Seeing the Forest for the Trees

There’s an old cliché that one can’t see the forest for the trees. It is used to describe people who are so focused on some detail that they fail to see the big picture. Nowhere is this failure to see the forest for the trees more evident than the rush to utilize dead trees for biomass fuel s and/or the presumed need to “thin” forests to reduce so called “dangers” and/or “damage” from wildfire and beetle outbreaks.

Contrary to popular opinion, we probably do not have enough dead trees in our forest ecosystems. And this deficit is a serious problem since dead trees are critical to the long term productivity of forests, and perhaps more important to forest ecosystems than live trees. Dead trees are not a “wasted” resource. It is questionable whether we can we remove substantial quantities of live or dead wood from the forest without serious long term biological impoverishment to forest ecosystems.

An abundance of dead trees, rather than a sign of forest sickness as commonly portrayed, demonstrates that the forest ecosystem is functioning perfectly well. For far too long we have viewed the major agents responsible for creation of substantial qualities of dead trees--beetles and wildfire—as “enemies” of the forest, when in truth; they are the major processes that maintain healthy forest ecosystems.

Recent research points out the multiple ways that dead trees and down wood are critical to the forest. One estimates suggests that 2/3 of all species depend on dead trees/down wood at some point in their lives.

Dead trees are very important for functioning aquatic ecosystems as well. Trees create structure in streams that shapes stream channels, reduces water velocity and erosion, and provides both food and habitat for many aquatic invertebrates. In general the more wood you have in the stream, the more fish, insects, and other aquatic life. Aquatic ecologists generally believe that there is no upper limit for dead wood in streams.

Once a tree falls to the ground and gradually molders back into the soil, it provides home to many small insects and invertebrates that are the lifeblood of the forest, that help recycle and produce nutrients important for present and future forest growth. For instance, there are hundreds of species of ground nesting bees that utilize down trees for their home. These bees are major pollinators of flowers and flowering shrubs in the forest.

Ants are among the most abundant invertebrates in the forest and many live in down trees and snags. Ants play a critical role in the forest, helping to break down wood, aeration of soil with their burrows, and protection of trees against the onslaught of other insects. One study found that ants killed 85% of the tussock moths that attacked Douglas fir and there are many other examples of how ants protect trees from tree predators.

And it’s not just wildlife that depends on dead trees. A recent review of 1200 lichen species found that 10% were only found on dead trees, and many others prefer dead trees as their prime habitat. Lichens, among other things, are important convertors of atmospheric nitrogen into fixed nitrogen important for plant growth.
Even the charcoal that results from wildfires burning up trees is important for soil productivity, helping to increase soil nutrients, water-holding capacity, and as a long-term storage mechanism for carbon.

Most beetle and wildlife events do not kill all the trees. Instead, they create a mosaic of age classes that actually increases biodiversity. Contrary to the popular opinion that beetles “destroy the forest” and fires “sterilize” the soils or create biological deserts, several recent studies have concluded that both beetle killed forests and the burned forests that result remain after stand replacement wildfires have among the highest biodiversity of any habitat type.

Notwithstanding, the fact that much new research suggest that both thinning or biomass removal are often ineffective at slowing or stopping large fires or insect outbreaks because these events are primarily driven by climatic/weather factors rather than fuels, there is the issue of whether the cure is worse than the so-called disease.

Logging, thinning, biomass removal and other forest management introduce all kinds of negative impacts to the forest ecosystem from the spread of weeds to soil compaction to alteration of water flow, disturbance to wildlife, creation of new ORV trails, increases in sedimentation, that all lead to the degradation of the forest ecosystem itself. Most of these negative impacts are ignored or glossed over by proponents of thinning and biomass removal.

In short, current efforts to thwart, and stop beetle outbreaks and wildfires create “unhealthy forests”. In fact, nearly everything that foresters do from thinning forests to suppressing fires degrades and impoverishes the forest ecosystem. Forest “management” is so focused on trees and wood products, that it represents a critical failure to see the forest through the trees.

Praise for the Dead (wood)

http://www.fseee.org/forestmag/1102wuer.shtml

By George Wuerthner
Forest Magazine, Spring 2009

Dead. Most of us have negative associations with the word. After all how did Death Valley get its name? Not because it was a favorite vacation spot for prospectors. Is anyone interested in fishing the Dead Sea? And when we say someone looks like “death warmed over,” it’s not usually taken as a compliment. So it’s not surprising that most of us tend to view dead things as undesirable, unless we are talking about mosquitoes and rattlesnakes.

We impose this cultural bias about dead things to our forests as well. Public land management agencies spend billions annually trying to contain wildfire and insect outbreaks based upon the presumption that these natural processes are destroying the forest by killing trees. Even though there is now some grudging acceptance by land managers that wildfires and insect attacks may be potentially beneficial if they do not kill too many trees, stand-replacement fires, ice storms and large beetle outbreaks are still viewed as unnatural and abnormal—something to suppress, slow and control.

When these natural processes kill trees, managers propose logging to “salvage” the economic value of the downed trees. They operate on the tacit assumption that surplus wood can be removed without hurting the forest’s ecosystem, and until now that has formed the basis of scientific and/or sustainable forestry.

