PINEYWOODS PROTECTION (PART 1)

April 11, 2003
Houston Zoo
Houston, Texas

Andy Jones, Director of the Texas Office of the Conservation Fund (512-477-1712 or tcftexas@aol.com), reported on a remarkable change in the landscape of East Texas. Beginning in 2001, two timber companies, International Paper and Louisiana Paper, have been in the process of selling 1.5 million acres of land in east Texas, much of it identified as critical wildlife habitat, including swamps, deciduous forest, pine savannas and dry sandhills. A third timber company, Temple Inland, is considering selling substantial tracts of east Texas woodland as well. These companies are liquidating their land holdings for several reasons:

• to meet competition from more modern and efficient Canadian pulp and sawtimber imports that are now largely free of taxation, due to NAFTA;

• to reduce debt associated with International Paper’s acquisition of Champion Paper;

• to avoid high ad valorem taxes (in the range of $7 per acre per year) on their Texas woodlands;

• to pursue the alternative of buying Texas timber from third party landowners; and

• to take advantage of residential developer interest in purchasing these lands for Houston and Beaumont surburbanites.

Mr. Jones is encouraged that as much as 6000 acres of the private timberland on the market lies within the authorized boundaries of the Big Thicket National Preserve. Further, Kay Bailey Hutchison has led legislation to provide $3 million to fund this acquisition under the "Addition Act". This acquisition could be critical: the Preserve is considered to be one of the ten most threatened parks in the nation, due to white flight from Beaumont and related development around its very extensive boundaries, which due to its linear layout, exceed the length of the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.

PINEYWOODS PROTECTION (PART 2)

September 28, 2007
Houston Advanced Research Center
The Woodlands, Texas

Presentation A:  Conservation Fund and Piney Woods Protection

Julie Shackleford (936-468-5490) spoke first.  She represents the Conservation Fund’s Texas office in Nacogdoches, where she moved to expose her kids to nature, and to be closer to the Fund’s land acquisition work in east Texas.  She began her presentation by explaining that the Fund has a dual focus - conservation and economic development.  Towards those two goals, the Fund employs 130 people, with 96% of its revenue going toward land conservation, which so far has totaled 5.5 million acres, worth $3 billion, nationwide.

The Texas office of the Fund was opened in the late 1980s and has acquired 50,000 acres in the state to date.  Since 2002, with major timber tracts coming on the market, the Fund has emphasized work in east Texas.  To give an idea of the scale of liquidation of Texas timberlands, Ms Shackleford explained that from 2000 to 2005, Champion Paper, International Paper, Louisiana-Pacific and Georgia-Pacific sold 1.7 million acres of east Texas lands;  in 2006, International Paper sold 535,000 acres by itself;   and in 2007, Temple Inland sold 1.1 million acres in the state.  In total, 3.34 million acres of private timberland have been sold in east Texas since 2000.

The Fund targets strategic acquisitions next to or within publicly protected lands.  For example, in the Big Thicket National Preserve, it has bought 8150 acres along Village Creek and 6700 acres in the Beaumont Unit.  In the Lower Trinity National Wildlife Refuge, the Fund has purchased 4800 acres;  and in the Angelina National Forest, it has bought 283 acres.  The Fund also manages the 20,000-acre Pinewoods Mitigation Bank, and holds an 11,000-acre easement on property formerly held by Temple Inland (it is unclear if the easement will convey to the purchasers, the Campbell Group).

Ms Shackleford explained that most of the timberlands are being sold to “TIMOs”, Timber Investment Management Organizations, which buy, sell and manage the lands on behalf of large insurance companies, pension funds, and foundations.  The TIMOs like timberlands because of the stable revenue from product sales, and the high returns possible from land appreciation.  There is concern that the TIMOs are largely based out of state and are not as tied to the community and staff as the older forest companies.  As well, the TIMOs have a shorter time horizon, perhaps 10-20 years, and may accelerate logging, and/or even sell for land development.  Since the TIMOs are buying property in huge blocks of hundreds of thousands of acres, they can realize significant gains on splitting the property up and “flipping it” in smaller parcels, essentially buying wholesale and selling retail.  In that prospect, Ms Shackleford sees a serious fragmentation risk from the role of TIMOs.

The immediate concern is the August 6, 2007 sale of Temple-Inland’s lands to the Campbell Group TIMO.  Within that package is a set of 240,000 acres of conservation lands that had been set aside, monitored and managed for habitat for many years by Temple-Inland.  A number of the individual tracts within the conservation package are also near or in public lands, including the Neches Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the Davy Crockett National Forest.  The Conservation Fund is negotiating with the Campbell Group about possible resale of these conservation tracts.

Aside from the clear habitat value of these lands, Ms Shackleford wanted to emphasize other aspects of the property.  For instance, Houston gets 70% of its water from the Trinity basin, and Beaumont gets an even larger portion of its water from the Neches watershed - and the flows and quality of water from both basins could be hurt by clearcutting, fragmentation and development.  In addition, the forests of these lands are important for cleaning the air breathed in the Golden Triangle area.  Finally, the lands are an important travel and recreation asset, if they remain in a natural, undeveloped condition.

