On the Range with George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak For the Forests?
By George Wuerthner, 1-27-09
 |
|
 | |
|
WHO WILL SPEAK FOR THE FOREST?
An associate who works for a major environmental group doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. He has concluded that I’m against logging because I won’t uncritically support the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Proposal (BCSP), a plan that, among other things, calls for logging a portion of the Lolo National Forest in Montana.
He’s right. I don’t support the BCSP because no one has convinced me the proposed logging aspects of the plan won’t be degrading forest ecosystems. How many acres will be logged? What is the rationalization for logging and is it accurate? Can some of the goals like fire hazard reduction be accomplished at less cost without logging? What are the real ecological costs of logging? So far most of my questions about the specifics of the proposal have gone unanswered.Without more information, no one, including the public can really determine whether this proposal is in the best interest of the public. I suspect if I had the answers to my questions, I might conclude that no logging makes sense.
Given that most of the nation’s wood comes from private lands, and very little from public lands, and that these public lands are about the only places where we can protect biological values, it behooves us to make sure that any exploitation is justified, and minimizes impacts. The only responsible uses of our public lands are those activities which do not leave them impaired. Is asking that anyone using public lands—especially using public lands for a potential profit—to leave them unimpaired so unreasonable?
Let me make an analogy. Let’s pretend a company wants to borrow and use some public property—say a school bus to transport people to a company conference. They are willing to pay a small fee for the use of the school bus. But when they return the key, one discovers that there were two flat tires, the gas tank was empty, the seats were ripped, the bus had a huge dent in the side where it had been hit, and the window shield was cracked. Would it be unreasonable to suggest that it was not in the public interest to let that company—especially a company that was using that public property for a profit-making venture—continue to use that public property?
And when it comes to logging we are spending our natural endowment for short-term profits, jobs, and wood products that are priced far below their real ecological costs. Logging is like skin exposure to the sun. Any dermatologist will tell you that the less exposure your skin has to the sun the better. If you must go out in the sun you should take precautions, like using sun screen and wearing a hat, but that doesn’t mean that sun exposure is “good” or benign.” It’s just a better way to cope with the sun when you can’t avoid it. And you might try to argue that getting a tan might make you more sexually attractive so perhaps that is a “benefit,” but any good doctor will tell you that is a steep price to pay given the long-term damage to your skin.
If you spend a lot of time in the sun without any sun protection, you may not get skin cancer, but your skin and eyes will still suffer. Similarly, some logging practices may not result in complete collapse of the forest ecosystem. But don’t let anyone fool you; there will still be impacts to the land.
Logging equipment compacts soils. Logging removes biomass critical to future soil productivity of the forest. Logging disturbs sensitive wildlife. Logging typically requires roads and skid trails which create chronic sources of sedimentation that degrades water quality and aquatic organism habitat. Logging roads and skid trails are also a major vector for the spread of weeds. Logging disrupts nutrient cycling and flows. Logging can alter species composition and age structure (i.e. loss of old growth). Logging can alter fire regimes. Logging can change water cycling and water balance in a drainage. The litany of negative impacts is much longer, but suffice it to say that anyone who suggests that logging is a benefit or benign is not doing a full accounting of costs.
Those who suggest that logging “benefits” the forest ecosystem are using very narrow definitions of “benefit.” Much as some might claim that smoking helps people to lose weight and is a “benefit” of smoking.
Most people are so inundated with propaganda from the timber industry, forestry schools, politicians, and just about everyone else, that it’s hard to sift through all the chaff to get at the kernel of truth.
I’m not even sure we can remove any biomass from the forest. Most ideas of “sustainbility” are based upon the presumption there is a “surplus” that can be skimmed off without damaging the ecosystem. I’m more and more convinced that such economic models are inappropriate to apply to biological systems. There is no “waste” and perhaps no “surplus” in forest ecosystems. Rather ecosystems continuously reinvest their biological capital in the forest and the removal of live or dead trees may ultimately be leading to biological impoverishment.
So where does that leave us? We have to exploit lands to survive. That’s what all species do, but whether the exploitation is justified, how much, and for what purposes can be debated. If logging the forest to provide wrapping paper for McDonald’s hamburgers that are tossed aside a few minutes after they are wrapped a good use of these trees? Do we need to build 4000 square foot homes? Is this a good use of forest biomass? Of course these are value questions, but unless we articulate the real costs, we cannot even begin to engage in a conversation about values.
That’s why it’s so important for environmentalists to always fully articulate all the costs at every opportunity. Is there any way to log a forest without damage? I honestly don’t know—because we don’t have enough information to determine the answer. What we do know is that if you are logging a large enough area and taking out enough trees to be commercially viable, you are very likely exceeding the real capacity of the forest ecosystem to absorb these losses and impacts without degrading the forest.
We certainly can’t expect the timber industry to account for these costs. And we can’t expect the Forest Service, which is no more than a handmaiden to the timber industry, to express these costs.
In my view, the role of environmental organizations is to continuously challenge the assumption that we “need” to log the forest. We must articulate all the costs to the degree that we are aware that they may exist. In addition, we should challenge the assumption that we “need” wood by advocating responsible behavior that will reduce demand for wood products such as recycling, use of alternative building materials, construction of smaller homes, and ultimately a reduction in population. We should always keep the precautionary principle in mind and approach every logging proposal with the knowledge that we may be damaging the forest ecosystem.
It’s possible that society will decide that some level of biological impoverishment and degradation of the forest ecosystem is an acceptable trade-off for the wood we garner from the forest. But society cannot make such a determination if no one is explaining the full costs. So who will speak for the forest?
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
If I may make another analogy. We have public libraries. We all can use the books there. But I can not take a book from the library and sell it, nor should I be permitted to degrade the books--mark them up or rip pages out of them so that others can not use them. But this is exactly what happens when we allow commercial logging, commercial grazing, and so on.
Is it unreasonable to question whether we should permit this kind of exploitation of public lands that leaves them impaired?
Forest management activities are almost entirely a thing of the past on the NF in MT. Enjoy the ensuing collapse of forest health, the industry boogie man, and all of the problems the go along with it.
ROCK ON!!
You're right when you suggest that the public should be properly compensated for the wood extracted. One of my points is that without a full accounting of the costs. These costs, as I'm sure you would agree, involve more than just the value of the wood. Effects on wildlife, scenery, water quality, and so on are all part of the real costs. And as I suggest we can't expect the timber industry to articulate the costs to the public, and in most cases, neither will the FS. So that leaves the role for full accounting to non-profits.
I also suspect you are right about fiber production--increasingly it will occur on private plantations. In general these lands are flatter, are already roaded, have better soils, and are closer to population centers where the products are used. They have their own problems to be sure, and are not lands we should just consider "sacrifice zones" either, but we may be able to contain the negatives if a smaller area is affected and the margin for error is smaller.
Correction to my last comment. Private lands might have a LARGER margin for error, not smaller.
Bird:
One of the things that I have been researching is the ecological value of dead trees. Dead trees are not a "loss" so long as they are not removed from the forest. Forest ecosystems "reinvest" that biomass back into the forest, and a surprising number of species depend on dead trees and downed wood. One researcher estimates that 2/3 of all species in the forest ecosystem depend on dead trees and downed wood at some point in their lives.
As for the changes in forests--yes some changes have occurred. Some because of past logging and grazing. Some due to fire suppression. And I think the majority as a consequence of climatic change. But even with all those changes, the changes from historic conditions are not uniform--they are most obvious in lower elevation forests.
But the things that some suggest are indications of this alteration like the large fires that have occurred in recent years are likely not a consequence of these human imposed direct alterations to forests due to logging, grazing and fire suppression.
Most of the acreage burned annually in the northern Rockies are the mid-higher elevation forests--which naturally had long intervals between fires--hence are not altered significantly from historic conditions.
But beyond that point, a tree that is killed by a fire, insect, or whatever if left on site sustains many species, plus has an important physical role in the forest ecosystem--for instance, downed logs in streams create habitat for fish, and research so far has shown no upper limit on the amount of wood in a stream that is considered a negative. In other words, all things equal, the more wood, the better for streams and aquatic organisms.
Although there has been less research on this issue for terrestrial ecosystems I suspect we would come to similar conclusions about dead trees and downed wood in terrestrial ecosystems as well. In other words, there is probably no level of mortality that is ultimately bad since all dead trees are recycled into the growth of new forests.
Basically, unlike true collaboration (which is open, inclusive and involves diverse interests and views) "selective collaboration" is a closed and exclusive process whereby seats at the table are only given to those who already basically agree.
If you raise concerns or questions about the effectiveness of giving $12 million in federal taxpayer money to a private logging company to build a biomass plant, you're excluded from the process and called a "bomb thrower." If you raise concerns or questions about giving up 200,000 acres of inventoried roadless lands on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest for "stewardship logging" you meet a similar fate.
No matter how people feel about the specifics of public lands management, I hope most people can see that "selective collaboration" has no place in public lands management. In my view as someone who has been following these issues closely for the past 15 years, "selective collaboration" seems to be favored (in general) by well-funded, politically connected environmental groups, resource extraction industries (most notably the timber industry) and in some cases by local, elected officials always looking for more "local control" of federal public lands.
While these interests should have a seat at any public lands management table, the multi-million dollar enviro groups and the timber industry certainly don't represent everyone when it comes to national forest management, lands that belong equally to all Americans. Thanks.
Is there no level of forest mortality that could have detrimental ecological effects on wildlife, water, species diversity, etc?
If no level of mortality is ultimately bad, what other metrics do you consider in evaluating forest health that are NOT adversly affected by mortality?
Good questions. As regards your question of whether any forest mortality has a detrimental ecological effect on wildlife, water, species diversity, etc. the answer is "depends." I'm not trying to be circumspect. It all depends on which species are you are considering, and at what spatial and temporal scales. We often talk around each other because we don't first agree upon the specific scales we are considering.
A good example is fish in streams burned by stand replacement fires. Immediately after a fire, there is typically a pulse of sediment. This is typically not good for trout. But the sediment flush declines rapidly as new growth and fallen logs which trap sediment on slopes and in the streams stabilizes the sediment load. Over time--a very short period of time it turns out--fish recover rapidly. And sometimes even increase in numbers due to an increase in insects that live on the downed trees. Then over time, the forest regrows and aquatic insects tend to decline and so does fish biomass.
So if you are talking about 1 year after the fire, the trout lose out. If you look ten years out, they do better then decline back to pre fire numbers.
good" side effects.
Those who are claiming that forests "need" managing apparently think they suffered through millions of years of evolution, just waiting for human beings to appear on the scene. I'm pretty sure they were doing just fine without us. Restore fire and the keystone predators to their natural roles, and they'll be fine again.
