Weighing in on Louisiana’s Cypress

Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests are hard to define, but they could be easy to lose if timber and environmental interests don’t resolve some fundamental differences.

By Mollie Day

   For almost a decade, environmentalists have campaigned against Louisiana’s cypress mulch industry, claiming it has harmed the state’s coastal wetland forests. Voices from all sides of the issue have chimed in over the years, but still there is widespread disagreement on matters of science as well as public policy. The debate is often heated, but when the emotions are removed, what remains is a dialogue about the iconic but inscrutable coastal forests themselves.
   Former Louisiana state governor, Kathleen Blanco, appointed a commission known as the Coastal Wetland Forest Conservation Science Working Group (SWG) to analyze the threats to Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests and to recommend ways to address those threats. The SWG issued its final report in 2005, but so far none of its substantive recommendations has been implemented. Meanwhile, several of the 42 group members, advisors and others have continued their research; they have forwarded recommendations to Louisiana’s current governor Bobby Jindal.
   “We’re still pushing,” says SWG chair Jim Chambers. “There’s a lot of missing data and misinformation out there. Hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more concrete kinds of things in the near future.”
   Specifically, Chambers hopes to see progress on three fronts:
   • Maps that define the borders of “unsustainable” coastal wetland forests.
   • Techniques for identifying regeneration conditions in the field.
   • Development of Coastal Forest Practice Guidelines that would replace the so-called “best
     management practices” (BMPs) currently used by the timber industry and state
     regulators.

   The Louisiana Forestry Association (LFA), a politically influential group, which includes landowners, loggers and members of the timber industry, does not embrace the goals to the same extent as Chambers and the SWG. In effect, the issue comes down to how Louisiana defines “unsustainable” and where the lines are drawn, but achieving these goals is about as easy as navigating a dense cypress swamp by moonlight.
   According to Buck Vandersteen, LFA executive director and a member of the SWG’s advisory panel, the definition of “unsustainable” coastal wetland forests should be limited to those areas affected by salt-water intrusion and subsidence. The LFA would define “unsustainable” in terms that maximize the timber industry’s ability to harvest cypress and other coastal trees.
   Chambers and the SWG, on the other hand, would include larger, hydraulically- influenced areas in their definition of “unsustainable” coastal wetland forests, and thereby restrict permitted logging activities significantly.
   In addition to defining a territory for the trees in question, the SWG report classifies swamps into three categories based on re-growth potential. They recommend that the state use these classifications “for management, restoration, protection and use purposes.”
   Environmentalists fear that the timber industry is less concerned than the SWG about cypress regenerating as cypress. They may be right.
   Standing ankle-deep in water on a tract that was clear-cut in 2001 of its cypress-tupelo forest in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, Mike Thomas, state stewardship coordinator for the Office of Forestry, surveys a lush field of new growth. Pointing to a number of sprouting young trees -- Chinese tallow, maple, oak and green ash -- Thomas says, "This is a forest to me -- not a big forest, not all cypress -- but it's got trees on it."
   Thomas believes that forests are always changing and that more bureaucracy might unglue the relationship between the Forestry Association's BMPs and landowners who voluntarily maintain a "95 percent compliance" with such recommendations.
   On top of having not yet concluded a definition for “unsustainable” cypress forests, presently the state of Louisiana has no plan specific to cypress management or their coastal wetland home. The LFA rejects the notion of replacing the current BMPs, with Coastal Forest Practice Guidelines. “Our forests are being managed under the best forest sustainability practices in the country,” says Vandersteen.
   Critics of the state’s BMPs say they were designed to reduce forest soil erosion and to protect Louisiana’s water quality, not to sustain coastal forests. “Those [BMPs] are strictly for water quality. … They don’t do anything else,” says Chambers.
   Up to 80 percent of the state’s second growth baldcypress lies in Southern Louisiana swamps that can’t re-grow, according to the SWG’s 2005 report.
