North Carolina State University-ISTF Chapter

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Stephanie Chizmar, Zeynab Jouzi, Ian McGregor, and Meredith Hovis

In the mid-1980s, Dr. Jan Laarman launched an International Forestry Program, including the Sylvanet newsletter (1987–2007), a course on conservation and sustainable development offered jointly by Duke and UNC, and the student chapter of ISTF. 

ISTF-NC State unites students and faculties interested in managing and conserving tropical forests. Some typical activities include– monthly meetings with international speakers on various topics and an annual trip to attend the conference organized by the Yale student chapter of ISTF. The chapter was fortunate enough to sponsor and send three NC State students—Stephanie Chizmar, Meredith Hovis, and Zeynab Jouzi—to present at the annual conference in Yale in early 2020.

NC State ISTF Logo

During the pandemic, in the year 2020, we held monthly meetings on Zoom, inviting guest speakers from around the world, to speak on a wide variety of topics related to tropical forests. We featured three graduate students—Ian McGregor, Anne McWhinney, and Omoyemeh (Jennifer) Ile—with work and research experience in Sub-Saharan Africa during the first meetings of the fall 2020 semester. From beekeeping to tree planting, the NC State ISTF chapter followed the experiences of the featured student speakers as they shared photos and lessons learned.

For the last meeting of the fall 2020 semester, the NC State ISTF chapter hosted Dr. Jonah Busch, a chief economist at the Earth Innovation Institute. Dr. Busch delivered an engaging and highly timely discussion on the costs and benefits of preventing another pandemic.

NC State students at Yale-ISTF annual conference, 2020
Screenshot from September 2020 meeting

Authors: Stephanie Chizmar, Zeynab Jouzi, Ian McGregor, and Meredith Hovis (NC State-ISTF Executive Committee)
E-mail- istfncstate@gmail.com

The Belize Tropical Forestry Action Plan: An Education

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Nick Brokaw

In 1988, I was fortunate to become a member of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) team for Belize, Central America. I worked with a group of forestry experts and saw much of Belize during this time. The experience taught me that tropical forestry can be sustainable, in principle, and showed me how complex forestry truly is.

Organized by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), TFAP was a pan-tropical program created to assist countries in studying and advancing the state of their forestry. Forestry in Belize was in decline at the time (Fig. 1), so the Government of Belize asked the UK to organize a Belize TFAP that could assess the conditions and provide targeted recommendations.

Figure 1. Graph showing log production in Belize from 1951 to 1986. Displays pine, hardwoods, and mahogany in units of thousand cubic feet. Yields of both pine and mahogany drop sharply throughout '51-'71.
Figure 1 – Log production in Belize (Belize Tropical Forestry Action Plan, 1989).

Members of the TFAP team came from Belize, USA, UK, Canada, and Turkey, and were mainly sponsored by development agencies of those countries. Each team member focused on their individual specialties, such as forest management, forest economics, forest industries, land use, institutions, and environmental conservation. As a forest ecologist, I had been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development and my specialty was conservation.

The team worked in Belize during May and June of 1988. Our headquarters for the duration of our assignment was the Bull Frog Inn in Belmopan, the capital of Belize. We all traveled to do archival and field work to get the background for our assessments and recommendations, but whenever we weren’t on the road, the team would meet each day at the Bull Frog to share meals and discuss our progress.

My archival work was to study conservation policy and progress in Belize using documents supplied by the Belize Forest Department, other government offices tasked with resource management, and conservation NGOs. My field work was to visit protected areas and speak to Belizean conservationists. For practical reasons, I was paired with Ozzie Bender, a veteran forest industries consultant from Tacoma, Washington. Ozzie had worked in 35 countries and was a deep source of wisdom and stories. He and I drove around Belize visiting protected areas, offices, logging sites, sawmills, furniture makers, and even a match company (Figs. 2-8).

