CHARLESTON — West Virginia forests are growing faster than timber interests can harvest them, ballooning 22 percent since the last inventory was taken 19 years ago, forester Randy Dye revealed Tuesday.

A large reason for the growth is that little use has been made of the Monongahela National Forest as a source of timber, he told the Forest Management Review Commission.

Dye’s agency is working on a 12-month mission, tackling a different aspect each month, to provide lawmakers with a new strategic plan for timber.

While environmental interests must be achieved, Dye suggested that visions held by some groups are negative.

“A forested ecosystem is not like a photograph that can be framed and hung on the wall, unchanging for all time,” he said.

“Forestry is conservation; setting aside is preservation. The words are not synonymous. In many cases, the setting aside guarantees that the values thought to be preserved will be lost. Forests are constantly changing, and cannot be kept the same forever.”

From a percentage basis, West Virginia is the second most heavily forested state, trailing only Maine, he said.

West Virginia conducted its first forest inventory in 1949, when the total acreage was 9.9 million.

“The forest symbolizes West Virginia,” Dye said, telling the panel some 15.4 million acres are in trees.

Of that number, some 11.5 million are regarded as “timberland” since it will produce at least 120 board feet per acre each year, and the land is available to be harvested.

“If we harvest at today’s rate, it would take 135 years to cut down every tree in West Virginia,” he said.

Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, a co-chairman of the commission, asked Dye to update the panel on how the Division of Forestry is using the 71,000 acres under its purview.

“I guarantee you that if a company had at least 71,000 acres, they’d do something with it,” Helmick said.

About 14 percent of the timberland is owned by government interests, Dye pointed out.

Private owners legally may decide their objectives, but Dye alluded to “a public responsibility” to manage their acreage as part of the rural community with an eye toward preventing destruction.

Families own some 60 percent of all forest land in the state.

Dye advised the commission he plans to move up the study by his ecological committee for discussion in January, since it tends to enhance the December inventory.

This means the taxation report will be delayed until April.

Even so, Helmick provided an update on the severance tax, showing it went from $3.3 million in 2004 to $1.3 million in 2008. The tax peaked at $3.9 million in 2006 because of the expiration of credits.

Severance tax collections began to fall in both 2007 and this year because of a decline in forest products, Helmick said.

In his own 15th senatorial district, Helmick some 465 jobs have been lost — a 21 percent reduction — within the past three years, based on reports given him by individual timber interests.

Dye said old ideas about managing land from a pristine viewpoint must be succeeded by “a true respect for nature.”

“Sustainable forestry is not just about maintaining the supply of raw materials and jobs,” he said.

“It is also about maintaining the functioning of the global ecosystem. Sustainable forestry must be concerned about people and their needs. Nor can we focus solely on environmental issues such as wilderness, biodiversity and old growth.”

— E-mail:

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