Sure the forest would “evolve” without our influence over millions of years but that’s an idealistic vision that ignores complex problems on our forests ie. wui areas, multiple use conflicts , wild fire suppression costs, invasive and exotic species, preservation and enhancement of unique ecosystems, plants and animal species and on and on….. not to mention that we already have wilderness and parks set aside for preservation. Why is forest management off the table? “Extraction” of timber from National Forest is currently a small fraction of historic levels, less than 15 percent of the state’s harvest. Would you prefer that our forest products originate entirely on industrial timberlands or be imported from other countries under less environmental regulation and oversight? Preventing forest management activities from occurring on your local National Forest unfortunately does not equate to a reduction in consumption of forest products.
Just realized that I did not answer your second question about criteria to judge forest sustainability, healthy etc. It's not an easy answer, but in general I would say that when we compare native unmanaged forests against managed forests, we often find substantial differences. My criteria for healthy ecosystems can't be easily defined or exhaustively listed. But healthy ecosystems tend to have a full array of processes operating unimpaired, including hydrologic function, soil productivity, carbon sequestering, provision of wildlife habitats, and keystone disturbances such as fires, floods, storms and insect outbreaks. It's important to note that not all these things occur on every acre at the same time. And we judge these by looking at large scale, native unmanaged landscapes--which is the only measure that I believe is valid.
"there is probably no level of mortality that is ultimately bad since all dead trees are recycled into the growth of new forests"
You suggest it's a lot easier to tell a logger which trees to cut than a wildfire. That is exactly the point. I am not smart enough to know which tree to cut--and I don't think anyone else is either.
How do we know that the trees we are taking out are not the very trees with the genes that will enable them to survive the next stresses--from whatever sources. Which wildlife are impacted by logging? What insects? Most of us don't even know the ants that are found in forests--and ants are among the most important insects in forested ecosystems. In fact, ants are among the biggest predators on other insects that attack trees, so removal of a lot of downed wood, in directly decreases the forest's ability to withstand insect outbreaks.
Many bees live in downed trees--and these native bees are critical to the pollination of flowering shrubs and other plants. How do you know which trees you can take that won't affect the bees?
As far as "leaving" snags, and so forth. When you compared managed forests--even the best ones--you find that they typically have far fewer dead and downed trees than natural unmanaged forests (assuming we are comparing similar stands in terms of age, species, and so forth). They seem sanitized.
Even the way a tree dies affects its decomposition trajectory. For instance, trees attacked by bark beetles create tiny holes that are natural entry ways for a host of fungi and other insects. A tree killed by fire decays in a different fashion. And a tree already dead from some other cause--let's just say beetles--and then burned is charred, and thus decays more slowly than a green tree killed by fire.
I have visited at least six certified sustainable forestry operations. And while they represent better ways of logging than most operations we see, they still failed to emulate natural forests in the species composition, the age class, the amount of dead and downed wood, the occurrence of natural processes like wildfire, and so forth. To suggest these are "sustainable" seems based more on sustaining wood fiber for the mill than sustaining the ecosystem.
We are not very good at emulating natural proceses--in part because we don't even think to ask the right questions.
Thanks for writing again.
Let me answer as best as I can. If you look at forests across the country the vast majority (excluding Alaska) have been logged at some point. Sure we have wilderness areas, and national parks, but these make up a fraction of the forested landscape. One estimate I've read suggests that 95% of the forests outside of Alaska have been logged at least once. I don't know if that number is accurate, but I'm sure it's in the ball park.
That may sound amazing, but it's not if you consider how completely many areas were logged. Just to give you one example, in Vermont, 85% of the state was cleared at one point, and the rest was logged. The largest tract of unlogged forest in the state is about 100 acres. Similar figures are available for many other states.
In the West, the conversion was not nearly as complete--thankfully. There are much larger unlogged tracts to be sure, but most of the unlogged tracts are the higher terrain forests in very remote rugged country. I'm glad they are there, but we have "managed" the majority of forests in the West already. Do we really need to manage more acres? I think not.
When you look at the record of "management" it is a record of misunderstandings, miscalculations, and outright hubris. Just to give one example, not too long ago, the FS would yank big logs out of streams to make them better for fish--or so they thought. Now we know there is virtually no limit on the logs in a stream that benefits fish and ironically in some parts of the West, the FS is now dragging logs back to the stream.
Not that long ago we had a policy of killing sagebrush with herbicides over millions of acres to make the range better for livestock. I can remember when we sprayed the landscape with helicopters to defoliate sagebrush. Now we are worried we don't have enough sagebrush for species like sage grouse.
I only give these examples--of which there are many more-- to demonstrate that our ability to understand complex ecosystems is limited. A reasonable precautionary approach is to keep all the parts (including processes like wildfire) and limit your manipulation to as small an area as possible.
Sure we can quibble about what is a small area or what we as a society really needed or not in terms of wood products, etc., but our species does not have an impressive record at managing ourselves, much less the rest of the planet.
You're right about large woody debris. Loggers were fined and had to remove if from streams within 24 hours if they dropped any there. That comes from the fisheries "biologists" telling us what is correct and the loggers following the rules that were placed on them. No one would propose a 65,000 acre clear cut, but that's what burned on the Payette in 2000 in the Burgdorf fire. Then in 2007 we watch almost 500,000 acres burn. In 1994 400,000 acres burned. I just don't see this as being better than logging limited areas and then replanting them.
Two points. You must live in Idaho. As you probably know Idaho has more roadless acres by proportion than any other western state, so your perception of how much land is unlogged may be a bit skewed. The rest of the country isn't so lucky.
Second point. Much of the East has reforested as you suggest. Vermont, as I pointed out was 85% cleared 150 years ago, and today is 80% forested. But here's the kicker--the quality of the forest is radically altered. The majority of the forest is small diameter trees. Prior to the logging and farming era, the majority of trees were larger diameter "old growth"
That has real consequences for the forest ecosystem. Larger logs take longer to rot. They store more carbon. They are more useful to wildlife for homes, etc. etc. etc.
There is also little downed wood on the ground, and even less in the streams in much of New England. The fishing is lousy. The same basic idea applies to much of the rest of the country.
As for fires burning up the landscape compared to logging, there are vast differences in the resulting landscape. For instance, with a fire, almost all the biomass remains on the site (very little actually burns up in the fire--since most of the fire burns the small branches and litter). After a stand replacement fire, we have many, many snags as I'm sure you know since you appear to have seen the aftermath of many fires.
These snags are very important to a lot of species. One estimate is that 2/3 of all species in western forests rely upon dead trees/fallen logs at some point in their lives. We would not see such dependency if dead trees from big fires/insect attacks, etc. were uncommon.
These burned trees are a long lasting biological legacy that help to nurture the next generation of forest. These dead trees are not wasted, rather they the investment in the future forest. When we log the forest, we remove this investment.
You can't keep spending more money than you earn, and think you don't have to pay it back --a lesson the US economy is just learning now. The same applies to our forests.
With the large, catastrophic fires we have been experiencing mycorrhizal fungi in old growth forests numbers are reduced, soil is volatilized. Grass doesn't even grow back the first few years because the ground burned so hot in many places and no seeds or other organic material are left behind. Soil pH changes, soils become more water repellant, soild become less productive (for all species). There are no buffer zones around streams and sensitive species.
Yes, fire does have a place in the forest and is necessary for maintaining some species, but not all fires are equally beneficial.
Average annual sawtimber mortality on National Forest lands in Montana between 2003-2007: 1,531,572 MMBF
Average annual sawtimber growth on National Forest land in Montana between 2003-2007: 1,724,894 MMBF
And just for perspective:
Total sawtimber harvest on National Forests in Montana in 2007…..a paltry six decade low of 87,000 MMBF
Any idea what growth and mortality rates were pre-settlement, really ……any at all?
It will make you wonder who will speak for the forest.
ps Big trees are not necessarily indicative of forest health or of a “quality forest"
"Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks" Nature 455, 213-215 (11 September 2008).
"In fact, young forests rather than old-growth forests are very often conspicuous soucres of CO2 because the creation of new forests (whether naturally or by humans) frequently follows disturbance to soil and the previous vegetation, resulting in a decomposition rate of coarse woody debris, litter, and soil organic matter that exceeds the NPP of the regrowth."
The notion that old-growth forests spend as much energy maintaining living tissue as they are able to store through
photosynthesis has been proven to be wrong. In fact so wrong that the role old-growth forests play in the global carbon cycle needs to be reaccounted for. This is very good news, if you actually care about global warming as you suggest.
Or maybe your just trying to use carbon emissions from fire
as an excuse for logging. If you really care about global warming don't you think we should focus on the incredible opportunties we have to reduce our own emissions from the tailpipe and smokestack? These human-made emissions were never part of the natural order before the industrial revolution and they now exceed wildfire emissions in almost every state, every year. However, wildfire emissions have always been part of the natural order and the emissions are only one part of the story. Wildfire also creates large amounts of charcoal, one of the longest stores of carbon in the soil. Wildfire also increases the albedo of the surface, causing an increase in solar radiation being reflected out to space. A recent study in the boreal forest shows that in the long-term, wildfire may actually have a cooling impact on climate when the albedo affect is considered.
And yes Bird, I don't want to get into the carbon issue since it is it is beyond my knowledge. I will only make these few comments.
What I have heard in presentations at several fire conferences, and have been told when I posed this question to several other scientists who study these things, is that any contribution of carbon to the atmosphere from forest fires is balanced by the capture of carbon by regrowing vegetation. In a sense, this carbon is not additive in the end since it is continuously recycled.
The main issue about global warming is the release of carbon from fossil fuels that has been stored for geologic time--and this is additive and not being captured and recycled--at least not fast enough.
I cannot argue with your own observations of fires, and like anything in ecology dealing with natural systems, there is always variation and exceptions.
However, the exceptions do not necessarily invalidate the rule. I have visited many, many large blazes around the West in the course of my work on wildfires. My observations suggest that most snags and downed wood are not consumed by fires. There are, of course, some exceptions over small areas where lots of wood is piled up--for instance, I know of one place in Yellowstone where a blow down piled up a huge amount of wood, and when the fires came through that area, many of the fallen trees were consumed. That appears to be an exception.
The only study that I know about to look at this issue was done by Dan Tinker at the U of Wyoming (you can google him and his work). He found that only 8% of the downed wood was consumed in fires. And of course, most standing trees are not consumed. So in general, it appears that most wood, and most fires, do not consume the downed wood.