But a new perspective is slowly taking root among forest managers, based on growing evidence that forest ecosystems have no waste or harvestable surplus. Rather, it seems that forests reinvest their biological capital back into the ecosystem, and removal of wood—whether dead or alive—can lead to biological impoverishment. Large stand-replacement blazes and major insect outbreaks may be the ecological analogue to the forest ecosystem as the hundred-year flood is to a river. Such natural events are critical to shaping ecosystem function and processes. Scientists are discovering that dead trees and downed wood play an important role in ecosystems by providing wildlife habitat, cycling nutrients, aiding plant regeneration, decreasing erosion and influencing drainage, soil moisture and carbon storage.

“When you start to look at western forests outside of wildernesses and parks, you notice right away that they lack large quantities of downed wood—dead trees,” says Jon Rhodes, an independent consulting hydrologist in Oregon. “Ecologically speaking, there is a big difference between areas that have been logged compared to areas that are left alone.”

Chad Hanson, a University of California, Davis, researcher, agrees. “We are trapped by an outdated cultural idea that a healthy forest is one with nothing but green trees. An ecologically healthy forest has dead trees, broken tops and downed logs.” Such forests may not look tidy from the perception of a forester, he says, but it’s an indication that the forest is healthy and biologically diverse. “Pound for pound, ton for ton, there is probably no more important habitat element in western conifer forests than large snags and large downed logs,” Hanson says.

Studies have consistently concluded that most western forests have a deficit of large snags and downed dead wood. “Large standing trees are important,” Rhodes says, “but they shouldn’t be museum pieces. They should be part of functioning ecosystems.” When old-growth trees burn in wildfires, they aren’t completely lost, he says, but provide the ecosystem with large quantities of snags and downed wood. “While some say we can’t afford to have old growth burned by fire, it’s apparent that we can’t afford for old growth not to burn in fires, due to the importance of large snags and downed wood and its current lack in western forests,” he says.

Writing in a 2004 article in Conservation Biology, University of Montana ecologist Richard Hutto sums up the new thinking about the ecological value of dead trees. “I am hard-pressed to find any other example in wildlife biology where the effect of a particular land-use activity is as close to 100 percent negative as the typical post-fire salvage-logging operation tends to be,” he wrote. “Everything from the system of fire-regime classification, to a preoccupation with the destructive aspects of fire, to the misapplication of snag-management guidelines have led us to ignore the obvious: we need to retain the very elements that give rise to much of the biological uniqueness of a burned forest—the standing dead trees.”

Healthy Dependence

Dead trees are important to wildlife. Think woodpeckers. But many other species depend on dead trees and downed wood for food and shelter.

Hutto reports that upwards of 60 percent of species that nest in severely burned forests use only snags for nest sites. In addition, about 45 percent of all North American native bird species rely on snags for at least a portion of their life cycle.

Hutto has found fifteen species that are most abundant in forests with high numbers of snags resulting from high-intensity stand-replacement crown fire—the kind of fires that foresters pejoratively call catastrophic. Hutto notes it is doubtful that these species would have evolved such dependency on snag abundance if large stand-replacement fires and widespread insect outbreaks were uncommon or unnatural, as some suggest.

But it’s not just the use of snags for nesting, or even feeding as with woodpeckers, that attracts birds and other wildlife to recently killed forests. Burned forests also are used extensively by seed-eating species that are attracted by the abundance of new seeds shed by cones and colonizing plants.

Even the presumption that large blazes are a threat to spotted owls is being challenged. “There are several studies which indicate that spotted owls actually benefit from substantial patches of high-severity fire within their home ranges,” says researcher Hanson. “They selectively forage in unlogged, high-severity burn patches.” However, he adds, if these burned areas are salvage logged, spotted owls avoid them.

In a paper presented at a conference on the ecology and management of dead wood in western forests, researcher Timothy Kent Brown estimated that two-thirds of all wildlife species use dead trees or downed wood during some portion of their life cycle. Among Pacific Northwest vertebrates, sixty-nine species depend upon cavities for shelter or nesting, while forty-seven other species are strongly associated with downed wood. And it’s not just the obvious species like woodpeckers that demonstrate this dependence. Many bat species, for instance, hide in cavities in dead trees or under the loose bark of dead and/or dying trees.

Jim Andrews, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, studies amphibians and reptiles in northeastern forests. “Foresters tend to look at the forest from the floor up,” he says. “I have occasionally gone on field trips with them, and they were rather proud of how they had managed their forests, but the forest has nothing in it. There’s no cover. No places to find live critters.”

Andrews notes that dead and dying trees are important for many cold-blooded species, from gray frogs to arboreal rat snakes. “Standing snags, once they get big enough so that they have hollow centers—what foresters call ‘overmature’…are the places where wildlife reside,” Andrews says. “To a biologist you don’t have overmature trees—you have wildlife habitat.”

Andrews notes that the greatest biomass of terrestrial vertebrate species found in eastern forests are salamanders, not the more charismatic large mammals like deer and moose. Salamanders provide food to many other species, from wild turkeys to shrews.

But salamanders are also significant predators in their own right, Andrews says. They eat beetle larvae, fly larvae, ground beetles, spiders, sow bugs, round worms and other invertebrates that feed on forest debris. In doing so, they shape the forest ecosystem much as wolves do on another scale. “Salamanders, by preying upon these species that consume leaf litter, help to maintain a deeper layer of leaves and other organic debris that holds moisture, reduces floods and that kind of stuff,” Andrews says.

