Owners' rights, protecting La. clash
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Coastal Cypress Links
Research/Associations:
Center for Southeastern Louisiana Studies at Southeastern Louisiana University
Turtle Cove Environmental Research Center at Southeastern Louisiana University
Save Our Cypress Campaign
Louisiana Forestry Association Cypress Mulch Position
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation Habitat Proctection – Saving Our Cypress
Coastal Wetland Forest Conservation and Use
Louisiana Wildlife Federation Coastal Forest Position Statement
Private Industry:
Southern Cypress Manufacturer's Association
Acadian Hardwoods & Cypress
Cajun Cypress & Hardwoods
Louisiana State Cypress
Roy O. Martin Industries
Private Industry:
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When Frank Bonifay was a child, his parents took him fishing at Alligator Bayou near Baton Rouge.
Fond memories of the place lingered as he went on to make millions in the construction industry.
On a visit home in the early 1990s, he and his partner Jim Ragland noticed that interest in logging the area was increasing. So they bought 1,240 acres of cypress forest and decided to preserve it.
“There’s nothing like standing next to a thousand-year-old tree,” Bonifay said. “It must be passed to the future.”
No logging will occur on their property. As the owners of the land, that’s what they want.
But other landowners in Louisiana do want to cut cypress trees on their own property.
Those decisions lie at the heart of a struggle to balance the right of landowners to log their coastal property against concerns that cut cypress forests won’t grow back.
Environmental groups cite a group of scientists who reported that in much of Louisiana’s coastal area, high water drowns cypress saplings, keeping the forests from regenerating. The authors of the report, commissioned by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said something must be done.
Landowners and the timber industry contend coastal cypress logging in the state is sustainable. They point to property logged just a few years ago that is already showing signs of regrowth.
But the issue is more than the age-old struggle over property rights.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita underscored evidence that cypress forests reduce storm surge — making coastal logging an issue of hurricane protection.
Southeastern Louisiana University researcher Gary Shaffer said test plots of cypress planted in the area hit by Katrina withstood the storm well even as surrounding trees were flattened.
That’s particularly important as state and federal officials design a system combining natural barriers and man-made structures to improve hurricane protection.
Click here to view the map
of areas covered in this story.
Renewed interest
Coastal cypress has been cut for as long as people have occupied Louisiana. But logging was limited by access to the interior marsh until the late 1800s, when people could use steam engines to pull out cut cypress.
Cypress logging in Louisiana peaked in 1913, when more than 700 million board feet of timber were processed in 94 mills. Now about 7 million board feet of cypress is logged a year, according to the report commissioned by the governor.
Though most of the original cypress is gone, subsequent generations of the trees are now big enough to support new logging. New lumber mills are opening and interest in cypress mulch is rising.
The increase in supply and demand — and the feeling that some cypress forests were deteriorating — is what led to the formation of the Governor’s Science Working Group on Coastal Forests.
“These forests provide a lot of functions and services and value for the people of Louisiana,” said Jim Chambers, chairman of the group and a professor of forest ecology in the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources.
The group made recommendations for sustainable management of the coastal forests. One was preserving certain forests until natural water movement could be restored.
The gradual sinking of the land — known as subsidence — causes some cypress forests to stay flooded too long. Though cypress can grow in standing water, it needs a period of dry ground to let seeds sprout. And after sprouting, the top of the cypress must remain above water during wet times or the tree can essentially drown.
The science group reported that cypress in many areas won’t grow back if cut. That land could turn into open water or marsh or be taken over by faster-growing species of trees.
So the group recommended a moratorium on cypress logging on state-owned land that is flooded year-round. The group also recommended delaying harvests on similar private land, along with financial incentives to help compensate landowners for holding off on logging.
In most cases, landowners aren’t required to have a forestry management plan, Chambers said. That means logging can generally occur in forests without a regeneration plan in place.
“I essentially think we have little or no management of coastal wetland forests right now,” Chambers said.
But Chambers cautions against reading the issue as an “either/or” proposition. Not all landowners want the same thing, despite the common assumption that all want to clear-cut their property.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” he said.
Landowners wary of rules
State forestry officials estimate about 80 percent of the 800,000 acres of cypress wetland forest in the state is privately owned.
Landowners and the state’s logging industry say steps can be taken to better the chances of regrowth. For example, harvesting in drier seasons can keep equipment from leaving ruts that trap water, which can drown cypress seedlings.
