July 26, 2012
MODERATOR: Good day, and welcome to today's live broadcast from the USDA Radio Studios in Washington, D.C., featuring the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Tom Tidwell.
Reporters and members of the media, if you wish to ask the Secretary or the Chief a question after opening remarks, please press Star/1 on your telephone touchtone pad.
It's now my pleasure to introduce Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
SECRETARY VILSACK: Rod, thanks very much, and thanks to everyone who's joining us this afternoon, and a special thanks to Chief Tidwell for his involvement with this press briefing.
Over the last 3-1/2 years, the Obama administration has been creating a new pathway to rural prosperity, obviously focusing on our great strength in production agriculture and export opportunities, local and regional food systems in the biobased economy, but key to that new pathway to rural prosperity is the utilization of our natural resources, our forest areas and grasslands, to expand economic opportunity, specifically tying our investments into expanded outdoor recreational opportunities, developing new energy sources, and supporting innovation through the biobased economy.
Today's announcements, I think, underscore the new pathway to rural prosperity and the utilization of our forests and grassland areas to encourage greater outdoor recreation, new energy sources, and new innovation.
Today we basically announce our annual visitor survey that reflects the activities that take place in our forests and our grassland areas. Last year, we welcomed 166 million visitors to our forests, and as a result of those visitors, nearly 200,000 individuals were employed on a full- or part-time basis, generating over $7.6 billion in wages. Collectively and overall, those visitors and wage earners contributed $13 billion to the gross domestic product just as a result of the activities that took place in our forests and grassland areas.
In addition, we have made a collaborative and concerted effort to restore our forests through the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. We announced the goal of moving towards ultimately 3 billion board feet of being treated, creating new opportunities, increasing it from the currently 2.4 billion of last year. We're announcing today that we are continuing that effort. We have already identified 121 million board feet of additional treatment, which is going to create 267,000 tons of woody biomass that can be used for a wide variety of activities, including new energy sources. That activity is already contributing $21 million to local communities as a result of this increased activity and will likely result in us getting to 2.6 million board feet of having been treated, well towards our goal of 3 billion board feet.
These wood energy projects are also being enhanced by announcements we are making today of $4 million in grants to 20 communities to assist in developing new wood-to-energy opportunities. Utilizing woody biomass as a new resource, we're seeing a great deal of interest in communities across the United States from New Hampshire to Colorado to Idaho to Virginia, grants being given to communities to develop these new energy sources.
And a new and exciting announcement that is being made today, one that I think has great significant potential, is the establishment of the first pilot plant opening at our Forest Products Lab in Madison, Wisconsin, a first of its kind in the United States focusing on nanocellulose from wood products. This will allow us to begin identifying and increasing the quantities of this new source, of this new resource, that will help us develop new lightweight high-performance products from wood and timber. There is a tremendous opportunity, an unlimited opportunity to develop new products using nanotechnology and combining that with our wood resources, and this first-of-its-kind lab in the U.S. will begin identifying adequate quantities of these materials that will allow us to develop more forest-based materials.
It is expected and anticipated that over the course of the next decade, we may see literally billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, of economic activity generated as a result of this new technology and the utilization of it with wood products, working on such things as lightweight armor, for example, that will be strong enough to resist bullets, things of that nature, a tremendous opportunity for us to expand economic opportunity.
So we continue to expand outdoor recreation. We continue to find new resources of energy, which is one of the reasons why we are reducing our reliance on foreign oil, woody biomass playing a role in that, the Forest Service now having over 70 project of one kind or another that it's helping to fund in the wood energy area, and an exciting new development of nanotechnology applied to wood products.
So we're excited about this. We're looking forward to working with communities across the United States to take full advantage of our forests and grassland areas, and it's very consistent with the new planning rule that was established that will allow us to fully utilize and better utilize our forests and make sure that we continue to focus on forests that are more resilient and restored, so that we reduce the concerns that we have about fires, wildland fires and the impacts that we've seen this year on communities.
So, with that, Rod, I'd be glad to take questions, and the Chief is here to help as well.
MODERATOR: And, reporters and members of the media, this reminder, if you have a question for Agriculture Secretary Vilsack or Forest Service Chief Tidwell, please press Star/1 on your telephone touchtone pad.
And let's go to the phone lines, and joining us for the first call of the day is Tiffany Steckler of ClimateWire. Tiffany, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (ClimateWire): Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Just a clarification. You said 200 -- you hoped to increase the board feet of treated wood from 2.4 billion to 3 billion next year, and is that another -- an additional 267 million tons -- or a thousand tons of woody biomass, or is that part of the 3 billion?
SECRETARY VILSACK: Essentially, we set as a goal over the course of the next couple of years to get to 3 billion board feet. What we are announcing today is that we've identified 121 million additional board feet, which will help us. Those 121 million board feet will help us generate 267,000 tons of woody biomass. As we get closer to the 3 billion, that number will obviously increase and create new opportunities for energy sources, particularly in the western part of the United States.
