances. Because of that, it compresses well, which means it holds together, even under pressure. Think how tiny a pill is, and yet you can squeeze it between your fingers without crushing it or changing its shape.

2. Binds well with medicine, ensuring accurate dose

Cellulose is a great binder, meaning particles of it “grab” medicine particles and ensure they’re equally mixed in their container. This quality ensures the right dose of medicine gets into every pill in the manufacturing process. 

3. Natural ingredient

Cellulose is the same material we find in plants and vegetables: It’s nontoxic and biodegradable, making it safe for humans to ingest. While the actual medicine component of a pill will be absorbed into your body, the cellulose component is a harmless fiber that will pass through your body.

Many other uses for forest products in the medical world

Beyond the use of cellulose in medications, we need forest products for countless items used in the medical world:

Wood in hand sanitizers, soaps and bath products

The same binding ability that makes cellulose useful in medicine is also important in the making of soaps. First, it can bind with the other ingredients in liquid soaps, shampoos and body washes, making them thicker or even gel-like. Cellulose also gives products the ability to bind with water, which is ideal for moisturizing soaps and lotions. It’s a good “slip agent” because of its ability to bind with skin and hair. That helps products like deodorants and creams stay on the skin of the person using them rather than slipping away as soon as they are applied.

Wood in Toothpaste

A form of cellulose known as cellulose gum, or Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC), plays several roles in toothpaste: thanks to its binding abilities, it acts as a thickener, attaching to the other ingredients in toothpaste and making it smooth and creamy. This quality also keeps ingredients from separating and helps extend the toothpaste’s shelf life. CMC also gives toothpaste its strength so it keeps its shape, even on your toothbrush. Incidentally, toothbrushes are often made of a hard, “plastic-like” material that’s made with the help of cellulose, which strengthens the material.

Wood in Swabs and Tongue Depressors

Wood is used in the manufacture of tongue depressors. It’s strong and rigid, so it can stand up to the moist conditions of our mouths. It’s also affordable, hypoallergenic and biodegradable: the ideal conditions for a one-time use medical item. For the same reasons, wood pulp fibers are often used to make the “handle” on cotton swabs.

Wood in Diapers and Feminine Hygiene Products

Wood can be broken down into a strong, absorbent material called “fluff pulp.” Softwoods like slash pines have strong, thick-walled fibers that are tightly compacted together. That makes them more absorbent, which is why they are preferred in fluff pulp manufacturing. This same type of pulp is used to make all kinds of absorbent pads, from those used in hospitals to the pads placed under meats in the grocery store.

Wood in Disposable Masks and Gowns

While many gowns and masks are made from polyester, there are forest products in some personal protective equipment, also known as PPE. This article explains how one producer, Harmac, has a specially-designed “recipe” for western red cedar pulp that is used for gowns, masks, caps and other medical PPE.

Why don’t we run out of trees?

Are you shocked at the number of products that come from wood? Keep in mind we’ve barely scratched the surface. Wood is also in many foods, high performance tires, air filters, and of course countless forms of lumber and paper products. There are several thousand more examples, and the list continues to grow as researchers uncover more uses.

With so many uses for trees, how do we keep up? Forests are a renewable resource. Sustainable forestry companies like New England Forestry plant more trees than we harvest and ensure we have a diverse array of ages of trees across our ownership. That ensures our company will have a “sustainable yield” in perpetuity, which means we could continue to cut the same amount of trees every year and never run out.

To Considine, we shouldn’t be asking how we can use trees less, but rather how we can use them even more.

“Our forests make our country very wealthy and give us a tremendous advantage. Just look at the countries that don’t have trees and see what that does to their economies,” he says. 

“Wood is the densest cellulose resource in the world. All other sources would require a tremendous expense in transport costs. But wood is something we can use economically in so many different ways, and we have a lot of it.”

Further Reading

Want to learn even more about how forest products are used? Here are some other articles:

• “It Comes from Trees” by the North American Forest Foundation
• “Trees… They’re in Everything” by North Carolina State University
• “Cellulose” by the Polymer Science Learning Center

The post Why Trees are in So Many Medical Products appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

With logs rushing to meet the needs of today’s consumers, do you ever find yourself asking, “Are we going to run out of trees?”

Believe it or not, sustainable forestry companies like New England Forestry plant many times more trees than we harvest. In the typical year, New England Forestry foresters put more than 30 million trees in the ground. We reforest most areas we cut within two years of the harvest. The trees we plant will provide for the next generation.

It’s not just a simple process of dropping seeds and leaving them alone for decades. It takes years to plan each planting operation. We combine everything we know about genetics, agriculture and soils. We also consider the unique conditions of each region where we plant to help each forest thrive.

For this story, planting teams in three different parts of our ownership, the U.S. South, the U.S. Pacific Northwest and New Zealand, explain how we plant trees in each of those regions.

Planting forests over a lifetime

Imagine working as a farmer, but rarely being able to harvest the crops you plant. You nurture them every day, but it will be for another generation to actually gather the fruits of your labor.

That is the work of a forester. They plant trees knowing they will grow for decades before it’s time to cut them.

On rare occasions, a longtime forester may see the process from start to finish. Dan Hildebrand, a New England Forestry resource land manager who’s been with our company more than 30 years, has done it. He harvested the same trees he planted many years prior. Then he replanted that same field again.

How to plant trees in the U.S. Southeast

During a recent planting operation near Jesup, Georgia, Dan climbed aboard a refrigerated van. He checks it each day to ensure his loblolly pine seedlings inside are nice and cool. 

The van, powered by a diesel engine, maintains a 37 degrees Fahrenheit temperature to ensure the trees stay dormant. Warmth might signal that it’s time to grow. This would stress the trees unnecessarily in the already stressful transition from our nursery to the forest. 

