[00:00:29] Zach Altman: Welcome back to the On Land Podcast, the show about the people shaping the future of the American West. Today, Western Landowners Alliance CEO, Lesli Allison, sits down with Dave Tenney, the founding president and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners. Dave and Lesli dig into the recent federal directives on timber production, wildfire risk, the role of private forests in wildlife conservation, and why sustainable forestry is becoming such a critical piece of the carbon economy.  

This episode really pulled back the curtain for me on the modern timber industry, how it’s evolved, and how private forest owners are stepping up to tackle some of the biggest conservation challenges of our time. 

Whether you’re a landowner, land manager or simply care about the future of the West, there’s a lot to take away from this conversation. This is On Land. I’m Zach Altman. Here’s Dave Tenney and Lesli Allison.  

Introduction to Dave Tenny 

[00:01:30] Lesli Allison: Dave, I am so excited to welcome you to this show today. Thank you for joining us for this podcast. We have a lot to talk about.  

[00:01:39] David Tenny: Yes, we do. And Lesli, I’m delighted to be with you. I’ve enjoyed our friendship and our experiences for many years. I’m happy to be with you and all of your listeners.  

[00:01:48] Lesli Allison: Great. Well, for our listeners today, let me just briefly introduce our guest. Dave Tenney is the founding president and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners, which short we call NAFO.  

Under his leadership, NAFO has grown from 14 initial members in 2008 to 49 member companies that own and manage more than 43 million acres of private working forests and 34 state and national associations that represent tens of millions of additional acres. Dave’s passion for building trust and pursuing solutions-based advocacy has helped NAFO become a leading national advocate for the economic, environmental, and social benefits of America’s sustainably managed private forests. 

Dave previously served as the Vice President for forestry and wood products for the American Forest and Paper Association and as Deputy Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he had responsibility for the US Forest Service. He got his start in the House, the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served as counsel and Natural Resources Policy advisor for the House Committee on Agriculture and, as counsel, for U.S. Representative, Wally Herger of California. 

A native of Boise, Idaho, he earned his bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and a law degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.  

So, Dave, with all that, we have so much to cover and for our listeners, we’re gonna dive in today to talking about some federal directives influencing forestry right now: wildfire markets and market access, NAFO’s, pioneering work on wildlife conservation and efforts underway in modern forestry to better align economic and environmental concerns. But let’s take a moment, step back, and just talk about timber production, Dave, from the timber industry from a 50,000-foot level, and I’m wondering if you might just paint a picture for our listeners of the U.S. timber industry. 

When people talk about an industry of any kind, it’s often in a generalized sort of way. So, what does the timber industry actually mean. And is it large scale timber, commercial timber production companies? Does it include small family forests? What percentage is on public versus private lands and where is it taking place? 

[00:04:11] David Tenny: There’s a lot to cover there, Lesli, and it’s good to take a big step back to get a sense of the whole picture. 

Current Timber Industry 

In the United States, we have about 760 million acres of forests, that’s about a third of our land base in the U.S. is forested. That’s a lot of trees. When you think about those forests, they are not all the same in terms of their purpose and their function or their ownership. About 58%, close to 60% of all those forests are owned by private entities, individuals, families, companies, so forth, and the balance are our public lands. They’re owned by or managed by the federal government or state or municipalities or other types of government.  

So, we think about forests generally in terms of private forests and public forests, but NAFO represents a particular part of that private forest sector. We represent the forests that are being managed for timber production. Think of timber production for wood and fiber. And those forests combined represent about 47% of all forests in the United States. So, a little less than half of all those forests are the forests that are being managed by private owners to produce wood and fiber for our country. So, that gives you a sense of scale for a sector. 

Now, NAFO member companies as you or NAFO members, as you pointed out, are still a smaller subsection of that private working forest ownership. And we do represent large and small companies, family owned, investor owned, owned by public shareholders, and everything in between. It’s a very diverse and very interesting and quite sophisticated sector. 

It’s not your grandfather’s timber industry, you might say. And so, a lot of people who own retirement portfolios may not realize it, but they probably own timber in some way, shape, or form, and a lot of public pensions, own timber holdings. So, we have a very, very interesting mix when we talk about the timber industry in the U.S. today. 

[00:06:37] Lesli Allison: With that super helpful context, let’s start first with the thing that so many people are talking about right now, which are the recent federal directives on domestic timber production.  

