Also see: My History in Forestry | Forestry Workshop | Recommendations

FOREST TRUSTEESHIP

       It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood, you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied, and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted. — Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message

Although most people speak of forest "stewardship," I personally prefer the concept of a "living trust" because stewardship does not in and of itself have a legally recognized "beneficiary"—someone who directly benefits from the proceeds of one's decisions, actions, and the outcomes they produce. Although a "steward," by definition, is someone who "manages" another's property or financial affairs and thereby acts as an agent in the other's stead, there is nothing explicit in the definition about a legal beneficiary. For this reason, "stewardship" is a much more wishy-washy term than "living trust" because the fiduciary responsibility of stewardship is to the shareholders; whereas the fiduciary responsibility of a living trust is to the beneficiaries, none of whom need to be physical shareholders.

A LIVING TRUST

A living trust is like a promise, something made today, but about tomorrow. In making a promise we relinquish a little personal freedom with the bond of our word. In keeping our promise, we forfeit a little more freedom in that we are limited in our behavior, but to break a promise is to lose some of our integrity and a bit of our soul. The reason people hesitate to make promises lies in the uncertainty of circumstances on the morrow. Helping to quelling the fear of uncertainty is the purpose of a "living trust."

A "living trust," in the legal sense, is a present transfer of property, including legal title, into trust, whether real property (such as forestland) or personal property (such as livestock, jewelry, or interest in a business). The person who creates the trust (such as the owner of forestland) can watch it in operation, determine whether it fully satisfies his or her expectations, and, if not, revoke or amend it.

A living trust also allows for the delegation of administering the trust to a professional "trustee," such as a "managing" forester, which is desirable for those who wish to divest themselves of managerial responsibilities. The person or persons who ultimately receive the yield of the trust, for better or worse, are the legal beneficiaries. The viability of the living trust is the legacy passed from one generation to the next, which means we must think in terms of "potential productivity" instead of constant production.

Though a trustee may receive management expenses from the trust, meaning that a trustee may take what is necessary from the interest, at times even a small stipend, the basic income from the trust, as well as the principle, must be used for the good of beneficiaries. In our capitalist system, however, natural resources are assumed to be income or revenue, rather than capital. That said, a trustee is obligated to seek ways and means to enhance the capital of the trust—not to diminish it. Like an apple tree, one can enjoy the fruit thereof, but not destroy the tree. A living trust, after all, is about the quality of life offered to the generations of the future. It is not about the acquisition of possessions.

Because a forest is a living entity, it can be thought of as a "perpetual, biological living trust," (hereinafter referred to as "biological living trust") in which individual people—as well as their relationships among one another, Nature, their communities, and generations—have value and are valued, as are all living beings. For forestry to survive throughout the twenty-first century as an honorable profession, it must accept the moral essence of a biological living trust. It must also advance beyond resisting change as a condition to be avoided (clinging to the current, linear, reductionistic, mechanical world view of exploitive forestry) and embrace change as a process filled with hidden, viable ecological-social-economic opportunities in the present for the present and the future—the beneficiaries. People with the necessary courage to unconditionally accept change are rare, but I remember meeting one in 1992 in Slovakia.

I had been asked to examine a forest in eastern Slovakia and give the people my counsel on how to restore its ecological integrity after years of abusive exploitation by the Communists. During the process, I worked with employees of the Slovakian Federal Forest Service. One man, the Chief Forester, then near the end of his career, had been in charge of the forest during the days of the Communists. As I was about to leave Slovakia, the Chief Forester took me aside and said, with great emotion:  "Chris, if I learned one thing from you, it's that the forest is sacred—not the plan. Thank you." With that, this man reversed the thinking of his entire 40-year career. I have seldom encountered such courage, humility, and dignity.
We all need such courage, humility, and dignity if we are to be worthy trustees of our public forests as a biological living trust. But before trusteeship and the precept of a biological living trust can be fruitfully discussed as means of caretaking forestlands, you and I must be able to understand and integrate two perspectives of time, that of a clock and that of an hourglass.

Time as measured by the ticking of a clock is constant in tempo. With a clock, you see the hands move from second to second, minute to minute, and hour to hour—as 'round and 'round the clock's face they go. While to a child time seems to drag, even stand still, to an older person time seems to fly, despite the fact that watching a clock's hands make their appointed rounds belies both the impatience of youth and the sensation of time as fleeting in old age.

