TESIMONY MOUNTAIN PINE BEETLES

TESTIMONY OF GEORGE WUERTHNER June 19, 2009

Representative Raul Grijalva, Chair
House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands

Representative Grace Napolitano, Chair
House Subcommittee on Water and Power

Joint Oversight Hearing on "Mountain Pine Beetle: Strategies for Protecting the West”

Dear Representatives Napolitano and Grijalva:

Thank you for allowing me to provide testimony on the mountain pine beetle issues in the western United States. I believe I can bring an ecological perspective to the concerns and I ask that my comments be submitted as part of the hearing record.
First let me introduce myself. I have lived in a number of western states either for school or work. These states include Wyoming, California, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and Oregon and have visited many others in the course of my work which I will discuss below.

I attended the U of Montana in Missoula for my undergraduate degrees in wildlife and botany, and was enrolled in three separate graduate programs at Montana State University, University of California, Santa Cruz and the U of Oregon.

For quite a few years after leaving academia, I earned my living as a writer and photographer and have published 34 books covering national parks, conservation history, geography, environmental and ecological topics. Two of particular relevance to the topic of pine beetles and wildfire issues are Yellowstone—the Fires of Change, and Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

In researching these books I have had the luxury of traveling extensively across the West to view the aftermath of major wildfires, and the time to read the latest scientific literature related to wildfires, beetles, and other issues. Indeed, at one time or another I have visited every national forest in the West, which, along with my ecological training, gives me a geographical perspective few can provide.

I will address some of the common misconceptions and provide some alternative viewpoints on specific issues. I encourage you to view a recent powerpoint talk I gave that covers many of the major points I will make below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySqngrG_H6M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6sWLTfI9jw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEJIUMwVyr4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2jPQcG1ImI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYlZtayRosE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZsKXPfpiKc&feature=related

I would also encourage you to review the paper by Romme el al.
Recent Forest Insect Outbreaks and Fire Risk in Colorado Forests: A Brief Synthesis of Relevant Research for a good overview of beetle ecology and relationship to wildfire. http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:JDj5CMoOWjoJ:www.cfri.colostate.edu/docs/cfri_insect.pdf+pine+beetles+romme+Colorado&cd=19&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

I want to highlight a few of their major points here.

First they conclude that: “There is no evidence to support the idea that current levels of bark beetle or defoliator activity are unnaturally high. Similar outbreaks have occurred in the past.”

Second, the idea that dense stands of trees are a consequence of fire suppression is very dependent on the forest type. Higher elevation forests are naturally dense and have not changed significantly due to fire suppression or any other human activities.

Finally, their concluding remarks are worth keeping in mind. They state: “Although it is widely believed that insect outbreaks set the stage for severe forest fires, the few scientific studies that support this idea report a very small effect, and other studies have found no relationship between insect outbreaks and subsequent fire activity.”

And they go on to say … bark beetle outbreaks actually may reduce fire risk in some lodgepole pine forests once the dead needles fall from the trees.”
I will elaborate on all these points below.

PEJORATIVE WORDS
Let me start my testimony by suggesting that many of the phrases and words used to describe natural ecological processes like episodic pine beetle events and wildfire are pejorative in tone. We heard a lot of people testifying in this hearing that pine beetles were destroying the forests and/or wildfires were catastrophic and so forth. From the perspective of human values, these words might resonate—certainly if a wildfire burns down someone’s home, it is a devastating experience. However, it is less clear that these terms are appropriate in describing natural ecological events like pine beetle events or large blazes. (See my comments on this in Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy or Rocca and Romme (2009).

Indeed, pine beetle events, wildfire, and killing droughts are natural ecological processes that are critical to the maintenance of forest ecosystems. To the degree possible, I try to avoid using words with regards to wildfire and beetles such as “destroyed”, “damaged” “unhealthy”, and so on.

As we shall see later in my testimony, dead trees may be more important to the long term “health” and sustainability of forest ecosystems than live trees. There are even some ecologists who believe we do not have enough dead trees to sustain forest ecosystems.

CLIMATE FACTORS
As many of those testifying alluded to, climate/weather may be a big factor in current beetle population increases as well as wildfire size and occurrence (Meyer and Pierce 2003; Whitlock 2004, Westerling, et. al. 2006, Heyerdahl,E. et al. 2008). As has been noted warm winters tends to increase survival of pine beetle allowing their populations to grow rapidly.