Executive Orders on Timber  

So, on March 1st, President Trump issued two executive orders. One was called the Immediate Expansion of Timber Production, and that executive order seeks to increase domestic timber production to meet the country’s natural resource needs and reduce dependencies on other countries. It streamlines permitting, creates a committee to report on Endangered Species Act obstacles, and directs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consult promptly, and to take actions concerning the applicability of ESA emergencies applications.  

The second executive order, also on March 1^st, was titled, Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Timber and Lumber. And this one talks about that the United States softwood lumber industry has the practical production capacity to supply 95% of U.S. softwood consumption and yet remains a net importer of lumber. And so, it directs the Secretary of Commerce to conduct an investigation on the current state of production and demand, the role of foreign supply chains and the feasibility of increasing domestic production, and then to make recommendations based on those findings. And then, finally, on April 4th, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, issued a secretarial memorandum to establish an emergency situation declaration on over 112 million acres of national forest land. 

The memo highlights the abundance of timber and the high risk of wildfire. It directs the U.S. Forest Service to increase timber outputs, simplify permitting, remove NEPA processes, reduce contracting burdens, and to ensure the U.S. Forest Service delivers a reliable and consistent supply of timber. So, the first question really is how can you help explain these federal orders and also how they might affect private forest Landowners? 

Federal Orders and Impact on Forest Landowners 

[00:08:40] David Tenny: Yeah, I’ll do my best. First of all, let me make one point that’s really important. As a threshold matter, United States has some of the most productive Timberlands in the world, period. And those Timberlands provide most of our domestically used wooden fiber. We don’t rely on other countries to provide our wood supply. 

On the margins, we do import some products, logs, and timber. Most of that is on the borders, but we have a lot of commerce going back and forth, so that’s an important thing to consider. But if you take a step back and look at timber production in the United States, here’s a statistic that probably not a lot of people know, 90% of all the timber harvested in the United States is coming from these private working forests. So, we are 47% of the total forest in the U.S. but we are providing 90% to the timber harvest.  

The forest service, on the other hand, provides about 3% of the timber harvest in the United States. So, by comparison, the private working force are providing nearly all of the timber that supports our mills. That’s important context, because if you’re thinking about how to increase domestic capacity and where the greatest opportunities are for increasing domestic capacity, it’s gonna be on the private forest lands. The federal forest lands may have the capacity to boost that 3%, maybe all the way up to 4%, but probably not much more. 

And so, the biggest challenge that we’re dealing with the federal lands has much less to do with timber capacity and much more to do with resource conditions. So, think of the threats of wildfire, of insect and disease, and other things that are threatening the health and the resilience of those forests. That’s the bigger issue. It’s difficult to imagine a situation where we’re going to build a lot more mills that are proximate enough to federal lands to turn them into timber producing regions of the country again, but there is much that needs to be done to address some of the risks that occur on those lands. 

[00:10:57] Lesli Allison: So, for example, in these orders is one of your areas of interest the wildfire? Imagine that the wildfire is an area of intersecting interest between the public and the private.  

[00:11:10] David Tenny: Absolutely. NAFO companies in the Western United States have tens of thousands of acres of common boundary with federal lands and we’re neighbors. And so, we have to behave like neighbors. And when there’s a risk on one side of the boundary, there’s a risk on the other side of the boundary. And for us, it’s about addressing that risk and behaving as good neighbors. So, when we look at these executive orders, the first thing we see is an opportunity for partnership to address the wildfire risk across landscapes and across boundaries, and especially across those shared borders. 

The second thing we see is that as we’re doing that, we recognize that the President, the Administration, the Secretary of Agriculture, wants to increase our domestic capacity. And I’ll talk about that first, and then we’ll talk about wildfire second. And I’m gonna tell you a story about two guides that were, that decided they wanted to get into the watermelon business. 

So, they grew a bunch of watermelons, and they got a truck, and they put the watermelons in the truck and put a sign on it along the side of the road that said Watermelon’s for sale. Well, they weren’t getting any customers, so they concluded, well, the, the thing we need to do is to grow more watermelons. 

Right. You see the problem? Yeah. We have an abundance of timber in the United States and the imbalance we have right now is that we have more timber than we have markets to use that timber. So, the issue that we need to address is not how to increase the timber supply, it’s how to increase the market demand. 

The most important market demand for timber in the United States is housing. So, we want to address the capacity or our ability to grow more and harvest more timber and use it in more products. The very best, and first thing we should do is address housing. Affordable housing is really important. It’s, it’s expensive to buy and own a home these days, and so whatever policies we can advance to help with that, to advance housing, the more we are going to benefit our forests and our forest resource capacity. That’s the first part.  