What won’t help, they say, is making rules that could make it nearly impossible for landowners to harvest their timber.
Buck Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association, a forest industry advocacy group, acknowledges some cypress forests face problems.
But he said the biggest misconception is that all the state’s cypress is in trouble. Most is on land that dries out enough to allow regrowth, he said.
“We have so much more growth in cypress than we have harvesting,” Vandersteen said.
He cites property partially logged by Glenn Miller in the Lake Maurepas basin several years ago. That cutting was halted when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided a Clean Water Act permit was needed.
Cypress seedlings can be seen everywhere in the dense undergrowth. Mike Thomas, assistant chief of forest management with the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry, estimates the regrowth there at 700 to 800 seedlings per acre.
Toni DeBosier, a coastal resource scientist with the state Department of Natural Resources, added that although they are overshadowed by quick-growing trees such as tallow, the cypress will take over. Tallow don’t live as long as cypress, she explained, and the canopy created by more mature cypress will eventually shade out other trees.
A member of the coastal forest advisory panel, Vandersteen opposes a moratorium on logging on any land.
He argues landowners should be allowed to salvage trees that fall on their property and clear them out for boat traffic. They should be allowed to get some value for the timber before it becomes too damaged or rotten, he said.
“It’s not fair for a landowner to be out all these costs,” Vandersteen said.
But he also pointed out that temporary guidelines are being drawn up to help landowners decide how to manage their lands in a sustainable way.
“No landowner wants to destroy their property,” Vandersteen said.
Another option
Dean Wilson, with the Atchafalaya Basinkeepers environmental group, agrees that landowners don’t want to see their property damaged.
But Wilson, who favors restricting cypress logging, argues the owners don’t always get good information about what will happen to their property during or after logging.
He said the timber industry uses scare tactics, such as telling people they won’t be able to sell their trees unless they cut right now.
The landowners are reassured their woodlands will grow back as cypress, but many will become forests of faster-growing trees instead, Wilson said.
Cypress forests haven’t truly recovered from the last time they were logged, in the early 1900s.
“All the cypress in Louisiana is second-growth,” Wilson said. “They’re 100 years old and they’re very small.”
Regeneration, he said, should mean returning the ecosystem to its original state, which isn’t large tracts of small trees.
Selective logging can be done, but that’s not in the best interest of the industry, he said.
“I fly everywhere, and it’s all clear-cut,” Wilson said.
Wilson suggests a way to ensure landowners a return on their land and to solve the issue of clear-cutting — the state should buy “as many swamps as they can and protect them in perpetuity.”
Yet the advisory panel report doesn’t include a moratorium even for logging in forests owned by the state, he said.
“I just don’t understand it,” Wilson said.
He argues there is a better way to make money off cypress forests. Tourists flock to Louisiana to experience Cajun culture, and part of that experience is seeing a large cypress swamp, he said.
Eco-tourism could increase the money made off cypress forests and provide a more-constant income stream than logging, he said.
That’s the path Bonifay and Ragland are taking as owners of Alligator Bayou Tours in Ascension Parish. Buying the 1,240 acres of cypress forest for preservation put them into debt, but Bonifay says he has no regrets.
The trees, some hundreds of years old, were becoming valuable.
“We foresaw that if we didn’t save it, it’d be gone,” Bonifay said. “After 14 years now, people are starting to realize the importance of the area. I believe in using timber, but not to kill the old-growth forests.”
Knowing he is saving something for the future makes the effort worthwhile, he said.
“We made the right choice,” he said.
Still waiting
After the scientific group suggested that state officials address the coastal cypress issue, Blanco gave the task of coming up with recommendations to an advisory group.
The group is a conglomeration of environmentalists, scientists, state officials and landowners. More than a year-and-a-half later, the group has come up with a report but hasn’t sent it to the governor.
Missing from the recommendations is any type of moratorium on cypress logging.
Doug Daigle, a member of the advisory panel, called the process one of the most badly handled situations he’s seen during his years in environmental work. The report does little, he said.
“It doesn’t deal with the issue. It doesn’t have a plan,” Daigle said.
He and several other panel members say the report includes some good information but makes no recommendations that would change the way logging is done. And many of the suggestions it does include could have been implemented more than a year ago, they said.
