TREE OWNERS NEWS
Fall 2004
Sherry and I want to begin by
sincerely thanking every one of you who are having us grow trees for
you! Your wonderful faith and continued enthusiasm make possible
everything that we write about in this Tree Owners News.
From those of you who joined us
at the very beginning and must have been guided by sheer faith, to our
newest tree owners who have learned about us from other tree owners,
from various articles, or from our Tropical American Tree Farms™
website, we thank you all very much for joining us!
- We are in the middle of another beautiful
rainy season. Everything is lush and green, the air is crystal
clear, and all of your and our trees are growing vigorously.
- Our planting teams are busy planting our
remaining land on the Sierpe farm.
- At the same time, our thinning teams are hard
at work. They have finished thinning the 1992 trebol, nearly
completed thinning the 1996 teak, and have begun the first thinning
of the 1997 teak. After that, they will thin the 1994 and 1995
nargusta. And then as soon as the rainy season ends, they will move
to begin the second partial thinning of the 1992 and 1993 teak and
1993 idigbo.
- By the end of this year, Beto and our teams
will have felled and milled more than 2 million board feet of
beautiful young tropical hardwood lumber from the trees we have
planted.
- Raleo™ is growing strongly and clearly will
be a wonderful benefit to every tree owner, both by creating greater
value for the lumber from the early thinnings, and by establishing
Tropical American Tree Farms as a high-end source of top quality,
exquisitely beautiful tropical hardwoods.
- The farms are changing dramatically as we
plant trees and protect and reconnect rainforest and other precious
habitats. We’ll try to describe the wonderful changes and show you a
few pictures, all taken here on the farms.
- Our tree prices will be going up October
20th, 2004.
Most of our earlier newsletters
have been about the business aspects of planting, growing, thinning, and
milling. Our business model of planting and growing tropical hardwood
trees for harvest continues to receive high praise, and for that we are
grateful.
We encourage you to
visit your trees and
experience
first hand all that you are
helping to protect.
Tree owners hiking to the foot of a majestic
150 foot waterfall on one of our farms.
In this Tree Owners News, we
will try to convey to you how your tree ownership is helping to
protect the environment and how amazingly the farms are changing as we
plant and protect them.
As one illustration of how the
farms are transforming, a few months ago we posted on our front page two
photos of the same area of Campo Real, our first farm, one taken as we
began Tropical American Tree Farms, and the second ten years later.
We have included the two photos
below for those of you who have not seen them on our website. The first
photo, taken in 1992, not long after we bought Campo Real and before we
began to plant, shows large areas that had been previously deforested
and, at that time, consisted of eroding, dry pasture.
The second photo, of the same
area of Campo Real but from a slightly different angle, was taken ten
years later, in 2002, and shows that almost all of the areas that had
been cleared by previous owners are now filled in, either by trees that
we have planted or by natural regeneration in areas that we have set
aside in complete protection.
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1992 - a typical
area of
Campo Real, our first farm,
before we began to plant
and protect it |
2002 -
the same area
ten years later |
Sherry and I have the blessing
of living in a simple home nearly in the middle of the area shown in the
photos, and so we see first-hand every day the dramatic evolution taking
place. What was hot dry pasture 10 years ago is now lush and green,
shaded by the fast growing, early succession trees that first colonize
the regeneration areas - known here by names like guarumo, gallinazo and
mayo.
All of the early succession
trees are considered worthless by farmers wanting to keep their pastures
cleared. But we see first-hand that these early succession trees shade
the soil and drop lots of leaf litter which decomposes to rebuild the
soil. These same early succession trees also provide much needed shelter
for the wildlife, and their fruits and flowers provide abundant food for
the returning and multiplying birds, butterflies, and animals.
Three-toed sloth tasting a leaf in a cecropia tree
in what was only dry pasture before we began
Ten years ago, as you can see
from the 1992 photo, the only apparent animals were the occasional cow
that the short, dry grass could still sustain, about one cow for every
two to three acres. Now, just ten short years later, the area is lush,
green and alive with flocks of returning birds and animals.
Ten years ago, the most visible
bird on the farm was an occasional buzzard. Today, we often see scores of parrots
and toucans as they fly in for the night and enjoy the shelter of the
new trees, or feast on the natural seeds and fruits of trees that didn’t
exist several years ago, or call raucously to one another from the
treetops.
Even more dramatic and an
indication of how healthy the land now is, we now see almost daily a
large forest bird species that I had not seen before in my 30 years of
experience in Costa Rica, the great curassow. The great curassow is a
three foot tall, 8 to 9 pound bird that spends most of its time on the
ground in the forest. The world’s remaining great curassows are
endangered, under great pressure from loss of habitat and hunting. It is
a joy to see them again thriving in the areas that we are protecting.