I want to respond to your last comment about old growth and forest health. I would not try to suggest that old growth was necessarily indicative of forest health--it would depend on the kind of forest type, climate, and a host of other factors.
What I think is more important is that natural processes operate and functioning properly for that particular ecosystem. These processes dictate what would be common in a particular area. Obviously every part of the country has occasional events that reset the ecological clock to some younger aged forests.
In some ecosystems, say the very wet forests of the Pacific Coast, trees tend to go for centuries without a fire, major wind storm blow down, etc. and in those areas trees get to be very large and old. This natural condition occurs in the absence of human foresrt management is the ecological norm for millions of acres--not to suggest that there are not times and places where even these forests revert to younger age classes--there have been large fires, for instance, in these coastal forests. But you were to inventory these forests in the absence of forest management, you would find that a large proportion of them are larger diameter, older trees.
Converting those sites to young growing forests over large acreages that remain young forests (because they are re cut on a regular short term rotation) changes the forest ecosystems in these regions significantly--including a reduction in total biomass in the forest, a loss of downed wood and snags. And to my way of thinking forest management makes them "unhealthy".
On the other hand, there are other parts of the country where things like fires, etc. are more common and you get large areas with younger vegetation. But that still doesn't mean that logged sties and the natural conditions are the same.
I can't help but believe if you are changing the major parameters of the forest over large areas (as has occurred with logging across the country) you are impoverishing the forest. There are some things that we can measure or use as proxies of health. An abundance of dead trees is not one of them in most ecosystems. In fact, the absence or decline in dead wood on the forest floor or in streams is indicative of unhealth. Things like the rising number of endangered species in many logged areas. Things like nutrient losses in some forest soils where there has been numerous rotations and/or the loss in forest productivity and decline in growth rates sometimes attributed to declining soil fertility due to timber harvest.
You won't find these things everywhere, but cumulatively they do exist and suggest that forest management does not emulate natural conditions. And because it does not, it stresses ecosystems.
In order to seriously and honestly consider your proposal Bird, one needs to have a full and accurate accounting of the tremendous amount of carbon that is released by the entire "working forest" process from start to finish. So, your proposal looks something like this:
1. Send logging crews up into the forests in big diesel trucks, fire up two-stroke chain saws to cut down trees, and then drive back into town in their big diesel trucks. Repeat for days or weeks.
2. Send big diesel logging trucks up into the forest, use big diesel equipment to load the logs, then drive the logs to mills located, in some cases, hundreds of miles away. Repeat for days or weeks.
3. Run those big fossil fuel burning mills, get all the mill employees to drive their vehicles to the mill. Repeat for the days and weeks.
4. Make the trees into some lumber products, which right have no demand because we're in the worst economic crisis in human history and lumber consumption has plummeted.
5. If you can even find purchasers, ship those wood products via truck or train to markets around the country -- more fossil fuel consumption. And at this point, should we even discuss if these products are part of an over-consumptive, unsustainable development paradigm?
6. Building contractors drive their big diesel trucks to Lowe's, Home Depot, etc., to pick up the wood products and drive those wood products out to the job site. Repeat for days or weeks.
7. This fossil-fuel-burning cycle could go on and on and should really include the energy needed to make the big diesel trucks, chain saws, milling equipment, hammers, nails, roofing shingles, copper wire, windows, etc.
Given this reality, cutting down forests for building products in order to sequester carbon does not pencil out by any rational, full-cost accounting measure.
P.S. True, wildfires do release a certain amount of carbon, as they have done for thousands and thousands of years. However, some of the most vigorous and productive forest growth occurs after burns, including in high severity fire areas in which most or all of the trees were killed (Shatford and others 2007, Journal of Forestry, May 2007). This vigorous and productive grass, shrub and forest growth after wildfires completely off-sets (and actually supercedes) any carbon that was released during the fire.
1. Carbon release from decay thanks to the mind boggling mortality rates
2.the carbon consumption of new vegetation following a timber harvest
3.the fact that forest products producers generate their own energy needs
4.the fact that carbon continues to be stored for the duration of the life of a forest product
5.the production of structural wood components require less energy than substitute products
6.Wood residues are used to make other products that could be replaced by plastics and other fossil fuel based products
7.and…..oh yeah, the incredible amounts of carbon released during a wildfire, (its increase a bit in the past few years)
Do we dare suggest some round figures that relate to our carbon gains and losses put forth here?
In this recent column, George insinuates that no one on the BCSP is communicating with him and that he has no knowledge of the details on the project. As George will have to attest to, I have spent a lot of time talking to him about the project (in person on two separate occasions) and I have corresponded with him by email including emails exchanged just one week ago. He is simply selective about what he wants to hear or share with you all and he does not accept the notion that the actual restoration work is still in the inception stage (there are no lines drawn on maps).
From the day that the original idea for the BSCP released, the process has been open and it remains open to those willing to take the time to invest themselves in it. George, you and your ideas are welcome at the table if you are willing to sit down and talk rather than simply write ill informed columns!
In all three columns, George repeatedly, and wrongly, described the BCSP as a “fuel reduction,” “thinning,” or “logging” project. The BCSP does include some forest restoration logging slated for low elevation dry forests in which thinning with prescribed fire (not thinning alone as penned in one of his previous columns) are planned, but this is not a "logging project."
George would have you believe that there whole District is on the docket for "logging" under the BCSP and that this is the only logging that would occur on the district. In truth, forests on the Seeley district that are eligible for restoration activities are previously managed forests and restoration is only being considered on less than 5% of the suitable timber base over the next 10 years. The Seeley District currently logs an average of 4 million board feet of timber each year (logging does exist on the district). This project would add a modest amount of timber to that base.
George would have us believe that he is in some way unique in his knowledge of the potential impacts of logging. As a forest soil scientist and ecologist, I am well familiar with these potential impacts and have personally spent a decades studying human impacts to soils and ecosystems (including 12 years on the UM Forestry faculty). My involvement in the project is to evaluate restoration proposals and consider the relative impacts of these efforts. The BSCP will weigh potential impacts carefully.
George would have you believe that the forests in question are pristine forests that are free of influence of human activities. Most all dry low elevation forests of this region have been hit by prior clear cutting, high grading, or thinning at one point or another. This disturbance combined with fire exclusion and a wet cold period has led to a condition that may well result in the loss of the few remaining mature stands of low elevation larch, ponderosa pine and fir. The restoration is aimed at protecting these important iconic stands of the region.
Members of the BCSP are also members of the Montana and Lolo Forest Restoration committee. They are running all ideas for restoration on the project through this committee. Members of local environmental organizations, including WWI, have provided input on this process and we look forward to their input in the future.
George’s opposition to the BCSP has been largely based on conjecture and on selective application, or limited understanding, of forest science. Unfortunately, he has greatly misrepresented the intent and the objectives of the project to the detriment of all.
Supporters of the BCSP, myself included, welcome and encourage constructive discourse on this open, inclusive and science-based project. No final papers have not been signed, no lines have been drawn, options are still open and on the table. There have been community meetings, open public meetings, and on site tours that are helping shape this project, yet by the sound of George's column, this is all a back room deal.
Going forward, anyone who presumes to “speak for the forest” should damned well do so with intellectual honesty and integrity at the core of their message rather than blind ahderence to their own personal agenda.
You don't need to spank me, I've already had it! I was taken to the woodshed by Tom. But I might take you up on dinner.
As for some of the details of the BCSP I stand corrected.
In retrospect, it would have been better if I had not started my essay with that particular reference to the BCSP. I was using the BCSP as a vehicle to illustrate a larger issue--whether managing forests is benign or beneficial and if there is adequate review of the assumptions and reasons given for most logging proposals.
Perhaps with the BCSP there is enough of this review going on by capable individuals like Tom and other organizations involved. But certainly on most of the public lands logging proposals could benefit from more review and challenges to common assumptions about the need to log, and why we log.
Here's my observations. From what I've read and observed first hand, unmanaged forests appear to flourish, regenerate, and sustain themselves without human input. I know not everyone responding here agrees with that. But if we presume that forest ecosystems have persisted for thousands of years without the benefit of forestry and even long before there were Indians on this continent, than I think it's reasonable to assume that they can persist and flourish without human help. I will be quick to add that doesn't mean they have remained the same--they are dynamic and continuously changing and responding to many inputs from climate to disease to insects over time.
However, when I compare managed forests with unmanaged forests, I find these generalizations. Mind you these are generalizations and like all generalizations they will not apply equally to all places. So please don't write back and say after logging such and such a drainage, there was no increase in sediment or something to that effect. Ecological science is generally more about trends, not absolutes.
1. Managed forests tend to be have more weeds and other invasives.
2. Managed forests tend to have more roads--and a host of ill impacts associated with them--disturbance of sensitive wildlife, etc.
3. Managed forests tend to have higher levels of sediment flows and erosion (i.e landslides).
4. Managed forests tend to have a higher number of species endangered.
5. Managed forests tend to be more fragemented.
6. Managed forests tend to have lower quality water and watersheds.
7. Managed forests tend to be for what of a better word--sanitized. In other words they tend to have less dead trees, less downed wood, and so forth.
8. Managed forests tend to have trees that are on average younger and smaller than unmanaged forests.
9. Managed forests tend to exhibit declining soil productivity over time.
10. Managed forests tend to have more compacted soils (as a result of heavy equipment).
11. Managed forests either reduce and/or amplify the effects of natural ecological processes that are frequently important drivers of the system--i.e. wildfire, insects, etc. But in either case, they change the influence of these processes from what was presumed to be pre-management regime.
11. Finally much of the management of forests today is justified on the bias of correcting the past management mistakes. I.e. we are going to fix the problems created by past logging with new logging.
What this suggests to me is that we haven't been very good at managing forests and therefore the less we manage forests, the less we disturb forest, the less intrusive we are, the better forest ecosystems will be. We may not be able to completely avoid intruding into forests for a host of reasons, but we shall always presume that any intrusive actions will likely have unintended consequences that we can't even imagine. Thus, the precautionary way to behave is to ask whether any proposed logging is necessary. And whatever rational that is given for logging should be examined to see whether first the reason is justified, that the proposed logging will achieve the goal, and that it will not impair or impoverish the forest ecosystem.
Anyone disagree with my conclusions? Go ahead I'm waiting for your responses.
I can't discuss the specifics of your observations that weeds are spreading faster in the Frank Church than elsewhere. I certainly know there are weeds in all environments and wilderness areas are no exception.
All I can do is explain what is observed in other places and in other studies.
another thing to consider - another "component" - with regard to carbon is the impact that "managed forests" have to forest soils - a lot of carbon is in fact held in the soil.