The second part is that there’s a lot of stuff that comes from a forest that doesn’t go into housing, and we need markets for that as well. Think of all the things that you can do with that underutilized wood that would be helpful, whether it’s producing energy or fuels or bioproducts, like biochar or bioplastics. Anything that advances the use of that material is also going to advance the resilience and the capacity to grow and harvest and use trees.  

[00:13:57] Lesli Allison: Great, thank you. I think that’s really helpful for people to be able to, to connect those dots, the markets, and then this affordable housing issue, which is really a crisis, you know, all over the west. 

Publicly Managed Forests vs Privately Managed Forests 

I don’t know how many people really understand the difference between publicly managed forests and then private commercial timberlands. The management on the private land is considerably more intensive than on the public lands because these are, in fact, farms, right? They’re in business to produce a specific set of products. And yet, these lands are also delivering many environmental values from sequestering carbon to providing wildlife habitat. In fact, NAFO and your members have been pioneering some new approaches to wildlife conservation that are really exciting. And so, I wanna ask you to tell us a story about your, how your Wildlife Conservation Initiative came about, but just sort, of again, connecting the dots here. 

We’ve got a wildlife component; we’ve got a carbon component. The way these lands are managed really serves multiple purposes and helping people understand the differences in how they’re managed is really helpful.  

[00:14:58] David Tenny: Well, let’s take a step back and talk about the differences in management, and then let’s talk about wildfire and then wildlife. And then, those will help us talk about carbon too, because they’re all connected. You mentioned that private working forests are like farms. They’re like farms in that they are privately owned and that’s probably the only similarity. And most farms are growing an annual crop. A private working forest is growing a forest. 

So, we don’t look at things in terms of annual growing seasons. We look at things in terms of rotations of forests. So how long does it take to grow a forest and at what point does that forest become mature enough for harvest? And then, how do you approach the replanting regrowth after that? So, we’re talking about time horizons of anywhere between 25 and 75 or 80 years. That is a long investment horizon, and in that horizon, a lot of things happen, and a lot of those things have a great deal of impact on the environment.  

Think of all the things that you associate with trees: water, wildlife. air quality, recreation. All of those things are happening in these forests as they are growing during that rotation period. And so, for us, we have a responsibility in our stewardship to manage these forests sustainably, so that they provide all these benefits. We have little saying in NAFO and that is that healthy markets, so that is the, the markets for housing and for other types of wood products that we all use every day. 

Healthy markets provide clean air and clean water and wildlife habitat and good paying jobs in rural communities. And it’s that middle section, the air, the water, and the wildlife that really is the foundation of our environmental stewardship. And so, anything that we do on the land as a stewardship ethic for NAFO members has to benefit those three areas that we know are important to everybody.  

And so, let’s take a step back and look at wildfire. What happens when we have severe wildfires? It affects our air; it affects our water and affects wildlife habitat. It touches every one of these foundational priorities and cultural values for NAFO members. And so, we as a priority are addressing the wildfire risk as good neighbors with the forest service. I’ll give you two examples, so that you can get us an idea of how this works. We wanna suppress wildfire so it doesn’t get out of control. So, we have an agreement in place between NAFO’s members in the West and with the Forest Service, and it goes something like this. 

If a wildfire breaks out on a national forest system land, adjacent to a NAFO member’s land, we will fight that fire and suppress it on initial attack, meaning the first ones to get there and the first ones to put the fire out. And so, as a good neighbor, we’ll do that with, for the Forest Service for free. 

Now, that requires a lot of things. It requires good communication. It requires proper training. It requires safety. It requires the equipment. But one of the benefits of our member companies is that we have the capacity to do that. We have those resources and we wanna make those resources available because it will benefit the federal land and it’s also gonna benefit us. So that’s example one.  

Example two is, what can we do ahead of time to reduce the risk of severe wildfire? And our agreement with the Forest Service on that front has to do with what we call cross boundary fuel breaks. I think your listeners will probably know what a field break is. Everybody has probably seen one, but just in case, it’s an area where we have thinned the forest significantly so that the fire will die down and drop to the forest floor or it’s a place where we can safely fight fire. 