   Forests of invasive and weaker species, trees that cannot survive a hurricane, are replacing the fallen and harvested sentinels of the swamp. “Trash” trees like willow and Chinese tallow lack the wide root base that holds cypress and soil in place through hurricane winds and storm surges. The SWG reports that the cumulative effects of “small-scale” factors, including the replacement of coastal forests with invasive species, “can be of equal or greater importance in coastal wetland forest loss and degradation than large-scale alterations.”
   Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests were first logged — clear cut — of their cypress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of Louisiana's first-growth cypress trees had diameters exceeding 10 feet. These were cherished for their buttery, rot-resistant lumber. Coastal conditions have drastically changed in the past 50 years, severely impeding the potential for today’s cypress to naturally regenerate according to the SWG. Cypress trees that managed to regenerate after the initial cut are dwarfed by their predecessors. Relatively sparse in number, second-growth trees average 2 feet in diameter and lack the cherished properties of the elder, virgin crop.
   Until recently, there was very little interest in a second cypress harvest. Then, starting in the 1990’s consumer demand for cypress mulch and furniture made from native Louisiana cypress made large-scale cypress harvesting profitable again. The big push to log cypress started when loggers and landowners realized that if they had 10,000 trees and only 1,000 were large enough to turn into board lumber — but 9,000 could be made into mulch — then it would be worth the high cost of building roads into the swamp and bringing in logging and hauling equipment.
   “I’ve discussed it with loggers, I’ve discussed it with landowners, and the trigger was mulch. Mulch came along and it suddenly made it profitable to go down into these deep swamps, which are very inhospitable,” says John Bruza, Chief Surveillance and Enforcement US Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District.
   In a state that looses an average of 15,300 acres of coastal land per year, Louisiana’s SWG and its forest interest groups can agree that coastal cypress forests are falling to the environmental impacts of a crumbling coast: salt water intrusion and sinking land, but few will settle on the science beyond those facts. Official state data and maps are in demand but the process of collecting and agreeing upon the information remains a great challenge.
   Bill Burkman, project leader for Forest Inventory and Analysis at the USFS Southern Research Station, says the data that he has seen in Louisiana has made coastal wetland forests “one of our bigger concerns.”
   Burkman adds that in the process of completing a five-year cycle of analysis for all forests in Louisiana in 2007, the USFS identified plots that had problems and fixed as many of them as it could, setting a protocol for future updates.
   LDAF officials say that they are presently collecting aerial data, adding that they are working on a process for “ground-truthing,” or on-site verification of species data gathered via aerial inspections. That process will not be easy, because many coastal wetland forests remain flooded year-round.
   Presently, negotiations surrounding the state’s coastal wetland forest policies largely hinge upon a border that is hotly debated. Louisiana’s Coastal Zone boundary is not ecologically based, but a “politically defined line that delimits Coastal Management’s regulatory jurisdiction,” according to the Department of Natural Resources. Louisiana's Coastal Wetlands extend far beyond the current Coastal Zone Boundary, according to the SWG. One of the group’s recommendations is to extend the Coastal Zone to include “extensive areas of wetland forests” that are not set within the current boundary.
   Environmental groups fear that the state is too closely tied to the timber and logging industries, a relationship that may lead to difficulty in establishing ecologically sound policies for cypress and their coastal wetland forest home. Lack of state policy and support has lead environmental groups to work with corporations; in the court of public opinion, advocates for the state tree have won key corporate support, which they hope will translate into pro-environmental policies at the state level.
   Advocates for the tree, including the Save Our Cypress Coalition, have tried to encouraged the big box stores, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s, to stop selling any cypress mulch produced in Louisiana until standardized certification programs are in place. The current Coastal Zone establishes a corridor that Home Depot and Lowe's won't enter when purchasing cypress mulch from Louisiana. While Wal-Mart has halted sales of any Louisiana produced cypress until a "standard or uniform certification program for designating sustainable areas of cypress forests" has been put into place.
   The full and partial compliance of these stores with environmentalists, and the consequent impact on mulch producers, has mulch industry members on the move to restore what they feel is a bad rap against the industry.