Teepe et al 2004 describes the effect that soil compaction associated with tread/skid trails/disturbance has on carbon equivalent gas fluxes between the atmosphere and soil - including nitrous oxide and methane. the basic idea is that compacted soils turn forest soils into sources of nitrous oxide (296 times the global warmer as CO2) and methane (26 times the global warmer than CO2) emission whereas soils that are not compacted do the opposite --- they sequester carbon & carbon equivalent gases. the rate at which the flux is altered is largely dependent on the texture of the forest soil, which makes sense given aerobic conditions sequester whereas anaerobic conditions emit carbon equivalent gases. Interestingly, soils directly compacted AND soils immediately adjacent to compaction are 'negatively' affected...
It seems that this would be particularly relevant given "managed" forests at the scale prescribed involve widespread/pervasive soil disturbance - landscape level soil profiles either directly compacted or adjacent to disturbed soils.
We can come up with an incredibly exhaustive list of valid carbon emissions related to forest management activities - everything from soil disturbance to chainsaw fumes, but when you consider the incredible rates of carbon emitted at current mortality levels and from wildfires…..they are surprisingly insignificant. Mortality has continued to rise on National Forests to the point that it is currently near its annual growth. That seems to be of little concern to some people. At what point will it be…. when it is equal to growth? Perhaps when exceeds growth? Should we even care about mortality at all as the author suggests?
Are you also not at all alarmed by these numbers?
Average annual sawtimber mortality on National Forest lands in
Montana between 2003-2007: 1,531,572 MMBF
Average annual sawtimber growth on National Forest land in Montana between 2003-2007: 1,724,894 MMBF
Total sawtimber harvest on National Forests in Montana in 2007…..a six decade low of 87,000 MMBF
At this point in time I am not that concerned about mortality in trees. I have seen the figures you cite and I can see why some might be alarmed. However,the dead trees are not wasted, and play a very important role in forest ecosystems. I suspect as informed as you are about forests that would likely agree there's a place for dead trees. Most knowledgeable forestry types concede this point.
However, what is difficult for most of us to accept is a lot of mortality. Most people, (and I include myself in this group not that long ago) are focused on live trees, so that we ignore or discount the role of dead trees in forest ecosystems. The more I have learned about the role of dead trees in functioning ecosystems, the less concerned I am about the mortality.
At some point soon, I will write another piece outlining many of these values--some are remarkable and not things that most of us would think of when we consider the forest.
I'm not suggesting that if all trees were dying and none were growing or surviving at all that I wouldn't be concerned, but that is not the situation now.
At the very least, we need to rethink our view of dead trees. I think we have a bias against them due to the emphasis on timber production rather than the emphasis on sustaining forest systems.
I think not.
So to answer your question "whether the limited activities of the Forest Service rob the forest of dead trees to the point that it invalidates the benefits?" That's a thoughtful and excellent question and one I ponder all the time. The short answer is I don't know.
Rather than asking how much can we remove from the forest, I think we need to reframe the question and start asking "how much down wood and dead trees does the forest need to function sustainability and at full capacity?"
When it comes to what level or number of dead trees and downed wood is necessary for the forest ecosystem, we don't know. I have yet to read any estimate of what is considered "enough" or "too much" downed wood.
As I said in previous messages, there is a growing body of scientific work in all kinds of fields all pointing to the unappreciated value of dead wood. Everything from some lichen species, to various fungi, beetles, ants, pollinating bees, salamanders, bats, bears, snakes, etc. etc. etc. are dependent on dead wood.
For instance, many bees live in downed wood. There are hundreds of species of bees living in the forest--not just our domestic honey bees or the yellow jackets that bother us at picnic. These bees and warps are important pollinators. Thus removal of downed log might reduce the number of pollinating bees and warps in the forest--at what point does this start to affect flowering shrubs and trees? No one knows because few have even bothered to think about how removal of dead trees affects pollinators. I could not find a single paper addressing bees, down wood, and how much wood they need or conversely even what point removal of too much down wood starts to impact bees, and indirectly pollination.
And as we have noted elsewhere in these discussions, at least some fishery biologists and hydrologists believe there is no known upper limit to the amount of dead wood that is "good" for streams. Could the save be said for terrestrial ecosystems? I don't know, and I have little evidence to suggest that very many have given this serious thought.
I guess part of all this discussion is about how the issue is framed. If I heard the Forest Service continuously telling the public how important dead trees were to the forest ecosystem, and how cautious we need to be about removing any trees from the forest because we don't really know at what point we might exceed the parameters needed to maintain a healthy forest ecosystem (which has a lot of dead trees) instead of presenting dead trees as a liability or "damage", I might feel more comfortable about some limited logging operations.
I'm not alarmed by these numbers. For one, they are somewhat cherry-picked, especially the last one showing sawtimber harvest for just 2007. Why just that one year, Bird? Especially since 2007 was when this tremendous reduction in home construction and lumber consumption started.
Do you have any evidence that the average annual sawtimber mortality or growth is significantly different than it was historically? Do you think that simply looking at how much sawtimber dies, grows and is logged in a given year or range of years is an accurate look at the overall health of an ecosystem? These are pretty dynamic systems we're talking about here. Seems to me that you want to focus on such a narrow part of that system to that point that it basically tells us nothing.
It's also kinda funny how some people complain about all the dying trees when they are not able to cut them down. Yet, often these same people will proudly remind us that "trees are a renewable resource" right after a logging operation. I don't understand that.
Mr. Wuerthner evidently likes to spend most of his days writing excessively long wandering diatribes about what he perceives are the evils of logging. Today I'm going to help him out by summarizing all of his ramblings into one short sentence. This should free up a lot of the time he now spends typing on his organic earth neutral computer and allow him to spend more time out in the forests.
Ready?
Mr. Wuerthner does not support any logging on federal lands.
It's that simple. Everything else he writes is basically fluff running around that central premise. The same can be said for Mr. Koehler.
Ready?
Mr. Koehler does not support any logging on federal lands.
(And, please Matt before you respond we all understand your brave bold stance on thinning helpless small baby trees right around houses.)
And those opinions are fine, really,....we get it.
It's just that the rest of us understand that our National Forests have been set aside for multiple-use management. It's the law. It is what Congress has told us we should be doing. We all understand that there are some real trade-offs involved in logging, mountain-biking, mushroom picking, or hunting.
So please George in the future do all of the readers a favor and place this header at the top of all of your postings and articles that you send to blogs or newspapers around the country.
"I do not support any logging on federal lands."
Thanks,
It will save us all a lot of time.
Keep in mind what's below is just an example of projects on the Lolo NF. We are doing similar work on other National Forests.
Apparently 11,000 + acres of fuel reduction accomplished through logging equates to "no logging" in your mind. Go figure. Get your facts straight next time. Perhaps if you posted using your real named you'd be more careful about what you say.
DeBaugan HFRA Project - Lolo NF
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lolo/projects/index-debaugan.shtml
"The proposed action included a variety of fuel reduction treatments on approximately 5700 acres of National Forest System lands. This total included 3900 acres of fuel reduction
accomplished through commercial timber harvest and subsequent slash treatment and 1800 acres accomplished through non-commercial methods, including prescribed burning, precommercial thinning, and slashing and piling."
Frenchtown Face Project - Lolo NF
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lolo/projects/index-frenchtown-face.shtml
"Harvesting timber on approximately 3,621 acres, to be followed by prescribed burning on 3,598 of those acres; Prescribed burning of approximately 6,488 additional acres."
Grant Creek Fuels Project - Lolo NF
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lolo/projects/index-grant-cr-fuels.shtml
"1) thinning the overstory and understory to open the crown canopy, raise the crown height, and reduce the bulk density of the forest in 13 units totaling about 600 acres; 2) thinning the understory to remove ground and ladder fuels on 15 units totaling about 1600 acres; 3) conducting an ecosystem maintenance burn (EMB) on about 365 acres."
Thanks for the quick reply and thank you for proving my previous point that.....
"Mr. Koehler does not support any logging on federal lands."
Reading your comments in the appendices of these reports it's quite clear that you only support "thinning" projects and even using the word support might be a stretch. That's not logging, that's like pulling weeds from your garden.
Also, your extensive litigation history against timber sales that is well documented in all of the local Montana newspapers prove my point.
If you want to prove otherwise, please provide me with a link to a sale who's main purpose is to harvest sawlog sized trees from our
National Forests that you support. I would like to see those comments.
But what I really can't understand is why you age-discriminate against small trees? Don't you think larger trees should have equal opportunity to be harvested? This discrimination is a common theme that tends to repeat itself among western obstructionist groups. You would think in this day and age that we would have been able to break through this barrier but evidently that is not the case.
Do you know what the growth and mortality rates are on private timber lands?
Average annual sawlog mortality on Montana’s private timberlands is 119,368 MBF, average annual growth is 792,870 MBF
vs:
Average annual sawtimber mortality on National Forest lands in
Montana between 2003-2007: 1,531,572 MBF
Average annual sawtimber growth on National Forest land in Montana between 2003-2007: 1,724,894 MBF
The differences in the ratio of mortality to growth is strikingly clear.
There are certainly many things to consider in looking at the health of a forest, tree mortality is not one that should be excluded.
You're certainly well informed, but those statistics could be interpreted in another way.
For one thing a much higher proportion of the private timberlands are already logged thus I am willing to bet have on average much younger trees. Younger trees are naturally going to have lower mortality just as comparing morality between 30 years old and those in their 80s would be strikingly different.
Beyond that point, I suspect there are differences in the species mix between public vs. private lands. As you no doubt know since you seem to be very well informed about Montana forests, the private timberlands are generally found at the lower to mid elevation lands, while FS lands have a much higher percentage of higher elevation lands.I realize that is not true everywhere, but I would not be surprised if a higher percentage of private lands consisted of p pine, Doug fir, and other species of the lower elevations, while those species are obviously on public lands as well, I bet there is a higher percentage of subalpine fir and lodgepole pine on public lands.
And lodgepole pine in particular have seen significant bark beetle visitation (I avoid using words like "attack" ) in recent years prompted by warmer winters. So it would not be surprising that one might see more mortality on public lands.
I would be concerned if some exotic disease were killing all the trees (like Sudden Death Syndrome is killing oaks in California). But at least the major sources of mortality in Montana's forests are things that the forests have been coping with for generations. Trees are not going away on these lands. When the older trees die from bark beetles or whatever there is immediate new growth of the remaining trees. So eventually this mortality is balanced out by the increased survival and growth of younger trees in the long run.
I see you're not letting the facts get in the way of your arguments. Those projects I listed above include commercial logging on public lands....about 10,000 acres worth.