Female great
curassow
The return of endangered birds
and animals is wonderful.
Another animal that I knew of
but had not seen before is the paca, a 15 to 25 pound very elusive
nocturnal animal that resembles a large spotted guinea pig. Pacas are
also under great pressure from loss of habitat and hunting. Now many
pacas forage in the underbrush and newly forested areas of our farms at
night.
Male paca
Wild animals now thrive on our farms.
When I wrote above that we have
the blessing of seeing the dramatic change every day, it is not only
because the birds and animals are returning and multiplying as their
habitat regenerates, but because they have figured out that we do not
represent danger to them. They have gotten so comfortable that they
often walk through our yard or rest in the trees beside our house, and
we get to observe their natural behavior up close.
Many nights pacas come right up
to our house to see if we might have a spare banana, and enjoy the
fruits that drop from the fruiting trees that we planted nearby. Male
pacas have huge heads and powerful jaws and often fight on their hind
legs. The females are smaller and more sleek, and some show signs that
they are nursing newborn offspring. Sometimes as many as a half dozen
pacas come up to visit.
Raccoons also often come up to
the house in the early evening, often napping on our front porch outside
the screen door or in nearby trees. One mother raccoon brings every
litter up to the house after her babies are old enough to have their
eyes open, as if to show us her new family. The raccoons are very mild
mannered and some know how to open our screen doors and walk into our
house. The mother raccoon is particularly fond of Jake’s (my younger
son) house. She opens his back door, walks in, casually looks around,
stops on her way through to say hi to Jake or his cat, then opens the
front door and walks on out.
An adult pair of great
curassows often walk up to our house in the mornings and afternoons,
usually with a juvenile male tagging along, and sometimes pause to look
in our front door.
Beautiful
butterflies are now
abundant throughout our farms.
Herds of white lipped peccaries
now forage in the underbrush. Even they occasionally come near the
house. And sloths are often seen slowly moving among the upper branches
of the trees.
At night, we often hear, and
sometimes see, kinkajous moving from branch to branch through the trees.
Hundreds of butterflies of all
sizes, shapes and colors now flit from flower to flower and brighten the
day.
The returning butterflies are a testament
to the healthy environment of the farms.
Whole groups of coatimundis
come by, often stopping to rest on the front porch, or groom each other,
or play in the yard. Sometimes there are as many as 30 coatimundis in
the yard. They too know we pose no danger. A few occasionally walk right
into my office if the screen door is open.
One coatimundi, the dominant
male who we named Bear because of his powerful build, developed a
particularly wonderful trust in us. He stayed completely wild and we
often wouldn’t see him for months. But when he was in the area he would
come by our house and sit up outside my office door to see if I would
come outside.
Male coatimundis fight terribly
and Bear would often show up wounded. He would allow me to clean his
wounds and remove any ticks. Sometimes he would just want some affection
and loved to have his ears and feet rubbed. If there were no other males
around that he had to stay alert for, he would even curl up next to me
like a puppy.
Bear,
stopping by for a brief rest and a
little affection, and Steve happily complying
We have had the joy of Bear’s
visits for more than seven years, but we haven’t seen him now for about
six months and fear that a younger male has bested him. If so, we will
miss Bear a lot.
It is truly wonderful to know
that the changes that we witness in the small area around our home are only a
tiny example of the flourishing habitat regenerating and abundant
wildlife returning over all 11,000 acres of our farms. You, our tree
owners, have made this possible.
We sometimes are asked why we
grow trees for others, why we don’t just keep everything for ourselves.
A major part of the answer is that alone we could not possibly do what
we are all accomplishing together.
The returning birds,
butterflies, animals and regenerating habitat are the more tangible,
visible benefits of your having us grow trees for you.
But there is another benefit
that scientists are not yet fully able to quantify but seems so logical,
and that is what young and growing trees do for the air we breathe.
Vigorously growing trees produce oxygen and take carbon dioxide out of
the air and convert it to wood.
Many scientists have concluded
that it is very important to not only reduce the amount of carbon that
mankind is putting into the air, from burning fossil fuels for example,
but that we must also work to remove carbon from the air to reduce man’s
impact on our climate.
In a rough calculation, I
believe that the trees that we have planted so far are removing 8,000 to
12,000 tons (that’s 16 to 24 million pounds) of carbon from the air
every year. The growing trees convert that carbon to beautiful tropical
hardwoods that will be utilized in exquisite furnishings and the carbon
will be nearly permanently sequestered or “fixed” in those beautiful
furnishings.
Carbon sequestration is a
concept that may not produce the same warm feeling as the wonderful
birds and butterflies and animals and rainforest that we are all protecting,
but the trees you are growing are indeed helping the world in many ways.
