A forest community is the net result of a wide variety of relationships among and between different organisms interacting in a particular place over time. The key word here is relationships. The nature of these relationships can vary widely. Some are parasitic, in that one organism benefits at the expense of another. Other relationships may be commensal, with one organism or group of organisms prospering while the others neither benefit nor suffer from the interaction. Still other relationships may be symbiotic, in that both parties are better for it.
Forestry is the process of managing human relationships with the forest. When forestry is successful, all parties benefit, including the landowner, the logger, the consulting forester, the sawmill, and even the community and the customer. And if the forestry is sustainable, the forest benefits, too.
Much effort must go into managing the expectations of the various participants in these relationships. This is most commonly accomplished through agreements – either written or verbal. The most common and perhaps most important agreement in forestry involves the landowner and the logger. This lays out the prices, the nature of the work, the season of operation, the equipment, how the access will be constructed and maintained, and more. Other important but less common contracts include purchasing agreements between landowners and sawmills and forestry service contracts between landowners and private consulting foresters. Although it is impossible to predict every possible scenario in these relationships, it is very important to try to identify the key elements of the particular relationship and to get them down on paper.
I have recently been working on these agreements – between landowners, loggers, consulting foresters, and purchasers – as part of a new timber-sale method associated with Vermont Family Forests. In the process of developing templates for these complex agreements, it dawned on me that we needed an agreement between the people managing the forest and the forest itself. And I realized that a relationship based not only on stewardship but also on friendship would be the most equitable and most likely to be mutually beneficial.
So, inspired by such conservation luminaries as Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, Paul Hawkins, and Terry Tempest Williams, here’s what appeared:
FOREST AND FOREST FRIEND CONTRACT
This contract is made this ___th day of ___________, 200_ between a ___acre _______ forest community located in _____, and further described on the attached map, and here-in-after described as “Forest” and _______ of _________, here-in-after referred to as “Forest Friend.”
Forest agrees to:
1. Provide a beautiful place for soul restoration, peaceful contemplation, and recreation;
2. Filter and provide clear, clean, wonderful water supplies;
3. Recycle leaves, twigs, branches, stems, and roots, and return them to the soil;
4. Provide a protective organic mantle that protects the soil from compaction and erosion;
5. Mine bedrock for nutrients and minerals;
6. Provide habitat for a wide range of native plants and animals;
7. Recover fully from natural disturbance events; and
8. Provide many forest products, as long as the ecological capacity of the forest allows such.
Forest Friend agrees to:
1. Conserve forest health as the highest priority;
2. Remove forest products from the forest only when it does not reduce the forest’s capacity for self-renewal;
3. Identify the natural communities of the forest as one of the first steps in management;
4. Carefully design, layout, construct, maintain, and close all elements of the access network in full compliance with the spirit and intent of applicable best management practices;
5. Protect site productivity through excellent design of access and by exercising restraint in removing biomass;
6. Be more concerned with what is left than what is taken;
7. Practice full cost and benefit accounting;
8. Mimic natural systems to the maximum extent possible; and
9. Combat invasive exotics.
It is mutually agreed that:
1. Forest health is the forest’s capacity for self-renewal;
2. Conservation is the effort by humans to understand and preserve that capacity;
3. Wilderness provides the base-datum of normality of how a healthy ecosystem looks and functions;
4. Forests were healthy long before humans arrived to cultivate them; and
5. Without healthy forest ecology, there cannot be a healthy forest economy or community.
Signed: _______________________ Date: ________ Witness: _____________ (Forest)
Signed: _______________________ Date: ________ Witness: _____________ (Forest Friend)