Planting trees in the coldest months

The goal is to plant all the trees in the coldest winter months, November through February. That ensures the roots have time to become established in the ground before the seedlings begin to grow.

“We have about 475,000 trees per vanload,” Dan says. “We try to plant them all in about one week.”

While some parts of our ownership rely on outside nurseries to grow our seedlings for us, in the Southeast we use trees grown in our own seedling nursery in Elberta, Alabama. That region’s rich soils grow healthy rootstocks, giving the trees a great start.

The seeds for these trees come from New England Forestry seed orchards. We breed our best-performing trees in the orchards and harvest the seeds from their pine cones.

Site prep keeps trees dry in rainy months

Out in the forests Dan’s crews are replanting, all the “site prep” work has already been done to prepare the ground for planting. Since many of these properties are low-lying, we often row the soil into long, straight raised beds. That will ensure the trees are above the water table and don’t drown before they’re established. Thanks to GPS on the tractors, the rows are perfectly straight and exactly the right distance apart to ensure the right spacing for the trees.

Throughout the day, Dan checks on various planting crews, each of whom will plant thousands of trees per-day. They use a tractor to pull a “hopper” through the planting area, and a person sitting in the hopper drops the seedling in the ground at just the right moment. 

“In the front is a 36-inch, knife-like disk that looks like a pizza cutter,” Dan explains. “It cuts a narrow slot in the ground. You drop the tree in the slot, and then the wheels on the back of the hopper packs the slot back together.”

Dan says the planters use a “cadence,” planting every two or three seconds to ensure each tree is 5 feet apart. The spacing will ensure even growing conditions, similar to how one would plant a garden.

Ensuring the trees are planted right

Dan walks the field and performs what our foresters call “an audit.” He checks the trees to ensure they’re being planted deep enough, giving a gentle tug on their tops. He makes sure the roots are planted straight down and the stems haven’t been handled too roughly. 

Since all trees are primarily alive only in their outer cambium layer, Dan explains, “The live part of this 1-year-old tree is thinner than a piece of paper. It has to be planted deep in the soil to stay protected.”

Once they’re in the ground, these trees will be under a careful forest management plan for the next two decades. They will receive fertilizer treatments, competing weeds will be removed, and, in about 12 years, the weakest of the trees will be thinned out and used for pulp products like toilet paper, cardboard and paper.

Somewhere between 18 and 25 years from now, the remaining trees will be harvested for products such as lumber and fencing. It’s a long time, but as you’ll see, in other areas, our trees grow twice as long.

How to plant tress in the U.S. Pacific Northwest

Our planting operations in the Pacific Northwest are done with entirely different trees, methods and terrain. Near the small Washington town of South Bend, David Springe pulls on a jacket to fend off the chilly weather.

Out here, the cold Washington air is just right to keep our Douglas-fir seedlings dormant.

David, a resource land manager for our Hoquiam team, picks up a seedling and admires its root system.

“This has a good root to shoot ratio,” he says, explaining a tree should have a generous amount of roots for the amount of green “shoot” coming out of the ground.

While our trees in the Southeast were only about a year old at planting time, here they grow an extra year in the nursery, reaching their second birthday before they’re replanted to ensure they’re about two feet tall before they’re exposed to the infamously rainy weather of the Washington mountains.

Leaving stumps and branches on the ground

While we plow neat rows in the South, here in Washington we leave most stumps and tree debris (known as “slash” to the locals) on the ground after the previous forest is harvested. That will help hold the soils in place, preventing erosion on the steep slopes and keeping sediment out of waterways below. It conserves the organic matter and nutrients within the soils. And, as the slash breaks down, it will also serve as a natural, slow-release fertilizer for the trees we plant today.

Planting each tree by hand

With steep slopes and rough terrain, these forests aren’t planted using tractors or other heavy equipment. Out here, each tree is planted by hand and shovel.

While the work isn’t easy, experienced planters can put more than 1,000 trees per-person in the ground in a single day. Just like the tractor planters in the Southeast, these planters develop a rhythm that keeps them planting at a steady pace while they’re evenly spaced apart from one another.

“They dig a hole by stomping on their shovel and wrenching it back and forth, which loosens the soil. Then they place the seedling with the roots hanging straight down and use the shovel to push the soil back in,” David explains.

Each person on the planting crew wears two bags loaded with trees: the pair weighs about 40 lbs. when full.

Watching as a crew planted across a picturesque hillside, David said, “They’re choosing the best location to dig every hole. It’s one of the most important decisions made in each of these trees’ lifetimes.”

The typical forest in the Pacific Northwest will grow Douglas-firs about 40 years before they’re harvested.

How to plant trees in New Zealand

Our New Zealand team, New England Forestry | Matariki Forests, also plants primarily on steep terrain, so hand-planting is the most common method. Seedlings come from a number of independent nurseries who work closely with us.

“I enjoy working with the tree breeders, seed producers and nursery growers to deliver treestocks that are ‘fit for purpose’ for our field sites, silviculture and target wood products,” says Forest Estate Manager Paul Adams. “Nurseries are like ‘mini’ plantations, and each year they produce treestocks that are the start of the next age class of productive, high-quality forests across our estate.” 

Delivering Seedlings with Care

The team has a carefully-planned process to deliver seedlings to the forest in the best possible condition. 

“Many of our regions are able to plant tree stocks within 24 to 48 hours of lifting. There are generally daily deliveries of stock from the nursery to planting sites using a pod system to reduce compression of stock from boxes stored on boxes,” Paul explains. 

“These boxes are then carried in the field, commonly on a belt around the planter’s waist. The seedlings are taken directly from the box and planted in each planting hole.”