And so, what our member companies have now agreed to with the Forest Service is that as we build fuel breaks on our land and as we plan for those fuel breaks. We will extend those fuel breaks onto neighboring federal land, onto national forest system land and we will do them for a cost. Now, that’s a big concept and here’s why that’s such a big deal. Fuel breaks can be very expensive to do, and the Forest Service contracts to do fuel breaks. They may be paying thousands of dollars an acre. When NAFO members create fuel breaks, they’re doing it probably for hundreds of dollars an acre. And sometimes it’s a little bit more, and sometimes it’s a little bit less depending on the topography and where you’re doing the work. But if you look at the difference in cost between doing those fuel breaks for a premium or doing them at the operational cost of a NAFO member, that’s a significant savings to the Federal Government. And so, that agreement is in place as well, and we are in our second year of that agreement, and it seems to be off on the right track. 

[00:20:07] Lesli Allison: Great. I wanna jump in and ask you a question that I think is gonna be on a lot of people’s minds right now, particularly with the executive orders and the secretarial memorandum. Which is what we’re looking at is really releasing regulatory barriers to getting after reducing the fire risk on these forests and ramping up timber production. 

And we’ve talked a little bit about what ramping up timber production needs, which is market access. But the other piece of this that I think is, is worrying to people is, does this now mean that we’re gonna go into our national forest lands and implement forest management in a way that is not paying attention to some of these other environmental concerns? 

And so, for example, if you guys are doing a fuel break, that’s to, that will look to a lot of people, like a kind of a clear cut in a place that they might feel sensitive or concerned about. Dave, from the timber industry’s perspective on this, when you guys are creating fuel breaks, doing these kinds of harvests. If these orders repeal the environmental regulations, what’s to say, these treatments are not going to be detrimental to other environmental values on the forest. I mean, I think that’s what the public is mostly worried about, right? And you’ve heard a lot of outcry from environmental groups that this is just gonna wreak havoc on our forests. So, how are you guys thinking about that and taking care of those environmental values at the same time, we’re accelerating these treatments? 

[00:21:36] David Tenny: Absolutely. It’s a good question and an important question. My observation is that I’ve never met a professional in the Forest Service who got up every morning thinking, what can I do to ruin the forest? That’s not the cultural mindset of the Forest Service professionals that I know. By the same token, our member companies, our, our members, NAFO members, have a commitment to sustainable forest management. In fact, as a condition of membership, they have a commitment to sustainable forest management and third-party verification of those practices. So, our members are third-party certified, and that certification is an assurance that we are going to continue to manage the forest sustainably for all the values we’ve talked about. 

Now, the Forest Service also has an ethic, and they have a series of laws. Some of those laws have to do with public process, and some of those laws have to do with the protection and the stewardship of the resource. Those come into play often, and sometimes they come into conflict because when the public’s involved in decision making around public assets, it can get a little bit messy from time to time. 

But here’s the low hanging fruit in the President’s Executive Orders and in the Secretary’s Memorandum. The low hanging fruit is the areas where we can work across landscapes, because we know it’s the right thing to do. We’ve already established it’s the right thing to do to reduce fire risk. You’ll probably cut some trees in the process. And as you pointed out, when you build a fuel break, you’re cutting trees, not cutting all of ’em, but you’re cutting trees so that the fire behaves differently in that fuel break. But if you take the opportunity that’s available to us now and use it to reduce wildfire risk in the places where we know it’s needed. And you use authorities that we already have. Authorities have been provided by Congress to accelerate the process, and it’s typically the public process, but there are some, also some environmental processes that are streamlined, but we know that they are streamlined for a reason. That is because there’s a lot of agreement on what needs to happen in these areas. If you look at those places and go there first, you’re gonna have a lot more success than going into places where that risk is not as great or where the need is not as great.  

I’ll give you two examples of fuel break work that NAFO members are doing, and it gets to your point about what the public will think about these. One is on the El Dorado Forest in California, and the other is on the Tahoe National Forest in California.  

Public Perspective of Forests 

These are two forests that are heavily used by the public. And so, the work that our members are doing is along heavily traveled corridors where their land abuts the federal land, and what they’re doing is they’re building fuel breaks along those corridors where people are coming to recreate. Because if they come in and there’s a fire they need to get out. And we also wanna preserve those, those forests because they are public recreation forests. They’re really important to the public. Those get very, very strong public support and are a good example of the kind of work that we’re talking about. 

And I can tell you, Lesli, that there’s a lot of that work that needs to be done throughout the National Forest system. The Forest Service will not be able to get to 112 million acres of National Forest system lands that are at risk, but they can get to a good chunk of those that are at highest risk to resources and people in communities where we can work together to get the work done. 