Fiery-billed
aracari
Birds thrive on the berries and other fruits
now abundant throughout the farms
With the wonderful changes we
see on the farms, the intangible benefits to the air we breathe, the
much needed employment we are providing, and knowing that the tropical
hardwoods that we produce will reduce the pressure on the world’s
natural rainforests, we are very motivated to do much more - to plant
many more trees, protect much more habitat, provide food and shelter for
many more birds, animals and butterflies, produce a great deal more
tropical hardwoods that aren’t taken from the rainforest, and create
many more much-needed jobs.
So please continue to tell
your friends and family about Tropical American Tree Farms. And if you
are not a tree owner, please join us in this wonderful endeavor.
Baby sloth (in the center of the photo) on
his
mothers tummy in one of our nargusta trees.
Together we really can make a
difference!
We are now able to accept both
Visa and MasterCard. If you would like to use your Visa or MasterCard to
purchase trees, simply go to our website, http:// tropicaltreefarms.com,
click on How to Order Trees, then on Voucher in the MasterCard and Visa
paragraph, print out and complete the voucher, sign and date it, and fax
or mail it together with your completed Tree Order Form which you can
also print out from the How to Order Trees page.
Or if you prefer, simply call
our office at 1-800-788-4918 and we will be happy to fax you the
voucher and Tree Order Form.
By the end of this year, Beto
and our thinning teams will have milled more than 2 million board feet
of beautiful young tropical hardwood lumber from the early thinnings of
trees we have planted.
Our teams have finished the
first thinning of the 1992 trebol, nearly completed the first thinning
of the 1996 teak, and have begun the first thinning of the 1997 teak.
After that, they will do the first thinning of the 1994 and 1995
nargusta. And then as soon as the rainy season ends, they will move to
begin the second partial thinning of the 1992 and 1993 teak and 1993
idigbo.
It is truly gratifying to see
all of the beautiful tropical hardwood lumber that these early thinnings
are producing.
As we have performed the many
teak thinnings and observed the trees and their hardwoods, we have
further refined our teak thinning schedule. We now project for future
thinnings, that we will do the first teak thinning after the 7th growing
season, the second thinning after the 10th growing season, and
subsequent thinnings after the 13th, 17th and 20th growing season, and
the final harvest in the 25th year.
When we first began Tropical
American Tree Farms, we were able to prepare economic projections only
for teak because there was no published information about our other
species upon which we could rely. That is still true, although over the
next several years we hope to have accumulated enough information from
our own experience to begin to create projections for our other species.
Our original projections for
teak were based on historical price information, growth and yield data
from other plantations, and estimated harvest and processing costs.
Now that we have completed
thinnings of tens of thousands of teak trees on our own farms, and
milled nearly 2 million board feet of teak from our own thinnings, we
can now include actual data for the lumber, economic yield, and harvest
costs for the earliest thinnings.
Our revised
projections and
accompanying notes reflect that new information, including a somewhat
increased resulting net yield.
Because we constantly prefer to
be conservative, the updated projections intentionally do not include
the likely greater economic yield from the higher prices that adult teak
is bringing on the world market, nor our forester’s thinking that we may
be able to have our final teak harvest earlier than the 25th year.
Our revised
projections also
reflect an additional year, for the first, and possibly the second,
thinning, for Raleo to utilize the young wood to realize its full value,
because the beauty of young teak is not yet widely known. Owners of our
earliest plantings have waited much longer as we embarked on
establishing Raleo, but by the time we do the first thinning of our most
recent plantings, Raleo should be able to utilize the lumber in the year
it is thinned.
Our objective is for Raleo’s
beautiful furnishings and Surfaces, crafted exclusively from the young
tropical hardwoods from our earliest thinnings, to display first-hand to
discerning buyers and specifiers just how beautiful, and therefore
valuable, our young hardwoods are. We are working towards the day when
the market will pay more for the young hardwoods than Raleo can support
paying. From that point forward, the young hardwoods will go directly
into the market and not wait to go through Raleo.
Raleo, our sister company that
we formed to create top value for our youngest hardwoods and to
establish Tropical American Tree Farms among design professionals and
specifiers as an excellent, high-end source of exquisite tropical
hardwoods, is moving strongly forward.
You will now see Raleo
furnishings, crafted exclusively of young Tropical American Tree Farms
tropical hardwoods, in the finest design magazines in the U.S. - in an
article in the May issue of Interior Design Magazine, another article in
the May issue of Contract Magazine, and full-page ads in the New York,
Florida, and International editions of Architectural Digest and in the
beautiful Florida International magazine.