Among the recommendations so far:
Vandersteen — the director of the state forestry association and a member of the advisory group — sounds more optimistic about the plan.
The five main recommendations are good, he said.
“It was a compromise effort,” he said. “It was a diverse group.”
Fond memories of the place lingered as he went on to make millions in the construction industry.
On a visit home in the early 1990s, he and his partner Jim Ragland noticed that interest in logging the area was increasing. So they bought 1,240 acres of cypress forest and decided to preserve it.
“There’s nothing like standing next to a thousand-year-old tree,” Bonifay said. “It must be passed to the future.”
No logging will occur on their property. As the owners of the land, that’s what they want.
But other landowners in Louisiana do want to cut cypress trees on their own property.
Those decisions lie at the heart of a struggle to balance the right of landowners to log their coastal property against concerns that cut cypress forests won’t grow back.
Environmental groups cite a group of scientists who reported that in much of Louisiana’s coastal area, high water drowns cypress saplings, keeping the forests from regenerating. The authors of the report, commissioned by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said something must be done.
Landowners and the timber industry contend coastal cypress logging in the state is sustainable. They point to property logged just a few years ago that is already showing signs of regrowth.
But the issue is more than the age-old struggle over property rights.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita underscored evidence that cypress forests reduce storm surge — making coastal logging an issue of hurricane protection.
Southeastern Louisiana University researcher Gary Shaffer said test plots of cypress planted in the area hit by Katrina withstood the storm well even as surrounding trees were flattened.
That’s particularly important as state and federal officials design a system combining natural barriers and man-made structures to improve hurricane protection.
Click here to view the map
of areas covered in this story.
Renewed interest
Coastal cypress has been cut for as long as people have occupied Louisiana. But logging was limited by access to the interior marsh until the late 1800s, when people could use steam engines to pull out cut cypress.
Cypress logging in Louisiana peaked in 1913, when more than 700 million board feet of timber were processed in 94 mills. Now about 7 million board feet of cypress is logged a year, according to the report commissioned by the governor.
Though most of the original cypress is gone, subsequent generations of the trees are now big enough to support new logging. New lumber mills are opening and interest in cypress mulch is rising.
The increase in supply and demand — and the feeling that some cypress forests were deteriorating — is what led to the formation of the Governor’s Science Working Group on Coastal Forests.
“These forests provide a lot of functions and services and value for the people of Louisiana,” said Jim Chambers, chairman of the group and a professor of forest ecology in the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources.
The group made recommendations for sustainable management of the coastal forests. One was preserving certain forests until natural water movement could be restored.
The gradual sinking of the land — known as subsidence — causes some cypress forests to stay flooded too long. Though cypress can grow in standing water, it needs a period of dry ground to let seeds sprout. And after sprouting, the top of the cypress must remain above water during wet times or the tree can essentially drown.
The science group reported that cypress in many areas won’t grow back if cut. That land could turn into open water or marsh or be taken over by faster-growing species of trees.
So the group recommended a moratorium on cypress logging on state-owned land that is flooded year-round. The group also recommended delaying harvests on similar private land, along with financial incentives to help compensate landowners for holding off on logging.
In most cases, landowners aren’t required to have a forestry management plan, Chambers said. That means logging can generally occur in forests without a regeneration plan in place.
“I essentially think we have little or no management of coastal wetland forests right now,” Chambers said.
But Chambers cautions against reading the issue as an “either/or” proposition. Not all landowners want the same thing, despite the common assumption that all want to clear-cut their property.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” he said.
Landowners wary of rules
State forestry officials estimate about 80 percent of the 800,000 acres of cypress wetland forest in the state is privately owned.
Landowners and the state’s logging industry say steps can be taken to better the chances of regrowth. For example, harvesting in drier seasons can keep equipment from leaving ruts that trap water, which can drown cypress seedlings.
What won’t help, they say, is making rules that could make it nearly impossible for landowners to harvest their timber.
Buck Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association, a forest industry advocacy group, acknowledges some cypress forests face problems.
But he said the biggest misconception is that all the state’s cypress is in trouble. Most is on land that dries out enough to allow regrowth, he said.
“We have so much more growth in cypress than we have harvesting,” Vandersteen said.
He cites property partially logged by Glenn Miller in the Lake Maurepas basin several years ago. That cutting was halted when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided a Clean Water Act permit was needed.
