“(Trees) Best Ecosystem for Our Future”

From Sarah Deumling at the Women Owning Woodlands part of the Hagenstein Lecture recently completed in Portland, Oregon.  What the speakers brought was passion and as much as they wanted to deny it, a unique perspective on forest ownership.  Thinking generational seemed to come naturally, watching a tree start from a seedling is like children, Sarah again “be patient, trees grow faster than you think”.  She added that they do not sell pulp (really small tree segments that paper is made from) and instead leave it in the forest to act as fertilizer to enrich the soil.

All of the speakers knew that the values of clean water, wildlife habitat and healthy air can be created in a forest, making them valuable ecosystems for our future.  What they wanted was a way to ascribe a value to these forest benefits and not just to the logs removed.  Currently the only substantial way a forest generates value is from log sales, and value is important to maintain forest ownership.  What I heard was great love for the trees and forest as a whole and that hard love is needed sometimes to keep the whole forest, growing and healthy.