SMALL BUT CRUCIAL

It’s easy to identify an ecosystem for its most photogenic species, but there are dozens of small cogs that are of equal importance. One of those is ants, and downed logs are their preferred home. Ants are among the most common invertebrate in forest ecosystems and, not surprisingly given their abundance, are critical elements in forest ecosystems.

The most obvious value of ants is as food—from birds such as flickers to much larger animals like bears. In fact, research suggests that ants are among the most important food for bears in Oregon during June and July, as well as later in the summer if the berry crop is small. A British Columbia study found that grizzly bears rely on ants for food late in the fall when berries are unavailable. Reducing the number of dead trees, and thus ants, has a direct consequence for bear survival.

But ants also prey on insects that attack trees. For example, studies in Washington and Oregon discovered that ants accounted for an 85 percent reduction of pupae from two tree-defoliating moths.

Dead logs and snags are also home to pollinating insects. Solitary and colonial bees, of which there are hundreds of species that reside in downed logs and/or snags, are among the major pollinators of flowers and berry-producing shrubs.

Dead trees are even important for other plant species. Bureau of Land Management botanist and lichen expert, Roger Rosentreter, says that dead snags, by creating suitable habitat for lichen growth, carry the legacy of lichen species to the next generation of live trees in the forest. Research by Oregon State University professor Bruce McCune found that some common lichens were more abundant on barkless branches of dead trees than on live ones.

Healthy forest soils also require decomposing material. Below the litter layer in the soil is yet another layer of life that depends on dead wood. “There’s a whole complex food web in the soil that is a combination of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, micro-fauna like arthropods, springtails, mites—all those organisms thrive and are important to the composition of the forest,” says soils specialist Tom Deluca, a forest scientist at the Wilderness Society’s Northern Rockies office.

Deluca notes that while forest litter, such as fallen needles and branches, is important to forest soils, forest soil development is also “very dependent upon the influx of carbon from [whole] trees that have a life cycle of hundreds of years.”

If the carbon influx (dead trees) created after a wildfire or beetle outbreak are removed, he says, the soil is robbed of energy for micro-organisms. “The organic influx is essential to micro-community,” he says.

MICRO-SITES

People commonly assume that wildfire destroys trees and leaves a smoldering pile of ashes. In truth, some live trees and a lot of dead wood physically survive blazes. Beyond the value of dead trees as feeding, hiding and resting habitat for wildlife, downed logs play an important role in forest regeneration.

Snags and downed logs modify micro-sites that can affect seedling establishment. For instance, snags provide some shade and reduction of drying winds, creating more favorable conditions for tree seedling survival. Researching the effects of fires on snags in Wyoming, Dan Tinker, of the University of Wyoming, found that only 8 percent of the downed wood was consumed in fires. He also says that 35 percent of the downed wood in clear-cuts was a biological legacy left by past fires that occurred prior to logging. Tinker and his associates found that these legacy trees intercepted precipitation and funneled it to the ends of the log, creating a moister micro-site that was often more favorable for tree seedling germination and survival.

Other researchers have found that, when it comes to trees, all death is not equal. How a tree dies affects its ultimate role in the forest ecosystem. A tree killed by bark beetles has a different decay trajectory than, say, a tree dying from disease or wildfire. For instance, bark beetles, by breeching the outer bark of a tree, create tiny openings that allow fungi and other insects to enter the tree’s core.

Bark beetles emit pheromones that not only attract other bark beetles but also insects that prey on bark beetles. And the volatiles released from the decomposing trees attract another entirely different group of organisms that feed upon dead wood. That is why one researcher in Europe found that bark beetle outbreaks increased biodiversity in forest ecosystems.

William Laudenslayer, a U.S. Forest Service researcher at the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experimental Station, and his colleagues experimentally girdled trees to kill them, a common forestry practice used to produce snags for wildlife. They compared those snags to trees killed by bark beetles. They found that “bark beetle-killed trees provided significantly greater woodpecker feeding activity, cavity building and insect diversity” compared to snags created by girdling.

Trees heated and killed by fire create sapwood that resists rotting and lasts longer in the ecosystem. Trees dead prior to the fire tend to become blackened and charred. Charred trees are also resistant to decay. Thus, a wildfire creates long-lasting biological legacies that can survive for a century or more.

DEAD IN THE WATER

Wayne Minshall, professor of ecology with the Stream Ecology Center in the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University, points out the importance of logs to aquatic ecosystems as well. “Wherever the logs occur, they cause the stream to meander or braid. And whenever you get braiding or meandering, you’re getting a reduction in the power of the stream and delivering the water in a way so as to dissipate that energy so the flow becomes less destructive. That’s important in keeping streams healthy.”

Wildfires and/or insect outbreaks create downed logs that fall into streams and across slopes. Downed logs, by slowing the velocity of the water, allow sediment to settle out and help return sediment flows to pre-burn levels. Minshall points out that while organisms have evolved to deal with episodic sediment flush events, such as those occurring immediately after a wildfire, they are unable to cope with forestry-induced sedimentation. To these organisms, a forest fire is no big deal, he says. “We get a short few years of sediment runoff, but it’s not a major thing that organisms can’t handle.” But aquatic organisms can’t take unexpected events they haven’t evolved with, such as the presence of fine sediment all year round for extended periods of time. “If we clear-cut, salvage log or put roads in, then the sediment flows tend towards chronic, and it’s a major detriment to organisms,” he says.