Contrariwise, if you measure time through the functioning of an hourglass, you have the distinct impression that time is "running out," like the sand pouring to the beck and call of gravity from the top of the hourglass, through the small hole in its middle, to the bottom. Most adults view time with a growing sense that theirs is running out, so they must grab all of life they can before their time is "spent," a fear of loss that champions material acquisitiveness in the supposed "safety" of the status quo. This sense of impending loss as time "runs out" causes people to avoid as best they can the inevitable admission of change.

In reality, of course, time does not run out; our bodies expire instead. And it's precisely the dual sense of time running out and the demise of our bodies that causes many people to seek a way to continue their sense of being in the world, like the continual ticking of the clock. One way to accomplish such continuance is through a living trust.

If we have the courage and the willingness to adopt and implement the concept of a "biological living trust," we are practicing sustainable forestry in which ever-adjusting relationships—ecological, social, and economic—become the creative energy that guides a vibrant, adaptable, ever-renewing forestry profession through the present toward the future. After all, forestry could be a profession that constantly opens the mind with growing conscious awareness because the forests of tomorrow will be created out of the inspirations, discernment, choices, decisions, and activities of today. In addition, sustainable forestry honors the integrity of both society (intellectually, spiritually, and materially) and its environment, thereby fitting the concept of a biological living trust in that it maintains positive outcomes for both the forest as a dynamic system and the beneficiaries who depend on the forest for their well-being.

A biological living trust is predicated on systemic "holism" in which reality consists of an organic and unified whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. That is to say, the desired function of a system defines its necessary composition. The composition, in turn, defines the structure that allows the functional processes to continue along their designated courses. Consequently, wisdom dictates that we must learn to characterize a system by its function, not its parts. The basic assumptions underpinning a biological living trust—all externalities within the current economic framework of forestry—are:

• Everything, including humans and nonhumans, is an interactive, interdependent part of a systemic whole.

• Although parts within a living system differ in structure, their functions within the system are complementary and benefit the system as a whole.

• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts because how a system functions is a measure of its ecological integrity and biological sustainability in space through time.

• The ecological integrity and biological sustainability of the system are the necessary measures of its economic health and stability.

• The biological integrity of processes has primacy over the economic valuation of components.

• The integrity of the environment and its biological processes have primacy over human desires when such desires would destroy the system's integrity (= productivity) for future generations.

• Nature determines the necessary limitations of human endeavors.

• New concepts must be tailored specifically to meet current challenges because old problems cannot be solved in today's world with old thinking.

• The disenfranchised, as well as future generations, have rights that must be accounted for in present decisions, actions, and potential outcomes.

• Nonmonetary relationships have value.

In a biological living trust, the behavior of a system depends on how individual parts interact as functional components of the whole, not on what each part, perceived in isolation, is doing. The whole, in turn, can only be understood through the relationship/interaction of its parts. Hence, to understand a system as a functional whole, we need to understand how it fits into the larger system of which it is a part. This understanding gives us a view of systems supporting systems supporting systems, ad infinitum. Consequently, we move from the primacy of the parts to the primacy of the whole, from insistence on absolute knowledge as truth to relatively coherent interpretations of constantly changing knowledge, and from an isolated personal self to self in community. At this point, you might wonder if a forest can be a living trust in the legal sense? The answer is, "Yes."

A FOREST AS A BIOLOGICAL LIVING TRUST

As he retired from his position as Deputy Chief for the National Forest System, Jim Furnish wrote an open letter to the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, dated October 2001. The letter opens and concludes with these paragraphs:

It has been my privilege to serve my entire career with the Forest Service, most recently as Deputy Chief for the National Forest System. I would like to close with some personal thoughts to you, my Chief, and to the agency as a whole. I think we stand at an important crossroads in our history. The choices made in the years ahead will have important impacts on our effectiveness and will shape the role that national forests and grasslands play in America and the world.

…

From my first day in the Forest Service, I have looked at the multiple-use message with the words Wood, Water, Forage, Wildlife and Recreation circling the shield. This simple emblem spoke well to the values of our society and a Forest Service bristling with confidence, striving to meet their needs. It served us well. But we need a new message.

We need to squarely address the issue of sustainability in a way that exhibits humility and an advocacy for the natural resources entrusted to our care. Societies throughout history have come to acknowledge—more often than not too late—that if one takes care of the earth, the earth will provide.

