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.”

Can America's West Stay Wild?

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/02/17/can-america%E2%80%99s-west-stay-wild/




Can America’s West stay wild?

Policy on vast public lands has favored ranchers. Demographics and economics may alter that equation now.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

In 1993, Washington State classified its Columbia Basin Pygmy rabbit, a burrowing one-pound resident of sagebrush thickets, as endangered. Farming and other human activity had greatly limited the deep-soil habitat available to the bunny.

In 2001, the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated the rabbit, one of only two burrowing species in North America, as “endangered.” Alarmed by the animal’s continuing decline, that year state officials captured 16 rabbits and began a captive-breeding program to try to ensure the rabbits’ continued existence. By 2003, fewer than 30 rabbits lived in the wild, down from 250 in 1995. By 2004, they were all gone.

For many, the disappearance of this tiny denizen of sagebrush thickets is a cautionary tale. Captive breeding programs are a noble last resort, they say. But in this case, not enough was done to save the wild population, they charge. While several factors outside of scientists’ direct control contributed to the rabbits’ demise – disease, fire, loss of genetic diversity, and habitat fragmentation, in particular – one factor squarely within human control was not addressed soon enough: livestock grazing. Although the state had recognized the rabbit as threatened in 1990, cows weren’t taken from the state-owned Sagebrush Flat, the bunny’s last known home, until 2001.

Here, the tale of the pygmy rabbit intersects with a long-raging acrimonious debate in the US West. Just over half the land in the West is public land. And what are public lands for – the preservation of “pristine” nature or resource extraction?

Historically, management of these lands by state and federal agencies has favored resource extractors far more than conservationists would like. But as western economies change and demographics shift, this emphasis on extraction makes less and less sense, economists say.

Meanwhile, attempts to reintroduce captive-bred pygmy rabbits into the wild have so far failed. Of 20 freed in 2007, predators killed 18. Scientists returned the remaining two to captivity. With genetic diversity low, in 2005 scientists added Idaho pygmy rabbits, a close relative. The hybrid offspring were more robust. But in 2006, the last purebred male rabbit died. In coming years, scientists plan to attempt reintroduction of the hybrid rabbit, three-quarters native, again. But the pure Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit is now genetically extinct.

Did cattle push the rabbits over the edge?

Steve Herman, a biologist emeritus at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., says cattle may have pushed the animals over the edge. At the site, scientists observed trampled rabbit burrows and broken sagebrush, which the rabbit needs for both food and protection from predators. When cows were finally removed, “it was too late,” he says. “We’ve lost a life form, and it’s likely that our species [is] responsible.”

Matthew Monda, the Washington (State) Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (WDFW) wildlife program director for Region 2, counters that although observers had noted trampled burrows and the rabbits were in obvious decline, there was no decisive evidence that grazing was responsible. In fact, he adds, since cows and rabbits had coexisted for perhaps 100 years to that point, some worried that removing cows might make things worse. WDFW initiated a study to determine “if the grazing that occurred on the area was good, bad, or ugly.” But when the rabbit populations declined precipitously, the study was halted and the cows removed.

Given the stakes, why not just play it safe? Mr. Monda turns the question around: What’s the most conservative choice, to remove cows and thereby change conditions, or to keep conditions the same and leave cows on the land? “What’s the right answer? I don’t know,” he says. But “for multiple generations, the area had been grazed. And it was the last place that had rabbits.”

Ranchers are bulwarks to development

Ranchers view themselves as natural stewards of the land. Who knows and cares for the land better than they do? Often abutting public land, working ranches are bulwarks against out-of-control development, say pro-ranchers. Subdivisions – further habitat fragmentation – are worse for endangered species than are cattle, they argue. In recent years, this historically polarized debate has seen what Courtney White, cofounder of the Quivira Coalition in Santa Fe, N.M., calls the emergence of “the radical center.” In an effort toward sustainability, “progressive” ranchers are seeking to apply lessons learned from ecological science.