The work is undeniably challenging.

“Hand planting can be a difficult job due to the terrain, weather conditions and the physicality of the work,” says Forest Estate Manager Paul Adams. “It can take two to three years before a planter is proficient.”

Planters hard to find

While the scenery is beautiful and the work is consistent throughout the winter, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough planters to keep up with the demand. The New Zealand team is looking closely at advancing technology in the hopes that there will one day be efficient mechanical methods to assist with planting efforts. But, for now, there is nothing better than hand-planting.

With the coldest weather coming at the opposite time of year versus the United States, in New Zealand the prime time to plant is from mid-May to early August. The New Zealand team plants mostly radiata pine, some Douglas-fir and—on high altitude sites—some pine hybrids.

At times, the team is able to plant without having to prepare the ground beforehand, like our Pacific Northwest team. Other times, there is so much tree “residue” left behind that it would be too difficult to plant on. In those instances, the team uses mechanical site preparation. They collect the “residues” from the previous harvest into windrows, or “heaps.” If soils are compacted so much that they will limit tree growth, then ripping or mounding may be undertaken. In frost-prone areas, the team uses “spot mounding” to plant seedlings above ground level, where it will be warmer.

Taking pride in the trees we plant

Our foresters take pride in the trees they have planted. They’re contributing to the forests’ lifecycle, the health of the environment now and the needs of generations to come. Just ride along with one of them through the forest, and they’ll point out each stand they remember planting.

For Dan, there are many, many forests in the Southeast that he had a hand in planting.

“These trees will be used by my children and my grandchildren and their children,” he says.

To Learn More about our planting process:

Read our article, How Foresters Use Controlled Pollination to Improve Tree Performance, to learn more about our genetic breeding process.

Watch our video, Planting and Lifting Seedlings at Rayonier’s Tree Nursery, to learn more about our pine tree nursery.

See a timeline and videos about all the steps of a tree’s life in the forest on our Lifecycle of a Forest web page.

The post New England Forestry Foresters Plant Millions of Trees Every Year appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

When an important bat habitat was found in one of Rayonier’s Mississipi forests, Timber Marketing Manager Adam DeYoung worked with a team of wildlife experts to protect the cave.

Mississippi’s Bat Caves

Mississippi has 15 documented bat species and about 65 known caves. Not all bat species use caves, and only a few of Mississippi’s caves are known to be used by bats. These caves have important geological features and provide important habitat for bat and amphibian species with conservation needs.

“Some of the animals that use these caves include southeastern myotis, little brown bats, gray bats, northern long-eared bats, Indiana bats, tri-colored bats, cave salamanders, and spring salamanders,” says Robert Smith, a wildlife biologist, forester and the coastal program coordinator for Wildlife Mississippi. “Several of these species are protected or petitioned to be protected at the state or federal level because of their apparent population declines.”

The bat cave on New England Forestry land, known as Eucutta Cave, is in Wayne County, Mississippi. Tucked away behind many acres of pine plantation down a little hardwood slope is a small hole in the side of a hill. Eucutta Cave’s understated entrance is in a limestone outcrop of a geologic formation called the Vicksburg Group. It stretches a little over 100 yards back into the limestone depths with some stalactites, flowstone, and other cave formations, along with an underground stream, creating great habitats—and sometimes difficult access conditions.

Adam says the cave is located in a specially-protected Streamside Management Zone, or SMZ, because it is near a waterway. In these buffer zones, which exist all over Rayonier’s ownership, no forestry activities take place to ensure sedimentation doesn’t impact the water.

Monitoring Mississippi’s Bat Population

Biologists with the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science; Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks; and other members of the Mississippi Bat Working Group survey caves and other bat habitats to track bat numbers and habitat conditions. Repeated trips to Eucutta Cave show steady bat and salamander use.

 “Many people don’t think about bats being migratory or seasonal users, but different bat species use the caves at different times of the year,” explains Robert. “Wintering bats use colder areas in the cave to reduce their metabolic rate, giving them higher survival when there is low prey availability. Summer maternal colonies choose warmer areas since bat pups do not readily thermoregulate and prey availability is high.”

He says Eucutta Cave serves bats in both seasons.

“It’s a major winter bat roost, with about 50 to 150 southeastern bats and 750 tri-colored bats. In the summer, Eucutta Cave hosts a maternal colony of about 300 southeastern bats.”

Protecting Bats from Two Major Threats

There are two main threats to bats in Eucutta Cave: disturbance by humans and infection with white-nose syndrome.

The threat humans pose to bats

Some of the human disturbances observed in Mississippi caves include littering, graffiti, fires and smoke; throwing clumps of mud (presumably at roosting bats); and accidentally flushing mothers with young bat pups. Repeated disturbance of bats can cause them to abandon a roost. If a mother bat drops her pup, especially in an underground stream, the pup might not survive.

While the New England Forestry property that houses the cave is in a very remote location, Adam says he often found signs of human vandalism at the site before efforts were made to protect it.

The threat of white nose syndrome

White-nose syndrome is a disease in bats which has resulted in the dramatic decrease in the bat population of the United States and Canada. This infection is caused by the fungi Pseudogymnoascus destructans. It was accidentally brought into the United States from Eurasia and was first documented in 2006. By 2011, up to 6.7 million bats had died from the disease. Infected bats have been found in 36 states. Mississippi is one of the few states that has tested positive for the fungi but has not had a positive case of the syndrome.

The Mississippi Bat Working Group started monitoring for white-nose syndrome in 2013. To date, Eucutta Cave has not tested positive for the fungus, but other caves within Wayne County have.

