The Value of Working Forests

How does harvesting timber impact wildlife around the world?

In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” Darren Miller, vice president of forestry programs and director of research programs for the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI) Foundation, and Jessica Homyack, director of environmental research and operational support at Weyerhaeuser, explore how commercial timber forests can coexist with wildlife conservation. 

As the forest industry undergoes organizational shifts and public expectations around sustainability grow, managed forest land has become increasingly important for global biodiversity. 

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s biweekly podcast, sharing stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. 

Further reading:

About Jessica Homyack - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-homyack-phd-cwb-52877a16/

About Darren Miller - https://ncasi.org/about-ncasi/staff-directory/darren-a-miller_vp-forestry/

Become a member of The Wildlife Society: https://wildlife.org/membership/

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Transcript

[00:00:02] Jessica Homyack: These are not biological deserts. They're incredibly diverse in terms of the habitats that are provided for fish and wildlife.

And you just see many amazing things across these landscapes. 

[00:00:14] Darren Miller: But I think it's important to recognize that public and private ownership together really increases landscape-scale diversity, on what's out there for a variety of species. If we hone in on just the managed forest, the, the ones that are being managed by corporations or investors, there's still a tremendous diversity in that landscape.

[00:00:32] Jessica Homyack: I'd say maybe today we're in a place more of collaborative conservation and working proactively with our regulatory agencies to help kind of make good decisions on the landscape, but also help these agencies understand the value of working forest landscapes for wildlife

​Intro Music

[00:01:02] Ed: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of the Our Wild Lives Podcast. This week is a pretty special one for me 'cause I've spent a good chunk of my career working in the forest, working for the Forest Service and also working in the private sector.

And we're gonna talk about forestry, forest management, the importance of forests, and they're critically important globally for habitats. Now we've already introduced the concept of private lands and discussed private land management and even a little bit of forestry involved with that. We're gonna really do a deep dive today with a couple of, special guests that work in the forest products industry. And, all of us worked for the same company that I even used to work for. Today we have, Dr. Darren Miller, who's the Vice President of Forestry Programs and the director of research programs at the National Council of Air and Stream Improvement Foundation. Darren is a certified wildlife biologist, longtime TWS member and a past president of The Wildlife Society. So thanks for your [00:02:00] service to TWS so many years, Darren. Really appreciate that. 

And we're also joined by Dr. Jessica Homyack, who is the director of environmental research and operational support for Weyerhaeuser Company. she's also a Certified Wildlife Biologist and has been a member for a long time. So thank you both for being here. Appreciate your service and all your dedication to your professional society.

Let's just kinda kick it off with both of you telling us a little bit about your organizations, and what led you to careers. Tell us about yourselves too. But, what led you to careers at the Forest product sector? Darren, let's start with you.

[00:02:35] Darren Miller: I have a bachelor's degree in wildlife management from Eastern Kentucky University in 1991. And then I went to, Mississippi State University for graduate school and worked on a bear project for my master's degree and stayed at Mississippi State and did a doctoral project on wild turkeys.

I started at Weyerhaeuser in 1997. I worked for them until, 2018. Jessica and I worked together in the Southern Timberlands Technology Organization for about 10 years. [00:03:00] And then in 2018, this position with NCASI, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, came open and it intrigued me because the ability to work across a bunch of different member companies, which are forest products companies and, and really have an influence on the type of research and technical support we were providing on for pr- private forest landowners. I thought It was a great opportunity and so I started that in 2018 and I've been there ever since also work with NCASI Foundation, which is an organization that supports the mission of NCASI as a nonprofit and serve to help with the, forest, research program with that organization as well.

You know, you ask about how I got into the, into the forest sector and it was actually fortuitous and a little bit by accident, to be honest. when I was an undergraduate, a junior or so, I decided I wanted to go to academia. I wanted to be a college professor, and so I, my, my grades reflect that. My GPA went up and I realized I really need to go to graduate school and probably needed to pay more attention in class.

And so, I went through [00:04:00] my, graduate program with that intent. In fact, the turkey project I took, uh, I took, because it was summarizing a 20-plus year project, I knew I'd get a lot of publications which is important for going into academia. And I'd worked on some Weyerhaeuser projects with fellow graduate students on turkeys and had met some of their folks.

Tony Melcher was my first boss, in fact, knew, knew Tony quite well, and this job came up with Weyerhaeuser just down the road from me in Mississippi. So it all kind of fell into place got the job. I always have felt like that type of job and that environment really fit my personality and what I wanted to do. I was very much interested in applied wildlife science, more than than basic research, not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. And so, once I got in and, and got, you know, kind of oriented and started working with all the great folks within Weyerhaeuser and other member companies, really enjoyed it and still enjoy doing that.

[00:04:55] Ed: Jessica, how about you? How did you get into the forestry sector?

[00:04:59] Jessica Homyack: I think kind of [00:05:00] forestry and forest management's just been woven throughout my educational background as well. So looking back, maybe it's no surprise that this is where I ended up. My undergraduate degree was at West Virginia University. My first field technician job was capturing bats on the Monongahela National Forest. And you know, from there I ended up doing research on forest management uh, in Northern Maine at the University of Maine for my master's degree, where we were examining effects of pre-commercial thinning on the prey species for Canada Lynx. I spent some time with the Fish and Wildlife Service out west in Wyoming and decided I was ready to go back to graduate school.