Warmer summer temperatures, combined with drought, increases tree vulnerability to beetles, and is a key ingredient in wildfire spread. The importance of climate and large scale oceanic influences on wildfire are obvious from this graph below has the Pacific Decadal Oscillation superimposed over the acreage burned annually by wildfire.


Source: Dave Peterson USFS
This graph shows how the Pacific Decadal Oscillation may have affected wildfires. Cool, moist weather in the 1945s-1980s would have limited fire ignitions and spread. This is the same period that we attribute fuel build up to “effective” fire suppression. But it’s just possible that the conditions were not favorable for fire spread, thus the influence of fire suppression may be exaggerated and overrated.
There several messages to take home from this graph.

The first is when it’s cool and moist, fires don’t spread. It doesn’t matter how much fuel you have, you still won’t get a big blaze. Most fires go out without burning more than a few acres. To illustrate this point, think about the rainforests found in the Coast Ranges of Oregon and Washington. There’s more “fuel” sitting on the ground in those forests than you will find any place in the Rockies but in most years there are no fires. Why? Because the forest is too wet and cool to burn well.
Take home point: Fuels alone do not necessarily lead to massive fires. Thus the fact that pine beetles are killing lots of trees does not, in itself, portend large wildfires.

The key ingredients in all large fires are long term drought, low humidity, high temperatures and most importantly wind. In the absence of these factors, you might get an ignition, but the fire will remain small and likely go out quickly. The mere presence of fuel does not imply that you will have a major wildfire. Since the probability of these climatic/weather factors converging on the same geographic point at the same time is very low, not surprisingly large blazes (pejoratively called catastrophic) are relatively infrequent and rare events.

The interpretation that fire suppression is largely responsible for “dense” tree stands is also being challenged. First in some tree species like lodgepole pine and high elevation spruce-fir forests, recruitment after fires and/or insects tends to create even aged dense stands. Thus it is not “fire suppression” that has created dense forests and these forests are not “overstocked” but display the exact kind of tree age and density that occurred historically.

But more intriguing idea that is getting some traction is that periodic moist, cool periods may also lead to high rates of seedling germination and survival leading to episodic events of tree establishment. In other words, favorable weather for tree survival may be as responsible for “dense” tree stands in some tree species such as ponderosa pine as much as fire suppression (Brown and Wu 2005).

BEETLE KILL DOES NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO GREATER FIRE SEVERITY OR SPREAD.
A common misconception is that dead trees will increase fire hazard. For instance, one study on beetles and wildfire occurrence that span the last 2500 years, found little correlation between wildfire and beetle events (Berg and Anderson 2006).

Another study (Lynch 2006) in Yellowstone on recently beetle killed lodgepole pine found that susceptibility to wildfire was not necessarily increased, though an earlier beetle event did appear to increase fire occurrence (the reasons are not due to dead trees, however, as I will explain below). Similar findings were reported for subalpine forests elsewhere in the Rockies (Bebi et al. 2003, Schoennagel et al. 2004, Biger et al 2005).

After a beetle event, there appears to be significant variability in fire susceptibility of forests that varies over time—assuming you have the prerequisite drought, wind, and low humidity that drives all large fire. Flammability is increased immediately after a tree is killed by beetles in what is known as the “red needle phase.” However, after the passage of one or two winters and the needles and small branches fall from the tree, the flammability goes way down. Thus if there is no ignition in those first few years (which as we noted earlier is very unlikely), the fire risk is significantly reduced.

It is only after the passage of several decades that susceptibility to fire increases, but not as much due to fuels, but as a result of rapid growth of small trees and shrubs that occurs after the forest canopy is opened by beetles. These small trees provide a ladder for flames to reach up into the forest canopy.

Nevertheless, even this period passes as the forest canopy once again closes, reducing forest fire susceptibility for many decades, even hundreds of years. (See Romme et al. 2006)

DEAD TREES DON’T BURN WELL
Another misconception held by many is that dead trees will increase fire hazard. As explained earlier fire hazard varies over time. But it is fine fuels that carry fires, not large boles. We see that easily after a wildfire. What do you see? Lots of snags. The needles and small branches burn off, but the core tree boles remain. One intuitively understands this from camping. When you try to start a campfire, you gather up “kindling” and small branches to start a fire. If you pile up a bunch of large logs and try to light it, you will likely get nothing for your efforts.

So while dead trees may not increase fire hazard, in reality the presence of green trees may. So in effect the large occurrence of dead trees killed by beetles may actually be reducing the fire hazard for nearby communities.