MODERATOR: And we go to our next call, and on the line is Greg Flakus of the Voice of American Bureau in Houston. Greg, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (Voice of America-Houston Bureau): Last year we had quite a drought that killed a lot of trees, and I was just up in Arkansas last week, and in that heavily forested State, you also see a lot of tree loss. And I'm wondering if you have any forecast as to what fire danger this might present a little later this year if this drought continues and what measures are being taken in that regard.
SECRETARY VILSACK: I'll let Chief Tidwell respond to that question.
CHIEF TIDWELL: Well, we're already seeing the consequences of the drought this year with the fire season we've already had throughout the South, the Southwest, and up into Colorado and Idaho and Montana where we've having record low fuel moistures, record temperatures, and, once again, we are having record catastrophic fires. So we're seeing the consequences of the drought conditions as they've played out and the increased level of fire behavior and especially the severity of the fire behavior and how difficult it is for our firefighters to suppress these fires.
SECRETARY VILSACK: I might add that that is part of the reason why our restoration efforts are so important. In the Four Forest Restoration Project in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, we are rehabbing over 111,000 acres of timber that was destroyed as a result of the Wallow and Schultz fires in the last year or so. So that's part of why we're focusing on restoration efforts.
In addition, we use these restoration efforts to reduce the risk to our wildland-urban interface, working with communities and working with homeowners to basically bolster and reduce and mitigate the risk of fires destroying homes and communities, and that's why it's important for the restoration efforts to continue and why we're focused on making sure that our forests are healthier as a result.
MODERATOR: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell are with us live in the USDA Studios. You in the listening audience and on the phone lines, thanks for joining us. If you have a question, if you're a reporter or member of the media for either of our guests, please press Star/1 on your telephone touchtone pad.
And let's go to our next call. That belongs to Josh Schlossberg of Biomass Monitor. Josh, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (The Biomass Monitor): Hi. Thanks for having me here. I'm wondering if folks are taking into account the studies that are shown that actually increasing backcountry logging does not stop the large wildfires, and that this logging and utilization for biomass actually increases the CO2, carbon dioxide, emissions into the atmosphere instead of reducing them.
SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, I think it's important to point out part of the restoration effort is actually to, as I said, create a buffer, if you will, or a mitigation against serious loss of homes and communities as a result of these forest fires.
We are making up for a considerable amount of time as a result of previous decisions to use a portion of the maintenance budget of the forest service to fight fires, which limited the capacity of the Forest Service to do proper maintenance. We are trying to make up for lost efforts. It's compounded by the fact that we have got a lot of damaged trees and dead trees as a result of pine bank beetle and other infestations. So we're in the process of making sure that we do everything we possibly can to mitigate the risk.
Having said that, we know that in any given year, you are going to have somewhere between 70,000 to 100,000 forest fires, some of which caused by lightning, some of which caused by human error, and so we want to do everything we possibly can to mitigate the consequences of that to people and to property.
CHIEF TIDWELL: And we have numerous examples across the country where we've done our restoration work, where we've thinned out these forests. When we do get a fire started and it burns towards a community, our firefighters are much more successful to suppress that fire and keep it out of the community.
In addition, there is much less damage and impact to the watershed. We still have a lot of standing green trees, the watershed recovers, the wildlife habitat recovers rather quickly, versus where we have these large fires that are burning through areas that haven't received any type of thinning or any type of natural fire for decades.
MODERATOR: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell with us in the studios, and we go to Tiffany Steckler of ClimateWire with a follow-up question. Tiffany, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (ClimateWire): Yes. Thanks for taking my call again. I'm wondering if you could tell me about the 20 communities or businesses that are going to benefit from the 4 million in grants. Are they all over the U.S., or are they concentrated in certain regions? And, also, are these projects going to concentrate on wood to electricity, or are they biofuel projects or both?
SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, the County of Sullivan, New Hampshire, is receiving a grant under our Woody Biomass program of roughly a quarter-of-a-million dollars, and across the country, the Clearwater Soil and Water Conservation District in Idaho is receiving a grant. To take you back east, the Longwood University in Virginia is also receiving a grant. To take you back west, the Evergreen Clean Energy Company in Colorado is receiving a grant. So I think it's distributed throughout the United States in terms of these 20 grants, and I'll let the Chief talk specifically about the nature of these projects, but, obviously, we're encouraging woody biomass being used in a variety of different ways. Electricity production is certainly one of them.
CHIEF TIDWELL: These 20 projects are spread through 12 different States, and they're primarily focused on using wood for either thermal or to produce electricity, but in addition to the 4 million, all of these grants come with a match of at least 1:1, sometimes 2:1. So this is an investment that helps these communities, and it helps these businesses, helps universities, hospitals be able to make a very good investment to not only reduce their energy costs but also to create another market for us to be able to find a use of this material that needs to be removed from our forests plus support the jobs that it takes to do the restoration work. So that's' the combined effect of these grants.