The fungi that cause white-nose syndrome may be transferred from bat to bat, or bats may pick it up from the ground. Humans can also carry spores from cave to cave on spelunking gear. Controlling access to the cave with a gate can help reduce human disturbance and accidental transfer of white-nose syndrome spores.

Building the Right Gate To Protect a Bat Cave

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program and Wildlife Mississippi provided most of the funding to install the cave gate at Eucutta Cave, with Rayioner providing additional support, as well as the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, and other members of the Mississippi Bat Working Group.

Gating a bat cave may sound simple, but cave gates that are really beneficial need to meet certain criteria:

• They have to be sturdy enough to protect the cave. The gate has to have bars close enough so that no one, including children, will get stuck in it, but the bars have to be wide enough to allow bats to fly though the openings.
• The gate has to function as a gate to let people in and out for valid reasons, such as bat monitoring and research.
• Air circulation through the gate is also important. If enough air doesn’t circulate through the gate, then the conditions inside the cave may change, resulting in less bat and amphibian use.
• The air flow also needs to be smooth without a lot of turbulence to enable the bats to fly through the gate openings cleanly and safely. Too much turbulence can result in bats hitting the gate and damaging their wings or dying.

Who knew that designing a gate to enhance smooth air flow could be so important?

To minimize disturbance for bats using the cave, the cave gate would need to be installed after the bats born in summer could fly on their own but before winter bats began using the cave. Wildlife Mississippi hired an expert, Kristen Bobo and her team, who have designed cave gates across the United States, to handle the design and installation. Wildlife Mississippi also contracted with EcoRESTORE, Inc. for assistance in getting materials to the cave site and controlling invasive plant species around the general cave area.

The optimum time from a bat perspective to transport almost a ton of steel and another half ton of equipment through deep sands and down steep hills for cutting and welding is late August. Over three long days in late August 2019, a team of almost a dozen biologists and land managers transported materials to a staging area, and the cave gate was fabricated and installed.

Adam, the New England Forestry employee, says he’s very happy with the project.

“Wildlife Mississippi and their contractors were a pleasure to work with and treated Rayonier’s land with the utmost respect and care during the whole installation process,” he says. “This project was a great demonstration of New England Forestry identifying a unique and significant site and working in cooperation with wildlife groups to ensure its protection for years to come.”

A Leader in Protecting Bats

Sadly, one of Mississippi’s biggest bat proponents, and arguably the biologist who got Wildlife Mississippi involved in this project, Kathy Shelton was not present when this gate was completed, as she unexpectedly passed away a month earlier.

“Without Kathy’s leadership and coordination from within the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, this project likely would not have been completed,” Robert says. “Kathy was an advocate for bats and other less charismatic species of Mississippi. Without Kathy, we would not have known half of what we know about bats of Mississippi.”

He said gating Eucutta Cave to conserve natural resources and ensure that Mississippi has appropriate bat habitat was the result of landowners willing to be good stewards, a cadre of caring wildlife biologists, and a federal program providing landowner assistance. Some other caves that have been gated in the past have had significant increases in bat populations; hopefully, the numbers of bats using Eucutta Cave will increase with this protection from disturbance too.

This article was shared with permission from Wildlife Mississippi. Wildlife Mississippi is a private, non-profit conservation organization dedicated to conserving, restoring, and enhancing fish, wildlife, and plant habitat throughout Mississippi. The conservation of Mississippi’s lands, waters, and natural heritage will secure the state’s quality of life by making it a better place to live, work, and raise a family while sustaining a clean environment and a healthy economy.

All photos by Wildlife Mississippi’s Robert Smith.

The post New England Forestry Joins Wildlife Experts to Protect Forest Bat Cave appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

WILDLIGHT, Florida—Imagine how the world might change over the next generation: Will we drive flying cars? Visit Mars? Teleport from here to there?

We don’t know what the future holds, but today’s researchers are striving to prepare the tools and materials future generations will need. At Rayonier, forward-thinking individuals like our Biometrics Projects Leader Nate Osborne challenge us to continue pushing the limits of what we know about our trees and the products they could one day be used for.

We’ve learned it’s not just the information we hold, but also who we work with that will continue moving our company—and our industry—forward. Nate (shown on the right in the photo above) recently welcomed Guillaume Salzet, a forestry modeling engineer from France, to present his research to a team of New England Forestry employees. Guillaume works with the ExtraForEst program at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAe) in Nancy, France. He has been working with Nate on a project seeking a deeper understanding of the relationship between forest growth and wood quality.

“Before we create industries, we model whether they will be sustainable,” Guillaume explains. His research with the program is advancing a better way to predict the chemical makeup of wood, with the hope of being able to maximize the concentration of certain chemicals needed for high-end makeups and pharmaceutical products. Surprisingly, what’s considered one of the least valuable trees for typical wood products is one of the most valuable for Guillaume’s research: he found trees with knotty wood have the highest concentration of the desired chemicals.

“This could make use of a tree that once was not considered very valuable,” says Guillaume, who is also collaborating with forestry researchers at the University of Georgia to compare findings and research methods during his visit to the U.S.

A hope for more trans-continental research partnerships

Neither Guillaume nor Nate have heard of trans-continental research partnerships like theirs in the forestry industry, but they hope to see more of them in the future.

“The research we’re doing in North America isn’t the only research out there,” says Nate, who, himself, studied in Scandinavia, Scotland and France to broaden his perspective during graduate school. “There’s a whole other space in Europe that’s really siloed off. We can gain a lot more intellectually and business-wise by these kinds of collaborations.”