Science has always been really, I think, where my, my passion and heart has been. So I ended up back at graduate school for my PhD at Virginia Tech, where I studied oak regeneration methods on salamanders. And kinda like Darren, I maybe didn't anticipate ending up in the forest sector, although I had [00:06:00]lots of opportunities to interact with, various members of actually Darren's current organization.

CASI funded my master's research. I was working across private forest landowners in Maine and West Virginia and Virginia. And ultimately it was a little serendipitous too about the time I was graduating Weyerhaeuser was hiring a scientist position in North Carolina and I threw my hat in the ring and kind of thought, well, I'll go try it out for a year or two and see what I thought. And 17 years later, here I am. So I ended up in North Carolina for about seven years and moved out west to Washington State where now I, I direct the entire environmental research, program for Weyerhaeuser. 

[00:06:41] Ed: You know, it's interesting, my first job, I was a technician in Grand Teton National Park, and I get a call completely out of the blue to, for a full-time, not a permanent job, but a not to exceed appointment position with the Forest Service.

So that was kind of my first real exposure to forestry. [00:07:00] And after a couple years with the Forest Service, and then a couple years in the refuge system on the, uh, in the US Fish and Wildlife Service, this job came open with Weyerhaeuser and I did the same thing. I threw my name in the hat and really had no, no real, in-intent... not intention, but I, I just didn't have no expectation that I was gonna get that job. There were three or four PhDs and a former industry biologist and, I guess I interviewed good and had what, what they were looking for 'cause they gave me a job and it was one of the best jobs I ever had, largely because it was wide open to do research on wildlife that really were not well understood in the managed forest out in the west, on the west coast.

So I think we knew a lot more in some of the eastern forests, but it was a clean slate to do research on things that were potentially to be listed in the future or, you know, were sensitive to forest management that we had absolutely no data for whatsoever. So what an [00:08:00] opportunity to lay the groundwork for some of the stuff you've stepped into in picking up some of that baseline work that we were doing on building habitat models and, just getting basic monitoring data out there. That's what led me to studying bats was working with Weyerhaeuser 

[00:08:17] Katie Perkins: Yeah, so not all managed forests are created the same. Could you describe some of the differences in forestry and wildlife management approaches on public lands, institutional forest lands, and small and private forest owners? 

[00:08:30] Jessica Homyack: That's a great question. I mean, really every different type of forest land owner may have different objectives. And so a large kind of, you know, corporate level, investor-led company is gonna have different objectives perhaps than a small family-owned forest. And so you might see those in some of the outcomes. But, you know, as, as Ed alluded to, you may often be surprised in what you find in all these different forest types. These are not biological deserts. They're incredibly diverse in terms of the habitats that are [00:09:00] provided for fish and wildlife. And you just see many amazing things across these landscapes. but it, it is true that for these kind of large corporate level or institutional, forest landowners, one of the primary drivers is, is making an economic return. So there are of course activities like harvesting and replanting and ensuring that the planted seedlings are, are growing and surviving and, and really thriving for that sustainable future harvest. And, those types of activities are gonna go on in small woodlots as well, just maybe at a different, scale or scope and use different harvesting and regeneration techniques. For example, 

[00:09:40] Ed: Dig into that a little bit deeper would you, Jessica?

Is it a issue of technique or is it an issue of scale when you're talking the, the difference between a large private landowner or corporate corporation versus a small private landowner? 

[00:09:54] Jessica Homyack: I think it, it may be a bit of both. I mean, scale is certainly gonna be a factor that's, that [00:10:00] changes the temporal scale, the spatial scale. I mean, one example, Weyerhaeuser currently owns over 10 million acres in the United States. So the scale that they're working at is gonna be very different than the family forest owner that owns 20 acres. 

[00:10:14] Darren Miller: So, before, you know, I talk about different forest management, it might be helpful to back up and talk a little bit about what NCASI does, because a lot of folks probably aren't familiar with, with our organization. NCASI was started in 1943 by the paper industry to solve some environmental issues around paper manufacturing with water quality and then air quality. And then early 1970s when the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act passed, the folks in the sector thought, well, we should probably pay attention to where the trees are coming to as well. And so the first, uh, forestry professionally that was hired by NCASI was a guy named Dr. George Ice, who's a hydrologist. And that hydrology program started in, I don't want to lie to you, sometime in the late '70s. And then Dr. Ben Wigley joined the staff in the late '80s, was the first wildlife scientist. So, [00:11:00] NCASI's been doing environmental work in the forest space since that time in in the biodiversity area. And so we're a membership organization. Companies like Weyerhaeuser Company pay us membership dues and we do work on their behalf. Environmental work, no policy work, all science work. And we do everything from the forestry and all the way up to the mill environment. And so in my position, I run our forestry program. We have wildlife scientists, forest hydrologists and biomatricians are, are who our staff of scientists are. And so, you know, part of what we're trying to do is understand the environmental consequences of forest management. Our members have those kind of questions and we want to help them provide those answers. And a lot of it is getting around to what Ed said earlier, this perception that these managed landscapes don't have diversity. They're not valuable for conservation, they don't contribute. And we still hear that some, which is unfortunate. And it's especially unfortunate because there's probably about fifty years of scientific literature that suggests otherwise. Ed mentioned bats. Ed taught me how to catch bats back in the [00:12:00] day. And I spent fifteen years studying bats on Weyerhaeuser property in the southeast because we didn't know anything about that community. And that's If you look at the history of the research, it started with game species, white-tailed deer, northern bobwhite, wild turkey because that was the concern. And now most of the work is focused on non-game species, pollinators, bats, aquatic species. Out west where Jessica is, red tree voles, and, and martens and fishers, and all these things that are important to, uh, as part of biodiversity that we don't understand well. So what I want to get to with that is, is a difference in management.

