In our first episode of Forest Matters, host Mark Fortune sits down with Tim White, NativState’s VP of Forestry, to explain what sustainable forestry really means for landowners. Learn how certification works, why it boosts the value of carbon credits, and what it means for harvesting, restrictions, and long-term forest health.
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Episode 1: Forest Certification Overview
Enrollment in a sustainable forestry program helps ensure that landowners receive the highest value for the carbon credits developed from their land. Landowners enrolled in NativState’s forest carbon credit programs participate in certification programs like Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), and American Tree Farm System (ATFS). These programs document sustainable practices and provide global recognition in the Voluntary Carbon Market. Enrollment in these programs can increase carbon credit prices and ensure long-term land management.
In this episode of Forest Matters, NativState VP of Forestry Tim White shares how he arrived at NativState and discusses sustainable forest management:
- What it means for landowners
- Its impact on forest carbon development
- The impact of certification programs on harvesting
- The economic benefits and requirements of certification
- The challenges and future prospects of sustainable forest certification
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sustainable forestry, forest carbon, landowners, certification programs, Forest Stewardship Council, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, American Tree Farm System, carbon credits, best management practices, global carbon markets, native state, forest management, wildlife management, recreational ownership, forest carbon development.
SPEAKERS
Mark Fortune, Tim White
Mark Fortune 00:00
You talk to landowners all day, every day. What do you get asked most often when it comes to forestry questions,
Tim White 00:07
How much can I cut? Or can I cut? How much can I cut? Yeah, can I manage my land just for wildlife? Those are some because a lot of our landowners are in what we consider recreational ownership. They love to hunt, fish, birdwatch, whatever, and so that’s why they got their land. So none of these certification programs are designed to inhibit any activity in the forest, any sustainable activity.
Mark Fortune:
I should say, welcome to Forest Matters, a podcast about sustainable forest management, forest carbon development and the opportunities available to landowners through global carbon markets. Forest Matters is brought to you by NativState, the leading forest carbon development company for small private landowners.
Mark Fortune 00:52
All right, welcome to the NativState Forest Matters podcast, Mr. Tim White, Vice President of forestry at NativState. How are you today?
Tim White:
I’m great. Thanks.
Mark Fortune:
Good. We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about sustainable forestry and forest management programs today, but before we get into all those details, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be at native state.
Tim White:
Oh, I’ll try to give you the short version, less than 30 minutes. So I’ve been a consultant forester since 1989 in Arkansas, I’ve worked with a lot of landowners, governmental agencies, just practicing forestry in the field. In 2021 about February, I got a call from somebody I’d never met before, named Stuart Allen. And Stuart said, I got this idea for forest carbon, and could you come talk to me? I’m like, Yeah, sure, whatever. That’s exactly what I said. I told my wife, I’m like, I don’t know what this is about, but we talked for four hours the first time, and Stuart was very compelling.
Tim White 01:50
He had thought this through completely to the best of his ability that we knew at the time. And so it sounds intriguing. I’ve built companies before. I’ve worked, you know, for myself, and it was like, hey, this sounds like it’d be fun. And fast forward over almost five years, close to over four years, and here we are, so we’re doing it every day. But it was just out of the blue, and I asked him, I said, How did you find me? He said, Well, I talked to two or three people, and every one of them mentioned you. He says they didn’t mention you first, but somewhere in the conversation, they mentioned you. So I’m like, well, that’s probably a good thing. So that’s how we started.
Mark Fortune 02:31
Had you been involved in forest carbon at all prior to that?
Tim White 02:36
Back in 2009 and 10, when the Chicago Climate Exchange was still functioning. I had just gotten briefly. I hadn’t done any work, but I’d gotten to know and try to understand how all that worked. And before I could get it understood, it was gone. I mean, 2010 it went away, and so it’s kind of died and never came back until 2021
Mark Fortune 02:58
All right, so let’s dive into sustainable forestry and forest certification. So why don’t you give us a short overview of what sustainable forest management is, and then maybe the three different certifications that we primarily work with.
Tim White 03:13
I want to start by saying sustainable forest management is what all foresters practice. There are certification programs that we’ll talk about today that will recognize and document the sustainable management. And the reason I say that is when I got out of school in 1981 we had more trees, more tons, more species than we did back then. So obviously, these foresters in general, are doing something sustainable now when it comes to a certification program such as Forest Stewardship Council, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or the American Tree Farm System, those are certification programs that basically document the sustainable activities and document them very well, and they probably go above and beyond the typical forest management. How much did you cut, how much did you plant, how much did you spray, whatever, they go above and consider other factors, cobenefits, if you will, that a typical forester doesn’t do so, you know,
Mark Fortune 04:19
Just to back up a sec, from a forest carbon program standpoint, I know this comes up all the time when we’re talking to land owners. Does enrolling in a forest carbon program, such as NativState’s and then a subsequent forest certification program preclude all harvesting from trees on my forest once I’m enrolled?