Figure 2 – Logging camp (Belize, 1988).
Figure 3 – Logger’s bed (Belize, 1988).
Figure 4 – Felling a mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) (Belize, 1988).
Figure 5 – Skidding logs to a barquedier (log assembly point) (Belize, 1988).
Figure 6 – Feeding scrap (left) into a milling machine that shapes broom handles (emerging right) (Roberson’s sawmill, Iguana Bank, Belize, 1988).
Figure 7 – Toucan Safety Matches, showing the Emerald Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus
prasinus), (Toucan Match Co., LTD, Belmopan, Belize).
Figure 8 – Sawyer (standing at left, control lever in hand) riding the conveyance moving a log to the right into a circular saw (Roberson’s sawmill, Iguana Bank, Belize, 1988).

After leaving Belize, the TFAP team met again in September 1988 at the Oxford Forestry Institute in the UK to integrate our reports. We submitted the 272-page (A4 paper) final report to the Government of Belize the following year, in September 1989.

My report described laws, regulations, and conventions governing environmental conservation; enumerated the public and private protected areas; provided suggestions for studies, a data center, new reserves, and improved management; and gave results of a “gap analysis,” which showed what habitats were not protected.

I did the gap analysis by layering a big map of Belize’s protected areas on top of a same-scale map that showed Belize’s 34 major vegetation types, assumed to represent distinctive habitats and constituent organisms. Taped onto a picture window, both layers would be brightly backlit on a sunny day, and I could see which vegetation types were not included in protected areas. The main conclusion of the analysis was that 16 of the 34 types were not protected.

Other reports from the Belize TFAP suggested changes such as using band saws instead of circular saws for milling (to reduce waste), abandoning polycyclic for monocyclic silviculture to favor mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) regeneration (which does better in large disturbed areas), establishing a series of long-term forest dynamics plots (to assess growth and natural regeneration of multiple species), changes in royalties (stumpage fees; and to increase Forest Department revenue), adding personnel to the Forest Department (to extend expertise and oversight), improved data collection (to optimize wood products output and income), and many others, all in great detail.

There is a lot more to forestry than trees alone. That is what makes it hard to achieve sustainability. But there are clear steps to take toward success so long as we can keep all the parts in mind and remain in pursuit of our goals.

The team also provided an action plan to effect these changes. I helped enact some recommendations, such as the establishment of long-term plots and research on promoting mahogany regeneration. Many of the other changes were also implemented following the TFAP report.

In the end, I got my consulting fee and much more from working on the Belize Tropical Forestry Action Plan. Every step of the way – at the Bull Frog, on the road with Ozzie, and at Oxford – I gained a deeper understanding of industrial, economic, silvicultural, and institutional forestry. It was a course in forestry that greatly expanded my outlook.

There is a lot more to forestry than trees alone. That is what makes it hard to achieve sustainability. But there are clear steps to take toward success so long as we can keep all the parts in mind and remain in pursuit of our goals. ISTF makes these parts of forestry accessible and foments the collective will to continue forward.

For all interested, the conservation section of the Belize TFAP report can be found here.

Author: Nick Brokaw, Forest Ecologist, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Reflections on earlier ISTF contributions

Patrick Durst

ISTF has always emphasized the dissemination of solid scientific information on tropical forest management to practitioners and policymakers. I first became aware of ISTF around 1980, about the time I was finishing work as an agroforestry extensionist with the U.S. Peace Corps in the Philippines. These were “Pre-Internet” days and the ISTF newsletter was one of the few consistent and reliable sources of information available on tropical forestry for those of us without regular access to a major library.

The quarterly ISTF News – published in English, Spanish and French – included timely information on meetings, events, grants and fellowships, and major developments in tropical forestry. It also provided extremely valuable summaries of research literature, regularly compiled by Frank Wadsworth, the newsletter editor. I considered ISTF News and, later, the ITTO Tropical Forest Update to be the two best sources of current information on tropical forestry for most of the 1980s and 1990s, and I generally read every word of each issue of ISTF News.