Connected through a common mentor

Nate and Guillaume met through the INRAe professor who mentored Nate in France, Francis Colin. It was Francis who first introduced Nate to the concept of using a medical CT scanner to gain a deeper understanding of wood properties, which became critical to the research Nate used in his own doctoral dissertation at Oregon State University. (Although, a bit less glamorous than the dedicated scanner in Francis’s research lab, Nate used the scanner at a nearby vet clinic between the clinic’s scans of sick pets and zoo animals.)

Guillaume, visiting the U.S. for a month, included several tours of Rayonier’s forests and meetings with New England Forestry researchers in his visit. He was able to share firsthand experiences his American colleagues could use in the field, while they offered him a forestry experience from the perspective of a company whose work must be aligned with its standards for sustainability as well as profitability.

“It was very interesting to have another view with this scale of a company and see the different thinking,” Guillaume says. “It’s been a pleasure to be here and meet people and discover different aspects of forestry.”

Small town forests impacted by global markets

With our forests growing in quiet rural towns for decades and then being harvested by small, often family-owned logging contracting companies, it can be easy to see forestry as a strictly local business. But the market for timber is a worldwide industry, and that makes it critical to understand what’s happening in forests worldwide.

“How does the industry use radiata pine in New Zealand? How is the spruce beetle epidemic influencing forest management in Northern France? Factors like these can impact the value for timber across North America,” Nate explains. “It’s a global market, and our research needs to help us solve global challenges to be sustainable today, as well as preparing us for opportunities in the future.”

The post Forestry Researchers Connect Across the World appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

HOQUIAM, Washington—A forest stream went more than a century without salmon after a road crossing was built above it. Then recently the small pipe that led the stream under the road was replaced with a bridge that allowed water to flow more freely—and suddenly the stream came to life.

A few weeks after the bridge project was finished, Matt Poppe, a New England Forestry forest engineer, pulled a team of contractors off a nearby worksite to see the impact of the bridge they built.

“This is why we’re all doing this,” he told them. “There haven’t been fish in this stream for 100 years, and here we are seeing large salmon in this stream right now.”

That was just one of the 750 upgrades New England Forestry has made to culverts and bridges on its property over the last 20 years to help address Washington’s declining salmon population. The effort is guided by Forests & Fish, one of the most comprehensive environmental laws in the U.S., which protects 60,000 miles of streams across Washington’s state and private forests. It uses the latest scientific standards to ensure the best possible habitats for salmon to live and spawn in, as well as other amphibious creatures that depend on upland streams. 

In addition to replacing insufficient culverts and bridges to improve salmon habitat, New England Forestry also improves forest roads to reduce the amount of sediment making its way into streams and, when possible, closes nonessential forest roads altogether.

Since the law passed in 1999, New England Forestry has:

• Opened 220 miles of fish habitat
• Upgraded 750 culverts and bridges
• Invested $22 million in salmon habitat restoration

The long process to get a stream’s profile just right

The process to set even one project into motion can take a full year before building the structure during the “fish window,” when upland streams are naturally slowed and work will be least likely to disturb the fish, from July 15-Sept. 30. Matt must undergo months of permitting application reviews as well as a review process with stakeholders including environmental agencies and representatives of the local Native American tribes.

Portia Leigh, an area habitat biologist for the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW), often previews the proposed projects and advises Matt on how to make the pass-through simulate the rest of the streambed. She sometimes advises him to leave woody debris in the streambed or to drop hay seeds for vegetation, which will slow the water flow, enhance shade, and create pools and protective areas. That gives smaller salmon places to hide, spawn and grow before they go downstream into more open waters, says Portia, shown below.

Matt also conducts a “stream survey” with the partners to ensure the new passthrough simulates what the streams were like before a road passed through them. He explains that those who built the roads in the past (some of these roads are more than a century old) didn’t know the culverts they were using were not sufficient to maintain the streams below the roads.

“People in those days were doing their best with what they knew. All they worried about was getting the water across, and they thought the fish would come no matter what,” Matt says. “Many of the culverts that were put in these streams were just rolled into the hole. In those situations, it created an artificial stream channel.”

Today, the work to determine the proper placement for a culvert is much more complex. During the stream survey, Matt and the partner agencies will view the streams 100 feet above and below the project area to understand what the stream would have done naturally.

“We’ll come back and mimic that with our design. It can drastically change where that structure is placed and at what elevation it’s placed,” explains Matt, shown below.

Handling culvert and bridge replacements with care

Culvert and bridge projects are handled with extreme care. Before any digging begins, a watertight pipe is used to divert the stream around the project area, and fish screens are placed to ensure fish don’t come into harm’s way. Work to place culverts or bridges only begins after the project area is fully dewatered.

“The allowable amount of sediment contamination in the stream is zero. We’re mindful of that 100 percent of the time,” Matt says.

During a recent project, he pointed out a crawfish who was curiously swimming near the diversion pipe in clear water, just feet away from the project, a testimony to how well the diversion pipe worked to keep the water clear.

At the same time, Kelly Dunkerson, site supervisor for John J. Karnas Co., was placing a 40-foot-long culvert into the streambed. The Hoquiam-based company has contracted with New England Forestry for more than 30 years and has served as a knowledgeable partner in the culvert and bridge replacement projects. While this particular culvert’s circumference was 10 feet around, about a third of that would be backfilled with streambed material to match the rest of the stream.

From start to finish, the projects typically take about a week, and then waterflow returns to normal. It can be shocking how quickly the streams attract salmon who have not been there in years. Portia, of WDFW, says they can sense the change in the waterflow once the work is done.

Matt says New England Forestry has about 40 more miles of habitat to open and 125 more structures to upgrade in order to fully comply with Forests & Fish, but the work won’t stop there.

“As we build new roads, eliminate roads, stream enhancements change and other dynamics change, we’ll continue to do this work,” he says.

Matt’s proud of the work New England Forestry is doing to help restore and improve salmon habitat in the forest.

