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CAPITAL IDEAS -- LIVE!
JUNE 2010
News Conference for Forest Owners
Sponsored by the Alabama Forest Owners' Association, Inc.
This Conference was recorded on June 16, 2010.
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Hayes D. Brown
starting time: (00:00)
Comment |
Moderator
Hayes D. Brown, attorney and forest owner, will moderate this news
conference. Hayes' email address is
hbrown@hayesbrown.com.
Click Here to View & Hear Prior News Conferences.
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Kerlin Drake
(00:26)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Wood Good for Commercial Construction
Kerlin Drake is Vice President
for Marketing at
Anthony Forest Products, El Dorado, Arkansas. Before we can tell you
about Kerlin, we have to give you a bit of background information first.
For the past several years we have
noticed an increasing amount of publicity being given to the
LEED green building certification program, a scheme which gives
credit to building designs that use building materials with lower
built-in energy costs. Our hotel at Calloway Gardens bragged about being
LEED certified and the Alabama 4-H Center has done the same. We were
frustrated with the LEED standards, however, when we learned that lumber
and wood products could only improve a building's LEED rating if they
came from forestland certified sustainably managed by the
Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC). Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there is
no forestland in Alabama certified by the FSC.
So we've been asking, how can we stop cities
and states from requiring LEED certification for new public buildings.
Someone said, "You need to talk to Kerlin Drake." In our first conversation,
Kerlin was quick to point out that the use of wood in commercial
construction -- schools, for example -- is not only good for local wood
processing plants, it's also very good for the construction budgets of local
schools. And while he continues to push for equal recognition of green
building certification programs that recognize locally grown wood, such as
the Green Globes system,
his main message is that wood is an excellent building material that
can reduce costs of commercial construction and look good, too.
Kerlin's list of suggested reading:
Phone: (870) 864-8704
Email:
kdrake@anthonyforest.com
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Don Smith
(05:34)
Hear Conference
Comment |
High Speed Internet Access for Rural Residents
Don Smith is Chief Strategy
Officer for SkyWay USA
LLC, a company that provides satellite Internet access to rural Alabama
residents. A few months ago in AFOA's monthly newsletter we asked members,
"Which service for fast access to the Internet is best in rural areas?" Only
two members wrote to us. Neither was happy with the speed of downloads and
other connections that require a lot of bandwidth, such as
Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (voip) or videos. Then we read an article in
The Progressive Farmer entitled Link Up Right,
and we learned that satellite service is not as fast as the cable or DSL
service available in urban areas. Many people we talked to thought that
matching ones expectations to reality might improve satisfaction with the
satellite-based products available. It may interest you to know that the
American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 (The Stimulus Bill) is involved in improving
Internet access in rural areas. Don will tell us about current satellite
service and what's ahead for rural areas.
Phone: (502) 736-6609
Email:
dsmith@skywayusa.com
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Tommy H. Patterson
(09:08)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Imagery -- Memories -- Perspective
Tommy Patterson is the
owner-operator of
Gulf Coast Aerials.
Patterson's is an interesting business that may provide you with aerial
"photos" of your pond, cabin, hunting lodge, or favorite "40." Or, as
we suspect, it may provide you with ideas on what you might do to develop
your own ways of storing information about your land. Tommy says, "Aerial
photos have long been a valuable tool to forest owners and forest managers.
Aerial photography also serves as a way to preserve memories of the
landscape and to track progressive change." Don't miss looking at some of
Tommy's low altitude aerial photography
on his webpage
and also check out the following links:
Phone: (251) 923-6636
Email:
info@gulfcoastaerials.com
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Mike Matre
(12:49)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Analyzing Value to Make Forestry Decisions
Mike Matre
is President and Founder of
Matre Forestry Consulting, Inc., based in Albany, Georgia. We read an
article Mike wrote entitled
Timber Appraisal, Net Present Value vs. Current Marketable Value,
Georgia Forestry Today, July/August 2009, and we've been pestering him ever since to be a guest on Capital Ideas -
Live! One of the worst problems forest owners have is deciding which
forest management practices to apply on our land. Should we plant seedlings
or leave regeneration up to Mother Nature? Should we thin our plantation
now, at age 15, or should we wait 5 years and clearcut the whole thing and
start over? What effect do property taxes and hunting lease income have on
our net worth? Mike is going to tell us about the value of a dollar in our
hand today and the value, today, of a dollar that we won't receive for
several years. He will talk about discounting and setting our personal
discount rate. Be sure to read Mike's article on pages 5 - 7 of
Matre Forestry's 2nd Quarter 2009 Newsletter entitled Planted Pine
Net Present Value versus Current Marketable Value.