Ms Shackleford concluded with an update on the Conservation Fund’s current work.  They have three projects presently.  First, they are in negotiations with Hancock Investments to buy 3800 acres in 2008 to complete the 97,000-acre Big Thicket National Preserve.  They are also in conversations with Congressman Brady to enlarge the boundaries of the Preserve to buffer its narrow “string-of-pearls” layout, since the commercial timberlands that long protected the Preserve can’t be relied on now.  Third, they are talking with Senator Cornyn and Represetative Brady to provide a one-time line item in the federal budget to acquire significant amounts of the commercial Texas timberland now on the market, recognizing that this land may never be available at this low a price, or in such large parcels, again. 

Presentation B:  Nature Conservancy and Piney Woods Protection

David Bezanson (512-494-9559, x.109) presented next.  He was formerly the executive director of the Natural Areas Preservation Association, the oldest and largest state-based land trust in Texas;  since February 2007, he has been the east Texas program manager for the Nature Conservancy.  The Texas chapter of the Conservancy was formed in 1963 by Ned Fritz, with an early focus and base in Dallas and the east Texas region.  The Conservancy retains significant east Texas holdings, including Caddo Lake, Clymer Meadow, Lennox Woods, Larsen Sandylands, Wier Woods, Little Rocky, and Timberlake tracts. 

Given the current focus on Temple-Inland, Mr. Bezanson pointed out that the Conservancy had a 25-year collaboration with Temple-Inland, keyed to work on the Larsen Sandylands tract, which was managed by the Conservancy’s first employee, Ike McWhorter.  Mr. Bezanson has been impressed with the management skills and forbearance shown by Temple-Inland:  it has resulted in a number of fine tracts that the Conservancy would like to see protected.  They include Longleaf Ridge, a 40,000-acre tract with 12 creeks, 100 rare species, and a diverse sampling of ecosystems, including a pitcher plant bog, RCW forest, a waterfall, and hills, with very little fragmentation from roads.  The Conservancy also has its eye on the Tonkawa Sandhills, Cauble Prairie (which would add the first prairie component to the Big Thicket National Preserve), and Hankamer Savanna (which has the highest plant diversity in Texas).  For all these reasons, the Conservancy is interested in working with the Campbell Group to see if these tracts can be acquired.

The Conservancy is also interested in parcels within the 700,000 acres held by the Hancock Natural Resources Group, a TIMO which bought these lands from Champion and Louisiana Pacific.  While Hancock has been cooperative, opening their lands to Texas Parks and Wildlife monitoring, the firm has a short-term horizon, and is expected to sell out within 7-10 years.  The Conservancy is especially interested in Rush Creek Ravine in Tyler County, which has unlogged stands of magnolia and beech, and 100-300 foot deep ravines.  Woodpecker Hill would be another good Hancock tract to protect, since it would offer a good RCW reintroduction site.

Mr. Jones was also pleased to report that the Conservation Fund has been successful in using Migratory Bird stamp funds to acquire an additional 3200 acres for the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.

He is most excited though about the possibility of acquiring roughly 33,000 acres along the Middle Neches River segment for roughly $26 million. International Paper has tracts there that abut and join the Davy Crockett and Angelina National Forests, and that would also create a buffer along this unspoiled segment of the Neches. To make land or water acquisitions in East Texas of this size and cost, the Conservation Fund is proposing to build and draw upon the "Texas Revolving Fund", which would provide direct loans to land trusts and interim funding for purchases of land in partnership with public agencies and non-profits. $13 million in applications are pending with a number of private foundations to create the Revolving Fund. As well, the Conservation Fund is seeking money from the Texas Department of Transportation to secure mitigation funds associated with construction of Interstate 69. Finally, the Conservation Fund is working in partnership with a sustainable timber investor that would work to manage and restore the portion of the land that could serve as a working forest.

Ellen Buchanan (409-384-1575 or ebuchanan@jas.net), director of the Big Thicket Natural Heritage Trust and staff at the Martin Dies State Park, stressed the urgency of efforts to protect woodlands in East Texas. She reported that Louisiana Pacific has already sold some 50,000 to 100,000 acres of land to Barrs & Glawson, a timber operator and land speculator which some fear may subdivide and sell the lands in turn to residential developers, particularly that around the Big Thicket National Preserve visitors’ center. There is concern that if much of this low-lying land is sold for development that it raise pressures to channelize the Little Pine Island Bayou which crosses the Preserve.

As a result, Ms Buchanan and the Big Thicket Natural Heritage Trust (a land trust spun off by the Big Thicket Association) are responding with several efforts. First, they have raised money to buy land, including 45 acres at the confluence of Beech and Village Creeks, within the authorized Big Thicket National Preserve boundaries. Second, they have been offering educational programs, including hikes in the wilderness of Newton County and canoe trips through the unspoiled stretches of the Neches River, Village Creek and other local streams. Third, they have been supporting an effort to get additional state funding for land acquisition in the area: this seems to be bearing fruit with a bill moving through the Texas House that would create a $500 million conservation bond fund.