From the ApSAF Chair...

Dog Days of Summer

Moisture deficits, high day/night time temperatures and a string of broken records. Sounds like another great baseball season but it’s the weather, not America’s favorite pastime, for which we lament this year. Was a time you could converse with others about the weather, complain and take consolation that this was just a phase we are going through and that relief would be just another tropical storm away. Right now as I type this, the first summer storm relief is in the Caribbean and is days away from testing the security of a well cap that has plugged the nation’s three-month –long, greatest ecological disaster.  More than ever, we seem to dread even the little storms because they pack a combined wallop of wind, water and energy. This morning’s news spoke of a 7-inch deluge that soaked an already wet Wisconsin. What the South wouldn’t give for just a fraction of that moisture during these the hottest months of the year and 304th consecutive months of the hottest temperatures above 20th Century records¹.  Sure we’d love the rain but not the straight-line winds, dry lightning and promise of rain that may not bring relief but simply more grief.
Sure we’d love our kids to get out of doors more but with temperatures like these and risks associated with sun, heat indices and tick-borne diseases- they seem wiser than us  in their choice to stay within the climate-controlled environs. It begs the question: Will the next generation be willing to work in the climate of the future and its great, open-spaces? Our efforts to mentor future professionals are more critical than ever and your colleagues Carlyle Franklin and Jim McCarter are working to make those mentor resources front and center on the APSAF website. But like any real change the first step begins with each and every one of us.  Be sure to check the website, and register for the list-serve so that you can keep apprised of their efforts and the tangible steps you can take to ensure that the next generation of foresters and natural resource professionals have a link to the past and hand-up to the future through their association with SAF and its dedicated members. If you have a moment to spare just contemplate the handful or dozen professionals that assisted you, complemented your progress or had a hand in getting you to the point you are today. How many of them were SAF members like you?

We live in truly interesting and challenging times. Pick your disaster or topic area – with 24 hour news and endless media streams, our science and facts about nature are increasing lost to a public that struggles to put food on the table pay the mortgage, healthcare bills and whom are decreasing in their science literacy and ability to understand the enormity of the climatic, economic and global energy changes that we face. Whether it’s a lawsuit challenging the next biomass facility, policy related to biomass definition or the latest hastily compiled treatise to warn the public of the “ravages” of unrestricted renewable energy facilities, we foresters and wood-aligned entities are definitely on the front lines of the national and international energy and climate policy debates².

So what can we do about all of this change? WE all sense the unrelenting pace and chaos of this seemingly insurmountable change, but others have faced change of this magnitude in the past and survived or even thrived. As SAF Society members, we have a network of colleagues to unify us and make sure the road we take is not a lonely one. Whether it’s Erica Rhodes at the national level or our past-APSAF chair Ched Kearse, we have friends tracking the policy horizon and keeping us apprised of what potholes and other pitfalls lay ahead of us. More than that, we have an upcoming APSAF annual meeting entitled,” The Road Before Us, Does it Look Like Anything We Have Seen Before?” where Brian Clark and others are lining up the best speakers in the region who’ll discuss recent changes in the industry, the physical and political landscape. If all goes as planned, the meeting will  address the strategies needed and the potential markets that will help ensure that we as a profession, industry and geographic region are viable, sustainable and poised to take advantage of upcoming opportunities that will arise during our profession’s second century.

So take advantage of the training, education and networking opportunities that your society offers you. Be it New Mexico in October or the APSAF meeting  in Charleston, SC on January 26th-28th, I hope to see you on the road before us.

Mark Megalos, NC RF #728, Ph.D
Extension Forestry Specialist & Asst. Extension Professor
NC State University, CB 8008 Raleigh, NC 27695-8008