Jessica already picked up on this, it's different objectives. Public land ownership has different objectives than a private landowner. Now I say that because the private landowners, it's hard to put them in one classification. You know, here in the Eastern US and the Southeast, ninety percent of the forest land is privately owned. Most of that is by small private landowners. The forest sector, actually, the institutional owners own about 14% of the land of that private. So [00:13:00] it's a piece of that. It's an important piece. And their objective's, I would say a little bit more aligned because they're invested in that forest resource and have to see a return on that investment. So they're, they that drives some of that. But they also have to have a market, and they also have to have a public and a customer and an investor that says what you're doing is okay out there. And that's part of what we do too, is try to understand the environmental consequences of that forest management. And so that that drive toward making a return on investment it moves the decisions into a certain direction that may be different than public because, that's not the motivation for public ownership. But I think it's important to recognize that public and private ownership together really increases landscape-scale diversity. On what's out there for a variety of species. If we hone in on just the, the managed forest, the, the ones that are being managed by, by corporations or investors, there's still a tremendous diversity in that landscape.

You've got different ages of [00:14:00] forest. You've got areas that aren't managed or harvested. Streamside management zones, for example. So this the diversity of habitat conditions across those landscapes, even in an even age system that w- our members operate in. And understanding how that works with the, public lands on the landscape is really important.

[00:14:17] Ed: I think that's a really critical point on just the, the scale relative to the breadth of that diversity. And that's what provides, those varied habitats. And then it comes down to individual species and how much area of habitat, the structural complexity they need, that kind of thing. I mean, when, when I first started, working in the forest industry, the spotted owl had just been listed and it was, considered, an old growth, dependent species, which it is. But I think later on in different forest conditions, what some of the forest industry biologists, notably in Northern California were finding out [00:15:00] is that you can grow, uh, spotted owl habitat, nesting habitat if you leave the structural complexity in those stands.

[00:15:01] Jessica Homyack: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:02] Ed: And I think that's been a real, that was an important revelation, at least for the way I saw it, because the food source was really abundant in some of those young redwood forests. But as, as long as there were big down logs and big snags and big dying, you know, older legacy trees, we called them back in the day.

But if you have that structural complexity, you can have some of these older forest-dependent species, which is very different than a clear-cut managed forest.

[00:15:31] Darren Miller: Yeah, I think the scale is really important, Ed, because the scale of operation when you look at NAFO members, so NAFO's the National Alliance of Forest Owners. It's a trade association for large private landowners. And a lot of NCASI members are NAFO members and vice versa. They, they own and manage about 49 million acres in the US. And so when there's practices put in place that are, that are of conservation value, they replicate, across a lot of acres. And [00:16:00] so you have all those acres that aren't harvested, that are sequestering and storing carbon and, and providing all these ecosystem services.

And of course, the harvested portions are important for species that need those young forests as well. I think there's a little bit of a, of a misperception sometimes about how much harvest takes place because you're looking at a local landscape and not across a large area where all these decisions are taking place across millions of acres. 

[00:16:24] Ed: Yeah. You know, let me come back to one point, in that question. the term institutional forest, I wanna dig into that a little bit because I, you know, uh, they've been called corporate managed forest, industrial forest. There's been a lot of semantics and names about what, what those are. Explain why, now we're calling them institutional forests, and it, it has to do with the change, that I saw when I first joined, Weyerhaeuser and entered into kind of the forestry space.

Uh, it, it kinda links to that, doesn't it, Darren?

[00:16:56] Darren Miller: It, it does. And so historically, [00:17:00]corporations that, that were forest products companies were what they were called vertically integrated companies. And what that meant was that they owned the land, they owned the mills, and they owned the infrastructure. So they could harvest trees off their own land, run it through their mills and put it out to market. And that was the model when I started. And was the model for a long time. But what happened over that time is several things. So one of the reasons that changed is because the US tax structure for corporations, timberlands assets for companies that were called REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts, was only eighteen percent, but the corporate tax rate was over thirty percent. So it was a competitive disadvantage to be taxed at that rate if you were a corporation. There were some attempts to correct that through congressional action, which did not occur. So it forced companies to make a decision about how they were structured. And so what happened was, is those companies divested themselves of either timberlands the manufacturing side and it was really driven by, by originally by, tax rates. And so Weyerhaeuser company [00:18:00] chose to keep the Timberlands assets and divest of most of their manufacturing. I was at Weyerhaeuser when that change occurred. And Weyerhaeuser's philosophy was, we've been a timber company we're gonna maintain that. Other companies, notably companies you've probably heard of, like Georgia-Pacific International Paper, they divested the Timberlands ownership and kept the manufacturing side. And as a result of that, a lot of that timberland area was available for purchase and we had some other types of organizations interested in those assets? Primarily TIMOs, Timberland, Investment management Organizations and others what I mean by that is some of them own the asset, but have another organization manage the asset for them. But they're retirement funds, or investment funds.