UNDER SOME CONDITIONS GREEN TREES DO BURN WELL
Let me explain. Green trees are often more flammable than dead trees, especially compared to dead trees (snags) where the needles and small branches are gone. The reason has to do with fine fuels. A living tree has a lot of fine fuels in the form of needles, branches, etc., plus at least for many conifer species, the needles and branches are full of flammable resins. Under drought conditions the internal moisture of these living trees often drops to very low levels. In Yellowstone NP during the 1988 fires, the internal moisture content of green trees was reported to drop below that of kiln dried lumber. Under such conditions of low humidity, drought, and high temperatures, combined with high winds, some green trees with high resin content will burn exceedingly well. (Bunting 1983, Perry 1995)

THINNING AND LOGGING MAY NOT REDUCE FIRE HAZARD
There’s a natural assumption that logging, by removing fuels, will reduce fire hazard. However, the evidence for this is inconclusive at best. There are examples of where thinning appears to have slowed the spread of fires and increased the ability of trees to survive stresses like beetles, drought, and fire (Youngblood et al. 2009), and in some cases reduce fire severity, but fires were not necessarily stopped or controlled as a result of fuel treatments (Pollet and Omi. 2002).

There as many examples of fires racing through previously thinned or logged stands. Indeed, logging can actually increase the likelihood of fire spread by opening up the forest to increased solar radiation and drying. Wind penetration is also increased by thinning. Wind increases drying of fuels, and pushes flames through a forest.

Though fuel treatments may appear to reduce fire spread and severity under “moderate” fire conditions, under severe climatic/weather conditions, particularly with high winds, fuel treatments do not appear to have significant influence on fire spread.

Fuel treatments could even create a false sense of security, much as the levees in New Orleans created for residents. Just as the Mississippi levees were breached when confronted by a category five hurricane, forests with fuel reduction treatments are often “breached” by wildfire under the equivalent of a “hurricane” force wildfire with high winds, low humidity and high temperatures.

DENSE TREE STANDS HAVE SOME VALUES AS WELL
The presumption that thinning forests is always a positive influence on forest ecosystems can be challenged as well. Trees growing under dense conditions tend to have tighter growth rings and are by nature stronger, and more resistant to decay as well. This has important implications for the long term biomass residency time of dead and down logs on the forest floor. Also there is some evidence to suggest that dense forests may inhibit fires due to greater shade and moisture—for instance on the Biscuit Fire in Oregon, dense forest stands tended to burn less severely than more open stands.

FUEL TREATMENTS CAN INCREASE FIRE HAZARD
Thinning, by creating more surface fuels, can increase fire hazard. Unless such surface fuels are removed, a subsequent fire can burn more severely. Thinning, combined with prescribed burning to remove surface fuels is often the most effective treatment, however, burning often does not follow thinning projects.

Furthermore, the effectiveness any fuel reduction treatment declines over time. Typically within 10-20 years, fuel loadings often approach pre treatment levels, thus thinning requires continual maintenance. This is one reason why thinning, if it is used, should be focused on the areas immediately adjacent to communities. Unfortunately, most FS fuel treatments so far are located well beyond that zone. According to a recent review of 44,000 fuel treatments implemented under the National Fire Plan only 3% were in the Wildlands Urban Interface (Schoennagel et al. 2009).

DEAD TREES ECOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT
One of the assumptions implicit in much of the angst over beetle events are the fact that many believe beetles “destroys” the forest. In reality, dead trees may be more important to forest ecosystems than live trees. Dead trees are biological legacies that are critical to ecosystem function. For a short overview see my articles in Forest Magazine Let us praise and keep the dead. http://www.fseee.org/forestmag/1102wuer.shtml

Dead trees serve many functions in the forest ecosystem and their removal can jeopardize future ecosystem sustainability (see Hutto 2006). Dead trees are a reinvestment in the next forest stand. For instance, one study found that 2/3 of all species depend on dead trees at some point in their life. Most of us are aware of the use of dead trees by woodpeckers, but up to 45% of all bird species use dead trees for roosting, feeding and nesting. Other species from amphibians to mammals depend on dead trees as well. Dead trees are important for invertebrates as well.