Other Links:
Phone: (229) 439-1837
Email:
mike@matreforestry.com
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Dr. James D. Haywood
(17:24)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Pine Straw Income & Fire Prevention, Too
Dave Haywood is a Supervisory
Research Forester the USDA
Forest Service's
Alexandria
Forestry Center
in Pineville, Louisiana. In 1990 Dave began a study of a 250 acre, 34 year
old longleaf pine stand on the Kisatchie National Forest in central
Louisiana. The results of 15+ years of study are reported in
Influence of Pine Straw Harvesting, Prescribed Fire, and Fertilization on a
Louisiana Longleaf Pine Site, Southern Journal of Applied Forestry,
33(3) 2009. On one area of the study, pine straw was harvested 13 times in
15 years and didn't seem to reduce the growth of the trees, although Dave
recommends fertilization to replace nutrients removed with the straw (See:
Nutrition Management for Longleaf Pinestraw, Woodland Owner Notes #30, by David Blevins
et al.) .
Besides income from straw harvests, removal of pine straw on a continual
basis "was shown to deter fire spread..." and "may be used to create fire
breaks across landscapes to disrupt wildfires."
Phone: (318) 473-7226
Email: dhaywood@fs.fed.us
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Curt B. Cope, Jr.
(20:42)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Daily Rain Reports from Your Land
Curt Cope is Vice President for
Sales for
MyRainReport.com. The company specializes in the production of accurate,
site-specific rain reports. Curt signed us up for a basic report on a
40-acre tract in Chilton County and we've been receiving an email every time
it rains down there. Now, we don't know how he figures out how much rain
falls on our land, and we're not sure we have a use for the service
ourselves, but...
What if:
- A tree planting contractor wants to
document the amount of rain that falls before and after tree planting to
understand why plantings succeed or fail.
- A prescribed burn contractor wants to
know if moisture conditions on a tract (50 miles away from the office)
are just right for burning (rather than drive to the tract with a crew
and find out the fuels are too dry or too wet).
- A consulting forester wants to restrict
logging on a tract following extremely wet weather conditions. He might
trigger the cutoff when rainfall amounts exceed a certain level during a
certain period of time.
Costs, etc.:
Phone: (334) 559-9233
Email:
curtjr@myrainreport.com
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Bruce E. Springer
(24:09)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Five Ways to Protect Your Forestland from Wildfire
Bruce Springer is East
Central Regional Forester for the
Alabama Forestry
Commission
(AFC). He has many years of wildfire experience himself, and supervises the
fire control operations in 11 east central Alabama counties. According to a
6/15/10 AFC Press Release, 874 homes were damaged or destroyed as a result
of 16,433 Alabama wildfires during the past 5 years. A map of fire risk in
Alabama is located at
https://maps.alabama.gov/flexapps/AFC_CAR/. Just as we learned that pine
straw harvesting might deter wildfires (see Dr. Haywood's section, above),
the AFC has developed a list of things a landowner can do to prevent or
minimize exposure to the hazards of wildfire. The
5 Ways to Protect Your Forestland from Wildfires are:
- Install Firebreaks
- Prescribed Burns
- Mitigate Along the Edge
- Limit Access
- Partner with Others
If you live on your forested property,
Bruce suggests a review of
50 Ways to Make your Woodland Home Firewise.
Phone: (334) 242-5585
Email:
bruce.springer@forestry.alabama.gov
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Dr. Anthony J. Cascio
(26:55)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Timber Markets & Trends
Tony Cascio is Manager of
Investment Research at
Resource Management Service, LLC, based in Birmingham, Alabama. RMS is a
TIMO (timberland investment management organization) that manages
approximately 700,000 acres of forestland in Alabama and more than two-million
acres in the U.S. and South America. Tony explains how rainfall,
housing starts, and
pine beetles all have an effect on
stumpage
markets.
Phone: (205) 980-7339
Email:
tcascio@resourcemgt.com
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