   Robert Lagasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council, says that the Save Our Cypress Coalition, which is spearheading the movement to further regulate Louisiana’s cypress mulch industry, is practicing “old-style environmentalism.”
   “Déjà vu Sierra Club and the spotted Owl,” says Lagasse. “It’s a very emotional appeal that the environmentalists are making and it’s unsubstantiated by the facts.” Lagasse has been working with Buck Vandersteen, former chief Louisiana state forester Paul Frey and others to navigate through what has been a very difficult position for the industry. “We maintain a continuing mission of recycling byproduct in a sustainable manner,” says Lagasse in regards to his push for a revival of Louisiana’s cypress mulch product.
   Scott Poole, chief operating officer of Roy O. Martin Lumber Co., based in Alexandria, Louisiana, agrees with Lagasse that the cypress mulch issue is not rooted in fair science. Founded in 1923, the company is a multi-generational producer of cypress products, though they do not produce mulch. “It’s a mosaic issue, granted,” says Poole, a graduate forester with an M.B.A. “But the scientific evidence is being distorted.” Poole says environmentalists are using scientific evidence from selected regions to provide blanket statements for the entire state.
   Using the volume of baldcypress over the entire state as an index for growth in the coastal region, the SWG claims that cypress growth rates have essentially ceased since 1980. However, the SWG report acknowledges that more information is needed because “the data are not well suited for making precise statements about geographical differences in the status of baldcypress forests within the coastal region.”
   Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network and an advisor to the Science Working Group says that though Vandersteen and Frey participated in the SWG’s advisory committee, “They just absolutely refused to accept that that [SWG’s] report was good science, even though it was the product of some of the most renowned wetland scientists in the U.S. …Our claims are based on what a credible group of scientists have said.”
   Sarthou and others fear that at the state- and federal-level forest service employees see their work as being an economic development tool for the forest industry, rather than a public service. “A lot of the concern that we’ve had is that this is about storm protection. The economic benefits of that are not being presented to the community.”
   Hassan Mashriqui, a Louisiana Sate University Professor of coastal engineering who creates computer simulations of hurricanes, concurs that a football field-sized stand of reduce the impact of a 20-ft-high storm surge by 90 percent. Coastal cypress forests in Louisiana have a magnitude stronger, more enduring and less costly than any concrete or earthen levee.
   “With a $50 billion fix on the table for coastal Louisiana, it only makes sense to protect the cypress that remains. It makes the Army Corps’ job vastly easier and cheaper,” says Aaron Viles, spokesman for the Gulf Restoration Network and a member of the Save Our Cypress Coalition.
   Dean Wilson is one of the leading environmentalists in the movement to halt Louisiana's unregulated cypress mulch industry.  His on-the-ground efforts are the foundation of the Save Our Cypress Coalition's campaign. In speaking of industry representatives and policy makers who refuse to acknowledge the SWG's findings, Wilson says, "They've been ignoring science and promtion logging. You cannot work with those people; It's corruption at the highest level."
   “Those who make claims should be able to put their fingers on the map,” says Legasse, arguing against the Save Our Cypress Coalition’s claims, but echoing a wide spread sentiment that almost everyone agrees upon. If the state had better boundaries on its land, there might be fewer troubles. The last land survey done by the state was concluded in 1840. Some high-water marks -- which determine the boundaries between public and private lands -- have never been surveyed. These circumstances make it difficult for the Corps and the EPA to enforce many land-use laws.
   “Tracking where trees come from in the mulching process is an excellent idea,” says Chambers. “Until we have the maps to where sustainable forests lie, we can’t do the certification.”
   Dr. Mike Dunn, a resource economist with a degree in forestry with Louisiana State University's AgCenter in Baton Rouge, agrees that Louisiana's coastal wetland forests are an ill-studied ecosystem. "It gets forgotten between things that happen in urban areas and the wetlands that we all know and are familiar with... Then there's the forest... It's not just economics. It's the biology and all the science involved with it that we need to know more about."