Jesse Abrams

Disintegration of the U. S. industrial forest estate: dynamics, trajectories, and questions.

In the past decade ownership of the corporate forestry sector in the USA has undergone remarkable transformation. Corporate consolidation, separation of processing capacity ownership from timberland ownership, and disinvestment from timberland ownership altogether have occurred rapidly and on a global scale. Vertically-integrated forest products companies, once the standard model for publically-traded corporations, have all but disappeared. A new class of timberland investors now dominates the timberland estate. These new owners can be viewed as the most recent manifestation of capital from the core seeking rent in the distant periphery. While in this respect they resemble their industrial forestry predecessors, they differ markedly with regard to landholding objectives, time horizons, management capacities and other characteristics. This transformation has created new challenges and opportunities for other forest owners and for rural communities. Many timber processing mills have closed, restricting markets for smallholder wood. While much former industrial timberland remains in industrial-style timber management, some has been subdivided for ‘highest and best use,’ and conservation buyers have assumed control of a few large blocks. Further fragmentation of the industrial forest estate is anticipated, presenting both challenges and opportunities to small-scale forest owners and rural communities. This paper outlines the dynamics of forest ownership restructuring, posits alternative future scenarios for small-scale forestry, and points to potentially useful future research.

Amenity Landownership, Land Use Change, and the Re-Creation of “Working Landscapes”

In recent years the “working landscape” concept has risen to prominence in popular, academic, and policy discourse surrounding conservation of both natural and cultural values in inhabited landscapes. Despite its implied reconciliation of commodity production and environmental protection, this concept remains contested terrain, masking tensions over land use practices and understandings of human–nature relations. Here we draw on a case study of landownership and land use change in remote, rural Wallowa County, Oregon to explore how working landscapes are envisioned and enacted by various actors. The arrival of landowning amenity migrants, many of whom actively endorsed a working landscape vision, resulted in subtle but significant transformations in land use practices and altered opportunities for local producers. The working landscape ideal, while replete with tensions and contradictions, nevertheless functioned as an important alternative vision to the rural gentrification characteristic of other scenic Western environs.

Re-envisioning community-wildfire relations in the U.S. West as adaptive governance

Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, and measure community-level resilience to wildfires. To date, however, insufficient consideration has been given to wildfire resilience as a process of adaptive governance mediated by institutions at multiple scales. Here we explore the possibilities for addressing this gap through an analysis of wildfire resilience among wildland-urban interface communities in the western region of the United States. We re-engage important but overlooked components of social-ecological system resilience by situating rural communities within their stateto national-level institutional contexts; we then analyze two communities in Nevada and New Mexico in terms of their institutional settings and responses to recent wildfire events. We frame our analysis around the concepts of scale matching, linking within and across scales, and institutional flexibility.

Socioeconomic Barriers and the Role of Biomass Utilization in Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Restoration

There is general consensus that ecological restoration of southwestern ponderosa pine systems is necessary and there exists ample ecological science suggesting that it is physically attainable. However, the pace of restoration has been noticeably slow and is far from approaching the landscape level. We conducted a review of published journal articles, book chapters, and proceedings on the restoration of ponderosa pine forests in the Southwest in order to identify and examine the primary socioeconomic barriers that are impeding the progress of ecological restoration in the region. The role of small-diameter wood utilization in the southwestern United States is highlighted as an example of broader, divergent socioeconomic contexts needing reconciliation if restoration is to expand to the ecosystem scale. A synthesis of opportunities for overcoming barriers and furthering the progress of forest restoration is provided.

Developing Fire Adapted Communities: The Importance of Interactions Among Elements of Local Context

ABSTRACT Resident perceptions and actions related to wildfire management are influenced by a complex set of factors that are often tied to a specific local context. We conducted in-depth case studies in two diverse communities to better illustrate how elements of local social context collectively influence wildfire perspectives and behaviors in a given locality. Our results suggest that the influence of commonly cited predictors for wildfire mitigation actions, including homeowners’ associations, vegetation preferences, and previous experience with wildfire, can vary based on their interaction with other elements of local context such as residents’ desire for privacy, preferences for wildland or ornamental vegetation, identification as “suburbanites” or “country residents,” and willingness to collectively organize. We compare our results to existing wildfire social science findings and argue for a more holistic view of local social context as a way to design tailored strategies for increasing resident responsibility for wildfire.

Fire in the Forest: Public Perceptions of Ecological Restoration in North-central Arizona

In recent years residents of the intermontane West have experienced a series of expensive and high-profile fire seasons. One result is that the concept of ecological restoration has moved squarely into public view. As scientists and practitioners continue to refine the definition of ecological restoration as a practical matter, citizens are forming their own perceptions of how restoration should be applied to local forests. We used a recent public opinion survey in north-central Arizona to assess public views of restoration. Our findings indicate broad support for restoration although portions of the population, particularly those in rural areas, see restoration primarily as a means to protect human lives and property from fire. Most importantly, our findings suggest that a majority of the public in this region have a view of restoration beyond fire risk reduction, but vary in their willingness to accept dramatic changes to forest conditions.

Living among Frequent-fire Forests: Human History and Cultural Perspectives

Ecological and social factors shaped old-growth forests of the western United States before Euro-American settlement, and will, in large part, determine their future. In this article, we focus on the social factors that affected the forest’s ecological structure and function, review the changing cultural influences through law and policy of public land management and use, and discuss the changing public perceptions of fire use. We also provide an overview of the current debates about the conservation of oldgrowth forests, and the current congressional protection and management of old-growth forests in public land management and use.

Community wildfire protection planning in the American West: homogeneity within diversity?

As large wildfires have become common across the American West, federal policies such as the Healthy Forests Restoration Act have empowered local communities to plan for their own wildfire protection. Here, we present an analysis of 113 community wildfire protection plans from 10 western states where large fires have recently occurred. These plans contain wide diversity in terms of specific plan elements and dimensions, yet less diversity in the paradigms underlying their fire protection approaches. These patterns held true across both plans constructed solely by local actors as well as those constructed with the help of outside consultant expertise.

Why People Matter in Ecological Restoration

Ecological restoration is a practice of hope; hope because restorationists envision a better future as a result of their efforts. Ecological restoration is a practice of faith; faith because restorationists work in a world of uncertainty. Finally, ecological restoration is a practice of love; love because restorationists care about, and give their lives to, efforts that protect and enhance the lives of humans and other-than-human beings alike. Ecological restoration is a human practice, and because it is, people matter.

Adaptation to a landscape-scale mountain pine beetle epidemic in the era of networked governance: the enduring importance of bureaucratic institutions

The authors sincerely thank our interviewees for sharing their time and perspectives with us. Thank you to Tony Cheng for supplying data on CBBC membership. Thank you to Kelly Jacobson for assistance with Figure 4. This research is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. 1414041.