They're not traditional forest corporations. And so it's a wide diversity of owners that are invested in that timberland asset now. One of my good friends, Jimmy Bullock, who I know all of you know, works for resource management service and they don't own the land that they manage, but they manage the land on behalf of clients that [00:19:00] own the land. And so they're not a corporation, they're a management service and there's mixtures of all those models that are out there and so that's why we try to use a more encompassing term because they're not all corporations. Uh, a lot of them are different structures. 

[00:19:13] Ed: But there are also companies that, at least in the past, companies that, were built around harvesting timber coming off federal land. 'Cause we used to cut a lot of federal timber. Boise Cascade being one of them, based out of Boise, Idaho. Their harvest came off federal lands is that still a thing?

[00:19:33] Jessica Homyack: I think the mix is gonna be different now where it's, there are certainly companies that are relying on timber coming off of federal lands, but it's gonna be a proportion of their overall mix of 

[00:19:45] Ed: The bigger portfolio. Yeah, 

[00:19:47] Darren Miller: And you have 

[00:19:48] Ed: yeah.

[00:19:49] Darren Miller: Uh, keep that ownership pattern in mind. Here in the southeast is 90% of the land is privately owned. So that's where 

[00:19:54] Ed: Private. 

[00:19:54] Darren Miller: practically all the fiber is coming from. 

[00:19:57] Ed: Yeah. Is there any [00:20:00] harvest on Eastern Southeastern pub- public lands?

[00:20:04] Darren Miller: Oh yeah. There, there's, the, the, the, I, I don't know the exact numbers, but there's still quite a bit that happens on and part, particularly in the deep south. There's a lot of harvest still goes on, on those lands, but I don't have the, have the numbers to tell you how much that is.

[00:20:16] Ed: Yeah. Yeah, the ramp up of, harvest on state and private lands and federal lands was, was almost exponential right up until June of 1990 when the spotted owl was listed and then it dropped like a rock, and really hasn't come back in most of those western forests There just hasn't been a lot of harvest. I see a little bit here and there, when I drive around the west, in various forest conditions, but the markets went away too.

and that's had a huge impact on the ability to harvest trees, hasn't it? 

[00:20:47] Jessica Homyack: it's certainly changed. I mean, just like there's a diversity of management objectives for private forest landowners. There's some variation across the public lands too. So if you're in the west, for the Bureau of Land Management is a forest [00:21:00] landowner in Oregon. They're gonna have a different, kind of silvicultural system and harvest system than Forest Service lands in the same state Because of that. 

[00:21:09] Darren Miller: Yeah the other time that we really saw a change in timber harvest was the 2008 recession. we still have not recovered harvest rates or log prices since 2008. We're still way below what was being harvested then overall. Uh, and so part part of that's actually a problem.

We talk... kind of move this back into biodiversity a little bit just for a second. There's large areas of the southeast there is no market for small diameter wood right now. So all of these landowners that planted pines, for example, as part of CRP programs and other things, they don't have a market. And so that really influences the ability to manage those private forests to benefit wildlife. And there's been some recent mill closures here, the last, even the last six months, and there's a lot we're starting to look at what are the consequences of some of that from an environmental standpoint and from a wildlife standpoint as [00:22:00] well. 

[00:22:01] Katie Perkins: Stay with us. We'll be right back after this message. Whether you're a student, early career professional, or seasoned biologist, The Wildlife Society has the tools to help you grow. From career resources and job boards to science-based publications and networking, TWS is your professional home. Learn more at wildlife.org. So it's no secret that wildfires are becoming more frequent, more intense. How does a company that is trying to manage maybe for reducing fuel loads. What do those treatments do to the wildlife populations in those forests? 

[00:22:38] Jessica Homyack: When we think about managing fuel loads on managed timberlands, it may be removing some of the smaller diameter trees that are competing with the trees that are gonna end up through the end of the rotation or maybe some sort of understory thinnings. So all of those can have pretty positive impacts for some suite of biodiversity.

There's, you know, forest [00:23:00] birds that require that type of open canopy conditions. Some of our bat species prefer to to fly and forage in those, in those systems as well. So if we can kind of marry up some of our objectives related to uh, reducing fuel loads and reducing our fire risks on a portion of our landscape that maybe is adjacent to an area where we might have a higher fire risk for example, we're gonna see some positive impacts for biodiversity. I mean, just all species don't require the same thing, so it goes back again to that diversity across a broader landscape, um, increasing the overall number of species that you might see in an area. 

[00:23:38] Katie Perkins: How do you know how to... You know, the, I'm thinking about it and I'm like, it must be such a complex system to, you know, maybe I'm trying to increase this species, or I'm trying to make it a little bit better for that one. Across a whole landscape, how are you even planning out these objectives? 

[00:23:54] Jessica Homyack: That's something that I think I continue to be amazed by working in the forest sector is [00:24:00] how complex every single one of these decisions is for a forest manager and how they are all backed up with science and data. These are not just kind of off-the-cuff decisions.

These are incredibly complex with mathematical calculations in the background about future harvest rates and volumes and markets and wood baskets. So you're right, it's incredibly, it is c- incredibly complex and this is where we maybe rely on our in-house biologists to help us make those decisions. We might know about a, a rare plant species, for example, in a certain area, and so we might make, certain harvest decisions or other management activity decisions directly related to, that plant species. In another area we might just operate kind of more broadly, how are the, our kind of day-to-day operations, providing nesting habitat for neotropical migrants and think about things at at sort of that broader spatial scale too. So it's kind [00:25:00] of a mix of all those things.

It's not a black and white answer for sure. It's gonna differ in each location, based on kind of those objectives and what we're aiming for.