MODERATOR: Reporters and members of the media, the reminder, if you have a question for either the Agriculture Secretary or the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, please press Star/1 on your telephone touchtone pad. Our next call today belongs to Kolby Hoagland of BBI International. Colby, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (BBI International): Good afternoon. I was wondering with those restoration efforts that are happening, there's a lot of timber that is put into a pile and commonly just burned. Are there any efforts to go with distributed generation or to utilize that slash from restoration efforts for producing energy?
CHIEF TIDWELL: Well, that's what this wood energy focus is for these grants, is to do exactly that, to be able to find a market, a beneficial use for that material that in the past we would just have to pile and burn, put smoke in the air. We'd much rather have a place, that that material could be hauled to a facility and converted into energy, whether it's just heat or ideally even for electricity, and then to be actually then put into the grid. So that's the sort of thing that we have been working on, to be able to promote that type of investment, so that we can make beneficial use of this material, reduce our energy dependency, but at the same time create another market for the wood that needs to be removed.
SECRETARY VILSACK: And that's one of the challenges at our Forest Product Lab, is to take a look at ways in which we could potentially use these resources combining with nanotechnology to produce new products with greater strength and lighter weight and high performance. I mean, this is basically what this pilot plant that we are opening will in fact be doing.
MODERATOR: Before we go to our final question of the day, maybe give us an idea about this nanocellulosic technology. I was talking to the Chief prior to going on the air, and he was explaining this technology. Give our listening audience kind of something to wrap our heads around from the standpoint of how this is so lightweight and, as Secretary alludes to, strong enough, stronger than metal and could be used potentially as an armor for protection against bullets and other weapons, yet at the same time biodegradable. I mean, that's almost like Star Trek, we're talking here.
CHIEF TIDWELL: Well, this technology has great potential for basically a new industry and another market for us to be able to take wood products -- and we are talking all sizes of wood, even the small diameter material that needs to be removed -- and through this technology basically convert it into biomaterial, and this is what the pilot plant is focused on, is to be able to take the technology that's there today and to be able to make it commercially viable, so that we can start producing products in this country that are made from cellulose that could replace a lot of the plastics that we're currently using, whether it's for car parts, whether it's for the Kevlar use, whether it's for carbon fiber. And so it has great potential to be able to be part of that overall mix. Once again, a new industry, another great market for the wood that needs to be removed off of our forests, and then also another great job creator.
MODERATOR: And our -- oh, go ahead, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY VILSACK: It's an example of the importance of getting America, as the President talks about, an economy built to last. This is an economy that is based on innovation. These are new ideas, new creative ideas, innovative ideas, new research opportunities, which in turn create products that have never been created before or create products that are improved over what we've had before, so that we can begin to export those activities and those products to the rest of the world. That's how we create jobs, and that's how we grow the middle class. So this is all designed to sort of reformulate the American economy more an economy that's based on what we make as opposed to what we consume.
MODERATOR: And our final question of the day belongs to Steve Wilent of the Society of American Forests. Steve -- or, rather, Foresters. Steve, good afternoon.
QUESTIONER (Society of American Foresters): Thank you, and good afternoon. I am the editor of the Society's newspaper, The Forestry Source.
You mentioned previously the Four Forest Initiative in Arizona. This is a landmark project not only because of its size and scope, but also because it includes the construction of a new wood products manufacturing facility, which will bring jobs to the region. Is the agency planning for similar large stewardship contracts in other areas?
SECRETARY VILSACK: I think the answer to that question is yes. We are asking Congress to give us the capacity to lengthen the time of a stewardship contract, so that we can create those kinds of new industrial or industry opportunities, and I think we have some support in Congress for that notion. That's my hope, and I think there is a real interest in making sure that we combine, as the Chief has talked about, better maintenance and better restoration opportunities and efforts within our forests, combine it with utilizing what's taken from the forests in a more effective way than burning and creating waste product and then developing new jobs and new businesses as a result.
And by encouraging healthier forests, that should encourage more people to visit the forest through the American Great Outdoors efforts, which in turn creates the visitors and the economic activity assigned with tourism, and as we create these new products, obviously we have already started down the road of creating new energy opportunities. So there is a tremendous capacity here that I think we're now just beginning to properly and more fully utilize.
MODERATOR: And, reporters, members of the media, thank you for your questions and all of you in today's broadcast listening in. Mr. Secretary, Chief Tidwell any closing remarks?
SECRETARY VILSACK: I don't think so, Rod. I think that last comment I made is probably good enough.
MODERATOR: Okay, appreciate it. Mr. Secretary, thank you. Chief Tidwell, thank you as well. This is Rod Bain from the USDA Radio Studios in Washington, D.C., wishing you all a great day.