COLLEGE STATION -- Drought has chopped East Texas forests by almost $342 million, and the timberlands are not likely to recover for years, Texas Forest Service officials said Tuesday. The loss is expected to ripple through the state economy for a $1.1 billion total impact.
About 65 percent of the pine seedlings planted on 150,000 acres this year in Texas died, according to TFS forest resource development head Ed Barron. At $170 per acre, that means a loss of about $16.6 million. Plus, the drought caused much of the existing forest to grow only about half as much as would have in a normal year, meaning a loss of $325 million in decreased growth.
"We'll be wrestling with this for years," Barron said. "It will be a setback. Anytime we lose a full year of reforestation cycle, it will take more than a year to catch up."
Agriculture officials have estimated that the 1998 drought surpassed that of 1996 by some $800 million. Dr. Roland Smith, Texas Agricultural Extension Service economist, said the agricultural losses will have a total economic impact of $5.8 billion on the state. But, he said, the forest figures are an additional blow.
Of the 29 million acres of forest land in Texas, about 11.8 million acres are commercial timberlands in East Texas. About 61 percent is held by private, non-industry owners, 32 percent is owned by forest product companies and 7 percent is publicly held, according to the Texas Forest Service. With sales of more than $1 billion annually, timber is the state's third most valuable agricultural commodity behind cattle and cotton.
Most obvious among the forest losses, Barron said, will be harvested lands where tiny trees had been planted last December in an effort to reforest. He said Texas timberland depends on some 112 million seedling trees planted every year to keep pace with forest use. Losing the bulk of this year's seedlings and facing the need for another 112 million trees when December planting begins means "quite of bit will be postponed," Barron noted.
"This is sort of a double whammy," he said. "A lot of the lands that are being harvested this year that normally would be replanted this winter will be put off for a while."
The main problem is that the state's seedling nurseries are barely equipped to keep up with normal demand, much less accommodate disasters. The Forest Service tries to reforest about 53,000 acres a year. But every acre needs about 750 seedlings, he said, and the agency only can produce about 25 million, so it has to get about 15 million from other nurseries. There are about five nurseries that produce seedlings for timber companies, he said, but they also are barely able to keep up with their normal needs.
Even if each nursery was able to stretch to produce an additional 5 million trees -- which the state forest service plans to do -- Barron said that would mean only an extra 25 million trees, far short of the number lost this year.
"Part of this (lack of nursery product) is that trees grown for individual land owners are grown at a risk. There is no guarantee up front that someone eventually will purchase the trees," Barron explained. "So, nurseries are a little hesitant to jump out there and build a new $3 million nursery. Plus, the seed that we use comes from the genetic tree program and it takes us 10 years to get a new seed orchard in production."
Barron said TFS hopes to get state funds to start a new nursery and seed orchard -- which eventually would become self-sufficient, "but even if we started today on the seed orchard, it would take 10 years to get a significant seed crop.
"We have been doing good just to meet the current need, but with a major drought like this we are not equipped to supply the trees, do the replanting and stay on schedule," he said.
Less obvious in forest losses is the lack of growth. Simply, trees shoot up and out with lots of water but stop growing when it's dry.
"When we assume that on average, tree growth has declined by half due to the drought, value lost is estimated be $325 million," Barron said, noting that the lack of growth is most severe on the western fringes of the East Texas forests.
"In most cases, even if we are fortunate to follow this year with a wet year, we will not make back up the lost growth," Barron said. "This year's lost growth is something that is just gone. And a lot of the impact on the industry will not be felt immediately because there still are a lot of trees in our inventory. But it impacts the total capacity and ultimately this will be felt and realized because the volume of trees long-term will not be there."
Barron said such an impact probably will not be felt for another decade.
"We just will have to try to go full speed ahead and try to double up on tree production in the new few years," he said.
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