Tim White 04:35
No, not at all. Sustainable forestry includes harvesting that’s good, healthy forestry. So no, there’s no provision for not harvesting in a sustainability program, right?
Mark Fortune 04:47
So kind of building on that, what are the biggest benefits for landowners in enrolling in a sustainable forest management program?
Tim White 04:55
Well, to me, and I’m a forest landowner, so I’ll include myself. The biggest benefit is to know that you’re part of something larger. And here’s what I mean. Back in the old days, 70s and 80s, we sold forest products down the road, across the state line, locally, we are in a world market, as are many steel and automobiles and all that. So we’re selling lumber, forest products, chips, pellets, you name it, across the world. So we have to kind of play in that arena. Well, a certification program is kind of a universal standard that everybody recognizes, whether you’re in France or you’re in England or you’re in Brazil or the United States. So they all have the same standards, and the same standards apply no matter where you are. So if I’m practicing good forestry in Arkansas, I want to be recognized, and the only way to be recognized, besides, you know, tooting my own horn, is to have a sustainability program that I adhere to. And each one of these programs have standards. There’s 10 in FSC and I think 13 in SFI. But these standards basically benchmark what you’re doing on your land. Are you recognizing those high conservation value areas? Are you altering your management to take advantage or work within a threatened or endangered species. Those are things that you probably were doing. You just didn’t document it. And so that’s the biggest benefit of a certification program. And so that people that are buying lumber, or in some cases, carbon credits from another country in the world, can say, oh, okay, they adhere to this standard, and they know what that means, right?
Mark Fortune 06:42
So, when we’ve worked with global companies that are looking to do agreements with NativeState for forest carbon credits that we produce, what impact does being enrolled in one of these certification programs have for them when they’re looking at us? I mean, you’ve gone through this due diligence process, right? A number of times, right?
Tim White 06:59
It’s huge in that they, you know, forest carbon, in some respects, is about managing risk. You know, these lands are actively growing. They’re here. They’re owned by private individuals with private property rights, and all the luxuries that we enjoy in the United States as far as land ownership. So a company in another country would say, Well, how do I know that’s going to be there 40 years from now? How do I know? You know I could say, because I’ve been doing this a long time, because I said, so, well, I’m not going to be here forever, and so they have to have this standard that we talk about in certification that they adhere to that standard. That’s how you’ll know. You know they won’t go through an smz. They will, they’ll adhere to the BMPs. They will. They will protect cultural sites. They’ll involve other stakeholders, community involvement, that type of stuff. That’s what they they get from being in a certification program within a carbon program.
Mark Fortune 07:58
Well, and so just to go to the economics for a minute, what impacts have you seen on the selling price of carbon credits when they’re enrolled in one of these standards?
Tim White 08:09
In general, it’s more because they’re willing to part with a little more money for a carbon credit. If you can adhere to this standard, because it’s it’s not just something as simple as signing up, right? You have to do things. You have to manage your land. I wouldn’t say differently. I would say maybe a little more conscientiously. But yes, it is. There is a financial benefit to the landowner for that.