[00:25:09] Ed: Well, I think this is where the interdisciplinary nature of working in the forest industry, and not that that doesn't happen in the, you know, federal and state agencies either, but the timber industry is exceptional at modeling growth rates and habitat conditions on their land. There's no arguing that.

But I think that interdisciplinary approach allows you to understand kind of the, the-- when a clear cut is gonna become a young managed forest, when it's become a, a pole size, uh, all the way up to harvest age, and you can really predict that out and model it across the landscape. That's what fascinated me in joining, uh, the company and, uh, integrating our wildlife data into all those forest growth and yield models, uh, which again, is done at the federal and state level as well.

But it was just a fascinating way to model [00:26:00] things out and predict what's gonna-- where that habitat's gonna move through space and time.

[00:26:04] Darren Miller: Yeah, just to follow up a couple of things. One is it's become more complex because back when you were doing that, people weren't concerned about carbon stocks in forest. And so now you're trying 

[00:26:12] Ed: Right.

[00:26:13] Darren Miller: to balance... because biodiversity objectives and the carbon objectives don't always align. And then also, the other, the other one that we deal with a lot is water. And so you're trying to balance all of those things with a sustainable timber harvest that's returning an investment. At a very broad scale that the diversity of habitat conditions on our landscape can provide conditions for most species. You have younger forest, older forest, non-managed areas, unique communities, maybe wetlands for example, things like that. So most species can find what they need in that landscape over time. But we also know some species may not be able to without our help. So identifying those species and communities and, and having different management in place. To ensure that they're taken care of and there's various mechanisms for doing that. [00:27:00] It's, it's, it's kind of a coarse filter and then a fine filter on top of that. So we know at a broad filter, most species have a place to live, but we know some don't. So what do we have to do special for those species? It may be places for nests, a- as Jessica said. you know, it could be certain formations or certain slopes or, or whatever it might be, that you have to consider then on top of that. 

[00:27:21] Ed: I think the key message there is that fuel treatments are not always compatible with wildlife goals, but they don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's, it's bringing those objectives together and looking where they're, they can be compatible. 

[00:27:34] Darren Miller: I was gonna say, we've even done done some work looking at fire breaks in pollinator habitat because we know that pollinators have to have open areas for those floral resources and fire breaks and thin stands are r- really good places for that, as are young stands. 

[00:27:49] Ed: I wonder a little bit about some of the federal management where it's driven largely by fuels management reductions. So, it's not that wildlife objectives aren't considered, but they may [00:28:00] not be a primary consideration. And with a lot of federal job loss and, and loss in capacity in science and such, I guess we'll have to stay tuned and kinda see how compatible those, fire, fire treatments that are, have been in place for a while, but are gonna be forthcoming in more legislation and such.

I think we need to keep our eye on it and make sure wildlife and fuels treatment are, are, are indeed compatible. Le- let me shift gears a little bit. we talked earlier, you know, in, in an institutional forest, wildlife conservation is not the main driver of the forest management.

Of those, both institutional and, and small private lands, but they're not mutually exclusive either. But how have you seen over time, all, both of you have been in this industry for a while. How do you think the, the owners or the principals of, of the organizations and the managers, are considering these investments in wildlife conservation?

And do they even consider it an investment or is it [00:29:00] a, an impediment that's just, you know, we try to do the minimum requirement to operate. how has that changed and kinda where do we sit today, in terms of conservation as an investment for, for these landowners? 

[00:29:12] Jessica Homyack: Yeah, I think if I reflect back on the forest sector, what I'd see is this, this evolution of wildlife management through the decades, you know, starting with the environmental movements, in the 1970s and going through kind of, you, you alluded to or talked a little bit about spotted owls. Once we had a couple key species on the Endangered Species Act, we became really focused on these individual species.

It might be spotted owls in the west and red-cockaded woodpeckers in the south. Kind of moved into a phase of biodiversity conservation. How do we think about these landscape scales, biodiversity questions that we have? And I'd say maybe today we're in a place more of collaborative conservation and working proactively with our regulatory agencies like the [00:30:00] US Fish and Wildlife Service or NMFS to help, kind of make good decisions on the landscape, but also help these agencies understand the value of working forest landscapes for wildlife too. And along the way, I think our, our kind of leaders at the, at the organizational level in the private forest sector are understanding that that wildlife touches many different segments of the business. So there is this expectation of environmental sustainability from investors. There's a growing expectation, I think, for the public and the public to have more involvement in the decisions that go on, even on private lands. And there's also other kind of business lines such as recreational leases. So many of this is for hunting, bird watching, fishing. It's another revenue stream for many forest landowners too.

[00:30:51] Ed: Yeah.

[00:30:52] Jessica Homyack: So that's wildlife management. So we're, we see it coming through in, in both kind of that economic space, but really also that social space is, is just as important [00:31:00] as a driver. 