For example, ants are among the most important invertebrates in forest ecosystems, responsible for protecting trees from other insects to transporting and planting seeds of some flower species. Plus important pollinators like bees and wasps also utilize dead trees. Another study found that lichens were more abundant on dead trees and some species were solely dependent on dead trees for their habitat. And when dead trees fall into streams, they provide much of the habitat for aquatic ecosystems. Indeed, the studies to date do not show any upper limits on the value of dead trees in aquatic ecosystem. In short, the more dead trees, the better for fish and other aquatic life. There are even new studies that show that beetle outbreaks create higher biodiversity (Muller et el. 2008) and beetles may be a “keystone” species in some forest ecosystems.

FOREST ECOSYSTEMS NEED LARGE BLAZES
Even if thinning were able to slow or prevent fires, such a policy would not be desirable. The vast majority of fires burn a very small acreage—most ignitions burn less than ten acres. The bulk of all acreage charred by fires is the result of a handful of blazes annually. If indeed one believes that fires are ecologically important to forest ecosystems, than we have to learn to tolerate large blazes since they are the only fires that do significant ecological work. For more on the ecological need for large blazes see my chapter in Wildfire Logging and Wildfires—Ecological Differences and the need to Preserve Large Blazes (http://books.google.com/books?id=tnW7iYyp2wYC&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=wuerthner+on+wildfire&source=bl&ots=oB)

It’s important to note that fires do not consume all biomass. Most fires leave a significant amount of dead wood on the site. This wood acts as a carbon storage mechanism. Indeed, charcoal resulting from wildfires stores carbon for thousands of years, and considerably more carbon than is released by combustion. One could argue we need more wildfires, not less, to store carbon in the soil.

LOGGING NOT BENIGN
When we are considering any management schemes, we must always weigh the presumed benefits against the costs. There is no evidence that logging “improves” the forest ecosystem except by using very narrow definitions of “improvement”. In the long term, logging always is a negative impact if all costs are considered. Thus we should attempt to minimize logging impacts to as small an area as possible.

What is seldom articulated by advocates of fuel treatments and other active management are the real ecological and economic costs of such management. For instance, most fuel management (thinning) involves use of logging roads which are notorious for causing sedimentation, and causing disturbance to wildlife. Logging roads by cutting across slopes interrupt water drainage and hydrology of a watershed. Logging equipment and roads spreads weeds and compact soils (Gelbard and Belnap 2003). (Entire books have been written about the impacts of roads, but for short overviews see Foreman and Alexander 1998 and Trumbulak and Frissell 2000)

Removal of dead and/or live trees can affect forest biomass, which in turn may affect things like watershed integrity and aquatic ecosystems. Disturbance of soils can increase the release of carbon. Logging fragments wildlife habitat. And we should not forget the carbon used in transporting trees to biomass converters or sawmills is yet another release of carbon.

In addition, foresters have no idea which trees will be best suited genetically for survival under changing climatic conditions. It’s possible that the very trees that foresters will choose to remove are those that are best able to cope with ecosystem and climatic variability. Letting nature “choose” which trees live or die is the only way to ensure the long term health and resiliency of the forest ecosystem.
Despite self interested assurances from the timber industry, logging is not an ecological analogue for wildfire (See G. Wuerthner 2004 Logging and Wildfire Ecological Differences) and substantially alters forest ecosystem function and ecological processes.

REDUCING HOUSING FLAMMABILITY FAR MORE COST EFFECTIVE
Restricting construction of homes in fire prone areas is a key way to address human safety and fire-fighting costs. But for those homes already in fire prone landscapes, by far the most cost-effective way to reduce losses to wildfire is by reducing the flammability of homes. Removal of flammable materials for 100-200 feet from homes is all that is required to vastly improve the chances that any structure will survive a major wildfire. Jack Cohen at the Missoula fire lab has written a lot about this topic (Cohen 2000). But mandatory metal roofs and a few other modifications to homes can go a long ways towards reducing vulnerability to wildfires at far less cost than attempting to protect communities by widespread logging/thinning fuel treatments.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND SOLUTIONS
There are a number of major points worth reiterating here. First, beetle and wildfire events are desirable and important ecological processes that sustain, not destroy, forest ecosystems. As a society, we should be striving to find ways to maintain these important processes. Rather than viewing such events as a “negative” , we need to find ways to “live” with such natural and ecologically important processes.

Second, the scientific evidence that actually shows fuel treatments can prevent large insect and wildfires is inconclusive. It appears that under severe climatic/weather conditions, these natural processes (beetles and wildfire) are not significantly influenced by treatments. Plus even under less than severe conditions, fuel treatment effectiveness declines rapidly and may even increase fire hazard. In any event, since the large wildfires and insect events are the only ones that we are concerned about, this raises important questions about the wisdom of applying fuel treatments across the landscape.