Full-page Raleo™
Twist Collection ad in
Architectural Digest and Florida International magazines
In May and June we exhibited
Raleo furnishings at this year’s top international design shows in the
U.S., ICFF, AIA, and NeoCon, and again received wonderful praise and
many orders for our Raleo furnishings and Surfaces.
You may remember that we wrote
in our Summer 2003 Tree Owners News that we had exhibited some early
prototypes of our Raleo Surfaces at two earlier design shows and
received such an enthusiastic response that we concluded that the demand
for our Surfaces would have substantially exceeded our production
capacity, and because of that we decided to first build up our
production capacity and then formally introduce our Raleo Surfaces in
mid-2004.
That is exactly what we have
done. Jorge Vargas our General Manager who runs Raleo, doubled the
capacity by Spring of this year, and we debuted our Raleo Surfaces at
the three international design shows in May and June.
The response at the shows was
overwhelming and Raleo is swamped with orders. Several architects and
designers gave us substantial orders for both our furniture and
Surfaces, and we signed up a national distributor for our Surfaces who
calls on architects throughout the U.S. serving the commercial and
hospitality markets.
Bob Sapan’s showroom at DCOTA
that markets our Raleo products in south Florida put our Surfaces panels
on display in his showroom and enthusiastically reports that the
response is “incredible.” Bob told us that after they installed our
Surfaces display, their June, July, and August, normally slower months,
were all record months, the best sales months since they have been in
business, and that it was all our Raleo furniture and Surfaces.
We are also already receiving
orders from Canada and Puerto Rico, and strong interest from designers
in the U.K., France and Italy, and have significant installations of
Raleo Surfaces and furniture in the next weeks in Boca Raton, Bal
Harbor, Miami, and Los Angeles.
We have touched only a tiny
part of the market and it is very clear that the demand for our Raleo
furniture and Surfaces greatly exceeds even our expanded production
capacity. So Jorge is now in the process of doubling our capacity again,
and will then add a second shift, so that we can accept additional
showrooms and representatives.
In the next year or so, we will
then have to move to even larger facilities. In 2001, we bought a 2+
acre parcel near our present Raleo production facility in San José, the
last undeveloped piece of land in the area, for future expansion.
Now that we have a better
understanding of Raleo’s huge potential, we are exploring the
possibility of putting that parcel on the market and buying a much
larger tract in a less developed area outside San José for a combined
design/production campus for both our Raleo furniture and Surfaces. We
would have more room to grow and have the added benefit of creating
employment in a rural area where it is more needed. We will continue to
let you know how that vision evolves.
You can see more of our Raleo
furniture and Surfaces designs at http://raleo.com. Many more beautiful
designs and products are on the way.
Building Raleo into a
world-class furnishings company that can pay top prices for the young
hardwoods from our earliest thinnings and at the same time establish
Tropical American Tree Farms as a high-end source of top quality,
beautiful tropical hardwoods and create a direct demand for our young
hardwoods, is truly a wonderful experience.
The enthusiastic response of
top design professionals from various parts of the world, highly
praising, specifying, and ordering, Raleo’s exquisite furniture and
Surfaces, all exclusively crafted of young tropical hardwoods grown on
our farms, is a wonderful affirmation of the beauty of our Tropical
American Tree Farms tropical hardwoods, Raleo’s beautiful designs, and
the wonderful benefit that Raleo represents for every tree owner.
One of the wonderful benefits
of being a tree owner is coming to Costa Rica to see
your trees and enjoy the magnificent rainforests and conservation areas
you are helping to protect.
We have nine tree farms, each
with well-mannered horses and comfortable saddles, and saddlebags to
carry your cool drinks and even a picnic lunch.
As a tree owner you are invited
to come see your trees and are welcome to visit any of the farms to
enjoy their unique beauty and to experience the incredible magic of
Costa Rica, away from the rush of tourists.
Imagine standing among your own
tropical hardwood trees, and then riding through an enchanting
rainforest, with the sounds of howler monkeys serenading you in the
background, or hiking down to the base of a hidden 150 foot waterfall,
or relaxing in a small boat exploring miles of river and secluded
estuaries.
Tree owners enjoying
a beautiful
waterfall on one of our farms
Sherry and I encourage you to
come visit your trees and experience first hand all that you are helping
to accomplish. Please call or send an e-mail to let us know when you are
able to visit. Ligia Alvarez, our office administrator, and Luis,
Marcela, and Patricia in our Tree Owner Relations department are happy
to help you plan a memorable visit to the farms.
We have held our tree prices
steady for two years and must now raise them. Our new tree prices for
all of our species will go into effect October 20.
Sherry and I thank you again
for making all of this possible. By growing tropical hardwood trees for
harvest, you are doing something beneficial for the world.
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