Ensuring The Health Of Our Forests For Generations To Come

It’s an iconic image of Louisiana that ranks right up there with Mardi Gras, jazz and Cajun cooking: the majestic cypress stretching up out of the rich wetlands. In recent years, threats to the cypress population in Louisiana have received a lot of media attention causing many individuals to wonder - and perhaps worry about the future of the cypress trees. However one organization is sharply focused on the facts surrounding the health of Louisiana’s state tree and ensuring it’s here for future generations to enjoy.

Protecting Our Forests

The Louisiana Forestry Association (LFA) was established in 1947 with a mission to foster sustainable forestry practices, rebuild the state's cut-over lands and encourage a healthy forest industry. More than fifty years later, the LFA is a statewide, private nonprofit with more than 3,500 members, including mostly large and small landowners along with those working in forest-related industries.

The organization was recently awarded SmartLogging certification by the Rainforest Alliance, an international nonprofit conservation organization. LFA is one of only two organizations to have ever been awarded this certification, which requires that members have harvest plans which include wildlife habitat protection, occupational health and safety, and water and soil conservation, among other criteria. This prestigious certification recognizes the commitment of the LFA to protect the delicate ecosystems of Louisiana’s forests.

The True State of the Trees According to the U.S. Forest Service, more than 400,000 new cypress trees are generated each year and cypress forests have actually increased in the past 10 years. In fact, Louisiana cypress forests are growing six times as fast as trees are being harvested. In addition to the natural regeneration that occurs when best management practices are implemented, landowners in the state plant more than 128 million seedlings each year, increasing the number of trees. Current legislation prohibits cutting trees in sensitive areas.

At present, Louisiana’s forest land is owned by a variety of entities. Eighty-one percent of forest land in the state is owned by non-industrial private owners, who pay annual taxes on their property. Ten percent is owned by the forest industry, and the remaining nine percent is held by public agencies.

Threats: Separating Fact from Rumor

According to a report by the Coastal Wetland Forest Conservation and Use Science Working Group, the major threats to Louisiana’s cypress forests come not from harvesting, but are primarily due to altered hydrology (flood-control levees along the Mississippi River that reduced freshwater and sediment inputs), land subsidence and canal construction that has led to greater saltwater intrusion into coastal wetlands.

Experts from the LFA concur and acknowledge that some trees in the state are dying as the result of man-made water diversion programs. For the last 100 years, flood control measures in the lower Mississippi River estuary have altered the flow of fresh water to the Gulf. In many areas, levee, canal and road construction have created impounded wetlands where flooding is often permanent and doesn’t allow cypress seeds the dry land needed for plant regeneration. Also, the loss of barrier islands allows more gulf water to flow inland resulting in tree death from saltwater intrusion.

Most landowners sell their cypress for higher-value products like cypress lumber found in homes throughout the state. The by-products from these sawmills do go into other markets such as mulch, but if they did not, mills would have to deal with the disposal of this debris in an inefficient manner. Less than two percent of the trees harvested in Louisiana are cypress, and less than 20 percent of that two percent is used for mulch.

The Future of the Trees

The forest industry contributes more than $5 billion annually to the state’s economy. Therefore, the LFA continues to educate its members to assure the forests ability to produce goods (such as cypress timber) and services are sustained and managed properly. The solution is not to stop harvesting trees altogether, but rather, efforts must be taken to rectify the man-made threats introduced over the past 100 years, while landowners and professional foresters work together to ensure best practice management for forest sustainability.

Half of our state is forested, said C.A. “Buck” Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association. I think the private landowners of this state have shown that they treasure their forestlands and want to hand them down to the generations after them.
If private landowners are prohibited from any harvesting at all, they would likely be left with no choice but to sell their land to developers, which often results in clear-cutting of the land and increased development that simply augments man-made threats elsewhere.

The best way to ensure that cypress trees remain a part of the character and culture of Louisiana is to entrust the management of the forests to those who have a vested interest in their existence and who have the expertise to keep the forest ecosystems healthy for generations to come.