Third, forest management is not benign. We should limit forest manipulation to as small an area as possible.

Fourth, the majority of fire hazard is located on private lands (see Schoennagel, T. 2009) for a review on this. Any fuel treatments should be focused on the private lands where it will do the greatest good. Furthermore, by focusing strategic attention to these lands where existing roads create easy access for treatment as well as follow up maintenance, the cost-benefits are maximized.

Fifth, keeping people from building homes in vulnerable locations is another key factor. Just as we discourage people from building homes in the flood plain of a river, we ought to discourage people from constructing homes in the “fire plain”. We are not hapless victims.

Thank you.
George Wuerthner
POB 719, Richmond, VT 05477
wuerthner@earthlink.net

REFERENCES:
Berg and Anderson. 2006. Fire history of white and Lutz spruce forests on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, over the last two millennia as determined from soil charcoal www.elsev Forest Ecology and Management 227 (2006) 275–283
Bebi, P., D. Kulakowski, and T.T. Veblen. 2003. Interactions between fire and spruce beetles in a subalpine Rocky Mountain forest landscape. Ecology. 84 (2): 362-371.
Bigler, C., D. Kulakowski, and T.T. Veblen. 2005. Multiple disturbance interactions and drought influence fire severity in Rocky Mountain subalpine forests. Ecology. 86 (11): 3018-3029.
Brown, P. and R. Wu. 2005. CLIMATE AND DISTURBANCE FORCING OF EPISODIC TREE RECRUITMENT IN A SOUTHWESTERN PONDEROSA PINE LANDSCAPE. Ecology: Vol. 86, No. 11, pp. 3030-3038.
Bunting, S. et al. 1983. Seasonal Variation in the Ignition Time of Redberry Juniper in West Texas Journal of Range Management, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Mar., 1983), pp. 169-171

Cohen, Jack D. 2000. Preventing disaster: home ignitability in the wildland-urban interface. Journal of Forestry 98(3): 15-21.
Forman, R.T., & L.E. Alexander. 1998. Roads and their major ecological effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 29: 207-231+C2.
Gelbard, J., & J. Belnap. 2003. Roads as conduits for exotic plant invasions in a semiarid landscape. Conservation Biology 17(2): 420-432.
Heyerdahl,E. et al. 2008. Climate drivers of regionally synchronous fires in the inland Northwest (1651-1900), International Journal of Wildland Fire
Hutto, R. L. 2006. Are current snag management guidelines appropriate for post-fire salvage logging in severely burned forests? Conservation Biology 20
Lynch et al. 2006. Insect–Fire Interactions in Yellowstone National Park: The Influence of Historical Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) Activity on the Spatial Pattern of the 1988 Yellowstone Fires. Ecosystems 9: 1318-1327.
Meyer, G.A., and Pierce, J.L., 2003, Climatic controls on fire-induced sediment pulses in Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho: a long-term perspective: Forest Ecology and Management, v. 178, p. 89-104
Pollet, J. and P. N. Omi. 2002. Effect of thinning and prescribed burning on wildfire severity in ponderosa pine forests. International Journal of Wildland Fire 11: 1-10.
Perry, D. 1995. Forest Ecosystems page 110
Rocca, M. and W. H Romme. 2009. Beetle-infested forests are not “destroyed”. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 71-72.
Schoennagel, T., T. Velben, and W. Romme. 2004. The interaction of fires, fuels, and climate across Rocky Mountain forests. BioScience 54(7): 661-76.
Muller et al. 2008. The European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus in a national park: from pest to keystone species.

Romme, W. et al. 2006 Recent Forest Insect Outbreaks and Fire Risk in Colorado Forests available on line http://www.cfri.colostate.edu/docs/cfri_insect.pdf
Schoennagel, T. 2009 Implementation of National Fire Plan treatments near the wildland–urban interface in the western United States. www.pnas.org
Trombulak, S., & C. Frissell. 2000. Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conservation Biology 14: 18-30.
Westerling et al. 2006 Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity Science Magazine, 18 (8)
Whitlock, C., 2004. Land management: Fire, climate, and landscape response. Nature 432, 28- 29.
Wuerthner, G. 2004. Logging and Wildfire—Ecological Differences and the Need to Preserve Large Blazes. In: Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy, Island Press, G. Wuerthner Ed.
Youngblood, A. , J.B. Grace, J. D. McIver (2009) Delayed conifer mortality after fuel reduction treatments: interactive effects of fuel, fire intensity, and bark beetles. Ecological Applications: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 321-337.