[00:25:23] Lesli Allison: You know, it, it reminds me of something that when I was a child, I grew up in an inholding in the National Forest and I used to play in the woods every day, and one day I went out to a place that I hadn’t been in a, in a little while, and I was very young at this point and I discovered that they were logging it. And I was just appalled. I was horrified. There was all these big machines cutting down my woods and everything looked terrible to me, stomps and big mounds of dirt and I early on just became absolutely opposed to forest operations, you know, forestry logging, and I kind of set my career in a, in a direction early on towards environmental advocacy. 

And fast forward through many life experiences, including managing a large, forested piece of land, where I came to really understand the importance and the need for forest management. And so, my perspective began to change with my experience on the ground. But then years later, I went back to the same place that had been logged at that time, that had set me in that direction. And it was actually beautiful. It was, it was quite something to see what had come back. And there was a kind of a side-by-side comparison ’cause right across from it was a place that had not been treated at that point, this is on the national forest. And on the place that had been treated, there was all kinds of understory, wildlife, you know, grasses, bushes, you know, healthy trees. 

It looked beautiful as the place you’d wanna go hang out. Right across had not been treated. Most of the trees were dead, disease, insects, almost no understory, no way for wildlife to move through that. And it was really eye-opening. It was just a really interesting experience for me. But I, I learned that, you know, when you’re doing forestry, it can look like a mess when it’s happening and yet wait a little bit of time and actually, the effects can be quite positive.  

[00:27:13] David Tenny: Yeah. When you talk about that Lesli, you remind me of something that is important. That is sustainable forest management. It’s the process of growth, harvest, and regrowth, right? And that’s, that is the way sustainable forestry works. Each year, private working forest owners will plant somewhere around 1 billion trees in the United States. That’s a lot of trees. So, 1 billion seedlings with the intent of making sure they grow to maturity, because that’s what private working forests do. That’s what that’s, that is the, that is the business of forestry. And when I think of NAFO members, just our members, which are only 40 million acres of that 350 plus million acres of private ownership, we’re planting almost 400 million of those seeds, just our members. Wow. And why are we doing it? Well, because we’re providing a lot of timber, but because we want those forests to regenerate, regrow. And you bring up the point now of, of what happens when we do that, and it brings us to our wildlife conservation work. I’ll tell you the story of what we are doing and why it’s important to us and why it should be important to everyone. 

Importance of Forest Management and Wildlife Conservation Work 

As we grow those forests and as we manage them over those long periods of time, we recognize the importance of the habitat those forests provide to a variety of species, terrestrial species that like land, aquatic species that like the water. We recognize that 60% of the at-risk species in the United States need the kind of forest that we’re managing. That’s a lot of species and that’s a lot of risk for those species that we can help mitigate.  

So, we came up with the idea of what we call the Wildlife Conservation Initiative, and it works really simply. We went to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and we said, here’s what we’d like to do. We would like to work with you to identify the most important species to you and to us, and then we want to conserve those species on our land, and we’ll let you come on our land and look for them, and we’ll work on it together, and we’ll make sure those species are conserved. 

Now, if you think about that from a landowner perspective. You’ve got Landowners, you’ve got Fish and Wildlife Service, and you’ve got species that’s not always been a happy mix. So, we had to take a bit of a leap of faith, but our objective was to create a culture of trust around species conservation. And so, what came of that has been a change in culture and now we have a nationwide partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service that we call our Wildlife Conservation Initiative. And our objective is to protect and conserve common, at-risk enlisted species. We now have agreements in place for listed species that enable the Fish and Wildlife Service to get data on listed species from our land for the benefit of conserving, recovering those species. And it’s okay. And those agreements are helping us do what has frankly never been done before. That is, to build trust around species conservation between the federal government and the private landowner in ways that are culturally aligned with both the government and the private landowner, and that hopefully create a model for others. 

[00:30:45] Lesli Allison: You know, we have been so inspired at Western Landowners Alliance by the work you all have done in this. I’ve listened to webinars and heard some of the stories about the accomplishments you’ve had in the Southeast and other places, and just wanna say hats off to you all, and I think this is a, a piece of the story that more people really need to understand and appreciate. 

And I think it goes to your point, Dave, that you know, this isn’t your grandfather’s forest industry anymore. Like you, in working in forestry through the parts of my career that I have, I never met a forest manager that didn’t have an interest in ecology, in wildlife, in healthy forests and, and clean water and healthy watersheds. 

And I think all of us learn through the decades, right? Every industry, every business as people, we continue to learn and evolve. And I think seeing where you guys are in leading this work is, is an inspiration. And I, and I hope a sense of some comfort to folks out there, especially as we hear these waves of news, that that can be so alarming for a number of folks who, who do have environmental concerns about the impacts of forest management. 