Rhodes says that scientists have not identified an upper threshold of logs in streams that is too much for fish. “The more wood, the more fish, all things being equal,” he says. “Lots of wood is a big part of the productivity for streams.” The loss of salmonids in many parts of the West, he says, can be attributed to the absence of wood in streams.

The criteria for healthy ecosystems can’t be easily defined or exhaustively listed. But healthy ecosystems 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.

One crucial element present in unmanaged, healthy systems is a significant amount of dead trees and downed wood, Rhodes says. “There is seldom too much dead wood in forests and certainly not in unmanaged ones. However, there is almost always a dearth of it in managed forests.”

Wilderness Strategy Questioned

http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/montana_wilderness_assocation_strategy_questioned/C41/L41/




Wilderness Strategy Questioned
Is the future of Wilderness simply more of the past?

By George Wuerthner, 2-18-09
The Elk River, a famous salmon and steelhead stream, in Oregon's Copper-Salmon proposed wilderness. Photo by George Wuerthner.
The Elk River, a famous salmon and steelhead stream, in Oregon's Copper-Salmon proposed wilderness. Photo by George Wuerthner.

“Compromise is often necessary, but it ought not to originate with environmental leaders. Our role is to hold fast to what we believe is right, to fight for it, to find allies, and to adduce all possible arguments for our cause.“‘-- David Brower

Dapine Herling, President of the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA), recently submitted a guest commentary to NewWest.Net titled “Opportunity Knocks for Protection of Montana’s Forests and Water.”

In the essay Daphne suggests that the reason Montana had no new wilderness in decades is largely because environmentalists have failed to seek compromises and collaboration with wilderness opponents. I agree with Daphne that negotiation and compromise is always part of any political campaign. However, negotiating for one’s perspective and then having to accept compromised legislation as part of the political process, is different than advocating for a resource industry’s financial and other interests.

An example of recent attempts at collaboration by the MWA that goes over the line towards industry appeasement includes the Beaverhead Deerlodge Partnership, which the MWA, along with other environmental groups, has endorsed. In exchange for MWA’s explicit support for logging of hundreds of thousands of acres on the forest, including in roadless areas, representatives of the timber industry have endorsed wilderness designation of lands on Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest.

The Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Proposal near Seeley Lake, Montana is another collaborative effort that the MWA supports. It is less onerous than the Beaverhead Deerlodge proposal, but still includes the MWA advocacy for a revision of the Lolo National Forest Plan to facilitate additional snowmobile use, as well as the public subsidy of millions of dollars to purchase a biomass burner for Pyramid Lumber Company that may increase logging in the local area.

What is a wilderness group doing advocating for more logging, more snowmobiling or greater taxpayer subsidies to private companies? At times it appears the MWA is spending more of its time and energy advocating for expansion of resource extraction than promoting wilderness.

Daphne implies that such quid pro quo agreements are the only way to obtain wilderness designation. Yet among the many wilderness bills in the Omnibus Public Lands Bill before Congress, none, with the exception of the Owyhee Canyonlands legislation, has any significant quid pro quo trades of public resources and/or advocacy of exploitative industries by environmental organizations.

For instance, Daphne specifically cites the Copper-Salmon proposed wilderness on Oregon’s Elk River as an example of a wilderness proposal with wide spread support. It does enjoy diverse support, but based upon its wildlands values not because some industry will garner support for resource extraction. Indeed, the Copper-Salmon Wilderness is being promoted as an antidote to the logging, which has destroyed most of the coastal salmon streams--quite a different approach than the MWA appears to envision in Montana.

Another wilderness proposal mentioned by Daphne is the Owyhee Canyonlands in Idaho. While the Owyhee Canyonlands proposal has the support of the Idaho Conservation League and Wilderness Society, it is opposed by 80 other environmental group--not exactly a rousing endorsement.

Author and Idaho wildlands advocate Ralph Maughan, expresses the dismay that many have about the Owyhee model of compromise. He recently wrote on his web page: “I’ve never been much of an enthusiast for the Owyhee Country because my picture of it is scenic, vertical-walled deep canyons with piles of manure and cheatgrass separating them. With the passage of this “unique Idaho solution,” almost everything will stay the same. Apparently the “model for the future” is more of the past.”

And that is the problem many observers find with most collaborative efforts; they tend to maintain or strengthen the social, political and financial status quo.

As a member of the MWA for decades, a former MWA board member, and current supporter, I am not comfortable criticizing the organization. I have a lot of respect for its staff and board whose motives I do not question. Some of the MWA’s current proposals such as the Scotchman’s Peak effort led by the Friends of Scotchman are good models of how to further wilderness designation by strong advocacy for the land’s wild values without compromising other public lands.

Let’s leave promotion of logging, ORVs, grazing and other traditional resource abuses to their respective industrial spokespersons. Let’s “sell” wilderness on its own merits, not as trading stock to facilitate more resource exploitation of non-wilderness lands.

As David Brower admonished, compromise should not originate with wilderness supporters. Let us be the voice for wildlands protection, always willing to articulate the many values of wildlands. If compromise is necessary, then let the politicians propose it--that is what we pay them to do. It is their job to resolve the conflicts between competing interests. It is our job as wilderness proponents to advocate for wildlands.