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.

Bridger Teton Asks loggers for wishes

http://www.jhguide.com/article.php?art_id=4269

Bridger-Teton asks loggers for wishes
Letter links logging industry, local mills with health of national forests.

By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Date: February 18, 2009

Conservation groups say U.S. Forest Service officials should reconsider their attempts to attract logging interests to Bridger-Teton National Forest after three regional forest supervisors wrote a letter courting logging interests late last month.

The letter, signed by Bridger-Teton forest supervisor Kniffy Hamilton and forest supervisors for Shoshone and Caribou-Targhee national forests, is dated Jan. 28.

“In recent years, epidemic insect infestations and uncharacteristically large and intense wildfires have occurred, which threaten the health of our local forests, both private and public,” the letter says. “Budgets and environmental restraints have reduced the number of acres that have been treated, primarily on national forest system lands.”

“This has impacted the local wood products industry,” the letter says. “Several local mills have closed and the capacity to improve forest land health through treatment and utilize the wood fiber has been reduced.”

A questionnaire accompanying the letter asks loggers and wood industry officials about their current annual wood use, their potential annual wood use, the species of wood they prefer and the size of the material they prefer.

George Wuerthner, ecological projects director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, said if the three forest supervisors really wanted to improve forest health, they would leave the forest alone.

“Basically, everything we do in forestry makes the forest more unhealthy, in my view,” he said. “It’s all designed to reduce the amount of biomass.”
Life from dead logs


Wuerthner said about two-thirds of all wildlife species depend on dead trees at some point in their life. Those species include a number of insects, cavity-nesting birds, bald eagles, pine martens, bats and salamanders.

“In Wyoming, martens are very vulnerable to cold,” he said. “It finds a pulpy, dead log to burrow into [when temperatures drop to extreme lows]. In areas where there are no dead logs, there are no martens.”

Ants that use dead and down trees not only provide an important food for animals such as grizzly bears and black bears, but also prey on insects that attack trees, Wuerthner said.

In streams and rivers, researchers have “found no upper limit” to the amount of wood that benefits life, Wuerthner said. “The more wood you have in a stream, the better it is for fish and aquatic insects,” he said.

He said there is also a misconception that beetle-killed trees contribute to more intense wildfires. While trees are slightly more flammable during the “red phase” of a beetle infestation, studies have shown that trees lose that flammability once needles drop off. A more important factor for big fires is persistent dry weather, which wipes out living trees and dead trees.

Wuerthner also said logging doesn’t work to reduce insect attacks.

“The level of thinning that you need to do requires taking between 50 and 80 percent of the trees out,” he said. “And the mortality of beetle-killed trees often doesn’t exceed 50 to 80 percent of trees.”
Exploring multiple use


Even if logging did work to promote forest health, Wuerthner said the associated impacts would likely negate any positive effects. For instance, logging roads not only contribute to soil erosion but also aid in the spread of noxious weeds.

“Typically, when you have a fire, you get an increase in sediment flow, but it rapidly goes back to the pre-fire conditions,” he said. “Roads never do heal. They are always putting sediment into streams. It breaks up the natural drainage flows.”

Jonathan Ratner, director of the Wyoming office of the Western Watersheds Project, said the Forest Service is behind when it comes to understanding the effects of logging on forest health.

“It is purely about this outdated understanding that the forests are way too dense and we need to cut, which is absolutely wrong,” he said. “What you have out there [after logging] are these vast monocultures of lodgepole, which are not only extremely flammable, but they produce almost nothing in terms of wildlife habitat.”

Ratner said some species such as Canada lynx and snowshoe hares benefit from younger monocultures of lodgepole pine.

Bridger-Teton spokeswoman Mary Cernicek said some areas on the forest have “extraordinary amounts of beetle-killed trees.”

“The Forest Service specialists acknowledge that a certain amount of dead and downed timber is needed to promote healthy life cycles and habitat for both plant and animal species,” she said. “However, if there is a way to benefit the wood products industries, keeping in balance with our multiple-use mission, the forest will explore that.”

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.