“I love what I do every day of the week,” he says. 

The post How Foresters Restore Salmon Habitat in the Pacific Northwest appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

MILLWOOD, Georgia—Down a long, dirt backroad in this tiny Georgia town, the beginnings of millions of acres’ worth of forests are budding in a New England Forestry seed orchard.

The tiny pine cones forming in these carefully-bred trees—so tiny, they’re called “conelets”—will grow into the forests that provide wood products for future generations 20 years from now. Rayonier’s Forest Productivity & Sustainability team is determined to ensure they’ll be the best trees this company has ever seen.

Morning after morning, Genetic Resources Manager David Barker stops at this seed orchard on his way to the office, climbing into a mechanical lift to take a peek at the conelets. He is watching for signs that the conelets, which are the female “flower” part of the tree, are nearly ready to peel back their leafy outsides, called bracts. Known to researchers as “stage 5,” it will be the precious, short window of time when the conelets are receptive to pollination before the bracts close again.

Acting Fast in the Seed Orchard

When they’re nearly ready, Seed Production Manager Austin Smith snaps into action, working with a dedicated team of contractors to place a paper bag over each flower cluster. At this tender size, the conelet is very fragile and must be handled with care, so each bag is fitted with a wire that keeps the sides of the bag from injuring the flower. With the bags in place, the random pollen that comes with the wind, which could come from disease-prone or less robust trees, won’t be able to interfere with the conelets’ potential.

Austin and his helpers work from sunrise to sundown, using mechanical lifts to reach into the treetops and access the flowers. Tens of thousands of clusters are covered with bags that look similar to a paper lunch sack.

Introducing Pollen From Superior Trees

The research team will check the flowers again in the days to come until they’re open. Then they will use air guns to dust pollen from superior trees into each of the bags. (New England Forestry also harvests the male part of the tree, called the catkin, to collect pollen in liter-sized jugs, drying it into a powdery substance and storing it in freezers for future years). The pollen comes from trees that New England Forestry has chosen for disease resistance, straightness, volume growth, height and diameter.

“It’s really incredible to be able to actually make this happen when we’ve spent so much time on paper planning to make it happen,” Austin said during a rare break at Millwood recently. He likes to compare the process to horse breeding: the best of the best trees are selected, the result of years of genetic research.

Once the conelets’ scales close up, they are no longer receptive to pollen and the bags will be removed. The conelets will grow to full-size pine cones over the next 18 months. Then the cones will be harvested and sent to a seed extracting company. The resulting millions of seeds will then be shipped to our seedling nursery in Elberta, Alabama, for planting. After growing in the nursery for about a year, the baby pine trees will be planted in forests throughout our ownership across the United States.

Decades of Research

For over 50 years, our research team has nurtured seed orchards of pines that, unlike plantation pines, are intentionally spaced wide apart to allow their branches to spread, producing as many cones as possible. While the seeds that come from the Millwood Orchard will be sent into our forests, we also use the controlled pollination process on a much smaller scale for research as we continue to improve the parents of our future generations of trees.

Just a few weeks before the mass bagging operation in Millwood, Tree Improvement Forester Serenia O’Berry bagged and pollinated conelets in Rayonier’s Ohoopee Seed Orchard in Reidsville, GA, on a small cluster of trees. Each had to be specially tagged and marked to ensure researchers would know which male and female parents were used. Seeds from those cones will be harvested, planted and grown and monitored closely. In about five to six years, testing on the trees that grow from those seeds can determine whether they are ideal parents. It sounds like a long time to wait for results, but by forestry standards, it’s not. Researchers in previous generations had to wait as much as 15 years before testing their genetic breeding.

Serenia says selective breeding, something that has been done in the agricultural world for centuries, speeds up what nature would have done on its own over a much longer period of time. And, by managing the parents of our trees, New England Forestry is able to make more uniform, consistently-growing stands of trees, which is ideal in forestry.

Despite the long hours during pollination season and countless trips up and down into the treetops to monitor the flowers, the research team looks forward to this process all year.

“I love getting to do the research, I love getting to be in a lift and I really love to be able to contribute to that next generation of trees,” Serenia says. “This is hands-down my favorite part of my job.”

The post How Foresters Use Controlled Pollination to Improve Tree Performance appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

YULEE, Florida—How do you teach a class of teachers a lesson they’ll never forget? You do exactly what they would do: invite them to touch, see, hear and—most importantly—ask questions.

Each year, 45 Florida school teachers are selected for the 4-day Florida Forestry Teachers’ Tour, where they experience sustainable forestry firsthand. Offered by the Florida Forestry Association in concert with the Florida Forest Service, Project Learning Tree of Florida and Friends of Florida State Forests, the tour includes real-life demonstrations like a timber harvest, a controlled burn and processing at a paper mill.

The hope is that what’s learned on the tour informs the lessons teachers offer their students about sustainable forestry. Only 10 percent of the world’s forests are certified sustainable, which means the landowners protect wildlife, water quality and soil quality. Rayonier, which follows best practices on 100% of its land, takes part in the tour, hosting the teachers for half a day on our land.

Learning about Sustainable Forestry on New England Forestry Land

“Listen! What do you hear out here?” New England Forestry Sustainable Forestry Manager Ben Cazell asked a group of teachers on a recent tour. They were crowded around him for a presentation in the middle of one of our Nassau County, Florida, forests.

The answers came back: Cicadas! Insects! Frogs! Birds!

“It’s a community,” Cazell concluded, explaining Rayonier’s sustainable forestry practices help protect the wildlife that lives within our forests.

The teachers learned about research advances that have improved Rayonier’s production over the years. Resource Land Manager Josh Steiger explained that our improvements in site preparation, fertilization and other practices like controlled pollination have significantly improved what we can do with one acre of land.