Wildfires and Dead Trees Needed

This is a letter to the Register Guard in Eugene, Oregon responding to a recent letter from Mike Dubrasich, a timber industry advocate.


WILDFIRES AND DEAD TREES NEEDED

George Wuerthner


In his January 19th Register Guard guest editorial on forests and fire, Mike Dubrasich, suggests that fire suppression had led to higher fuel loadings, and hence is responsible for the large blazes we have seen around the West in recent years. And he advocates logging as a prescription to "restore" forests to their historic condition. Unfortunately Mr. Dubrasich conflates very different fire regimes into one narrative that inaccurately portrays the causes of recent large blazes as well as the influence that fire suppression may have had on PNW forests.

Only the lowest elevation grasslands, oak savannas and ponderosa pine forests tended to burn frequently and contrary to timber industry rhetoric even these forest occasionally burned in stand replacement fires. Fire suppression may have increased fuels in these forests, but since only a small proportion of our woodlands are of this forest type, the influence of fire suppression is greatly exaggerated.

The bulk of all forest types in the PNW, including most fir, hemlock, spruce, and other mid-higher elevation forests historically burned infrequently and as mixed or high severity stands replacement fires. Because of the naturally long interval between fires--often hundreds of years--fire suppression has had a minimum affect on most forests types since they have not "missed" a fire rotation and there is no unusual fuel buildup.

This is important because the majority of acreage burned annually occurs in higher elevation, longer fire regime kinds of forest types. Large blazes in these forest types cannot be attributed to fire suppression activities, nor are large stand replacement fires "abnormal" or a sign of "unhealthy" forests as timber industry advocates try to portray.

The main factor contributing to large blazes around the West is not fuels, but climatic/weather conditions. The period between the 1940s and 1980s was moister and cooler than previous decades earlier in the century as well as recent decades. This is exactly the same time that people are suggesting fire suppression was effective. But another interpretation is that it was too wet to burn well during that period.

Timber industry proponents try to link fuels with fire, but it is climatic and weather conditions that permit any fuels to burn. If you have extensive drought, coupled with low humidity, high winds, and high temperatures, you can get large blazes—no matter how much or how little fuel you have.The West has been experiencing some of the worst droughts in centuries so it's not surprising that we are seeing large blazes.

The 2002 Biscuit Fire illustrates this finding. Old growth stands and north slopes—the very forest types with the highest fuel loadings and greatest biomass--were the least likely to burn. By contrast younger forests, open savannas of Jeffrey pine and shrub dominated south slopes which had far lower fuel accumulations made up the bulk of acreage charred by the blaze.

Another study found that areas that had been "salvage logged" after the Silver Fire and subsequently reburned in the Biscuit Fire had higher fire severity than unlogged stands, even though these stands obviously had far less biomass (fuel) than unlogged stands.

The explanation is simple—north slopes and old growth forests retained moisture better--and despite the high fuel loads, are more difficult to burn. By contrast, open forests and south slopes exposed to the sun dry out sooner and typically had more "fine" fuels, thus burn better. This is one reason why "thinning" can enhance the chances that a stand will burn because removing trees opens up the forest to higher solar radiation and wind—both of which contribute to fire spread.

A third misconception perpetuated by the timber industry is the idea that dead trees are somehow undesirable and an indicator of "unhealthy" forests. In reality dead trees are the foundation for forest soil productivity. Dead trees are also important for most forest dwelling species—with fully 2/3 of all forest species dependent upon them at some point in their lives. Wildfires, along with insects, are the major agents for producing dead trees and contributors to healthy forests.

Contrary to popular opinion, our managed forests are the ones that are "unhealthy" and "sick". Managed forests typically have less dead trees, and are biologically impoverished and degraded.

The timber industry keeps trying to tell us that all they care about fixing the forests degraded by none other than past forestry practices—and now suggest that we need more logging to fix the problems they created. I am willing to bet if there were no profit in logging our forests, they wouldn't give a hoot about forest health, restoration, wildfires or anything else. It's all a rationalization for exploitation.

Forests have survived for thousands of years with wildfire and insects and they don't need our help to survive or be healthy. I suspect forests live in far more fear of foresters who possess too much hubris, than of any wildfire.

Neither logging nor subdivisions

Farmland dominates the Willamette Valley, not development.


This is response I wrote to a recent editorial in the Oregonian basically stating the tired condos vs cows or in this case, the condos vs clearcuts argument and chastising some environmentalists for continuing to oppose logging when in the Oregonians view they should wise up and see that timber companies are really "our friends."

To see the original editorial go to: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/12/saving_private_forests_conserv.html


Neither logging or subdivisions are good for the land.

George Wuerthner

The December 26th editorial in the Oregonian suggested that the logging industry deserves the support of environmentalists or these companies might sell their land for subdivisions. Unfortunately the Oregonian editors relied on flawed information to reach their conclusions. I'm sure if they had access to better information we would have seen a much different viewpoint.

The implied message is that we should tolerate environmental degradation and biological impoverishment resulting from logging because it’s better than a subdivision. That’s like suggesting we should encourage people to be alcoholics because otherwise they might become heroin addicts. Obviously neither is good for society, and neither are subdivisions and/or logging impacts.

