Budget cuts have often left government agencies ill-prepared for reforestation after sweeping wildfires, which is why the American Forests nonprofit is stepping into the breach.

“It’s really aimed at helping them fill the gaps in their capacity,” said Brian Morris, the organization’s senior director of forest restoration. “Where can we have the biggest impact?”

Though federal spending on forest management has lately increased, the expertise needed to replant trees on a massive scale doesn’t just rebound overnight, Morris said.

“When budgets were tight, silviculture was often one of the first things to get squeezed,” he said.

Such decisions are understandable, as the future benefits of tree cultivation may seem distant when financial shortfalls are immediate, Morris said. “You need to make ends meet today.”

To reduce the reforestation learning curve as much as possible, American Forests is helping federal, state and local agencies get up to speed wherever they need support, he said.

Oldest conservation group

Acting as a facilitator is logical step for American Forests, whose role has been evolving for nearly 150 years as one of the nation’s oldest conservation groups.

The organization’s been involved in steering U.S. forest policy since its inception in 1875, advocating the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1900s and expansive federal reforestation efforts after the Great Depression.

However, the nonprofit’s functions have since multiplied, applying scientific principles to post-fire recovery and other on-the-ground projects across the country, Morris said.

Long-term roots

The specifics of its work vary depending on the region, but developing long-term roots is a unifying theme.

Under the organization’s philosophy of “place-based partnerships,” employees are encouraged to live where they work and forge strong connections with local land managers and other stakeholders, he said.

“Their kids are on the same baseball teams. They’re members of the same community,” Morris said. “If we don’t have the relationships, we can’t do the work at the end of the day.”

American Forests is currently in a “stage of growth,” recruiting workers at education levels “from GED to Ph.D.” to fill a broad range of positions — from manual field labor to advanced research on reforestation ecology, he said.

“We need each piece of that somewhere,” Morris said.

Forestry and other natural resource industries generally face a shortage of young people entering workforce, he said. Reversing that trend will require communicating career opportunities while dispelling negative perceptions.

“We’re often seen as a bunch of grumpy dudes who hang out in the woods,” Morris said.

Reforestation complex

Outwardly, reforestation may seem deceptively simple, but it’s far more dynamic and complex than sticking trees into holes in the ground, he said.

Over the past half-century, forest managers have moved away from planting trees in uniform patterns and toward more irregularly spaced forest stands, for instance.

Uneven spacing not only results in better environmental outcomes but helps guard against a rapidly spreading wildfire.

Gaps in the canopy allow sunlight to reach the forest floor, stimulating diverse vegetation and thus wildlife habitat, while hindering flames from hopping among trees.

“It can’t jump from crown to crown because they’re no longer so close together,” Morris said.

Ultimately, it’s more important to find areas in the landscape where the trees will thrive rather than rigidly adhere to a grid-like pattern, Morris said.

“The trees grow better when they’re planted in better micro-sites,” he said. “They’re prioritizing getting the trees planted at the right sites versus the perfect spacing.”

Improvements in nursery management and seedling vigor have reduced the number of trees that must be planted per acre, since fewer perish during the early stages of growth, Morris said.

Better trees

“We’re providing much better trees that are more likely to survive.”

Lower stocking rates also decrease competition among trees and the need for expensive thinning.

“With changing climates, there’s increased moisture stress,” he said. “The land can’t handle as many trees.”

Forest managers must contend with other effects of climate change, as the temperatures and weather cycles at planting are unlikely to remain static as the trees reach maturity.

“We are starting to understand how to match seed to climate,” Morris said. “What can this piece of land actually sustain with a fire-resilient ecosystem?”

To compensate for shifting climates, forest stands will probably be replanted with seeds acclimated to lower elevations and latitudes with higher temperatures — the trick will be knowing how far afield to look for the new genetics.

Most foresters aren’t seriously considering replacing Oregon’s Doug firs with California redwoods, but even smaller adjustments will require research and a degree of risk.

“We’re really looking at small movements,” Morris said. “We’re being very diligent and careful in how we make that movement while realizing we need to make that change. We’re trying to find a balance between moving too fast and too slow.”

Computer models

Fortunately, the changing demands of reforestation have coincided with tremendous increases in computing power that help land managers model such adaptations, he said. Advanced methods will be imperative to climate research because trees don’t lend themselves to short-term study.

“There’s no perfect lab experiment to tell us what to do,” he said. “How we process that data is very different than what we did in the seventies.”

‘Impressionable time’

Having grown up the scion of firefighters in California’s Sierra Nevadas, Morris hopes his own children will have similar opportunities to appreciate the natural world.

His own interest in silviculture emerged during high school, which was a particularly “impressionable time” after a wildfire swept through neighboring forests in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said.

“I was very interested in forest management as a solution to the fire problem rather than just suppression,” Morris said.

An early job preparing the burned landscape for replanting strengthened his resolve, as the long days and hard work didn’t diminish his interest in forest work, he said. “Walking through the ash and the dust, I really enjoyed it at the end of the day.”

After graduating from college with a forestry degree in 2008, Morris found the job environment to be tough everywhere — but especially in the timber industry, which was still reeling from the housing crisis and financial collapse of the Great Recession.

Instead, Morris opted to continue his education and ended up earning a doctorate in 2015, after which he was hired as a silviculturist by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. He rounded out his reforestation experience as a seedling nursery manager before joining American Forests.

“We’re dealing with some really difficult problems and looking for new ways to solve them,” he said. “it’s the people on the ground who are making it happen.”

Rebuilding forest resilience

Rebuilding forest resilience

https://datastories.americanforests.org/scor-wildfire-plan/#section1

Brian Morris

Age: 39

Hometown: Yacolt, Wash.

Occupation: Senior director of forest restoration

Family: Wife, Crystal, with an infant son and another due this summer

Education: Bachelor of science degree in forestry and natzural resources management from California Polytechnic State University in 2008, master’s degree in forest products from the University of Idaho in 2010, Ph.D. in forestry and forest products from Virginia Tech University in 2015

Employer: American Forests

Founded: 1875

Annual revenue: $24.3 million

Full-time employees: 89

Website:

www.americanforests.org