When I was still working with the USDA Forest Service, I always thought that Frank Wadsworth’s task of compiling literature summaries for ISTF News would be one of the most enjoyable tasks that anyone could be assigned, and I hinted that when Frank retired, I’d be willing to take over.  Luckily for everyone, Frank continued summarizing literature for years and years after that, even after his “retirement” from the Forest Service. I say “luckily” because Frank remained a master in his ability to capture the key elements of any article or publication – far better than I ever could have managed.

During the years I worked in Washington, DC (1988-1993), ISTF held office on the third floor of the historic “Wild Acres” headquarters building of the Society of American Foresters, on Grosvenor Lane, in Bethesda, Maryland. ISTF President, Warren Doolittle, was particularly skillful at co-opting volunteers and committee members, and on any given Wednesday (ISTF “Volunteer Day”), visitors would be likely to meet Warren and other “walking encyclopedias” of tropical forestry at the ISTF office, including the likes of Gordon Fox, Elbert Little, and later, Tom Geary and Les Whitmore. As a young-ish tropical forester at the time, it was always a great pleasure for me to visit ISTF and soak up some of that incredible knowledge, experience, and advice.

In addition to regular publishing of ISTF News, ISTF also distributed thousands of publications upon request of members, including those serving as a regular distribution node for FAO and USDA Forest Service publications. ISTF also organized and co-sponsored various events around the world, helping to bring current information to the doorsteps of forestry practitioners.

After I joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, I recognized more than ever the value of ISTF News and other current information to practitioners working in the field. It gave me considerable satisfaction to provide ISTF “gift memberships” to various colleagues from many developing countries. If I remember correctly, dues back then were just $5 USD for members of developing countries, and the gift memberships were money extremely well spent in helping struggling tropical forestry practitioners – hungry for information – to keep up with current developments and learn from others’ experiences.

Since those days, the Internet has put countless pages of information readily available at nearly everyone’s fingertips. Now, the challenge is not how to access information, but rather how to sift through and find what is practical, relevant, and useful. In this respect, I believe the “new ISTF” has clear roles to play in creatively helping members obtain the most relevant information for improving tropical forest management and facilitating the sharing of knowledge and experiences related to real-world forest management challenges.

Author: Patrick Durst, Independent Consultant, Bangkok, Thailand

Some Brief and Random Reflections

Chun K. Lai

I am proud to have served as ISTF Regional Director for Asia-Pacific and Director-at-Large for 17 years, beginning in 1993, when I was the FAO Regional Coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Agroforestry Network based in Bogor, Indonesia. That era proved to be very fruitful for international forestry cooperation, with CIFOR and ICRAF also beginning to establish offices in Bogor.

International Society of Tropical Foresters Technical Session participants, during the 19th Congress of IUFRO in Montreal, Canada (convened August 9th, 1990).
Left to right: V.J. Nordin, ISTF; Hollis Murray, FAO;  Ralph Roberts, CIDA; Salleh Mohd Nor, Forest Research Institute of Malaysia; Bjorn Lundgren, ICRAF; Warren Doolittle, ISTF and Carl Gallegos, USAID. Source: The Forestry Chronicle, December 1990.

Dr. Warren Doolittle, who passed away in 2013, was the ISTF President from 1984 to 2001. During that period, memberships peaked at ≈2,000 foresters and affiliates, in 120 countries around the world. Warren and his team were instrumental in advancing ISTF goals and activities, including:

  • Publishing a quarterly newsletter in English, Spanish, and French, which was faithfully edited by Dr. Frank Wadsworth, longtime Director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry based in Puerto Rico. Frank celebrated his 106th birthday in November 2021. (We lost him on January 5th, 2022).
  • Preparing an annual Membership Directory.
  • Organizing ISTF country chapters via a network of Country Vice-Presidents, as well as student chapters. Yale’s student chapter has organized some 25 annual conferences since its establishment in 1989.
  • Distributing relevant publications on tropical forestry. For several years, ISTF served as the North American node for the FAO-supported Forest, Trees & People Programme, coordinated by Ms. Marilyn Hoskins, who was also an ISTF Director.
  • Sponsoring workshops and symposia.
  • Supporting membership dues of students and colleagues from developing countries.