Mark Fortune 08:35
Well, so kind of, as you kind of mentioned that in that last in that last question, what is required of the landowner once they’re enrolled in one of these certification programs, typically,
Tim White 08:44
Well, how much time do we have? How long is this podcast? It’s, it’s, we can get into the minutia. We won’t get into the minutia, but, but in general, there are, like I said, there are standards. There are 10 standards and they give guidance for each standard, and they say, Okay, here’s an example of that, but let’s just say you must have your boundary lines posted. You must know where your land is. I know that sounds a little silly, but if we’re talking about 160 acre or 600 acre parcel, well, they need to know that. We know where the boundaries are. So in the event that you do a harvest, you know where the boundaries are. Do you know what the best management practice, we call them, BMPs, do you know what those are, and do you know how to implement them? Do you know what that covers when it comes to the width of an smz, a streamside management zone along a creek? Do you know what that is? Are you using a contractor, whether it be a harvesting contractor or a herbicide applications contractor, are you using somebody that has been trained and is certified and that can follow all laws and regulations? That’s a big deal in all these because it’s a worldwide standard, and there are, let’s admit there are places in the world where they don’t have the laws and regulations that we do in the United States, but it doesn’t matter. We must always follow all laws, and that means OSHA laws, that means safety laws, that means hazardous spill regulations, that means a lot of things. Like I said, we can’t get way down into minutia just yet, but in general, document what you do. Use qualified personnel to do this, or you may be disqualified. You can do it yourself and keep good records, because all these certification programs have a yearly audit. And the thing that myself and hopefully my predecessor or my successor will be, is keeping up with what happened on that piece of ground down in Louisiana or over in Missouri or wherever. You know the app, the landowner applied to herbicide. Okay, that’s fine. What did they apply? When do they apply it? How much did they apply? What was the active ingredient? Who was a certified applicator? That’s all you need to know. Most people don’t keep those kind of records. The general public does not. That’s one thing that you would need to do if you’re going to build a road. Okay, there are road building specs inside the BMPs. Let’s follow those. Let’s put in water bars. Let’s put in any kind of things to hold the surface soil so it doesn’t move. So there’s a few examples of what a landowner should do, but the most important thing is, if they’re with NativeState, all they have to do is contact us. We can go over every little bit of that. We can go out to their property. I just hired two new foresters, or two additional foresters to do just monitoring and reporting and all these things that were looked at by these buyers to do?
Mark Fortune 11:43
Yeah, and I think that’s an important point, you know, because it can, it might sound onerous, but talk for a minute, if you will, about the resources of forest carbon development company like NativeState or whomever someone might enroll with, provides to the landowner to to work through these programs.
Tim White 11:58
Well, it is onerous, but it’s on us to be the onerousness. I’m not sure there’s a joke in there somewhere, but it is on us to make sure, because we are the certificate holder for that group certification. So it will say NativState certificate number XYZ, and all the landowners will fall underneath us. And so we’re kind of responsible for that, and we don’t mind that. But it is, it’s a big deal because you’ve got 600 plus 1000 acres scattered in nine or 10 states. It can turn into a real job pretty quick. But that’s okay. That’s what we’re here for. Other carbon companies, I’m not sure how many other carbon companies are in a certification program, but it’s, it’s the next level. It is the, I don’t want to use the word gold standard, because there’s a registry called Gold registry called gold but, but it is above and beyond what you really need to do in a carbon program. If you want to have the highest value, most conscientious, most sustainable carbon credits, then this is what we need to do right.
Mark Fortune 12:57
Kind of to wrap up on this episode, so backing up a little bit. What do you, you talk to landowners all day, every day, and carbon companies, you know, carbon credit buyers, all day, every day. What do you get asked most often when it comes to forestry questions, how much can I cut, or can I cut? How much can I cut?
Tim White 13:16
Yeah, can I can I manage my land for just for wildlife? Those are those are some because a lot of our landowners are in the what we consider recreational ownership. They love to hunt, fish, bird, watch, whatever, and so that’s why they got their land. So none of these certification programs are designed to inhibit any activity in the forest, any any sustainable activity, I should say. So most people don’t know, so therefore they’re a little skeptical. And I was skeptical, I’ll be honest, when I heard we were going down this road, I was like,
Mark Fortune 13:57
Yeah, I remember our first discussions about this.
Tim White 14:00
But with education comes less skepticism. So having dug in and having dealt with consultants and with FSC and with SFI themselves, it’s not as daunting. It’s it is above and beyond. And some landowners just say, What am I getting for this? Well, you’re getting a higher carbon price. And I have a feeling, and this is just my feeling, you know, right now, landowners don’t get any more money for the timber they sell, whether it’s FSC or SFI or tree farm, because we’re dealing on such a world stage. I’m not sure that won’t change. Recently, Arkansas had a Brazilian company buy a paper mill, and they changed like within days, their procurement practices to take just certified wood. Sustainability Program is what we call certified wood. So I’m not sure that’s a sign of things to come or. Maybe we’re just trying to test the market to see. But if you are, if you are in a sustainability program such as FSC or SFI or tree farm, you’ll have one leg up on your landowner neighbor that doesn’t when it comes time to sell your timber, so I don’t know. We’ll see what the future holds.
Mark Fortune 15:18
All right. And with that, thanks, Tim for your time, and we’ll be talking to you again soon.
Tim White 15:22
Good to talk to you. Thanks.
Outro
Forest matters is brought to you by NativState, the leading forest carbon development company for small private landowners. Learn more at nativstate.com