FALSE DICHOTOMY

There are two things wrong with such a false dichotomy. The first is that subdivisions are not necessarily worse than logging and the likelihood of new rural subdivisions in the current economy is a minor threat—though obviously in Oregon due to its terrific land use laws, even this threat is more imaginary than real.

The geographic footprint from all development in the US is actually quite small. It may not seem that way to someone living in Portland, but the bulk of the US landscape is not urbanized and/or developed. According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service approximately 5.4% of the land area of the US is estimated to be developed—that includes all highways, malls, factories, housing tracts, etc--any development that involves more than a quarter acre of land. In Oregon, approximately 2% of the land area is developed. Even California which has the largest population in the country and huge urbanization pressures, developed land occupies slightly more than 5% of the state.

One can easily confirm this with a drive down the Willamette Valley at night. The thing that is most striking to me is how once you leave the immediate area of the few cities like Portland, Salem and Eugene, one sees very few lights despite the fact that 70% of Oregon residents live in this one valley. It’s not urbanization that has biologically impoverished the Willamette Valley as well as the rest of Oregon, but forestry, farming, and livestock production. That is not to suggest that development is good for the land—it’s not, but Oregon has wisely chosen to limit such development through its land use laws.

LOGGING DEGRADATION

Even if we were to limit the discussion to forested lands (as opposed to open lands like the Willamette Valley) it is not housing tracts that fragments, degrades and biologically impoverishes these lands, it is logging. For instance, there are far more miles of logging roads in Oregon than all the roads among subdivisions, highways, etc. combined. And since most of these roads leak sediments into streams, fragment the landscape, spread weeds, degrade watersheds, and so forth, the overall ecological footprint of logging is far greater than subdivisions—and I predict will always be so as long as there is a timber industry left in Oregon. Statistics on endangered species support that contention with the bulk of species endangerment in Oregon as well as the rest of the West due to resource extraction industries like farming, ranching and logging.

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

The second assumption of the argument that deserves critical review is the economics of development. Given the current housing glut, and economic situation, there is not much demand for rural land development any place in the country right now.

We could reduce any future demand considerably if we internalized the real costs of rural development. These costs include fire fighting to protect those properties, the effects of leaky septic systems on water quality, habitat fragmentation, costs of transporting kids from far flung housing tracts to schools, and so on. If these real costs were not externalized to all taxpayers but internalized on developers as well as owners of homes far from towns and cities, there would be little demand for rural forest development.

Instead of enumerating all these costs to both logging and subdivisions, too many environmental groups either out of ignorance or lack of courage are afraid to articulate the real costs of both logging and development, so citizens are not able to make reasonable choices.

Fortunately Oregon Wild has the courage to articulate these environmental and economic costs, and Oregonians can be thankful they do.

THE CHOICE ISN'T LOGGING OR SUBDIVISIONS

The choice isn’t logging or subdivisions as implied by the Oregonian. Neither is good for the land, and we should strive to curb the impacts of both. One of the great things about Oregon is that its land use laws do limit the spread of unwise subdivisions. Unfortunately, the state hasn’t done a good job of limiting unwise logging. Most of the real costs associated with logging are externalized—which is why salmon and marbled murrelets are among the many species endangered, not as a result of subdivisions, but as a consequence of logging.

CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE NEEDED IN BARK BEETLE DISCUSSION

George Wuerthner





In the November 17th Science Section of the New York Times there was an article by Jim Robbins about the current pine beetle event occurring in the West. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18trees.html?_r=1

There was a lot of good factual information in the piece about pine beetles and their basic ecology, and on the whole, Robbins did a good job of describing some of the concerns that people have about the beetle situation. Nevertheless, the tone and implied message conveyed an overly pessimistic and negative picture of beetles as well as wildfires. It was not so much that it had a lot of false statements as much as the way it was written. Taken together the various quotes, and background in the article leaves one with the perception that somehow beetles, as well as wildfires are “out of control” in the West's ecosystems.

What is lacking is perspective and context. As a writer myself I recognize that space limitations often affect the detail that can be contained in an article. Sometimes you can’t list all the exceptions, nuance, and provide the full context for a piece. Robbins got a lot of ecological information in his piece, and in that regard he did a good job.

However, it seems to me that the real “news” here isn’t that we are having large outbreaks of beetles, but that such events are probably quite normal when looked at from an ecological temporal and spatial perspective. Those who are asserting these are the largest outbreaks in history are only going back a relatively short time—perhaps the past 50-100 years for the context and perspective. At least some beetle researchers I’ve talked with believe the current infestation (infestation is pejorative and not a good word to use here, but I can think of nothing more suitable) is not that out of the ordinary when compared to other large events from the more distance past.

We are seeing unprecedented drought and much warmer temperatures as Robbins noted in the article. But what he did not do is connect the dots. Such droughts mean that our forests are overstocked for current conditions, and the beetles as well as wildfires are doing us all a great favor by thinning them at no cost. Instead of portraying this natural thinning process as a problem, a more ecologically informed perspective might suggest that the beetles are creating forests that are more in balance with available moisture, and other nutrients.

Now the global warming that is occurring may be unnatural--due to human caused climate change--but global warming is the problem, not the response of the beetles, fires, and forest to that climate change.

Large beetle outbreaks and wildfires in particular, rather than being “destructive” as insinuated in the article are the major ecological influences upon these types of forest ecosystems. The real “news” is that what people think about forests and wildfires,is not accurate.