In those days, ISTF operated on a shoestring budget, relying on part-time volunteers to run the society’s affairs. Modest financial support came from the USFS international forestry program, a few other donors, and membership dues. The Board of Directors was able to convene in person once in Washington, DC, during the 1990s. ISTF also organized networking opportunities for members during the Society of American Foresters’ conventions, World Forestry Congresses, IUFRO conferences, and other fora.

It is great to see that under the leadership of the new ISTF board and coordinator, there are efforts launched to revitalize ISTF, including a new website. I believe that the best way forward for ISTF is to proactively support and engage with the next generation of tropical foresters and leaders of developing and developed countries. One key strategy would be to effectively reach out and collaborate with student chapters and other relevant youth groups—for the future of tropical forestry and forests is literally in their hands!

Participants at the Annual Conference of the International Society of Tropical Foresters (ISTF).
Seated (L to R): Rodney Young, ISTF; Dr. Warren Doolittle, President, ISTF.
Standing (L to R): Dr. V. J. Nordin, Vice-President (Canada); Dr. Les Whitmore, USDA Forest Service; Dr. Brian D. Payne, USDA Forest Service; Robert C. Van Aken, ISTF; Dr. David Challinor, Smithsonian; Dr. Doug MacCleary, USDA Forest Service; Dr. Tom Geary, USDA Forest Service (retired). Source: The Forestry Chronicle, February 2000.

Author: Chun K. Lai, Independent Consultant, Los Banos, Philippines

ISTF and the post-COVID world

The ISTF Board

31 January 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted devastation on the individual lives, families, health care systems, and economies of almost every nation on the planet.  There is great pressure on governments to mitigate this economic impact and on individuals to address family and community needs.  One option is to look to natural resources as potential sources of wealth to be exploited in this time of need.  Thus, the drive to recover from the personal and country-level impacts of COVID could result in even greater depletion of tropical forests and their resources.  With proper vision, planning, and execution, however, tropical forests and forestlands can sustainably contribute to recovery from the COVID pandemic. The International Society of Tropical Foresters can help ensure appropriate and sustainable use of forest resources during the pandemic and the recovery period by staying on message about conservation and sustainable use of tropical forest resources and sharing information about how to do so.

Volcanic mountain chain, western Guatemala (photo by Rene Zamora).

The interdependence among health care, governance, economics, and sustainable forestry is increasingly clear.  The Covid-19 pandemic poses various threats to tropical forests and forest-dependent people (especially indigenous forest-dwellers). In some cases, losses have been exacerbated by government-led overexploitation of forests and forest lands, and from land and resource grabbing by opportunists taking advantage of lapses in governance due to Covid. Redistribution of populations has increased pressures on tropical forests, as people have returned to their rural roots after loss of their urban employment.  For example, in Guatemala, many people have returned to smaller towns after losing their jobs in the capital city.  Globally, this return to rural areas includes out-of-work migrant workers and international workers returning “home”.  Reduced opportunities for earning in other sectors have increased pressure on tropical forests as local residents and returning workers clear additional land for subsistence farming and cash crops.  Wildlife resources risk further depletion due to increased pressure from hunting for food.

Planning of priority areas for restoration and a nursery of native species. The plan is focused on the upper parts of the Pacific Coast Watersheds in Guatemala (photo by Rene Zamora).

What role can ISTF play in the current urgencies?  ISTF seeks to maintain and enhance the tropical and subtropical forests of our planet through networks of practitioners and implementers to foster knowledge transfer and exchange.  Our goal is to assist local inhabitants, managers, and policymakers to recognize the values and benefits that forests provide and to ensure that the benefits are available to future generations.

With this goal in mind, ISTF encourages leaders to fully consider the long-term benefits that tropical forests provide and to resist the urge to over-exploit their resources for short-term benefits.  Such action risks irreparable long-term damage to tropical forests, imperiling the environmental health at both local and planetary levels.  Quick fixes at the expense of tropical forest resources are a) unlikely to provide the economic benefits sought, and b) risk reducing environmental quality now and into the future.

