Johnna Pinholster
The Valdosta Daily Times
VALDOSTA —
The future of Georgia’s forests was the topic of conversation Thursday evening at the Ravine Grille at Kinderlou at the Valdosta Regional Meeting of the Georgia Forestry Association.
The night’s guest speakers were Chad Scruggs, with the USDA Farm Services Agency and Robert Farris, Director of the Georgia Forestry Commission. Farris became director of the Georgia Forestry Commission in 2007, the year wildfires raged through much of South Georgia.
Projecting the future of forestry in Georgia is hard to determine, Farris said.
“I hope you won’t be disappointed in me — my crystal ball probably doesn’t work any better than any of y’all,” Farris said. The commission has collected data over the years to determine where forestry has been. The data that can help them see where forestry will go, Farris said.
The goal is to protect Georgia’s forests and tracts of land that help provide clean air and clean water for the state.
The threats to Georgia’s forests include man-made issues such as urban development, pollution and changing timber markets to wildfires and forest health, he said. The good news, Farris said, is the acreage of forest land in Georgia has not changed much in the last 50 years.
Currently the state has more than 24 million forest acreage, putting the state in the top 10 in the nation as far as forest acreage goes, he said.
Ninety-two percent of that acreage is privately owned, an issue that is uncommon in the western states, where most of the acreage is publicly owned. The state is also seeing an increase in forest landowners. This makes sense, Farris said, as the size of acreage people own decreases.
For the Georgia Forestry Commission, this creates a challenge when trying to promote proper forest management.
“Everyone knows it harder to work with 10 landowners that own 100 acres than it is to work with one landowner that owns 100 acres,” Farris said. The reasons people are purchasing tracts of forest has changed, he said. Land is being purchased for recreational use, aesthetics, legacy and privacy.
“Economics is not always the top priority,” Farris said. But that doesn’t mean that timber harvesting and other uses are mutually exclusive, he said. Both can be accomplished on the same piece of property.
“Most of the time it (timber harvesting) complements those other objectives,” he said.
Forestry remains a big business in Georgia. Between 2001 and 2008, forestry generated $28.7 billion in annual revenues to the state, he said.
The business of managing, harvesting, preserving and conserving forest lands also employs 128,000 people in Georgia. Pulp paper remains the largest timber business, even as mills within the state have decreased, he said. Even though timber output remains at historic highs, the growth of Georgia’s forests well exceeds removals, Farris said. Georgia is also seeing new markets open up that have strong ties to
forestry in the area of bioenergy. There have been announcements for 36 new bioenergy plants in the state this year, he said.
Population growth remains a threat to Georgia’s forests, Farris said. In 25 years Georgia’s population is expected to grow from nine million to 12 million, he said. Currently the state is losing 106 acres of forest land a day to urban development.
“Believe me, that development is not only in Atlanta,” Farris said.
Development into forest areas makes it harder for the Georgia Forestry Commission to protect the forests.
Air quality issues make it hard to conduct prescribed burns in forested areas with a close human population, he said.
Putting out wildfires in a populated area is difficult, because the commission is not only protecting the forest but human life and structures as well, Farris said.
The health of Georgia’s forests is threatened by the introduction of invasive species, several of which are slowly making their way across the state, he said.
Scruggs provided those gathered with an update on Biomass Corp Assistance Program (BCAP) which assists agricultural and forest landowners through payments when they produce biomass.
The Georgia Forestry Association was founded in 1907 and is Georgia’s oldest conservation organization.