Rethinking Forest Health

George Wuerthner

I just read through a portion of the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) revised plan. Among the major components of the plan is support for “vegetation management,” a euphemism for logging. The BDNF plan calls for “treating” its forests by logging to “restore” its ecological health. It has become commonplace for the Forest Service to justify logging for forest health reasons instead of timber production. We no longer log just to get the raw material for lumber and profits for timber companies. We log the forest to restore ecological health, or so the agency suggests.

I personally don’t believe that the BDNF staff is purposefully using “forest health” as an excuse to log. There is a wide-spread assumption among many forest ecologists that past forest management, including past logging, along with fire suppression, has radically altered our forests. However, the agency may be unaware of more recent research that calls into question many of these previous assumptions about forest condition and health.

Even if the assumptions about forest condition are correct, that doesn’t mean that logging can actually restore the presumed “historic range of variability.” One could restore ecological health by permitting more fires to burn, and by the use of more prescribed burning. Since this doesn’t produce profits for the timber industry, the agency is under a lot of pressure to cut trees instead of using less intrusive means like prescribed burning and wildfire as a means of restoring the presumed forest conditions. To its credit, in its Alternative 3 of the forest plan the BDNF does recommend exactly that prescription—more wildfire and prescribed burning and limited logging. Unfortunately, for the public, Alternative 3 is not selected by the agency as its preferred alternative.

The problem for anyone advocating “restoration” is that we have few references about how the forest looked a hundred years ago. There are some historic photographs that provide a valuable perspective, but whether these represent just a point in time and at a particular spot, or are characteristic of the forest as a whole is unknown. Furthermore, there is always the potential for a selective bias in the choice of photographs by the researcher seeking to find evidence for a change in forest condition and composition.

The same can be said about written accounts. When someone asserts that the forests were so open they could ride a horse through them could again reflect a bias in the observer who either selected the easiest pathway through the woods, avoiding other denser forest stands, or even a failure to note when the forests encountered were densely forested. Also there is always the chance for researcher bias that ignores some references to forest condition, in favor of descriptions that fit one’s preconceived notions about how the forest appeared.

The further back in time you go, the murkier the record. Most ecologists must rely upon reconstruction of past “historic conditions” by proxy. One popular method involves looking at fire scars on trees, and trying to determine past fire intervals. The assumption is that low intensity fires do not kill trees, but rather leave a record of their occurrence by a scar. By reading the intervals between such fire scars, researchers can reconstruct past fire occurrence and severity and make some assumptions about the historic look of these forests. However, a recent review of this method by a number of researchers has called into question the validity of many of these studies.

For instance, William Baker from the University of Wyoming and colleagues did a review of fire history studies in ponderosa pine forests and found that nearly half of them depended upon only one or two trees. Such a small sample size is suspect. Furthermore, even when a larger sample is used, there is a tendency for fire researchers to sample trees where there is an abundance of fire-scarred trees. However, such a bias in sampling may not represent the historic conditions of the forested landscape as a whole. Baker’s research suggests that the occurrence of stand replacement fires may have been greater than previously assumed, even for low elevation dry forests.

Another study done by Forest Service researcher Paul Hessburg and associates looked at the temporal patterns of eastside forests in the Cascades. He started with the assumption that past conditions would be reflected by the stand composition of the present forest. Using randomly selected air photos to review forest stand composition, he determined that there was little evidence for so called “light, low intensity” burns or “open park-like” forests in dry low elevation and moist mixed forests as presumed. Rather partial and stand replacement fires appeared to be the norm—even before fire suppression was effective and presumably created a “fuels build up.”

A third study in Colorado done by Dominick Kulakowski and his associates critiqued the Forest Service’s assumption that there was wide-spread “decline” in aspen. Kulakowski was fortunate in finding a highly detailed and accurate 1898 map of forest type and occurrence of recent burns for a portion of the Grand Mesa area of Colorado. Digitizing the map, and then comparing it to the present vegetation type for the forest, he was able to determine that relative to the late 1800s, a larger portion of the landscape was covered with aspen today than a century ago. A rash of fires near the turn of the century as a result of more favorable climatic conditions for fires (i.e. drought), as well as burning by sheep herders, miners, and other settlers contributed to an increase in aspen throughout the 20th Century. So measured against people’s recollection of aspen abundance in the recent past century, there had been a decline in aspen. But what Kulakowski’s research showed is that the current abundance of aspen was not outside of the historic range of variability—and conifer cover was actually greater a hundred years ago than today.