Countries and communities should rather view the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen measures to conserve tropical forests and their resources, including through enhanced, multi-stakeholder governance structures that help to build more sustainable economies and more just societies.  Many countries can use the Covid-19 re-set to take long-needed steps to clarify and strengthen forest tenure regimes and use rights.

In addressing relief and recovery from the pandemic, priority may be given to supporting viable agroforestry practices so that people who have returned to rural areas can enhance their food security in a sustainable manner and build greater resilience to future shocks of all types.  It may also be appropriate to provide support for the marketing of locally-produced forest and farm products, including near-term emphasis on local and domestic markets – recognizing that many global market chains have been seriously disrupted by the pandemic.  Grants and credit facilities may be required to help forest-based small and medium enterprises afloat until recovery gathers momentum.  In many of these endeavors, the roles and functions of small producer groups and associations – working in concert with governments and members – can be indispensable.

Even prior to the onset of the pandemic, many countries committed to ramping up forest and landscape restoration.  The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to advance and accelerate action on these commitments, consistent with relief and recovery objectives. Forest and landscape restoration can provide temporary and permanent jobs that will help with economic recovery and develop sustainable opportunities in rural areas, from nurseries to silviculture and management, from agroforestry to ecotourism.

From the ground up, ISTF needs to support voices and practical action in tropical forest restoration, conservation, and sustainable use.  ISTF is committed to strengthening our networks of restoration practitioners, forest managers, and advocates for sustainable management while increasing our efforts to highlight successful cases with potential for scaling and transfer to other regions and locations. 

We invite the ISTF Membership to help us keep ISTF relevant to the present moment.

Cocoa agroforestry. Anyima community, Bono East Region, Ghana (photo by Daniel Kofi Abu).

ISTF Chapters 9-2020

Connecting a World of Tropical Foresters in a Virtual Age

Connecting a World of Tropical Foresters in a Virtual Age

We decided to revive the International Society of Tropical Foresters in 2016 after a 5-year hiatus because of our belief that there is still an urgent need for global communication and community among the bright minds working in some of the most remote locations on Earth – tropical forests.

Through this new generation of ISTF, we hope to enable the grassroots conservation director, living between a tent as she does field research and her home in a small town, to consult with university professors across the world that have decades of experience to inform her research and outreach. We hope to empower a forestry student at a university with a relatively new program and thus, a lack of resources, to internships and jobs in tropical forest management at organizations and companies at the forefront of innovation worldwide. We hope to connect the worker in one forest who checks his phone as he gets back to camp at night after requesting help with an urgent question with a seasoned forestry director who quickly passes on a tried and true resource as she hops into her truck at the end of a long day to head back home from the field. 

These are the connections that will power a transformational change that is needed now more than ever. Every day we are confronted with more and more news about the dire situation of this world’s tropical forests. In 2019, Amazon fires increased by 84% in one year [1] and during this coronavirus pandemic in 2020, illegal deforestation has brought even more destruction there [2]. The Congo basin rainforests may be gone by 2100 [3]. The lack of adequate protection of Indonesia’s massive peatland forests releases gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year [4]. However, too often the people on the front lines of managing and saving these forests lack adequate information, training, and connections to get the support they need. Often they need resources on-the-go, passed along in informal ways, or answers to specific immediate questions they confront in the field. These are not always things you learn in a staid university course at a young age, but rather learnings gleaned by foresters and forest actors as they make their way through the school of life. ISTF harnesses this knowledge and puts it in the hands of the people who need it most. 

We welcome you to this page and this movement. Please see our membership, committee, and chapter pages to learn more about how to get involved.

Ruth Metzel, ISTF Vice-President, in action working with a high school biology professor and students to reforest on the Azuero peninsula of Panama. c. Azuero Eco Foundation

 

Sources:

  1. Amazon fires increase by 84% in one year – space agency.

  2. Amazon Deforestation Soars as Pandemic Hobbles Enforcement.

  3. Congo basin rainforest may be gone by 2100, study finds.

  4. Dangerous new regulation puts Indonesia’s carbon rich peatlands at risk.

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