I am not aware of any Forest Service logging project, which according to the Forest Service's own documents and purpose and need statement, has a "main purpose of harvesting sawlog sized trees from our National Forests." All the timber sales now-a-days are couched by the Forest Service and logging industry itself in "forest health" or "fuel reduction" or "restoration" terms...even if that's not always the case, in our opinion. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen timber sale for year's that hasn't been considered a "fuel reduction" timber sale by the Forest Service.
You go on to say, "your extensive litigation history against timber sales that is well documented in all of the local Montana newspapers prove my point." What "extensive litigation history?"
Fact is, I've been doing forest activism work since 1995. Off the top of my head, and if my memory is correct, under my direction the Native Forest Network litigated exactly two timber sales: One on the Bitterroot NF and one on the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest.
In 2006 NFN changed its name to the WildWest Institute when we merged with The Ecology Center.
True, the The Ecology Center actively sought to hold the Forest Service accountable through litigation, but I certainly hope you aren't holding me responsible for what the The Ecology Center did before we merged in 2006. They were a completely separate organization with their own board and their own exec. director. I had zero involvement with any of their litigation decisions prior to our May 2006 merger.
Under my direction, I believe the WIldWest Institute has filed four lawsuits: One on the Kootenai, two on the Lolo NF, and one on Payette NF.
So how you figure that six lawsuits filed under my direction during the past 14 years equates to an "extensive litigation history against timber sales" is a real mystery to me.
Finally, you seem to accuse me of "discrimination" because I don't believe that "larger trees should have equal opportunity to be harvested." The mission of our organization is protect and restore forests, wildlands, watersheds and wildlife in the Northern Rockies. Our mission is not to get large trees on national forests cut down and fed into some sort of an over-consumption/over-development paradigm, especially since most of the large, easily accessible trees on national forests were cut down long ago.
But if you still think I'm "discriminating" and preventing "equal opportunity" I suggest you contact your local branch of the ACLU.
Regardless of personal values and perceptions, scientific information is always degraded when it is strictly used as an advocacy tool for either side of a debate. It is not the role of science to show that logging, or any issue/action for that matter, is right or wrong, but rather provide insight and information on its effects within different forest types, landscapes, soils, climates, etc, so that land managers may use the best available information to determine when and where particular projects can be conducted within an acceptable level of risk. Let's stop using science as a tool, but rather a source of unbiased information. If we don't we all lose...enough said.
It's nice to see that my point that.....
"Mr. Koehler does not support any logging on federal lands."
hasn't gotten in the way of you attempting to run around it once more.
Here are a few excerpts that you provided of your supposed ringing support for logging..
Frenchtown Face: "As far as the vegetation treatments, we have serious reservations. The action alternatives’ over-emphasis on logging, despite the adverse cumulative effects attributable to previous logging, is extremely troubling. Whereas the thinning of truly small trees might have insignificant impacts on the forest structure, the proposal to log larger trees indicates that timber production is too high a priority."
Grant Creek: "Offsetting the cost of fuel treatments by selling larger trees would cause cumulative adverse ecosystem effects. This also raises NEPA costs in an attempting to justify risking unnecessary ecological impacts. Also, administering timber sales requires expenditures of money."
.....so does litigation!!
DeBaugen: "For the most part, the treatments
should focus on removing finer fuels like brush and small trees less than 8 inched in diameter.."
Perhaps Matt you are starting to go away from lawsuits after getting some pretty thorough spankings from the ninth circuit recently. (clancy unionville/and your beloved middle east fork)
Luckily for you Newwest chose not to feature those articles on it's pages.
But really lets get back to my main point for you and George.
It is clear that neither you or George support timber harvesting on our national forests. It's quite clear to all of us in the mainstream that the real goal of your Institute along with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Native Ecosystems Council is to shut down logging altogether on our federal lands.
Again, if you or George can show me a sale and submitted written comment where you enthusiastically endorse the logging of sawlog sized material we're all anxiously waiting to see it.
Your obstructionist, not-in-my-backyard "Institute" has been personally responsible for the demise of local production of a truly renewable, green, organic building and life sustaining material. You have done nothing to reduce the demand for wood, simply shifted the supply of where that material comes. You must love seeing a lumber train go by and see that Canadian Maple Leaf tattooed on all that wood. I personally see it for the glaring hypocrisy that it is.
Why don't you fight for an issue that really destroys forests, urban sprawl. A clear-cut grows back, a subdivision in the forest actually does fragment and destroys habitat.
I would also like to see an example of when you actually supported a Forest Service Timber Sale instead of a list of comments that you submitted in order to gain legal standing for the eventual appeal/litigation.
Trees have been with us in the New West for 10,000 or more years, how ever long this interglacial has lasted. Dr. Bonnicksen at Texas A&M;has explored how forests evolved from barren land recently uncovered by retreating glaciers and the loss of permanent snowfields. His writings show how forests move up and down slope, north or south, east or west, depending on how land forms and climate provide for them. Forests don't have wheels or feet, but they will move. There is some indication that they have moved upslope in the last couple of decades a few yards. Over a thousand years, that could be significant. Dr. Hansen years ago at Oregon State studied pollen and used pollen deposits as a key to understanding what kind of vegetation was present at what times in our recent history of thousands of years since the last Ice Age. During the Ice Age, there were no forests, and prior to the last Ice Age, no human record can be found in the New West. However, as the Ice began to retreat, the Asian migrants using oceanside routes, and dry valleys between glacier dominated highlands, moved to the Americas from Asia, following mega fauna they used for food. Most of those critters are extinct, the last of the pigmy mammoths maybe as long as three hundred or so years off the northern coast of Siberia. No matter, those people came here before forests sprouted, and they have been here ever since. Their fire, their use of fire to sustain themselves, to modify their environment, is how we got "old growth" forests. More so, it is their constant fire that gave us fens and meadows, great expanses of plants useful to subsistence, all kept free of invasive species of trees by set fire. Too much burned area is in areas of little lightning activity, and much of that comes at times of the year when fuels are wet. The logical, proven source of fire is anthropogenic. Not millions of years ago, but merely several thousands of years of it, ending with the advent of diseases from Europe and Asia to which the native peoples had no defenses. When most exploration occurred, in North America, the New West, the native people population was a fraction of what it once was due to the diseases that had run their course long before the Europeans and Asians actually set foot on most land. Social peoples, without preventative medicine and the Harvard Medical School, spread disease far and wide before we ever knew of them, or saw them. Theirs was the first extirpation by the introduction of exotic human species. Lewis and Clark noted empty longhouses and pock marked faces on the lower Columbia River.
So, most of the forest forms, ages, species compositions, we argue about protecting today are new to the New West, never having been here before the native peoples were out of the landscape burning business. The pre-European forest was one with constant set fire, with limbing of dead limbs, with fire wood gathering, with millions of people cooking and keeping warm every day and night with wood burning, brush burning, buffalo chip burning. Plants were cultivated, trees bearing nuts were owned and protected, water was diverted, seeds were kept and stored for planting. Most of what was found by the white people who got here in the 19th century was a land devoid of its former managers, gone to seed, and the people left were just trying to get by, not unlike war torn countries today, or countries ripped apart by disease and famine. We are self serving ego driven zealots going through the paces of argument in a mostly advanced state of ignorance. We found a coke bottle and feel the need to worship it. And we will never get satisfaction to the logging or no logging argument because we don't accept ourselves, believe in ourselves, as those who came before us did.
In the meantime, forests are dynamic and fluid, and constantly reforming themselves. They die, they burn, they do the hokey pokey. And there is a mechanism of renewal, of gained strength, from disturbance, and the weed trees like douglas fir will take over any chunk of land they might. Wrassle it from the Canadian thistle and teasle, the canary reed grass. I will bet doug fir, in time, will kick the crap out of knapweed and run it out of the country, too. Where there is moisture enough, the trees will try to take it all over. Only when man shows up does the need for openings, clearings, meadows, prairies, appear.
I laugh at ivory tower scholars preaching environment from a college campus. If ever there was a place that was landscaped to the natal savanna of East Africa from which we all came, a college or university campus is that. A copse here and there, low brush well scattered, with great expanses of short grass prairie and longer grasses, and other plants in defined areas, with a wide variety of trees to provide shade in summer, and of course, some water features here and there. And if you want to feel better, you go to National Parks maintained in a similar fashion by too many head of wild animals. Yellowstone NP is grazed to the rocks every year. No brush. No tall grass for winter cover. And in spring, it all renews, and grows lush, and by mid winter, not a blade uneaten remains. The fairways are hard. The greens harder. There is only rocks for rough. But the idea of great expanses of trees and open spaces of low grass is comforting to the human spirit. The Grand Lodges, and the Administration Building, Old Hall, the rim rocks of stone walls. Who are we bullshitting, really? Man is a control freak. Every contributer to the thread is proof of that. Man controls his environment. To not control is a method of control. It is the control of people. The problem is that we have become too many. I suggest stimulus money to research the retroactive vasectomy.
What's the hard source on those morts? A link please? Such numbers are a simple outrage. A forest that is dying at nearly the rate it grows is by no means healthy. What the heck is it, 300,000 acres deader than a doornail up on Flesher in the Lincoln RD?
All that bull pine crying for a haircut, fighting one another cone and root for that last drop of water, in a mutual cellulosuicide pact? And what was the response? Is that forest somehow better for having been "protected?"
Never mind the WONDERFUL job Wildwest et al did in hanging up the Clancy Unionville project for NINE YEARS until the last part of it became completely pointless. So thanks for that, Matt and Sara Jane. And thank you Geo and Eric for your latest lawsuit in Wyoming.
That's all.
I was wondering when you would jump in.
I would argue that a forest that has few dead trees is one that is unhealthy, not the other way around. And no doubt the woodpeckers, salamanders, fungi, ground nesting bees, ants, trout in the streams, and so on would argue with you about forest health as well since they all depend on dead trees and downed wood.
Dead trees are not wasted in the forest ecosystem. That is the shift in perspective I hope you will eventually adopt. Might be a stretch for some of you, but the science is solid behind this--dead trees are ecologically valuable--and not usually an indication of a problem.
Would that be a correct analysis of your views?
The answer is back in my essay. I suspect there is some minimum level of logging that can likely be done without significant impoverishment of the forest ecosystem. However, I also suspect that level of wood removal "may" be well below what is considered economically viable in today's markets.
For instance, how much dead wood is needed to maintain ecosystem function? I have never seen any number or even a guess about what this might be. But it's increasingly acknowledged that dead wood has real ecological importance in ecosystems. So how do we know that logging is not impairing the forest ecosystem if we can not even guess about this and many other processes and components of the ecosystem?