I have another question I wanted to touch into on that, unless you have, do you have anything else that you’d like to tell us about the Wildlife Initiative at this point?  

[00:32:02] David Tenny: Maybe it’s a perspective. One is that we often look at the Endangered Species Act with respect to what it tells us we cannot do, but it’s better to look at the Endangered Species Act from the standpoint of what does it not tell us that we can’t see. 

All right. You see the difference? Mm-hmm. We’ve been focusing our, our efforts on what the Endangered Species Act doesn’t tell us we can’t do because there are some permissive aspects of the Endangered Species Act. And that is where we were getting our best results. That’s where we’re making our greatest progress. So that’s one perspective. The second perspective is that we have learned together with the agency that voluntary collaboration and is much, much more effective than reactive regulation. It will always be the case.  

[00:32:52] Lesli Allison: We see that also in our work. You know, I’ve, I’ve pointed out many times to people, you can pass laws that tell people what they can’t do, but you can’t pass laws that tell people what they have to do, especially when it comes to land stewardship. 

And so many species depend on the actions of private landowners on the, the, the decisions that we make every day out on the land. And so, working with the landowners rather than against the landowners to support and encourage that voluntary conservation goes much, much further than simply regulating what can’t be done, and I think that’s what you guys are really showing the path forward on. 

[00:33:30] David Tenny: Without question if, if at when NAFO was created in 2008, if someone would have told me that our closest working relationship in the federal government would be the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I would’ve belly laughed, different day, different set of issues, different culture. Today, I’m able to say that with, with great joy and pride. I mean, this is an important relationship and when I look at the Fish and Wildlife Service, they are as important to NAFO members as the Forest Services, and that’s saying something.  

[00:34:08] Lesli Allison: That’s an amazing statement. I hope people really will pay attention to that. That’s, it’s quite remarkable. I wanna also do a shout out actually on that line to an organization that’s actually grown out of your work in that space, which is the Conservation without Conflict. Leo Miranda is, is heading that up, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director, and it’s really looking at the change in culture inside both the Fish and Wildlife Service as well as from the private landowner side about finding ways to work together to really advance conservation goals in a win-win way. And that’s a, it’s a wonderful group. We’re excited to be involved in that with you guys. Looking ahead to a future in which we do see more collaborative and enduring conservation outcomes because of this kind of cooperation rather than conservation being, you know, fought out on a kind of a war basis, like it, it has been for so long, so kudos to you guys for that.  

Forest Carbon 

And I do wanna touch too, also on carbon. Obviously, forest carbon is a big issue. Climate change has been a big area of controversy, but our landowners, our forested landowners and our membership are very interested in forest carbon opportunities. Some are already engaged in forest carbon transactions, and it’s also still kind of a, a wild west. And so, I’m just curious how you guys are looking at the forest carbon space. Is that, is, I mean, is that like, is that a competitive thing with the timber industry or is that a compatible thing?  

[00:35:40] David Tenny: Well, here’s what we know. Let’s start with some data, because data is a wonderful place to start.  

With regard to forest carbon, you’ll remember that I said earlier that our private working forest, that’s the 47% of our nation’s forests that are producing timber for, for wood and fiber production, they’re providing 90% of our timber harvest. So, one would think if they’re, if we’re cutting all those trees, that’s gotta be doing a, a real number on carbon in the forest. Well, here are the data points. Yes, we’re providing 90% of our timber harvest, but those forests are also providing 80% of our net carbon sequestration from all forests in the United States, public and private. So, less than half the forests are providing 80% of the sequestration, that is the carbon that we are actively taking out of the air every year. 

Well, that makes sense because our trees are gonna be younger and they’re growing and they’re just taking carbon out of the atmosphere quickly because that’s what growing trees do. Well, one would say, well, that must mean that most of the stored carbon, the carbon that’s in the more mature older trees, that must all rest in the public lands, and well no, over half of all the carbon storage is in the same forests. So, we’re carrying more than our fair share of the carbon storage and also, carrying much more than our fair share in the carbon sequestration. And if you add to that, the amount of carbon that’s stored in the wood products that, that are produced from our trees, the story gets even better. So, when you think about the, the carbon that’s stored in wood, just in the wood that’s in buildings today, there’s more carbon stored in, in buildings in the U.S. today, close to three times as much as all the carbons that’s stored in all of our national parks combined. 

[00:37:38] Lesli Allison: Wow, that’s a really interesting, that’s very interesting data point.  