I hunger to see the Forest Service enthusiastically and openly embrace a new set of values for our second century of service. Being clear about what we stood for was what made the Forest Service great. We can emerge once again as international leaders in conservation, but not by being silent.

I share these thoughts with you in hopes that they will help you prosper in your role as Chief. The Forest Service occupies a privileged role in America. The incredible foresight to establish and grow the National Forest System has reaped untold benefits for this great land and people. We are now struggling to assert the legitimacy of our vision as the rightful and proper leaders to manage this estate. We are moving in a new direction, but lack clarity and purpose. I think it is the highest calling of leadership to be clear and explicit about the destination, as well as the urgency to get there.

All we have to offer our children and the generations of the future—ever—are choices to be made and things of value from which to choose. Those choices and things of value, both biological and social (= legal), can be held within the forest as a living trust, of which we, the adults of the current generation, are the legal caretakers or trustees for the next generation. Although the concept of a trustee or trusteeship seems fairly simple, the concept of a trust is more complex because it embodies more than one connotation; consider a forest as a legal living trust.

The forest is a biological living trust in the present for all generations. A living trust represents a dynamic process, whether in the sense of a legal document or a living entity. Human beings inherited the original living trust—planet Earth—long before legal documents were invented. The Earth as a living organism is the ultimate biological living trust of which we are the trustees and for which we are all responsible. Our trusteeship, in turn, is colored, for better or worse, by the values our parents, peers, and teachers instilled in us, our experiences in life, and the ever-accruing knowledge of how the Earth functions as an ecosystem.

Even so, the administration of our responsibility for the Earth as a living trust has throughout history been progressively delegated to professional trustees in the form of elected or appointed officials when and where the land has been, and is, held in legal trust for the public—"public lands." In so doing, we empower elected or appointed officials with our trust, our firm reliance, belief, or faith in the integrity, ability, and character of the person who is being empowered.

On public lands, such empowerment carries with it certain ethical mandates that in themselves are the seeds of the trust in all of its senses—legal, living, and personal:

"We the people," present and future, are the beneficiaries; whereas the elected or appointed officials and their hired workers are the trustees.

• We have entrusted these people to follow both the letter and spirit of the law in its highest possible sense.

• We have entrusted the care of public lands (those owned by all of us), whether forested or otherwise, to officials and professionals—planners, foresters, and other people with a variety of expertise, all of whom are sworn to accept and uphold their responsibilities and to act as professional trustees in our behalf.

• Our public lands—and all they contain, present and future—are "the asset" of the biological living trust.

• We, the American people, have entrusted these officials and professionals with our public lands as "present transfers" in the legal sense, meaning we have the right to revoke or amend the trust (the empowerment) if the trustees do not fulfill their mandate:  Public lands are to remain healthy and capable of benefiting all generations.

• To revoke or amend the empowerment of our delegated trustees if they do not fulfill their mandates is both our legal right and our moral obligation as individual, hereditary trustees of the Earth, a trusteeship from which we cannot divorce ourselves.

• As U.S. citizens, we have additional responsibilities to critique the professional trusteeship of our public lands because we are taxed to support not only the delegated trustees but also to provide public services with respect to those lands, and elected officials make the dollar allocations on our behalf. Their decisions about where and how to spend "our" money are reflected in both the present and future condition of our public lands.

How might this work if we are both beneficiaries of the past and trustees for the future? To answer this question, we must first assume that the administering agency is both functional and responsible. The ultimate mandate for the trustees, be they employees of an agency or otherwise, would then be to pass forward as many of the existing options (the capital of the trust) as possible.

These options would be forwarded to the next planning and implementation team (in which each individual is a beneficiary who becomes a trustee) to protect and pass forward in turn to yet the next planning and implementation team (the beneficiaries that become the trustees), etc. In this way, the maximum array of biologically and culturally sustainable options could be passed forward in perpetuity.

Should the officials and/or professionals fail to fulfill their obligations as trustees to our satisfaction, their behavior can be critiqued through the judicial system, assuming the judicial system is functional. In this way, the carefully considered effects embodied in our decisions as trustees of today could create a brighter vision for the generations to come. In order for this to happen, the notion of a biological living trust must become a "big idea."