One more point. You may find this difficult to believe, but I would like to believe that we could log without serious impact. I like wood. I like the things that are made with wood. But as I said, I haven't seen a sustainable forestry operation yet. Whether it's possible to have such a program under current economic paradigms, I'm not sure. That is the conundrum for us all.
To view the mortality data for example:
Select “sawtimber mortality on timberland (bdft)” then “continue”, then select Montana 2003 through 2007 (the figure is the avg of these years), “continue” then select “ownership class”, and finally “show results”
Luckily for George and Matthew the Forest Service does a very poor job of decimating this information, which belongs on a billboard at every forest entrance.
I also posted the private growth and mortality figures for private timberlands to explain why George must maintain the absurd notion that "there is probably no level of mortality that is ultimately bad since all dead trees are recycled into the growth of new forests"
As you can see, private industrial timberlands have a great deal of growth relative to tree mortality, and therefore if he recognizes that tree mortality is in fact even ONE important consideration in evaluating forest health, he would have to concede that this could be a positive result achieved through forest management.
Our National Forests are not managed as industrial forests because they are required by law to be managed for multiple uses. I see no reason not to recognize forest management’s ability to preserve or enhance these uses and at the same time provide a renewable resource, reduce wildfire threats, provide jobs and and most importantly, return the forest to a state that is comparable to the forest that existed before decades of fire suppression.
I my opinion, there will be an AMPLE supply of dead trees in the forest given the dismal and unnatural state of health on our National Forests.
Thanks for sending those links. I'll take a look at them.
But I have to take you to task at least on one of your last statements--the idea that fire suppression has lead to a huge change in forests from historic conditions.
Most authorities agree that some changes have likely occurred to lower elevation forests--i.e. ponderosa pine for instance, but the more you go up in elevation and/or moisture gradient, the less effect fire suppression has likely had on forest stand character. The reason is that the natural fire intervals lengthen and often are far longer than the period of successful fire suppression.
To use an extreme, in the rain drenched Douglas fir forests of the Olympic Mountains of Washington, the natural fire interval is about 500-600 years. So one would have a difficult time arguing that a few decades of fire suppression has radically altered these forests in any measurable way.
On the other hand, ponderosa pine forests may have had fire frequency of a few years to few decades depending on where we are discussing. In these forests, fire suppression likely has had a greater impact--though the degree is now being disputed.
There is growing evidence to suggest that other factors may be equally as important, or more important, in the character of these forests. A number of decades of favorable moisture for tree growth between 1940s and 1980s has likely led to increased stand density, particularly at lower elevations where moisture is most limiting (i.e. ponderosa pine forests). At the same time, moist conditions made it easier to put out fires--if they even started to begin with.
So the narrative that fire exclusion has created "unnatural" forests has more nuance than I commonly hear from logging proponents. Not all forests were equally affected by fire suppression to the same degree, and climatic conditions have had a major hand in the observed conditions as well.
Lets talk a little about scale, Matt and George. On average in Region 1(this is a broad generalization I know) there is about 25% of the land base that is designated for timber harvest in the Forest Plans. Subtract from that areas which cannot be reached due to logging and economic constraints, wildlife issues, stream buffers, etc. and you may come to a number somewhere in the range of 15-20%, some Forests more, some less. Again I ask, is this not a minimal impact? Is this a number that you could accept?
I believe that Wilderness is one of the greatest ideas we have come up as a society, it is a beautiful idea and a wonderful experience. However, I also enjoy and require the benefits of wood products every day of my life, as do you. I also believe in Multiple Use Management which is the guiding force of the Forest Service. I believe that managing 15-20% of the National Forest land base for timber production, while leaving the rest for Wilderness, Wildlife, Watershed, Roadless, Recreation, etc. is clearly a middle ground, if not skewed toward your side.
Finally I ask: Is this not a minimal impact? Is this a number that you could accept?
The quick answer to your question is about whether the forests in Region One could sustain some logging if only 15-20% of the area was open to logging. I think it's likely that some amount of land could be logged, but I don't know whether 15-20% is acceptable or whether there could be more logging or alternatively there should be no more logging on public lands in light of past logging impacts. I'm not trying to be evasive.
I can't answer such a question without knowing more about where the logging would occur, the species being logged, how much of the habitat has been fragmented by previous logging. Whether new roads are needed. What kind of logging is proposed, what is the likelihood that weeds will be spread, and on and on.
As for the statistics you cite, there are some things hidden in them that should be accounted for in any discussion about logging. The public lands are a subset of the entire landscape. Much of the private lands are more intensively used than the public lands, especially the private timberlands. So that puts greater importance on the public lands to shoulder more of the other values that society wants to protect.
Secondarily whether we are talking public or private lands, much of the logging has occurred in the valley bottoms, and gentler slopes. Most of our wilderness areas, for instance, are skewed towards higher elevations--the "rocks and ice". So some ecosystems have been much more affected by logging--namely the lower, more productive elevation forests. Whether any of these lands can sustain further logging is not known.
Plus percentages can hide the effects of fragmentation--you probably knew that, but to remind us all, even if only a small percentage of the land is actually logged, the impacts extend much further from the site than the actual area logged. You can log say 20% of a drainage, but the fragmentation might make the remaining 80% unusable for some wildlife. For instance, one study done on the Flathead NF showed that grizzlies tend to avoid otherwise useable habitat up to two miles on either side of a logging road. So if you could easily log only 20% of a drainage and still impact grizzlies.
Same for fisheries. A small percentage of the drainage might be logged, but it could exceed the threshold for sedimentation for trout in the stream. Bull trout as you may know are very sensitive to sedimentation and chronic sedimentation that often comes with on-going logging (as opposed to a one time flush after a fire) can shift the balance away from bull trout towards other species.
I use these examples to illustrate the problem of trying to suggest that just because the total acres being proposed for logging may be small, that it is somehow not impairing other forest values.
And again whether these trade offs are acceptable to the public can't be determined if the public is not being made aware of the full suite of trade offs. My original intent in writing the essay was to suggest that someone needs to continuously remind the public that there is no free lunch. We are always weighing trade offs and we make better decisions when we have full access to all the information.
You appear to be misinterpreting what I have said about wildfire--sorry for the confusion. I do believe fire plays a very important role in higher elevation forests. Let me say it another way and see if it is a bit clearer.
Fire is important in nearly all forested ecosystems, even the wet Doug fir forest of the Olympic Mountains that I gave as an example. It's just that the interval between fires increases as one goes up in elevation or moisture gradient and the conditions conducive to a fire ignition and spread are less frequent. When these forest types do subsequently burn, they tend to burn hotter, and with more stand replacement severity.
As a consequence, fire suppression has not uniformly affected all forest types as is sometimes implied. If you have a naturally long interval between fires, than even if fire suppression were effective, it is unlikely to have created "unnatural" fuels or conditions that deviated from historic conditions. Severe fires in these kinds of forests are not "unnatural" or a consequence of fire suppression, but the "norm" for those kinds of forests types.
Does this make things clearer?
Fascinating stuff. You have to wonder why it is never disseminated. Yet, such ridiculous numbers make the USFS look bad up front, never mind it is Congress' fault for wrapping the agency up in reams of red duct tape.
I suppose it can be argued, as Geo and Matt sure will, that mortality equaling growth is the "nature" of things. It certainly was in the pre-white-guy era, when the red guys, and red gals, set management fires to kill the stuff they didn't like and encourage the growth of stuff they liked.
By logical extension, it seems to me that if mortality is SUPPOSED to equal growth, then let's have a more "diverse" set of mortalities. Let's have some fire, some bugs, some age-rot, and some good old LOGGING!
As for the issue of "impoverishment" -- I guess Geo is happy to prevent "impoverishment" of the biota whatnot at the price of ensuring impoverishment of the associated humaniota.
You always bring up the Indian burning issue.
The issue of Indian fire deserves a separate longer response--maybe I'll write something some time and you can have at it.
While there is no doubt that Indian fires occurred, the magnitude of this influence is in dispute.
But beyond this question of magnitude of human ignitions and its influence on some vegetative communities, there is a matter of nested hierarchies. Vegetation still largely responds to climate influences, with other factors like human ignitions a secondary factor.
Indians manipulation, for instance, could not make trees grow in the desert or shift trees into the alpine zone etc. You are not going to take ponderosa pine from the valley floor and grow it at timberline. And some forest communities naturally grow in more dense stands, and burn infrequently largely as a result of climatic conditions.
The major point is that no matter what the historic condition was like, the forests are responding to present climatic conditions, not what was happening two hundred years ago. Though because trees are long lived organisms, there is a lag factor in the response. If the climate becomes warmer and drier, we will see more wildfires in some forests. If it gets cooler and moister again--as has occurred in the past, we'll likely see fewer fires. We can only maintain the processes that shaped the forests like wildfire, bark beetles, etc.--and it seems too many are hung up on the physical appearance rather than maintaining the influences that create those vegetative communities.
Can we really only safely harvest an amount equivalent to 7 percent of the annual saw timber mortality on National Forests and is it the wise thing to do in the midst of sky rocketing fire suppression costs and the many health problems facing the forest?
Among other things, wilderness serves as a control group for forest scientists but the consequences of a wilderness management approach applied to a landscape level are often underestimated. Forests do a remarkable job at recovering from disturbance, even collapse with enough time, but the questions has to be asked whether a “do nothing” approach on such a broad scale achieves a net benefit for the beneficiaries of the forest and the environment.
Let me react to your statement. I will sound flippant, but I'm not trying to be, but we have such opposite viewpoints. For instance, your statement: "Among other things, wilderness serves as a control group for forest scientists but the consequences of a wilderness management approach applied to a landscape level are often underestimated."
I would turn that around and say the consequences of forest management applied to the landscape are often underestimated.
I see most of the presumed "problems" like bark beetles and wildfires as normal ecological processes, and certainly not a sign of an unhealthy forest. The fact that these processes still operate, as are the mortality rates you note, both are hopeful signs that that forests are resilient and are remarkable in their ability to recovering from the effects of a hundred years of forestry management.
The sky rocketing fire suppression costs are part of this lack of perspective. We are attempting to stop ecological processes from happening, much as we might try to keep a two legged stool missing one leg from falling over. This requires more and more energy to oppose the natural tendency for the system to reach some kind of equilibrium.
In addition, as I'm sure you know, the high costs of suppression are largely related to the continued construction of homes sprawling into wildlands, and the lack of any kind of zoning or planning. That's a governmental policy problem, not a problem with the forest.