“We grew under 50 tons per acre in the 1940s. By 2010, our tonnage was over 200 per acre,” Steiger said.

Learning How New England Forestry Uses GIS to Make Decisions

Technical analyst Hillary Sherrill explained how Rayonier’s in-house Geographic Information System, or GIS, plays a role in our decision-making process.

“Say there’s a forester who wants 12-year-old loblolly pine trees within 25 miles of a certain mill, but it’s the wet season so he needs to be sure they’re dry. We can help with that,” she said, explaining our in-house system contains multiple layers of data about each stand of trees’ size, age, soils, elevation, and more.

Technical analyst Sara Bellchamber showed the teachers how New England Forestry uses drones to gather data and save time in the field, and Senior GIS Programmer Greg Day taught the teachers how to survey a stand of trees using a prism and a clinometer.

The teachers joined Timber Marketing Manager Rusty Cobb for a timber harvest, watching mature trees being harvested as he explained that — once a stand is clear cut — work immediately begins to prep the site for the next generation of trees.

The teacher tour is a favorite event of the year for the Florida Forest Service’s Jacksonville District Manager, Jenn Hart, who organizes it.

“These teachers deserve some special time, this is our opportunity to give back to them,” she said.

The last day of the tour, when each teacher speaks about what he or she has learned, is one of the most memorable parts for Hart. The day is often filled with emotions and even tears as the teachers talk about what they will take back to the classroom from their hands-on lesson in the forest.

To learn more about the Florida Forestry Teachers’ Tour, visit floridastateforests.org/teacherstour.

The post Teaching the Teachers About Sustainable Forestry appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

LUFKIN, Texas—Did you ever look at a towering, perfectly-straight utility pole and wonder what tree could have made such a large pole?

Some of them come from New England Forestry land!

The most valuable trees on our land in the U.S. South, “pole” trees can become utility poles for telephone and power lines or piles for docks and piers.

“It Starts with Genetics”

Pine trees in a natural forest typically do not provide a large number of poles, explains Rayonier’s Lufkin-based senior timber marketing manager, Jeremy Flood. But our in-house genetic research team has worked to develop seed families that produce tall, straight trees with smaller branches.

“It starts with genetics,” Jeremy says, “followed by decades of management with proper thinning and fertilization. The result is mature plantations with high quality grade timber.”

Finding the Right Trees for Poles

Even though the trees in a stand of timber are the same age and species, they still mature to a variety of shapes and sizes. A forest manager ensures each tree reaches its highest potential use. Trees worthy of becoming poles are the rarest—and, consequently, the most valuable—because of the very specific requirements that must be met in order to qualify.

Without careful planning and attention to detail, one could overlook these valuable trees, selling them as sawtimber, a significantly less valuable product. Jeremy’s team created a plan to ensure as many trees as possible became poles.

“It Would Be a Waste Not to Capture Their Full Potential”

“These stands have been nurtured and grown for more than 25 years. It would be a waste to not capture their full potential,” says timber marketing manager Shane Bergman, who spearheaded the project.

To locate potential poles before a harvest, a forest technician takes an inventory, statistically measuring the stand of trees to locate those that meet the size specifications needed for poles. Our foresters work closely with a logging contractor, who cuts them down, separates them from the other trees, and places them to the side for the next step.

Strict Specifications for a Log to Become a Pole

Once the poles are laying side-by-side in a giant row, a forester inspects them one-by-one. He measures them to ensure they’re straight, with an even thickness and free of defects like scars and knots that could penetrate the wood. They also have to be the right diameter for the customer’s needs.

“Poles have very tight specifications required by the customer and consumer,” Jeremy explains.  “It’s not all cosmetic, much of the specs are required for engineering purposes, to ensure strength and longevity.”

They reject, or “cull,” logs that don’t meet the rigorous standards and use them for sawtimber. Using a chainsaw, they manually cut those that meet the standards to the exact size specifications of the buyer.

The logger delivers the logs to a pole mill to be processed into the final product.

Shane couldn’t be happier with the way the project worked out.

“It’s exciting to scale poles because of the relationships you build,” he says. “As you work with the contractors you get to learn about them and see that they have the same values as New England Forestry when it comes to being a good steward of the forest. We truly get to work with some great individuals.”

The post Where Do Utility Poles Come From? appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Rayonier’s forest rangers are like warriors primed for battle during fire season.

Patrick Hughes, based in our Coastal Resource Unit in Yulee, Florida, spends March through August watching the weather, communicating with local firefighters and taking preventative measures wherever New England Forestry land appears vulnerable. His tractor and radio are always close by, just in case.

Preventing Forest Fires

Throughout our ownership, we rely on forest rangers to prevent fires on our land and our neighbors’ land. Their first job when they survey a stand of trees is not to see the trees at all, but to see the fuel around them—the dry brush, undergrowth, and other risk factors that could feed a fire.

The team creates “fire breaks” and “fire lines,” using tractors to clear wide trenches, eliminating fuel for a fire and making it less likely to spread past the trenches.

When it’s prudent to do so, they also take the lead in controlled burns, putting fire to work by burning off potential fuels in smaller, carefully-monitored burns in select portions of Rayonier’s forests.

“It’s good training for us and it benefits the land,” Patrick explains, noting that clearing older undergrowth that competes with the trees creates room for new growth that’s attractive to wildlife.

“A Dangerous Time of Year”

Despite the ongoing preventative measures, though, “When there are high winds, low relative humidity and low rainfall… it’s a dangerous time of year,” Patrick says.