For instance, dead trees do not necessarily increase fire risk, and in fact, green trees might burn better under severe drought conditions. And dead trees provide many ecological benefits—which were not even mentioned in the piece to balance the doom and gloom. This kind of information is really the “news” especially for the Science Section of the New York Times.

The piece also mentions fire suppression as one of the factors that has led to even aged stands of lodgepole vulnerable to pine beetle attack. (Pine beetle typically only attack larger trees so trees growing back from recent burns are not susceptible to attack) Rather than fire suppression contributing to these large beetle events, what is more likely occurring is a significant proportion of lodgepole pine stands in the West created by past large fires and/or beetle outbreaks a century or more ago are now the proper size and age to support sustained beetle population growth. As Robbins does note correctly, when they reach this size, and are stressed by drought, they are less able to extrude beetles attempting to lay eggs in the tree’s cambium layer.

One of the reasons that fire suppression is unlikely to have had much effect upon the region’s lodgepole forest vulnerability to beetles has to do with the typical fire regime of this species. Lodgepole pine usually burns infrequently at relatively long intervals between fires, and generally in stand replacement blazes.

Significant fires in lodgepole pine only occur when there is severe drought--conditions as we are experiencing now. So the idea that past fire suppression reduced fires in these kinds of forests is unlikely or at best probably has had little influence on total fires and acreage burned today. Lodgepole forests don’t burn simply because there are dead trees—whether those trees are a consequence of past fires or beetle attack. It takes specific climatic conditions to sustain a fire.

There is a widespread misuse of the Southwest ponderosa pine model fire regime which is too often indiscriminately applied to all forests. While Southwest ponderosa pine forests are characterized by frequent low intensity fires that may have been altered by fire suppression, this generalization should not be applied to other forest types like lodgepole pine which naturally have much longer fire intervals. Fire suppression simply hasn’t been effective long enough to alter the fire intervals in lodgepole forests.

The other factors listed in Robbin’s piece--drought and warm winters--are the main reasons for this particular spectacular beetle outbreak. And these are largely factors controlled by climate--likely human induced global warming-- rather than fire suppression.

Another factor that was not really addressed in the piece was the current condition of our forests is largely a reflection of either past fires and/or past beetle outbreaks. In other words, the extensive geographic extent of lodgepole of the proper age to make them vulnerable to beetles is a consequence of past events that created large stands of even aged pine.

There is data to suggest that previous beetle outbreaks every bit as large as and/or larger than the current one have repeatedly swept pine in the West. Put into that kind of perspective, the current events do not seem so extraordinary.

The problem is that we humans have such a short temporal viewpoint on ecological change. Events like large wildfires and beetle outbreaks that occur periodically, but only every century or two "seem" large because we are not witness to them but once every generation or two. That is why the Yellowstone fires seemed extraordinary to the country even though research has demonstrated that large blazes, often much larger than those in 1988, occurred in Yellowstone’s forests in centuries past.

Furthermore, just as a hundred year flood does a lot of the real hydrological work of a river in terms of channel morphology changes, these large fires and outbreaks of beetles are the major ecological force in their respective ecosystems. In other words, the small fires and outbreaks that occur on a more frequent basis really don't matter because they don't amount to a hill of beans. It's the occasional, but rather uncommon large events that are the real driver of ecosystems. This perspective was regrettably missing from the article.

Third, the idea that dead lodgepole increases fire risk is also more nuanced than presented. In most of lodgepole pine forests it is too wet to burn most of the time--regardless of the fuels that are present. That is why lodgepole forests tend to burn on long intervals—because conditions that make them dry enough to burn readily do not occur frequently. Just because you have a lot of dead trees, doesn't mean you will have a large fire or the fire risk is higher in those particular forest types.

Beyond that point, the overall fire hazard changes through time, and it is not as neat as presented in the article. Immediately following the attack and the red needle stage, flammability goes up. But what is the likelihood that there will be an ignition and that it will be wet enough for these trees to burn during that short period of several years. Well it turns out it is a very small probability.

Probability is an important factor in these discussions. The fact that you have a lot of red needles out there doesn't translate into higher fire risk unless the other factors that contribute to large blazes like wind, drought, low humidity, and ignition are also present. Getting all these factors together on the same piece of land at the same time that the forest is dominated by red needles is extremely rare--which is why lodgepole pine forests do not burn very often.

But after the needles drop, and small branches break off the trees, the flammability goes down for several decades--so even with drought, wind, etc. the probability of fire actually goes down over that which might occur if the trees were green and alive. In reality, a standing dead tree is not likely to burn except under very severe fire conditions.

Under severe drought conditions, green trees are more flammable than dead trees (where the small branches and needles are gone) because they have flammable resins. Thus under extreme drought conditions, your green forests are more likely to burn than a sea of dead trees at this stage.

The bulk of trees killed by fire or beetles do not fall over for several decades. Even then, what increases flammability aren’t so much the dead trees, but the rapid growth of young trees that take advantage of the opening in the forest canopy and reduction in competition. Since it is fine fuels that sustains fire, not large snags, it is the young trees, grass, shrubs, etc. that rapidly fill up the ground and can carry a fire that leads to greater flammability.