Plus as Jack Cohen in Missoula's Fire Lab has stated reducing the flammability of homes is by far the easiest and most effective means of safeguarding communities--not logging the forests.
There may be reasons to log the forest--i.e. to get wood which we use--but thinking logging will stop fires under SEVERE fire conditions is questionable.
So a purposefully overplanted forest is choking on trees, and the trust fund to pay for the work has disappeared like virga over the rims rocks. Federal Govt smoke and mirrors, the Congress, and poof!, the money is gone. Add to that 25 years of constant, incessant NGO, Green, hateful litigation against forest management, and now we have forests that the "speakers for the forest" would rather burn. Who spoke for the Jews of Germany? Were they chastised by German scientists and German academics? Sure. And the econazis of america want to destroy the forests IF ONLY TO KEEP THEM FROM THE LOGGERS. Simple as that.
I read the Smithsonian magazine at my kid's, and it is telling us that clearing of the Amazon rainforest reveals prior civilizations, earthworks, irrigation, raised bed gardens and more. So someone, maybe pre-Columbian, clear cut the Amazon, and gee whillikers, the darn thing renews itself when abandoned. And then the article went on to show how it happens in as little as a couple of decades, with examples in Panama. Another myth debunked. Man clearing jungle does not do away with the tropical rainforest. There are indicators that for every acre cleared today, another ten are in some sort of seral stage succession of reverting to rainforest, and at amazing growth rates for the trees and plants.
In the arid New West, and most of it is arid, we have our own micro climate vestigial forests, remnants of wetter times. When these forests are destroyed by logging or fire, you cannot get the same species mix and regrowth due to too great a change in thermal and moisture regimes. These areas need to be fire protected in any way we might, because when they are gone, they can never be again in our or many following generations lifetimes. Or ever, maybe. Some are "cloud forests" at elevations and aspects that allow them to gillnet water out of the sky and drop it to their roots, or even foliar water themselves. Others provide the shade in summer and heat in winter to nurture understory development and mult species succession on the fringe of the east slope rainshadows. When they burn, reforestation never works, and lodgepole becomes the occupier of the site. Or juniper and sage. The fire removed forest is so delicately balanced in its little micro site, and WFU policy used within miles of those forests (and at least three of those areas RNA protected and Wilderness protected, were burned in 2007 in WFU managed fires--I would prefer the fire boss were drawn and quartered, but law won't allow it). But fire is a tool, and not a brush with which to paint the whole barn. Logging is a tool, and also not the brush with which to paint the whole barn.
I manage a blueberry farm, and the absolute fatal error and mistake in saving of money that you can do is to not prune. And if you don't prune for a couple of years, it will take twice as long as you have not pruned to recover the plants to prior health, vigor, and fruit production. You can skip nitrogen, and most water, and you can slog through. Skip pruning and your plants suffer. Skip it for two years, and you have serious trouble. Three years and perhaps flailing and replanting is a cheaper avenue to recovery. Our forests, public and private, are no different. The have to be tended because they have been created by human instigated disturbance for thousands of years.
There is no end to the examination of how this insect feeds on a particular plant and is controlled by a certain species of wasp that only feeds on that insect, so you have to have the plant to have the butterfly and the wasp. I will get holy hell for saying it, but forests have had man as a part of their cycle for thousands of years, and if you want THAT kind of forest, you have to have the hand of man involved. Wilderness is not that forest. And never will be. Old growth forests, with the spatially separated trees without limbs for a distance above the ground, are the product of man, and you can only replace them by tending the forest.
I don't doubt that you enjoy wood products, we all do.
But I do seriously doubt that you support in any way, shape, or form logging on federal lands. I have never seen anything in your writings that would seriously suggests that.
Which, again is a valid opinion.
You just mistake the source of your problem. It is not the Forest Service, or the BLM, or even the timber industry. For the type of change you seem to desire you need to head down to Washington and try to convince the halls of Congress that your point of view is the best way to deal with federal land management. Who knows, maybe Bernie or Pat Leahy would be receptive to your arguments, but having watched them for awhile I expect even they would even think you're a little out in left field on this issue.
You're such a wide reader and have some good observations. I like reading your comments.
But the forests existed long before there were any humans to tend them, and I think as you even suggest in your commentary, they will be around a long time after we are gone.
Your poetry is sometimes entertaining but your facts are all screwed up. You're obsessed by this idea that pre Columbus natives in the New World did intensive forest management on a massive scale transforming entire forest ecosystems which is basically bullshit. Many tribes harvested nuts and berries from the forests. A few tribes burned to attract game. And some tribes cleared land for residential and agricultural purposes but that doesn't mean that they engaged in clear cutting a significant percentage of the surrounding tropical jungle. What an imagination!
First I want to thank all of you for your perspective and viewpoints. I think for the most part we come at this issue from very different philosophical perspectives and cultural values. Whether there is ever going to be any common ground is hard to say. But I do enjoy hearing from a number of you on a regular basis. I have learned some good things from your commentaries. Many things we are never going to agree upon--but I do consider these discussions to be worthwhile. Some of you have valuable insights.
For you, Treehugger, I am glad to say that I am finally in agreement with one of the comments. I agree that the logging is legal and that the agencies are not required to consider all the impacts. And certainly you are right that the courts have said that agencies do not have to manage for all values on the same acre. But they do not necessarily have to permit public lands to be degraded either--so that is one of the issues we are continuously going round and round about--what level of impacts--if any--are acceptable in exchange for whatever we may get back in "goods".
Many of you believe that logging improves the land--and from one perspective--it's easy to see how one could conclude that kind of thing. So I don't begrudge any of you that perspective--though I do hope to move you a little in my direction.
And that is why I appreciate you all taking the time to consider my viewpoint--and at least to give me your two cents worth shows you have been thinking about things.
However, if I were a betting man Treehugger-I would bet that over time my perspective will gain more credibility if not complete acceptance. Given what I have seen through history, I suspect society will demand better and better treatment of our public lands over time--that is the long term trend. And things that seem acceptable today will be viewed less favorably in the future. That is how it has gone in the past and I suspect will continue into the future.
The agencies are largely following Congressional dictates as you suggest Treehugger, so I absolutely agree that the way to change things is through Congress. And when Congress works the way we all hope it will, (despite Bearbait's cynical view that it often fails) we do hope that it responds to public opinion. And changing public opinion is what I am hoping to do.
Maybe even your opinion Treehugger, just a little. And some of the feedback I get, changes my own views a little as well. So it's a two way street.
Thanks.
All this gets me thinking why are people who are clearly middle of the road when it comes to federal land management policies even entertaining this nonsense that you and other extremists spew, instead of giving it the rightful dismissal it deserves.
The answer is really quite simple. George Wuerthner, Matthew Koehler, Michael Garrity, Sara Jane Johnson and other local "Earth Warriors" are under current law allowed to hijack and manipulate the legal system to impose their dominion over the land for their own personal financial gain and ego. This is not democracy, it is the tyranny of the minority. I guess the survival of the environmental industry depends on you and other "guardians" to continue your crusade for total control of the earth. We would hate to lose another industry in these tough economic times.
George, I realize that you’re not concerned with mortality and that these are a natural part of a forest ecosystem, but I think they are worth noting as they will most certainly have an impact on future fire seasons.
BARK BEETLE CONDITIONS IN BRIEF
Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB)
Lolo and Helena NF.s showed significant increases as infestations
moved into previously un-infested areas.
Acres on which beetle-caused mortality was recorded, in all species and on all ownerships, decreased but only slightly, to more than 807,200 acres, down somewhat from the most-recent high figure of more than 820,400 acres recorded in 2005.
Douglas-fir Beetle (DFB)
In many stands in Montana, beetle-related damage has declined because much of the susceptible hosts have been killed.
DFB populations were found at virtually endemic levels in most parts of western Montana.
Beetle populations in stands surveyed in and around areas affected by 2000 and 2003 fires, on parts of Bitterroot and Helena NFs, showed a return to near-endemic levels.
There are close to 2 million acres of Douglas-fir in the State that are relatively susceptible to DFB infestation. Weather and stand disturbances.fire, defoliation, or wind throw.increase the likelihood of DFB outbreaks in those susceptible stands. Preventive management is the key to reducing outbreak potential.
Fir Engraver (FE)
Grand fir stands, in which FE-causedmortality was recorded, increased to an all-time high in 2004, at more than 298,650 infested acres.throughout the Northern Region.
We believe these dramatic decreases in FE-caused mortality were a result of better precipitation for the couple of years
following 2004. Now, however, 2007 was once again warm and dry. Increasing beetle populations in some areas in 2008 would not be surprising.
Western Spruce Budworm (WSBW)
Most heavily impacted reporting areas were on the Beaverhead (198,905 acres), Helena (127,878 acres), and Gallatin National Forests (75,958 acres) in Montana.
Over the past few years, we also have recorded budworm defoliation in areas where it had never or rarely been recorded.
Western Balsam Bark Beetle (WBBB)
In the areas surveyed, in 2006, more than 130,400 infested acres were reported. That figure declined to 115,200 acres in 2007.
I'm not surprised by those statistics. Thanks for sharing them--I find them interesting. They do confirm some my own observations from traveling around Montana in the past few years--particularly the large number of dead trees on the Helena, Beaverhead, and Gallatin Forests. I find these statistics reassuring since it demonstrates our forests are still operating largely as they should operate--grow more when conditions are good, and a reduction and higher mortality when conditions are not favorable.
Bird, I think if you could fast forward you would see that your alarm over tree mortality is unwarranted. I would love to take you to some places I know about in Yellowstone and Grand Teton where past insect outbreaks "destroyed" the forest and see if you think the existing forests look "destroyed."
One place in Yellowstone NP used to have one of those road side "information" signs pointing out where budworm had killed a lot of Douglas fir. That sign used to irk me and I complained a number of times to the NPS about the sign saying it was really biased in that it was suggesting that insects were bad for the forest instead of seeing them as a natural process. Whether responding to my complains or just a change in attitude, whatever, they eventually removed the sign. Now every time I drive by that site, I think about that old sign. Frankly if you were in a car with me, I doubt you would even notice that the area had once been a place of significant tree mortality so rapidly has the forest understory filled in the stands previously killed by budworm.
I also visited a couple of sites with some forest ecologists who have been studying the forests in Grand Teton and Yellowstone for decades. They showed me some lodgepole stands that had been high bark beetle mortality in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, like most bark beetles outbreaks, not all the trees died, and many of those surviving trees are now "old growth". Released from competition, the younger trees grew rapidly filling in the understory and now are very large trees. Today if it had not been pointed out to me, I would have never guessed that 70-90% of the larger trees had been killed by bark beetles 40 years before.
