Letter to the Editor: When a Tree Falls in a Disaster, Insure It
By: Rep. Buddy Carter & House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman
A timber farmer in Coffee County, Ga., awoke after Hurricane Helene to a devastating scene: 125 mile-per-hour winds wiped out the tree stands he’d been growing for four decades.
In May, a record number of tornadoes ripped through Arkansas, leaving an $18.4 million trail of damage through the state’s forestlands.
Across the nation, forest landowners are facing more than threats to life and property; their entire industry is at risk because of unprecedented losses by natural disasters.
And while all agricultural businesses take on the risk that a crop could be wiped out, for forest landowners, a single storm can destroy a decades-long investment.
Incomprehensibly, forest landowners are not covered as part of the Federal Crop Insurance Program, so there is no federal program to help these growers overcome economic devastation and replant their forests after disasters. Private insurance for this industry is often either unavailable or unaffordable.
This combination of insurance chasm and unique crop timeline makes timber farming one of the riskiest agricultural products. It’s no surprise that after a loss, many forest landowners choose to lease out their land for solar farms or other developments with more immediate yields rather than to replant.
Congress should pass the Disaster Reforestation Act, amending our tax code so that landowners who farm trees can deduct the value of their timber loss from a natural disaster and be guaranteed some financial recovery after a catastrophic event. The bill would require those landowners to reforest their land within five years, preserving the environmental and economic benefits our forests provide. This would be a tremendous boost for our rural communities, many of which rely on timber as the lifeblood of their local economy.
This is a common-sense bill that would grant forest landowners a permanent solution to an ongoing problem, one that will impact all of us if it is not addressed.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it qualify for a tax deduction? The answer ought to be yes.
Read the letter on Washington Posts' website here.