Big logs, as most of us probably know from trying to make campfires, are not easily ignited . If you don’t have a lot of “kindling” under the logs, ignition from a match, spark or any other source, won’t get the log to burn. The larger the log, the more preheating require to get it up to the burning point and keep it there. You need a lot of fine fuels and small branches to carry and sustain a fire. It is the rapid growth of smaller trees, etc. that provides this small fuels, which can heat the larger logs to the ignition point and help to sustain the flames.

Fourth, the article unfortunately had a lot of dire stuff about mudslides, floods, etc. which may or may not follow a fire, but even if it does, even these events must be put into perspective. Research shows these kinds of natural events are relatively rare. And at least in some places, research has shown that the bigger and most severe burns actually have contributed to higher biodiversity, more fish, etc. than lightly burned areas. In other words, contrary to popular perception, severe wildfires might not be “bad” from a biodiversity and ecological perspective—even for things we care about like the quality of the trout fishing.

Another problem with the piece was the use of pejorative language. In my book Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy I discuss at length about how language helps to promote the idea that wildfires are "bad" by using words like "catastrophic", “disaster”, “damaged”, and other adjectives used to describe wildfires. Such terms are really pejorative words since large fires are not deadly to the landscape or ecosystems as implied.

As mentioned at the beginning, most of the factual content of the article was accurate, but still the author weaved together a report that presented an ecologically inaccurate portrait of the situation. Context and perspective are critical to our collective understanding of ecological events, and without such information, we react with poor policy choices.

ACT TO SAVE AMERICA'S FORESTS

George Wuerthner

Lost in the political excitement of the Presidential election cycle was the recent introduction of the largest and strongest nationwide forest protection bill in U.S. history, The Act to Save America’s Forests 2008.

The Act, sponsored by Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and backed by the grassroots coalition, Save America’s Forests, is the latest attempt to change the US Forest Service from its former role as a handmaiden to the timber industry to a new role as caretakers of America’s public natural forest ecosystems. Among other things, the Act would prohibit clearcutting, preserve Ancient Forests and roadless lands, while mandating the agency protect and restore biodiversity.

The Act would also transfer the Giant Sequoia National Monument from the Forest Service, which persists in logging in the sequoia groves despite its national monument status , to the Park Service which has a good track record on preserving the sequoias in the neighboring Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.

The Act also gained an innovative new section this year which requires the National Park Service to conduct a comprehensive study of all U.S. ecosystems to determine where holes exist in our ecological protection of natural landscapes, and to propose creation of new national parks in all these areas to correct this deficiency.

The Act was first introduced into Congress in 1996 and has been reintroduced in each successive Congress since then, most recently this past September. With the new configuration of Congress and a new President in the Whitehouse, backers of this legislation feel the time is perhaps right to enact this sweeping legislation.

Besides protecting over 60 million acres of “core areas” – riparian areas, Ancient Forests and Roadless areas, the bill specifically bans logging and road-building in over a hundred other specially designated “special areas” mostly in eastern and mid-western national forests. These include areas with high biological value such as wildlife migration corridors, key habitat for rare species, rare habitats, and areas with high levels of biodiversity, among others. Other special areas include forests with high recreational, geologic, cultural, and/or scenic value. Even such things like opportunities for solitude that previously were not among the values given protection from logging impacts would be given consideration.

The Act also permits the nomination of additional federal lands for special areas designation.

However, the Act itself does not completely ban logging on all areas of the national forests. Small acreage of selection logging would be permitted on previously logged lands, outside of the core protected areas. However, such logging would occur only if tree cutting were furthering strictly defined ecological restoration efforts, as in the removal of non-native invasive trees. The Forest Service would be required to restore the millions of acres of monoculture tree farms sprawling across our national forest lands to naturally diverse old-growth forests.

This legislation is unprecedented in scale – over 200 million acres of federal lands – and unprecedented also in its requirements for full ecological protection and restoration of all native species of flora and fauna. This has led some observers to conclude that the bill is too “environmental” to gain serious traction in Congress. Yet the Act has been supported by some of the most powerful politicians in Congress, and gained over 140 House and Senate cosponsors in a recent Congress, demonstrating that its passage is indeed legislatively feasible. Some more notable current or former cosponsors include Nancy Pelosi, now speaker of the House; Rahm Emanuel, the next White House Chief of Staff; former Presidential nominee John Kerry; and Environment Committee Chair Barbara Boxer.

Based on the principles of Conservation Biology, the Act has received the support of over 600 world renowned scientists including E.O.Wilson, Peter Raven, Stuart Pimm, and Jane Goodall. It is worth reiterating some of the points these scientists made in a letter of support to Congress. “Clearcutting and other even aged silvicultural practices and timber road construction have caused widespread forest ecosystem fragmentation and degradation. The result is species extinction, soil erosion, flooding, destabilizing climate change, the loss of ecological processes, declining water quality, [and] diminishing commercial and sport fisheries…”,” (mudslides and death not so recent - over 10 years ago)

And they go on to note that: “Less than 5% of America's original primary forests remain, and these forests are found primarily on federal lands.”

The bill is expected to be reintroduced in both the House and the Senate in the next session of Congress and have committee hearings. The Act to Save America’s Forests could go a long way towards correcting a century of abuses and degradation of our public forest ecosystems and put them on a pathway towards ecological recovery and restoration. It deserves support of all of us.