During her campaign, Maura Healey said she had a “forest management plan” but it had nothing to do with forest management. Instead, her plan is to undermine what’s left of the forestry sector here in Massachusetts which will accelerate the decline of our forests.

She supports a moratorium on all forest management on 650,000 acres of state-owned public forest land to “protect the climate.” But the reality is this: Forest management is needed on state land to protect water quality on our watersheds; to provide a diversity of wildlife habitat; to create a diversity of forest types and age and size classes; and to provide some of the forest products we all use. Prohibiting forest management on our state lands will not allow any of those objectives to be achieved. Managed forests also sequester more CO2 than unmanaged forests while making our forests more resilient to insects, disease, storms, and other forest damaging agents.

Gov.-elect Healey said she will establish a “forest protection program” for landowners to reward private landowners who manage their forests for “reducing emissions” by increasing intervals between harvests, conserving the oldest trees, protecting soil carbon, and other improved harvesting and management practices. Healey also says she wants to make our forests more resilient and to promote biodiversity.

The “reward” she is referring to is to support a program that would pay landowners a paltry $10-20/acre for enrolling their land in a “climate smart forestry” program which will essentially make landowners cede control of their forest land for 20 years to a third-party entity who will reap most of the “rewards” by selling carbon credits to wealthy corporations who will use them as offsets so they can continue to emit greenhouse gases. It’s equivalent to a money laundering racket. This program will fail to attract a significant number of landowners and I would advise landowners not to do this. Instead, they should consider enrolling in the Chapter 61 Forest Land Tax Program which will reduce their property taxes in a 10-year plan and they can decide how they want to manage their forest land.

The intervals between timber harvests depend on a wide variety of factors. Conserving some of the oldest trees is already one of the primary objectives of landowners. The recommended age class distribution for Massachusetts forests are 5-15% in seedlings and saplings, 20-30% in poles, 40-60% in sawtimber and 10-15% as old growth. Soil carbon is protected when we follow practices that minimize erosion and sedimentation. Healey says she wants to improve harvesting and management practices but she doesn’t say what those are. If she really wants to make our forests more resilient and to promote biodiversity, she would promote more forest management.

Healey said that “burning wood for bioenergy depletes our forests, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and is a threat to human health” all of which are false. She said she will end subsidies for forest bioenergy for electricity and commercial-scale heat. Proposed subsidies for biomass electric plants were ended in 2010 when the state accepted the fraudulent “Manomet Biomass Study.” With electricity bills skyrocketing because of inept state and federal energy policies, hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents burn firewood and wood pellets which are much cheaper than burning oil and provides a low-grade timber market needed for forest management. Harvesting low grade timber for firewood or for wood pellets does not “deplete our forests” especially since both growth and mortality far exceed harvest.

Massachusetts forests are releasing over three million tons of CO2/year as more trees decline and die reducing net growth and decreasing CO2 sequestration rates. According to a recent U.S. Forest Service report on forests in Massachusetts, tree mortality is 50% of growth which is totally unacceptable — should be about 10% — while tree mortality is three times the rate of harvest which suggests we could easily triple harvest volumes while increasing forest productivity, forest resiliency, CO2 sequestration, and wildlife habitat.

Massachusetts forest policy has been a disaster for both landowners and our forests. It is long past due for a new forestry deal for both private and public forest land so we can finally stop the decline of our forests and promote common sense forest management policies. Healey needs to recognize that foresters, timber harvesters, and forest industry are all needed to promote healthy resilient forests while supporting thousands of jobs and the forest products we all need.

Mike Leonard is a consulting forester with North Quabbin Forestry in Petersham.

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