[00:31:01] Darren Miller: yeah, so when I, it's a good question about how biodiversity is, is how th-the space has changed for the forest sector over time. When I came into Weyerhaeuser in the late '90s, we were just starting something new ca-called Forest Certification. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative was actually started as part of the American Forest Paper Association, or AF&PA, and it eventually moved out to be its own organization, which it needed to be, it needed to be an independent organization. And so Forest Certification is, basically a system where a third-party auditor looks at the practices undertaken by those that are certified under the different organizations and verifies that they're doing what they say they're doing. And all of those, the two biggest ones in the US certification are Sustainable Forestry Initiative and Forest Stewardship Council, SFI FSC. FSC is more international, and SFI is more North American-focused, But they all have similar principles and, and outcomes. And they have expectations for [00:32:00] biodiversity. And so the, the participants in those have programs in place to address the principles that are expressed in those, in those different standards. And then they're audited against it by an independent, third-party auditor. So it's not just the company saying they're doing it, It's saying they are doing it. I shouldn't just say company. There are state lands that are also SFI certified. And all those certification reports are public record. You can go to SFI's website and look 'em up for any, any of their members and see how they're doing. And over time, those certification standards have changed to reflect new science, new information, new expectations, you know, as Jessica alluded to. And then on top of that, you know, so you have this expectation around this certification space. You have investors, customers and the public that expect, sustainable forestry to be practiced. And now we're getting in an era with these global frameworks to look at biodiversity in particular. There's these, these nature metrics and different things being developed, lot of that is not just for forestry, it's across all [00:33:00] businesses. For example, some of them have goals for showing that your products are not causing deforestation. That's, that's one we work with a lot. And, so all of this is creating a greater expectation for considering those environmental services from the forest, you know, and I, and, and, and so that formalizes it.

But I also say that during my almost 30-year career in, in the forest sector, I've never met anybody that, that wanted to cause harm by the activities they undertook. Whether it was a forester, a wildlife biologist, whoever it might be, looking to do the right thing in the right way, they still have their job to do, which is to keep the fiber moving into the market, but do it in a way that's responsible. And so I think that these mechanisms just provide assurances to those outside the sector that, that we are doing things the right way in our consciousness of, and, and taking care of those species and things that are important to everybody. 

[00:33:55] Ed: You know, on that, point, I completely agree. All the engineers and [00:34:00] foresters and, and the harvest managers and such, they never wanted to do harm, but they had a job to do and, and, and they were looking for us and our advice on, on how to, how to balance that out. Part of the project is really important, and I wanna tell a little story about this because I remember I learned this from, Chris Sokol, down in Klamath Falls when they built, an entire program around managing bald eagle nest tree habitat. And they did that up on upper Klamath Lake, and it was a huge success and a real model for, for managing bald eagle habitat, across the country, really in, in my opinion, but certainly in the, that region.

And they got the foresters involved with it, with the project. They didn't mark the nest trees or anything. And then, you know, now you've got foresters coming up and saying, well, how are our eagles. So they really gain ownership. And I experienced this when we were doing an experiment on snag creation. I went out and talked to the operator one [00:35:00] day and I showed him exactly what I wanted in a very complex, manipulative experiment.

And we did one, it was good. But I told them what I wanted in these different distributions and densities of snags, and they said, well, aren't you gonna mark the trees?

And I'm like, no, that's your job. Here's the guide, you do it. And it gave them that ownership and they loved it. They really appreciated it. So, uh, that's one way I think to really help, is get your operational folks involved as close to the front end as you possibly can. They expect you to design the good science, but make them part of the project.

And I think they just own it and it's so much better.

[00:35:38] Darren Miller: I've seen the same thing, and to the point that trust the expertise of the foresters. We put a project in years ago looking at different herbicide treatments and the, the faculty members, the academics were arguing over, we have to use the exact same chemical and the exact same rate across it.

No, you, you need to tell me what you want that stand to look like, and you need to let the local foresters tell you how they're gonna [00:36:00] get it to look like that and that's exactly what we did. And it was a, it ended up being a great study. And I'll add just real quick that we just finished up a wood turtle project in, in the of Maine with fish and wildlife, S- excuse me, up of Michigan. We're also doing one in Maine, so. And once the graduate student talked to the foresters and operation folks about wood turtles, they were calling her several times a day. Hey, just saw a wood turtle. What do I need to do? Because they do have 

[00:36:25] Ed: Yeah. 

[00:36:26] Darren Miller: Ownership and they do have that sense of responsibility. I know Jessica, I think saw the same thing with spotted turtles in North Carolina many years ago. Right.

[00:36:32] Jessica Homyack: There's so many spotted turtles they weren't calling me every day around about them, but 

[00:36:35] Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:35] Jessica Homyack: Maybe rattlesnakes and other things. I certainly would get lots of pictures, be like, what is this snake? 

[00:36:41] Ed: I think that's the low-hanging fruit for integrating across all, all, members of your staff in a, in a given company. The hard part, and I've, I've, I pulled a couple of things away when I, when I was at Weyerhaeuser and when I left, this notion of conservation as an investment as opposed to the proverbial [00:37:00] impediment.

And I think that's really important. And we're still getting there, not just with forest industry, but with wildlife conservation broadly. Because I'm a firm believer that industry has to be part of the discussion and the conservation. And if it's not an investment for them, it may just be viewed as the proverbial impediment and treated as such.

The one thing I haven't seen in any industry done very well, if at all, is integrating conservation performance measures in one's bonus structure or performance reviews. And I think that is the next step to really integrating that, institutionalizing that in a company you don't necessarily have to comment on that.

But that's my feeling is that if we really want to integrate conservation as an investment, with private landowners or with, especially with these institutional companies or any industry, it, it really truly has to be an investment. 

[00:37:54] Jessica Homyack: Yeah, I think there's a couple places where you, you might see that starting to evolve [00:38:00] is things like our SFI certification, these third-party sustainability certifications. There's an expectation at the company level that we are going to do well in that process and continue to do well. The same idea from these investor-led decisions.