[00:37:42] David Tenny: And that’s just the, the carbon that’s fixed in wood. And we’re adding to that every year. And we’d like to add to that even more by building more houses. And it really is quite a story internationally. International organizations that look at carbon have determined that the greatest benefit that we get from our forest is through a combination of forest management, growth, harvest, and regrowth, forest products, the things that we make out of those trees that store carbon for a long time and energy. And we have a combination of those three things, we are gonna get the optimal carbon benefit from our forests. Now, that suggests that active forest management is going to be a, a smarter carbon play than just preservation. 

And that’s not to say that you have to harvest every timber stand out there or every forest in the United States. That’s not the case, but it is true. The data show us that active forest management is a better carbon outcome than not.  

[00:38:47] Lesli Allison: So, in terms of how that translates to carbon markets, how does that work for you all? Are you all able to take advantage of carbon markets?  

[00:38:55] David Tenny: What we do is we focus on what we are able to claim about the carbon benefits of our forests, and we want that data to be as credible as possible. We’ve been working with the Forest Service on that, and that that work continues and that work will continue because it’s important. 

We’ve got a lot of important data sets out there that show what timber inventory or what forest inventory means from a carbon standpoint. And we’ve got a lot of data from the private sector that shows the carbon benefits of building with wood. Well, we want that information to be open sourced and available to everyone because that will help people in the marketplace make important decisions about product choice. And so, when we think about carbon markets, we think about it in terms of how carbon flows from the forest into products, into consumer goods, and into the marketplace as a whole, and into the buildings of today and tomorrow. 

Now, there are some cases where people want to use forests to grow more carbon in the forest, and that’s fine. That will happen, mostly on the margin and where we can, where we can make those contributions, we will and NAFO member companies do that. NAFO members are, are involved in some of those kinds of forest carbon plays where the forest itself is producing carbon in that carbon sold in the marketplace. But most of our carbon benefits come from the combination of trees and wood in the marketplace to produce durable things that you and I use every day.  

[00:40:28] Lesli Allison: Wow. That’s super interesting. You know, I do, I do wanna call out, you guys have a great data visualization section on your website there at the National Alliance of Forest Owners. I encourage folks to take a look at that piece on the website. Do you have any advice for landowners with forested lands that are looking at the carbon markets right now?  

[00:40:48] David Tenny: That’s a good question. If you’re going to do carbon, the first thing you wanna make sure of is, is that whatever you can claim is absolutely credible in the marketplace, because the marketplace will rise or fall on the credibility of whatever it is that’s being sold. 

It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be a, a consumer product of any kind. If the consumer product is flawed or faulty, eventually the market will reject it. So, if you want to be involved in carbon markets, make absolutely certain that whatever claims you’re making and whoever you’re working with is enabling you to make claims that are absolutely credible. 

Lesli Allison: Great advice.  

Dave Tenny: And we do have carbon registries that have protocols in place that have to be met, but those protocols are only as good as the fidelity with which they’re used. They’re like a building code. You can have a building code, but if you don’t follow the building code, you’re not in a safe building. So, if you’re gonna sell carbon, make sure that whoever you’re working with is using those protocols with great fidelity.  

[00:42:00] Lesli Allison: That’s great advice, Dave. And you know, it points to just the importance of everybody in whatever industry it is, out on these landscapes and beyond really, you know, rising to their highest and best, right? Trying to enact ethical business practices, ethical and land management practices, being cognizant of all the different concerns that society has. I think that’s the way that we meet so many of the challenges that we’ve got today. And you all are really, I think, lighting the path that way. 

Looking ahead, I’m wondering if what, where you see risks for forest landowners and where you’re seeing opportunities and whether that’s for your members or sort of forest landowners in general?  

Opportunities and Risks for Forest Landowners 

[00:42:51] David Tenny: Well, let’s start with the opportunities. I like opportunities. I’m a, I’m a glass half full kind of a person. 

We know that people are gonna continue to need a place to live. We have a housing shortage in our country right now, and that housing shortage will continue until we fill that need. And so, the demand for housing is going to be an opportunity going forward. We will certainly support whatever can be done to make housing more accessible and affordable to everybody. That would be good for us. That’s a great opportunity for the forest.  