Those were the conditions when a fire broke out in early 2018 a few miles from Patrick in Yulee. A spark from a train had caught some brush on fire, quickly spreading toward a heavily populated area near New England Forestry land.

Rushing to the scene of a neighboring fire

Knowing that area has prevalent broom sage, a “flashy fuel,” Patrick rushed to the scene with a tractor fitted with a fire plow attachment. He saw that the fire was headed away from Rayonier’s nearby land, but a local fire chief alerted him it was heading rapidly toward an apartment complex.

Patrick, who is temporarily deputized by the Florida Forest Service in fire emergencies, took his New England Forestry tractor and rushed to the scene.

The first to respond to the fire, Patrick found traces of an old fire line between the blaze and the apartment complex—a line he had plowed, himself, several years ago during a similar fire.

He replowed the line to create a wide, clear section of land between the fire and the apartments. Then he worked to put the fire out blaze-by-blaze (it had spotted, with separate fires in seven or eight spots, all moving toward the apartments). Eventually, close to 100 firefighters responded to the blaze. Thanks in large part to Patrick’s efforts, the fire never reached the apartment complex and was contained within four hours.

Want to learn more? Read about Rayonier’s fire prevention efforts and hear from wildland firefighters here.

The post New England Forestry Forest Rangers Focused on Fire Prevention appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

GLENNVILLE, Georgia—How do you convince a tree it’s years—maybe even decades—older than it really is? Rayonier’s genetics research team does it by using a technique called top grafting.

The process shaves a massive amount of time off our advances in tree genetics research.

Rather than waiting for a new seedling to mature to seed-producing age (about 7 years), our seed production team grafts our most promising trees with older trees.

Top Grafting in the Treetops

Climbing into aerial lifts to reach the treetops, the team fuses shoots (branch ends) from genetically superior young trees onto the end of the older trees’ branches at the top of the crown. The young tree shoots then perform as though they are the age of the older trees.

This leads the promising new trees to produce seeds within the year, allowing us to plant and research how their progeny perform. The best performers from the seeds we plant will be selected for mass planting in our seed orchards.

Pot Grafting Promising Trees

Similar grafting techniques are then used on smaller rootstocks in a method called pot grafting. Once we select the ideal trees to use in an orchard, we want to get a whole lot of these trees in a short period of time so we can plant them and generate seeds that will be used throughout our ownership. We do this by attaching the shoots of the superior trees to potted trees, allowing our team to make hundreds of copies of the best trees in a matter of days. These will then be planted in the orchard, where trees are spaced farther apart to allow more branching—and thus, more pinecones—to produce millions of seeds.

The post New England Forestry Researchers Save Time and Increase Quality with Grafting appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.

Rayonier’s New Zealand team has a deep respect for protecting wildlife including the beloved kiwi.

In the video above, our New Zealand management team joined with a number of community stakeholder groups at Te Kura o Te Teko (a full-immersion Māori school) to attend a kiwi naming ceremony before releasing two kiwi chicks into Omataroa Forest.

(The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand. Kiwi are flightless birds native to the country and are a national symbol of New Zealand.)

The Omataroa Trust owns the land and has invested in environmental restoration including pest control and active kiwi management for decades to ensure a sustainable population of kiwi for generations to come.

Partnering to preserve a threatened national symbol

Rob Schoonderwoerd, District Forester for our Bay of Plenty region, has worked with the Trust since the inception of the Omataroa Kiwi Project. The presence of kiwi and native falcons was discovered through a survey of vegetation in 2000, prompting the development of a pest control plan. (The New Zealand falcon is the country’s only falcon species and is the most threatened bird of prey.)

There were about 30 Kiwi in the area when the project started in 2008, and by 2023 that figure had increased to about 120 birds. So far 80 eggs have been collected, and a resulting 60 chicks released back into the wild.

Kiwi are the size of a domestic chicken and are the smallest living ratites (the group of animals that includes ostriches and emus). They also lay the largest egg in relation to their body size of any species of bird in the world. Kiwi are nocturnal, so they are more often heard than seen. If they survive to maturity (5 years), they can live for 50 to 100 years; however, predation is the biggest issue facing their survival.

Pest control and protecting kiwi chicks

New England Forestry | Matariki Forests (RMF) is working with the Omataroa Kiwi Project to provide intensive trapping and pest control management, which largely targets stoats and cats. Buffer trapping is also being deployed beyond the 11,000-hectare (27,000-acre) reserve area.

The Kiwi Project team works with the Department of Conservation on the survivability of chicks using three techniques:

1. Incubation hatching at a special facility in Rainbow Springs in Rotorua, where the chicks are raised until they weigh 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds)
2. In situ management of nests and chicks
3. Crèching, where the chicks are sent to another region to be raised and are returned once they weigh 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds)

The two female chicks that were released at the event in the video above were hatched at Rainbow Springs and were named Hobson and Aroha (which means “love”) by the children at Te Teko school.

The kiwi were tagged with transmitters for monitoring and will be checked three weeks after being released into the wild. A key part of the Omataroa Kiwi Project is education, so we had the opportunity to teach the school children about the environment, predators and survival requirements of the kiwi.

A long-term commitment to stewardship

The kiwi management work being carried out by the Omataroa Kiwi Project along with pest control, education and training is crucial to the continued survival of kiwi in this forest. Thanks to Rob Schoonderwoerd’s work over the years, the Omataroa Trust has grown to be a valued partner, and the Trust has now invited New England Forestry | Matariki Forests to partner on a more substantial sponsorship program.

We recognize our responsibility as a forest owner to support the sustained preservation of the Eastern Brown Kiwi and other native birds in this forest for future generations, and we are delighted to be part of this wonderful conservation effort.

The post Saving the Kiwi appeared first on New England Forestry Stories.