by ROCKMAN » Wed 05 Mar 2014, 16:33:52
Folks : You are all missing THE key aspect of why they are building the plant where the are. They won't be cutting "old growth forest". Much of the N La pine forest is 4th or 5th generation plantings. I would imagine that a fairly big portion of their source will be mill wastes of which there is mucho. Now whether the economics work or not I'll leave the rest of you to battle over.
"Trees are the life blood of central Louisiana, a sustainable resource that is vital to the local economy and fills pockets on pay day. Commercial forests occupy more than 13.8 million acres of land in Louisiana (that's 49% of total land area) with 64% held by non-industrial private owners, 26% by forest industry, and 10% by public agencies. "That means we have about 148,000 individuals who own timber land in this state," said Clyde Todd, Forestry Issues Coordinator for the Louisiana Forestry Association. In order to maintain healthy forests, forest industries take time during the winter months to replant what they have taken out, setting seedlings that will grow to tall pine forests and begin the cycle of forest sustainability once more. This reforestation after harvest has become the cornerstone of Southern forest management programs for corporate, private, and government landowners.
The Louisiana Forestry Association estimates that around 128 million seedlings are planted in this state each year. That's 410 trees per day and 29 trees planted for each man, woman, and child in the state. Almost 55,000 acres a year are converted from farmland to pine trees. The usual planting is 700 trees per acre but varies by company policy. Planting season runs from November to March in Louisiana. "March 15 is the deadline for planting trees here," stated Dorothy Bosch of Bosch Nursery in Jonesboro. That's why companies as well as individuals start planting early. The Bosch Nursery began in the early 1950s by the Continental Can Company, an earlier owner of the mill and forestry operation at Hodge, to provide seedling for its own timberlands. The nursery was purchased by Leonard Bosch, one of the first employees there. While operations had ceased at Bosch in the last few years, they plan a moderate planting schedule next year. "We plant while the trees are in their dormant stage," said Kenneth Womack, Timberland Superintendent at Plum Creek in Joyce. Pines can't be transplanted in summer or spring because they are still growing. "During that period, the small seedlings would die when we pull them up to plant them." This 2003-2004 planting season, Plum Creek planted 1.2 million pine seedlings on 2,107 acres. "That's below average for our company," Womack said. "We've been changing our rotation to around 28 years to keep from clear cutting as much. We usually plant around 8,000 acres and we will again in a couple of years." Plum Creek grows their own pine seedlings in a nursery on Pearl River in Mississippi."