We want investors to, to pick forest land as the place to kinda put their money for growth. And part of those expectations, again, is that environmental sustainability. So maybe not, you know, direct metrics back to wildlife conservation, but it's in the, in the landscape. 

[00:38:30] Ed: Yeah,

I think, you know, forest land managers and vice presidents and such always had a metric in there to, not break the law. You know, don't violate the Endangered Species Act, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, it's good to hear that, some of those metrics are making their way into, into other angles of it's not just an endangered species or not breaking the law issue. It's proactive conservation opportunities.

[00:38:54] Jessica Homyack: Yeah. 

[00:38:54] Darren Miller: Don't look at what the Endangered Species Act says you can't do.

Look at what it says you can do, and there's a [00:39:00] lot of things you can do within the ESA. 

[00:39:02] Ed: Mm-hmm. 

[00:39:02] Darren Miller: That promotes collaborative conservation, that promotes working together to find solutions instead of being used as a hammer to punish landowners for not doing the right thing, which a changing view and on both sides, actually.

And I think it's been nothing but positive. We can, we can get into that a little bit later. 

[00:39:22] Ed: 'Cause you both have worked in the south and you're familiar with, some of the agreements that were put together on things you could do under the guise of the ESA, and it spawned the whole conservation without conflict movement.

It didn't have a name necessarily before that, but that was a really big d- It's a big deal in the South particularly, isn't it? Especially with our friend Jimmy Bullock, who works with a lot of small private landowners and e- exacting proactive conservation, before you have to worry about a listing issue.

[00:39:53] Darren Miller: I'm gonna tell you a quick story. This is like Jimmy, I'm gonna steal, I'm gonna channel my inner Jimmy Bullard, 'cause this is one of his favorite examples he used about collaborative [00:40:00] conservation. You mentioned the spotted owl got listed in 1990. what other species in the south also got listed almost the exact same time? 

[00:40:07] Ed: Red-cockaded Woodpecker, wasn't it? 

[00:40:10] Darren Miller: They were 

[00:40:10] Ed: Nope. 

[00:40:11] Darren Miller: act. 

[00:40:12] Ed: They were already listed. Okay

[00:40:13] Darren Miller: don't know, and that, that's actually really important,

Louisiana Black Bear, 

[00:40:17] Ed: Oh yeah, black bear. 

[00:40:18] Darren Miller: almost the exact same time, and when it was listed, newspapers all over the country proclaimed it to be the spotted owl of the south. It was it was gonna destroy forestry. 

Now obviously black bears and spotted owls have different habitat requirements and needs, but what changed that, the reason you didn't know that, because the Fish and Wildlife Service worked originally with private landowners to conserve Louisiana black bear because their big threat was habitat loss, agricultural conversion for the most part. They were already protected. So WRP other NRCS programs encouraged replanting of trees, re, re recovering agricultural lands, and all of this working collaboratively [00:41:00] with a lot of private landowners. The bear was delisted in 2016 and it never caused the same amount of angst as the spotted owl did. 

[00:41:07] Ed: Right 

[00:41:08] Darren Miller: that was really the first real example of how collaborative conversation could work to avoid conflict. 

[00:41:14] Ed: No, it's a really good one. I mean, when I was working on sage grouse, I heard the same thing. Well, here's our spotted owl of the plains.

[00:41:20] Jessica Homyack: Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:21] Ed: and the only thing sage grouse and spotted owl had in common was an ESA listing and they were birds. That's it. They're very, very different situations. You're talking scale across 11 states. Totally different biome. It just, yeah, they were night and day different, So I found it entertaining when, some folks were making that comparison. 'cause that's the only, literally the only two commonalities. Those two have. they're avia- they're an avian species and one was proposed and one was already listed.

So, very unique example. I appreciate that. 'cause yeah, black bears are a celebration for us. Huge [00:42:00] conservation success.

[00:42:01] Katie Perkins: I would love to know a little bit about what it actually looks like to work with managed forest lands for wildlife conservation. Can you give us a few examples of some projects you worked on and what made them work? 

[00:42:11] Jessica Homyack: So maybe a couple favorites from my career. So as I mentioned, I started in the southeast first as a wildlife scientist, so, so two kind of big areas of research there that were just, you know, really kind of fun and exciting for me was looking at wetland-associated species, mostly amphibians and reptiles, including spotted turtles in some of these ephemeral aquatic habitats in Eastern North Carolina. I mean, similar to what we talked about before, these were just kind of knowledge gaps for us. So even understanding that there's going to be 30 to 40 species of amphibians and reptiles using this habitat type on managed forest, many of these were either imperiled species or species of concern at the state level.

Another one that was really fun is we were doing a lot of work looking at biomass [00:43:00] harvesting and trying to understand the overall impacts of harvesting the woody residuals left behind after a clear-cut harvest on everything from soil properties, soil carbon, looking at wildlife communities, small mammals and amphibians, and reptiles too. And that was another really exciting multidisciplinary and collaborative project with lots of universities and graduate students involved. And then, just real quickly, a third one that working on now is in 2020 there was really large wildfires that occurred in the state of Oregon, and we very quickly put together a whole portfolio of work to try and understand the environmental impacts of these large intense wildfires on fish, on wildlife, on kind of soil properties and slope stability. And that work's ongoing, but really kind of exciting and, and new ground and will really help us make better or management decisions in the future, or just understand how our decisions played out this time around too.