New market development is another opportunity. There are so many things that you can do with the wood from trees. We want to have the ability to create sustainable aviation fuels, sustainable maritime fuels, sustainable transportation fuels of any kind. Well, wood is a really good source for those types of fuels, and so that’s an, that’s an opportunity that we want to develop and grow over time too, because there’s a great need and we can be a part of that. Wood can be a great part of our energy future overall. Whether we’re using it for transportation of one kind or another, or whether we’re using it for the production of electricity, or whether you we’re using it in other advanced processes, that will enable us to find new sources of energy for an ever-expanding energy consumption need in our country, alright. 

Then I think another really great opportunity for us is to build the partnerships that will help us solve problems, and it wants to solve the problem in advance, forestry and thereby advance the markets for forestry. Wildfire’s a great example. It’s hard to sell stuff when it burns down, right? So, if we can create the partnerships to help mitigate wildfire risk, we are doing everybody and especially ourselves a favor.  

Same thing with wildlife. It’s hard to look yourself in the mirror if you’re not doing right by wildlife. And wildlife conservation makes wood an even better choice, because as you’re using it, you know you’re doing something good for the future of wildlife conservation. So, those are the opportunities.  

The risks, the risks are the flip side of the coin of the opportunities. A loss of market demand is going to be our greatest single risk. And as I said at the outset with regard to the executive orders, the focus should not be on supply. The focus should be on demand. If you increase demand, supply takes care of itself. We have enough wood in our countries to supply all of our domestic needs and to export both wood and products abroad. So domestic markets, export markets, the risk of, of those not being strong enough is a significant risk for the entire sector and for the forests. 

Of course, wildfire is a risk. Any kind of disturbance is a risk. The final one I’d mention is just contraction. Contraction in the wood consuming sectors. I’ll give you an example. We’ve had a lot of mills closed in the United States that produce fiber for paper and pulp and other types of products that compete internationally. That contraction closes those markets. Well, that wood doesn’t have a place to go. If that wood doesn’t have a place to go, those forests lose their value. And when those forest lose their value, there are other competing land uses that come into the picture, and you have the real risk of losing those forests altogether. 

[00:46:37] Lesli Allison: I wanna just build on that by saying that in, again, in my experience, and this is in the Intermountain West, trying to manage a heavily forested private landscape, not for commercial timber production, but simply for forest health. We struggled to do that because we did not have the markets and, and because the markets support the loggers, then you have to have the trucks and the whole chain of supply has to be there to support the forest management. We had very thick, overgrown, diseased forest at high risk of wildfire that are very critical to municipal and agricultural water supplies downstream for hundreds of miles. We really wanted to take care of the forest and restore that forest health, and that was a very limiting aspect of what we could do. 

One of the things that we were trying to do at that time was to restore fire because we understand that fire is important in fire adapted ecosystems. We were trying to restore fire to the forest. The forests were so overgrown, however, that we couldn’t just go in and ignite a prescribed fire without going in and thinning first. And so again, to, to do that kind of pretreatment, to restore the fire ecology, we needed that infrastructure. We needed those loggers and, and places to take that woo and we didn’t, we really didn’t have those. And so, I think that is a critical issue for just simply restoring forest. Health across the West, you know, much less the, the whole timber production and all the benefits that that can also generate. 

So, um, I did wanna ask you, how do you think about prescribed fire and, and natural wildfire use for natural resource benefit?  

[00:48:13] David Tenny: Well, I’ll answer first with this. Private working forest owners, and NAFO members in particular, are the nation’s largest users of prescribed fire as a management tool. We do it more than anyone. And so, we understand it and we do a pretty good job because you don’t hear a lot of reports of us burning down our own forests.  

[00:48:37] Lesli Allison: That’s true. 

[00:48:38] David Tenny: Right?  

[00:48:40] Lesli Allison: Yes.  

[00:48:41] David Tenny: So, I can assure you that if that were the case, you would be hearing about it in, in national media, but it doesn’t happen because we know how to do it, and we do it safely. 

And so, we are proponents of using prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk, but it has to be done in the right conditions and in the right way. And some of the challenges that we have seen on federal lands have been a result of not doing it in the right conditions in the right way. I think that’s pretty safe to say. 

So, we are big supporters of using fire at the right time and in the right place in the right way. We’re not big supporters of using fire as a management tool in the height of fire season.  

[00:49:23] Lesli Allison: Got it. Got it. Yeah, I think, I think many in the public would, would, would align with you there. You know, we are here in New Mexico where we had some pretty bad experience with some fires not too long ago. So, there’s that concern.  

Well, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Your insights are really helpful and I hope people really, uh, take some heart in hearing about your work. And, um, thank you again.  

[00:49:49] David Tenny: I was glad to join you. Thanks again for the opportunity.