He is co-author of new report, An Assessment of Biomass Harvesting Guidelines, available on the Forest Guild website. It's essential information for anyone involved in harvesting biomass. 

Zander Evans: In 2007 we began looking at case studies of biomass removal from forests for the Joint Fire Sciences Program (http://biomass.forestguild.org). As we delved into the issues of harvesting biomass, my co-author, Robert Perschel, and I started getting more and more interested in what was happening with state guidelines. Bob works in New England and he was getting requests and questions from people in states where guidelines were beginning to be developed, or people thought maybe they should be developed. So rather than deal with each question as it came along, we took the opportunity to think about biomass harvesting guidelines a little more systematically. 

LM: The report looks at biomass harvesting guidelines in Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, parts of Canada and by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). What’s happening in other states?  

ZE: There are three things going on. One is that in some cases, states feel like they can use their existing regulations to ensure sustainability of biomass harvests. Sometimes that means adjusting the current Best Management Practices (BMPs). There are other cases where at least some parts of the forestry community feel like things are working fine and they don’t need new guidelines. One example of that might be a situation near a pulp mill where a lot of very similar material is already getting used. The third approach is to draft new BMPs or guidelines to specifically address the potential impacts of biomass harvesting on wildlife, biodiversity, soil, and long term site productivity. In the next couple of years I think we will see more biomass guidelines developed in the southeast, and across the country. We hope those guidelines will ensure ecological sustainability. 

ZE: Yes. I think partly it’s a philosophical difference because with private land we need to acknowledge private property rights. There is a balance between allowing an owner to do as he or she see fit with his or her land and ensuring the communal benefits forests provide, such as water quality, are protected. On federal land the public are more used to having a larger role in forest management regulation.

ZE: From a Forest Guild perspective, we don’t see planting fast growing poplar or willow, growing it for a couple of years, cutting it down and using it for energy fuels, as forestry. It really becomes more agriculture than forestry. One of our main concerns is ensuring that forests stay as forests. 

ZE: We haven’t seen many guidelines come out for those locations yet, but we definitely will. BC and California probably have some of the most developed forest practice recommendations and rules in the world, but Colorado and Montana will need to think more carefully as they are trying to utilize some of that bug kill material for biomass. It’s a good fit, but what do they need to leave on site to protect the other values for the forest? I wouldn’t be surprised if Colorado starts pushing for either amending their existing BMPs or coming out with recommendations for biomass utilization. A lot of people are trying to utilize bug kill wood today, but there are millions and millions more acres left to deal with so I don’t think it’s too late to develop guidelines.

One of the other things worth highlighting is that a lot of the guidelines we’ve seen so far have focused on forest types that aren’t fire dependent. Fire is an integral part of lodgepole pine ecosystems, so the amount of biomass that gets left on site, and how you think about the way the site looks when you’re done, would be different than a forest type where a hurricane or an ice storm might be the dominant disturbance process rather than fire.