[00:43:59] Darren Miller: Yeah. You know, that [00:44:00] last one is, is, is really good in, in NCASI we had a lot of several studies in place in the location of those wildfires and our staff worked with Jessica and other others of our members to pivot to look at those fire effects because what a fantastic opportunity. And, and our Western staff did a, just a fantastic job taking advantage of a very bad situation. Um, but Katie, I'll give you two, I'll give you two examples. The first one we've already touched on, which is the bat work. And. that was a huge information gap in the southeast. There was almost no work done on, private forests and bat conservation. What we didn't even know what bat species were there. 

And I was at a conference and a very prominent bat person suggested there weren't any bats on managed landscapes. Just said it, and Ed remembers this because I called him because he was in the bat world. I said, you know, "What's going on here?" So I started doing the literature review and all the work was on public land.

And so Ed traveled to Mississippi from Oregon and showed me how to catch bats, and I spent the next 15 years helping to fill that information gap. But the one that, [00:45:00] that has really been the most, gratifying for me is tied to conservation without conflict. So we have a program called the Wildlife Conservation Initiative, the key partners in that are NCASI, National Alliance of Forest Owners, NAFO and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

And other partners, Sustainable Forest Initiative, Wildlife Management Institute, Associates Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and state agencies. But those are the three principals. And what happened was, is in about the mid-2000s, 2013 or 14. Y'all may remember the mega petitions, Jessica, you were still in the south working for Weyerhaeuser when environmental groups petitioned over 500 species to be listed all at the same time, the service couldn't address all of that within the time constraints dictated by law. So then they were able to sue the service. That's kind of how that process worked. So we private landowners and the service, realized we needed to help each other. Because a lot of those species were aquatic species and we had almost no information on it. So we started thinking, how can we fill these information gaps? And the first species we looked at were gopher tortoises, [00:46:00] terrestrial species in the southeast, they need open forest canopy conditions, pine forest, they're a keystone species. So we started there. But what built up was a trust relationship between the forest landowners, NAFO, and the fish and wildlife service to say, let's, let's, let's trust each other and collaborate to understand how these landscapes can help conserve at risk and listed species. Let's have real conversations and let's get to real solutions. And so that has evolved over the years. It is still in place. And so what happened is the service to their credit provided a bunch of funding to do research on managed forests throughout the US. So we have projects Pacific Northwest, the Northern US, and the Southeast US. Pole ears, mussels, wood turtles I mentioned already, marten, fisher, birds, all these species to really understand them. And what that's led to is opportunities for conservation by learning to trust each other and having good conversations. To where just recently RMS, I [00:47:00] mentioned earlier, Resource Management Service reintroduced a listed species on their private land, flatwood salamander. I can't imagine when I started my career that a, that one of our members would intentionally reintroduce a listed species on their property. But that's where we are now. That evolution, to see that through my career more of an adversarial in some cases to being truly collaborative is absolutely amazing.

I've been privileged to be part of that, and to see that, and I'll... real quick example of, of the power of that, we worked on a project in South Alabama in a very biodiverse area, with a, a gentleman named JJ Apodaca, who did his PhD work on private lands, on, red hill Salamanders, a a local, a small endemic in South Alabama. So, long story short, did a whole bunch of sampling from EDNA to visual surveys, to camera trap surveys. Documented many dozens of species and of those many dozens, 25 species of either state or global imperil status on a managed forest landscape. 

[00:48:00] And I think that's really critical because I think we could replicate that study in other landscapes and get very similar results.

Those species are there. What we've lacked is the ability to sample for them effectively and to really understand and embrace the conservation value of these private forests. And WCI is getting us there and it's really, I think we've got a lot more work we can do and a lot more species we can help conserve on those forests. So that's probably the most gratifying thing I've been a part of during my career.

[00:48:28] Ed: I wanna close with something you said, Darren, and we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, the conservation without conflict.

This, this is the future of conservation. It has to be, we have to get out of this waiting for the looming hammer of the ESA to come striking down and get more into proactive conservation. I think it's a challenge because companies are trying to deal with legal issues with the ESA and other, other laws and, and maybe not have the investment or the [00:49:00] incentives to do more proactive, but obviously it works.

And I think that example you gave is beautiful because that's exactly how proactive conservation can and should work at scale. So that's something that actually gives me hope about our abilities to achieve this balance between, managed forest, independent of the kind of forestry, whether it's clear-cutting or, or, uneven-aged management.

It, it really gives me hope that, we can continue to achieve that balance. 

[00:49:28] Darren Miller: I think as part of that is we are seeing where presence of those species is viewed as a positive and not a liability. And I really believe that that is taking place and that's the way, that's where we wanna be, right? 

[00:49:40] Ed: Yeah. 

[00:49:41] Darren Miller: that space. 

[00:49:42] Ed: Well, and I think if you can demonstrate that proactive conservation yields the benefits, not just from a legal perspective, but contributing to biodiversity broadly, how can that not be a win for everyone? I, my, my feeling, has always been that the best way to revise the Endangered [00:50:00] Species Act is never have to use it in the first place. And this is a perfect example of moving into that proactive space. 

[00:50:18] Katie Perkins: You've been listening to the Our Wild Lives Podcast, brought to you by The Wildlife Society. If you're loving the show, we'd love to hear about it. Leave us a review or shoot us a message at the link in the description box. You can learn more about The Wildlife Society at wildlife.org and on our social media pages @TheWildlifeSociety.