A fourth study of wildfires in the northern Rockies by Penny Morgan, of the University of Idaho, found one more piece of evidence that can be used to question the assumptions about “historic range of variability.” She mapped known wildfires on national forests in Idaho and western Montana from 1900 through 2003. She found the majority of all large fires occurred in just 11 fire years. These fire years coincided with extensive drought. The first six big fire years occurred prior the mid-1930s and the last five years have been since 1988—the year that much of the Yellowstone ecosystem burned. Between the 1940s through the late 1980s, moister conditions resulted in virtually no large fires in the entire region. This has major implications for our assumptions about fire suppression and fuels.

Many people use the recent past as their point of reference. In other words, people talk about the large fires we are experiencing today as compared to the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s and presumed that the reason has to be a consequence of greater fuels. But what is intriguing about her research is that six of the large fires occurred long before anyone can claim that fire suppression was responsible for a “fuels buildup.” No one can reasonably assert that fire suppression and fuel buildup was responsible for the huge 1910 Burn that raged across more than 3 million acres of northern Idaho and western Montana. Drought and wind drove those fires, as it has all recent big fires.

The more recent spate of large fires in the 1990s and 2000s are attributed to “fuel buildup” as a consequence of this fire suppression. However, the recent period of large fires also coincides with historically severe drought conditions across the West—the kind of climatic conditions that has always driven large blazes. Severe drought and overall warmer temperatures are also responsible for widespread beetle outbreaks. Beetle experts, however, do not see the large die-off of trees due to beetles as out of the ordinary—and many assume that such large scale beetles outbreaks have occurred in the past, again calling into question the assumption that our forests are “unhealthy.”

Temporal scale is an important factor in how we view current conditions—the longer the time frame of reference, the less current conditions seem unnatural. A study by Boise State University professor Jen Perce and colleagues looked at fire frequency and scale among ponderosa pine forests along the Payette River in Idaho. Using the geological fire history recorded by charcoal buried in soil sediment, she concluded, contrary to popular perception that low intensity blazes are the norm for low elevation dry forests, when viewed over longer time scales, climatic conditions like drought has led to significant stand replacement fires on occasion, even in ponderosa pine ecosystems.

What do all these studies and others suggest about the presumed “historic range of variability”? The message I take from these studies is that climate controls big fires and, when viewed on a landscape scale, our forests may not be out of balance as presumed. In fact our forests are very healthy and what we are seeing with both large blazes and large scale beetle outbreaks are within the “norm” for these forests if climatic conditions are taken into account. The large fires we are experiencing are “resetting” the ecological parameters of the region. There is no need to “restore” forest health—the forests are perfectly healthy and are restoring themselves—without the help of the timber industry, thank you.

Furthermore, even if it can be proved that some forests are somewhat out of “balance” that doesn’t necessarily mean that intrusive logging is necessary or can restore forest health, especially since logging has many other negative impacts that are often ignored or glossed over. These include the creation of access roads that decrease habitat security for wildlife, act as vectors to spread weeds, not to mention are a major source of sedimentation into streams (sedimentation from fires is short lived—while roads “leak” sediment for decades).

Logging operations seldom leave as many snags as naturally occur as a result of fire or beetles. Logging also removes snags which are critical to the survival of many species—for instance; more than a third of all birds in the northern Rockies are cavity nesters, not to mention use of snags by a host of other species from bats to snails. Plus, logs charred by fires take longer to decompose and last longer as a structural component in the ecosystem—with long term consequences for wildlife and nutrient flows. The presumption that logging “emulates” nature is a bunch of timber industry propaganda.

Finally, new research is calling into question the other major justifications for logging which includes the assertion that logging can stop or reduce large fire risk and/or insect outbreaks. Logging does not affect the conditions that drives large blazes namely drought, high temperatures, low humidity, and, most importantly, wind. In fact, there is even evidence to suggest that thinning the forest can substantially exacerbate these conditions leading to increased solar drying of fuels, and permitting greater penetration of wind. Even a five mile an hour increase in wind results in an exponential increase in fire spread. And removal of competing trees, leads to rapid regrowth of shrubs and smaller trees that are more flammable. The best way to reduce fire risk to communities is to fire-proof homes, not the forest.

Circling back to the BDNF plan, all of this research calls into question the Forest Service assumptions about what is “normal” for the BDNF as well as many other forests in the region. It is possible that the Forest Service assumptions about the forest conditions are accurate. On the other hand, there is more than a reasonable likelihood that our forests are well within the “historic range of variability” and need no intrusive management other than to get out of the way and allow fires, beetles, droughts, and other normal ecological processes to operate.