Cypress seedlings can be seen everywhere in the dense undergrowth. Mike Thomas, assistant chief of forest management with the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry, estimates the regrowth there at 700 to 800 seedlings per acre.
Toni DeBosier, a coastal resource scientist with the state Department of Natural Resources, added that although they are overshadowed by quick-growing trees such as tallow, the cypress will take over. Tallow don’t live as long as cypress, she explained, and the canopy created by more mature cypress will eventually shade out other trees.
A member of the coastal forest advisory panel, Vandersteen opposes a moratorium on logging on any land.
He argues landowners should be allowed to salvage trees that fall on their property and clear them out for boat traffic. They should be allowed to get some value for the timber before it becomes too damaged or rotten, he said.
“It’s not fair for a landowner to be out all these costs,” Vandersteen said.
But he also pointed out that temporary guidelines are being drawn up to help landowners decide how to manage their lands in a sustainable way.
“No landowner wants to destroy their property,” Vandersteen said.
Another option
Dean Wilson, with the Atchafalaya Basinkeepers environmental group, agrees that landowners don’t want to see their property damaged.
But Wilson, who favors restricting cypress logging, argues the owners don’t always get good information about what will happen to their property during or after logging.
He said the timber industry uses scare tactics, such as telling people they won’t be able to sell their trees unless they cut right now.
The landowners are reassured their woodlands will grow back as cypress, but many will become forests of faster-growing trees instead, Wilson said.
Cypress forests haven’t truly recovered from the last time they were logged, in the early 1900s.
“All the cypress in Louisiana is second-growth,” Wilson said. “They’re 100 years old and they’re very small.”
Regeneration, he said, should mean returning the ecosystem to its original state, which isn’t large tracts of small trees.
Selective logging can be done, but that’s not in the best interest of the industry, he said.
“I fly everywhere, and it’s all clear-cut,” Wilson said.
Wilson suggests a way to ensure landowners a return on their land and to solve the issue of clear-cutting — the state should buy “as many swamps as they can and protect them in perpetuity.”
Yet the advisory panel report doesn’t include a moratorium even for logging in forests owned by the state, he said.
“I just don’t understand it,” Wilson said.
He argues there is a better way to make money off cypress forests. Tourists flock to Louisiana to experience Cajun culture, and part of that experience is seeing a large cypress swamp, he said.
Eco-tourism could increase the money made off cypress forests and provide a more-constant income stream than logging, he said.
That’s the path Bonifay and Ragland are taking as owners of Alligator Bayou Tours in Ascension Parish. Buying the 1,240 acres of cypress forest for preservation put them into debt, but Bonifay says he has no regrets.
The trees, some hundreds of years old, were becoming valuable.
“We foresaw that if we didn’t save it, it’d be gone,” Bonifay said. “After 14 years now, people are starting to realize the importance of the area. I believe in using timber, but not to kill the old-growth forests.”
Knowing he is saving something for the future makes the effort worthwhile, he said.
“We made the right choice,” he said.
Still waiting
After the scientific group suggested that state officials address the coastal cypress issue, Blanco gave the task of coming up with recommendations to an advisory group.
The group is a conglomeration of environmentalists, scientists, state officials and landowners. More than a year-and-a-half later, the group has come up with a report but hasn’t sent it to the governor.
Missing from the recommendations is any type of moratorium on cypress logging.
Doug Daigle, a member of the advisory panel, called the process one of the most badly handled situations he’s seen during his years in environmental work. The report does little, he said.
“It doesn’t deal with the issue. It doesn’t have a plan,” Daigle said.
He and several other panel members say the report includes some good information but makes no recommendations that would change the way logging is done. And many of the suggestions it does include could have been implemented more than a year ago, they said.
Among the recommendations so far:
- Conduct more research into which cypress forests are threatened by high water.
- Develop best-management practices for cypress forests.
- Find ways to provide financial incentives for landowners to preserve their cypress.
- Restore the natural flow of water in some of the flooded cypress areas.
- Map areas of cypress that can regrow, those that will need replanting and those that are too flooded during the year to regenerate.
Vandersteen — the director of the state forestry association and a member of the advisory group — sounds more optimistic about the plan.
The five main recommendations are good, he said.
“It was a compromise effort,” he said. “It was a diverse group.”
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