Tools of the Trade

Sustainable Forestry

      Forests are the backbone of eastern-North America’s ecology. As such, keeping land in forest cover is one of the most effective ways to benefit the health of the watersheds that we live in. Forests provide such ecosystem services as, water filtration and purification, places to hunt, fish, or otherwise recreate, timber, and scenic enjoyment. Additionally the conservation of forestland is vital to the maintenance of our biological resources. Forests provide important habitat for birds, wildflowers, and a myriad of other species. Some species are dependent exclusively on interior forests - those forests far from roads, houses, and other developed areas - like some neotropical migrants, other require very large areas of forest to exist, like black bear and northern goshawks. In these cases, to protect biodiversity - that is all animals and plants - we need to conserve those large tracts of forestland and those far from development to protect our whole suite of species. Sustainable forestry is a vital part of protecting these areas. Because it would be impossible to “set aside” large acres of forest for just the conservation of Biodiversity, sustainable forestry offers those interested in conservation a tool to protect our resources while providing income for the ownership and management of forestland for all of its associated values.

Dave Schreffler speaks about sustainable forestry.

      By managing our forests in the best possible manner we can conserve and protect all of the values associated with forests while ensuring that the resources that humans depend on can be produced for generations to come. This view of forestry, which encompasses not only human but other values as well, is the core of sustainable forestry. By promoting things like Best Management Practices (BMP) and we can help ensure that our forests remain productive source of income to help support our rural economies as well as protect our tremendously valuable and increasingly threatened water resources. By preventing the negative effects of forest management such as erosion and sedimentation and providing a long-term source of income we can prevent the permanent loss of productive forestland. By conserving forestland in our watersheds and along waterways we can actually reduce the amount of sedimentation and nutrients reaching our waterways from our nearby homes, farms, and businesses.

      Western Pennsylvania Conservancy can help willing landowners take another step toward conserving forestland through conservation easements. Conservation easements that provide for forest management are often called working-forest conservation easements. These easements allow forestry according to BMPs. Easements can help landowners conserve family forests, for hunting, recreation, and income, while protecting the ecosystem services, and timber economy that forests provide for future generations.

Sustainable Agriculture

      Agriculture has large impact on the everyday life of every person on earth, regardless of whether they live in New York City or in the hills of Pennsylvania. Many people easily associate agriculture with the provision of the food we eat, however few think of agriculture when considering some of the raw materials we depend upon, such as ethanol and cotton. Even fewer people think of agriculture as being an important component of our ecosystem. Agriculture, by preserving open space and promoting large unbroken tracts of land, supports many ecological functions that we often take for granted. These open spaces serve as wildlife habitat, which supports food chains, seed dispersal, nutrient movement, and genetic drift. The open spaces created by agriculture also support keystone ecological functions, such as soil building, plant respiration, groundwater recharge, and nutrient cycling.

Sustainable agriculture is essentially a method of managing any given farm in such a way that the farm’s resources are protected and the farm can remain economically and socially viable. Sustainability does not necessarily change the type of agriculture a given farm is practicing (e.g. a sustainable beef farm is still a beef farm). Rather, it simply shifts the mode of economic and natural resource use decision-making from short-term planning (which is the case with conventional farming) to long-term planning. Sustainability also encourages diversification of an individual farm to help lessen the sensitivity to market fluctuations.

There are many examples of how to incorporate sustainability into the farm system, most of which begin with managing the farm’s natural resources in manner that ensures its persistence. However, few of the suggested practices or economic decision-making models can accurately account for the diversity among farm-level natural resource endowments, economic and natural resource flexibility, individual capability, or access to the needed resources to make sustainability a reality. Therefore it is important to remember that sustainability is not a practice in and of itself, it is a management tool. The sustainability management tool helps to ensure that the farm’s productivity, economic and social viability, and the environment (the agroecosystem) are considered in every farm-level decision.