A BIOLOGICAL LIVING TRUST AS A BIG IDEA

Real learning—the remembrance of things forgotten and the development of things new—occurs in a continuous cycle. Learning encompasses theoretical and practical conceptualization, action, and reflection, including equally the realms of intellect, intuition, and imagination. Real learning is important because overemphasis on action, one part of which is competition, simply reinforces our fixation on short-term, quantifiable results. Our overemphasis on action precludes the required discipline of reflection, a persistent practice of deeper learning that often produces measurable consequences over long periods of time.

Many of today's problems resulted from yesterday's solutions, and many of today's solutions are destined to become tomorrow's problems. This simply means that our quick-fix social trance blinds us because we insist on little ideas that promote fast results, regardless of what happens to the system itself. What society really needs are "big fixes" in the form of systemic ideas that promote and safeguard social-environmental sustainability, e.g., a collective vision of our public forests as a biological living trust.

The late publisher Robert Rodale, speaking at the Third National Science, Technology, Society Conference, February 5-7, 1988 in Arlington, VA, asked:  "Where are the big ideas, those that change the world?" They probably lie unrecognized in everyday life since our culture lacks sufficient free spaces for general thought.

A "big idea," according to Rodale, must:

• be generally useful in good ways—a biological living trust translates into a healthy environment and available resources;

• appeal to generalists and give them a leadership advantage over specialists—a biological living trust requires an understanding of the system as a whole and so necessitates an amalgamation of generalists and specialists, with generalists in charge;

• exist in both an abstract and a practical sense—a biological living trust, as seen in number one above, is practical it its outcome, but it is also abstract in that its practical outcome requires people to work together with love, respect, humility, wonder, and intuition, as well as their intellect;

• be of some interest at all levels of human concern—a biological living trust requires the continual building of relationships, which is all we humans really do in life and so touches all levels of society, both within itself and with Nature;

• be geographically and culturally viable over extensive areas—a biological living trust is a general necessity if the natural world is to remain viable and habitable for the generations of the future;

• encompass a multitude of academic disciplines—to caretake public lands as a biological living trust requires the integration of all disciplines, such as soil science, mycology, philosophy, sociology, theology, education, politics, ecology, forestry, and economics; and

• have a life over an extended period of time—a biological living trust is, by definition, an instrument of continuity among generations.

A biological living trust seems to fit all of Rodale's requirements. It also helps people to understand that life is not condensable, that any model is an operational simplification, a working hypothesis that is always ready for and in need of improvement. When we accept that there are neither shortcuts nor concrete facts, we will see how communication functions as a connective tool through which we can and must share experience, invention, cooperation, and coordination.

When people speak from and listen with their hearts, they unite and produce tremendous power to invent new realities and bring them into being through collective actions. While today's environmental users with narrow, special interests will not be around by the end of this century, all of the environmental necessities will be, and that makes "trusteeship," critically important.

"Trusteeship," in terms of public lands, is a process of building the capacity of people to work collectively in addressing the common interests of all generations within the context of sustainability—biologically, culturally, and economically. A biological living trust, in turn, means honoring the productive capacity of an ecosystem within the limitations of its ecological principles. This said, every public forest could be on a trajectory toward sustainability if we begin now to caretake each of them as a biological living trust, which is a "big idea." After all, sustainability is only a choice—our choice, but one that must be carefully and humbly planned if it is to endure the often shortsighted, contradicting political vagaries of humanity.

Remember, to protect the best of what we have in the present for the present and the future, we must all continually change our thinking and our behavior to some extent. Society's saving grace is that we all have a choice. Accordingly, whatever needs to be done can be—if enough people want it to be done and decide to do it.

Veteran Richard H. Schneider said in remembrance of his service in World War II:  "It's not so we live in the past, but so the past may live in the future." There is no better way to describe the purpose of caretaking the forest as a biological living trust—to give the generations of the future the greatest probability of seeing the same beauty and dignity of a healthy forest that I saw as a youth wandering the mountains of western Oregon and Washington nearly half a century ago, when bird song filled the air and every stream and lake was pure enough to drink from.

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Note:  This piece is excerpted from my book:  "Our Forest Legacy:   Today's Decisons, Tomorrow's Consequences." Maisonneuve Press, Washington, D.C. 255pp. (2005). For more information, see the "Book" page of this website. (I have posted a similar piece, but one referring to Planet Earth as a whole, under Essays.) The photograph of Zane and me was taken by Sue Johnston.

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Chris Maser
www.chrismaser.com
Corvallis, OR 97330

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