Bob Pinkston, a forestry instructor at Haywood Community College, worries about the point of no return for Southern Appalachian forests — a threshold where there aren’t enough trees to meet society’s demand for wood.

At today’s rate of development, such a wood shortage seems inevitable this century, Pinkston said.

“At some point we are going to have to say no — no more private communities on the mountainside or third houses just for play houses,” Pinkston said.

But in the meantime, wood prices would skyrocket.

“We are having a tough time trying to find timber to feed these mills. One day our foresters will be as rich as oil in the Middle East,” Pinkston.

Pinkston and fellow forestry instructors at Haywood Community College are charged with training the next generation of foresters. But the jobs these students do will be more complex than loggers of the past. They will have to convince landowners it is possible to cut down trees without upsetting the rest of their forest, said Blair Bishop, another forestry instructor at HCC.

“Our profession and forestry in general has been associated with negative externalities of land management, such as poor logging practices and large environmental degradation, which goes against stewardship and sound land ethics, which are really the guiding principles of our profession,” said Bishop. “Foresters are concerned with the growth and well-being of our forests and regeneration of our forested lands.”

Forestry is also about stopping hemlock wooly adelgid from destroying hemlock groves. It’s about protecting wetlands in shady coves. It’s about protecting views of the mountains.

“Forestry has really branched out as a discipline,” Bishop said. “Definitely there is a part of forestry that is going in and harvesting timber, but forestry and logging are two different things.”

Even traditional logging is not traditional logging anymore. A favorite term used by the director of the natural resources program at HCC sounds a bit like a car wash setting: “soft-touch” logging.

Doug Staiger, the director of HCC natural resources program, accompanied forestry students on an all-day field trip to Biltmore Estate Forest last week to tour “soft-touch” logging. Staiger said soft-touch logging places forest conservation on equal footing with simply cutting trees for cash.

“The Southern Appalachians are intricate forests,” Staiger said. “It’s about how to keep the forests and wildlife on a productive level.”

A $1.7 million federal grant recently awarded to Haywood Community College to expand the natural resources program could be used to advance the concept of soft-touch logging. Establishing industry standards is a starting point.

“What I envision as the natural resources school, we would develop some sort of certification program,” Staiger said. “We can help loggers become better loggers.”

Jim Hamilton, one of the new forestry instructors hired with the grant money, said trees aren’t the only commodity that grows in forests. Ginseng — a medicinal root that grows only in shady, moist forests — is also a forest product with a place in forestry discussions.

Natural resources management can also include eco-tourism and agri-tourism, both growing industries in the mountains, Hamilton said.

“I think we can move beyond what some people consider traditional forestry,” Hamilton said. “Forestry is not only about logging anymore.”

Hamilton, who has worked in tropical forests, hopes to introduce students to international forestry.

“It gives you more of a global picture of forest resources,” Hamilton said.