In terms of fire vulnerably due to insect outbreaks, there are two responses to your statement about wildfires. First, high mortality from beetles, budworm, etc. does not necessarily lead to greater wildfire occurrence as many of you presume--again because it's not fuels that drives big fires. You have to have the ideal fire weather and pre existing climatic conditions conducive to fire to get a blaze. The probability that any particular stand of trees affected by bark beetles will experience a fire is very small.
A number of studies I could send you show either no correlation between insect outbreaks and fire, or only a weak correlation. In other words, the reason places burn isn't due to dead trees. The correlation between climate and weather is much stronger than anything to do with fuels.
In addition, the vulnerability to fires changes over time. All things equal--fire vulnerability changes over time. The first few years after bug mortality when the trees are red needled, yes wildfire vulnerability does go up slightly. But that stage only lasts for a few years, and then once the fine fuels are removed by winter storms, the needles and small branches fall off, the forest is less vulnerable. Then over time as the young forest grows up in the understory providing some ladder fuels the vulnerability goes up for a time until the canopy closes in and the forest vulnerability again declines for decades.
So again this gets to probability. What are the changes that you will have dry conditions, wind, high temp. and low humidity combined with an ignition source during those years when the affected forest is most likely to burn readily?
frequent or intense fire disturbances than in the past. Many of these forests and grasslands are overcrowded with increased susceptibility to drought, and insect and disease outbreaks. The excessive amounts of dead wood and grass, especially in watersheds that historically burned at frequent intervals, heighten the risk of high-intensity, destructive fires. Large-scale vegetative disturbances in a watershed adversely affect waterbodies by increasing soil erosion and nutrient runoff. With dense stands of vegetation and large amounts of dead fuel on the ground, the size and intensity of fires can increase significantly and be accompanied by greater risks of erosion, severity of floods, and decreases in water quality.”
“The long-term view is that healthy watersheds can only be achieved if the ecosystems on the watershed are healthy. Watershed restoration includes recovery of natural timber and grass stands and fuels composition. Thinning, prescribed burning, and other management projects are needed on a watershed
(landscape) scale to significantly alter the predicted course of events leading toward large-scale erosion, flooding, and nutrient loss on disturbed watersheds.”
http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/policy-analysis/water.pdf
That's an interesting link on watersheds. Thanks.
Since you're providing links, I thought I would throw a few out to you. I will not overwhelm you with references, but these are worth at least checking out the abstracts--which shouldn't take you too long to review. The basic message is that the less you screw around with the watersheds, the better off they are--even after fires.
The first one is a meta analysis of watersheds in the Northern Rockies of high conservation value for fish. What it shows is overwhelming evidence that roadless lands--i.e. unmanaged stands have the highest quality watersheds.
http://pacificrivers.org/science-research/resources-publications/the-geography-of-freshwater-conservation-roadless-areas-
Several other papers show that wildfire has little long term negative impact on aquatic ecosystems--in fact enhance productivity.
2004. Stream ecosystem responses to fire: the first ten years. In: L. L. Wallace (ed.) After the Fires: the ecology of change in Yellowstone National Park. Yale University Press, New Haven. (G. W. Minshall, T. V. Royer, and C. T. Robinson).
2005. Functional characteristics of wilderness streams twenty years following wildfire. Western North American Naturalist 65:1-10. (Robinson, C. T., U. Uehlinger, and G. W. Minshall).
Logging of watersheds negatively impacts waterhsheds.
2004. The effects of postfire salvage logging on aquatic ecosystems in the American West. BioScience 54:1029-1033. (Karr, J. R., J. J. Rhodes, G. W. Minshall, F. R. Hauer, R. L. Beschta, C. A. Frissell, and D. A. Perry).
I wish there were more people who frequent the interior of Idaho and the fringes of the Frank Church Wilderness and others. They should have some up close and personal views of how well fire is helping restore salmon and watersheds. After all, a goodly part of their neighbor hood has been burned over and through a couple of times in this century, and the USFS has plans to burn more. I have seen some ugly pictures of spring freshet blowouts and mass headwall and sidewall failures blocking streams, and some summer thunder boomer flash flooding that filled many spring salmon holding pools to the brim, and changed the morphology of the rivers and streams for a long time. The damage is the type that if it had occurred after logging would have been seen on the front page of the London Times. The Green NGO apologists and supporters of fire have said nary a word. Selective judgements work that way. The one sided bell curve. Saw it many times in the lumber business. Your chip's water content would never be drier than 50%. The test takers would throw out any sample with less than 50% moisture. You could chip nothing but fire killed dead trees, and the moisture would never get lower than 50% in the heat of summer. Selective testing. It does happen, and I just suppose it happens when your advocacy is threatened, your interests. Only burned watersheds that are relatively intact get studied. The unmitigated disasters are not, because they would skew the numbers you want. The world of science seems to operate that way more and more. Only one side of climate change is heard or has popular political support. No bell curve.
One small correction on you fire frequency number. We've had fire of the catastrophic type in our neighborhood in 2000 and 2007. That doesn't include the fire being close enough to foam our cabin in 1994.
thanks for the tip on Babyfoot Lake research. I have been the lake numerous times, both before the fire and since. I was not aware of the research.
Most of the research I"ve seen on fires and fish suggests only minor impacts except at a very local level. I.e. the smallest drainages may be impacted for a short time, but few long term impacts, even at that level.
Of course, every fire and situation is different, but the general feeling I get from the research is that fires do not pose a long term threat or harm to aquatic ecosystems. That's really not surprising since fish have been living with wildfires for thousands and thousands of years.
Regards River of No Return Wilderness, there actually has been extensive research done on fires and watersheds there by the Stream Ecology Center at Idaho State University. I saw a couple of presentations on findings at a recent fire conference in Jackson this fall. I imagine you could find their papers on line. But the general conclusions they presented was that wildfire actually increase productivity in the streams, as well as in near-by riparian zones. Aquatic insects were up. Fish sizes were up. And the flying aquatic insects supported more birds and bats as well.
I've similar findings on other aquatic ecosystem research. See some of the stuff that Bob Greswell, formerly of OSU, now at Montana State University, has done on Yellowstone fires.
The afore mentioned meta analysis of roadless areas which included wilderness areas including the River of No Return Wilderness found that the highest quality aquatic watersheds were in these roadless areas--and many of them have burned.
I also reviewed another aquatic ecosystem study done by a professor at ISU on Greater Yellowstone looking at watershed quality. I don't recall his name off hand, but he found the least disturbed by management (not fires) drainages had the highest quality fisheries.
There was a riffle/pool aspect to the study, so that all were equally represented. The findings were that the order of vertebrate and invertebrate aquatic abundance was b-a-c......the clear cut with direct sun on the stream provided the most life, and the intermittent nature of the old growth canopy was second, and third was the canopied over stream bordered by a vigorous second growth stand of conifers and alder. The conclusion was that sunlight, temperature, aquatic plant growth, terrestrial insect availability, all produced more vertebrate life in the stream. And, if you ever looked at the most productive salmon streams in the world that empty into Bristol Bay, AK, you don't see any old growth forests with a canopy and understory. Willows and scattered spruce at the limits of it adapted site. Lots of sun on the streams and lakes during what is essentially a 20 hour a day growing season in spring and summer. And the same sunlight is on the ocean and the cold oxygenated water with lots of light penetration for the short, intense growing season. And with all that in view, I can certainly see how, after all the erosion has taken place, the sediment stored in the streams and off channel, the trees now rotting along the mean annual snow level on the bole, and the trees falling towards gravity, downhill, to the streams, providing structure and cover, post fire there is a resurgence of aquatic life. Lots of bugs from rotting wood, nutrients created or exposed by vegetation oxidized by fire, no shade limiting vegetation in the stream, a reseeding of the stream by aquatic species, including fish if there is an unburned stream to feed the fire area, or there is no stream blockages from mass erosion, slips, slumps and slides from headwall and sidewall failures, you can have more fish in the creek than when it was in the "old growth" state of protected wilderness. But, then again, as the Andrews study showed, you can get there with logging, too. Logging does not preclude that kind of response.
I have fished high in the Santiam drainage, and it is only in the clear cuts on the Hill Timber Lands checkerboarded in the USFS land, that you catch fish. The deep dark draws with timber shade and north slope shade, all you can catch is teeny little sexually mature cutthroat less than 6"...that is why so many streams have the name "Sardine Creek." Early on, they had only very small fish to grace the table of early venturers into the area. Bull trout food, as it were. That is an interesting fish. A char. Not a trout. And it is designed to, along with its mate, to go up high, cold mountain streams, eat all that lives there, and then lays its eggs. The introduction of another char, the eastern Brook trout, which has a differing spawning time and regime, just happens to have its young ready to emerge and eat all the Bull trout spawn and fingerlings before they can grow or migrate. In Pacific salmon areas, there was a bounty on Dolly Varden or Bull Trout, for many years. How things change!!! Their ability to wipe out the small fish in a stream during their spawning ritual was noticed early on.
So, the fish and aquatic life deal in creeks burned over is about the introduction of sunlight and the absence of a major predator due to water quality issues. You will get a good fish response. If that is the natural or wanted response, I have no idea. But you can also get it through logging. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
My son, now approaching middle age, is a logger, and he looks for the carpenter ant flying stage in the spring. When the carpenter ants fly, he goes fishing, in season or not.(use to..now he can't miss a minute of work in this economy)...He fly fishes, and he can always say he is steelhead fishing, and does hook an occasion kelt that way. Never keeps them. But the cutthroat fishing during the carpenter ant flying time is as good as mayflies on the Yellowstone or salmon flies on the Deschutes. If only the season setters would let you legally fish then. It is a hoot. All catch and release, but 'cuts to twenty inches all day long. And, if you kept one, a chance to go to jail. Could it be any better? The season starts right on the coast, and works its way through the Coast range by elevation, and up the Cascades following the snow melt. Burns and older clearcuts are great places to fish that hatch. And that hatch feeds a lot of aquatic life. Insider information for gonzo fly fishers...empirical knowledge from fern hoppers and brush apes...#3wgt. 6' rod...big black ant with wings...ker-splash!!! All those ants coming out of stumps, cull logs, and left coarse woody debris.
You definitely hit one nail on the head regards sunlight effect. The researchers say the reason productivity goes up in fire areas is exactly due to more sunlight--at least in cold high mountain streams.
The other reason is the input of woody debris--i.e. dead logs which increases the food source for many shredders and other aquatic insects.
I will take note of your fishing advice. Thanks.
Geo.