But, say some, even if better management can diminish livestock’s harmful impact, cows, an exotic species, shouldn’t wander the semiarid western landscape for one simple reason: “There’s only so much biomass out there,” says George Wuerthner, coeditor of “Welfare Ranching.” “If the majority of forage is going into a cow, it’s not there for all the other life forms.”

The forebears of American cattle evolved in parts of Eurasia much wetter than the US West. They gather and loiter near water. Much of the damage caused by cattle, scientists say, is from their impact on waterways. They can denude riverbanks, leading to erosion and muddy water. The loss of shade-giving plants raises water temperatures. Native fish species that have evolved in clear, cold water may suffer. Nesting birds lose habitat.

Other species affected by cattle

Katie Fite, biodiversity director at West­ern Watersheds Project, a conservation group in Boise, Idaho, lists species that are among those negatively affected by grazing: the sage grouse, the willow flycatcher, the yellow-breasted chat. Reptiles and amphibians like collared lizards and spotted frogs also suffer, she says.

A 2005 report by the US Government Accountability Office found that grazing on public lands cost taxpayers $115 million yearly. Ranching critics say that the current grazing permit price – $1.35 per cow-calf pair per month – is at least an order of magnitude too low. This subsidy, they say, is greatly responsible for much of the degradation on public lands in the West. Humans get a little meat at the
expense of wolves, grizzlies, bison, birds, and trout – intact functioning ecosystems.

“We ought to leave the West mostly for wildlife,” Mr. Wuerthner says. “That’s where it does really well, and it can’t be substituted somewhere else.”

Others see a more complicated picture.

Rick Knight, professor of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, says it’s not so simple. The fate of public and private lands are intertwined in the West. Whither goes one, so goes the other, he says. “If you want to save our natural heritage, you have to save both public and private,” Professor Knight says. “They are interlaced.”

Mark Brunson, a professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University, Logan, says that without low-cost grazing permits, many ranchers would go out of business. But it’s no throwaway subsidy. If done sustainably (as he and others say it can be), ranchers provide an invaluable service. They supply locally raised beef for a burgeoning locavore movement. Less tangible is the “living cowboy culture” they provide.

“The culture of ranching, which is also part of the American psyche, is also important,” he says.

Cultural heritage vs. land and species preservation

To many, this last argument falls flat. De­­structive professions shouldn’t be subsidized, no matter how iconic. If the concern is development, address it directly with zoning laws.

Demographic shifts long under way may change this debate. If the question is what the public values more – a working landscape or a pristine one – the “keep it pristine” camp is on the rise. (Disturbed by rapid development, even farmers and ranchers have begun to push for more landscape-friendly zoning.) Analysis of the past 40 years of economic growth show that preserving nature is the better long-term investment, economists say.

With its expanses of relatively pristine nature and a modern infrastructure, the US West is unique, says Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont. The region has long been a magnet for immigrants. But late-20th-century arrivals were not, as they once had been, mostly people seeking to work the land. Resource extraction, once a mainstay, is an ever-shrinking portion of western economies.

Profound economic, demographic shifts under way

Between 1970 and 2000, nonlabor jobs fueled 86 percent of this growth. Mining, timber, and agriculture (including ranching) contributed only 1 percent. Now, 93 percent of jobs in the West have no direct link to public lands, says Rasker. But wilderness areas, in conjunction with infrastructure like airports, correlated closely with areas that saw the greatest growth.

“The major contribution is that it creates a setting,” he says, and that’s what immigrants want. Conserving rather than exploiting nature makes more economic sense, he says. People move here to live near nature.

Land-management agencies have been slow to recognize the new role of unspoiled public lands as an amenity, he says. But they’re coming around. The marked “blue shift” in the politics of Western states in the recent election suggests a more conservation-minded public.

For Thomas Power, an economist emeritus at the University of Montana, Missoula, the puzzle is why the shift didn’t come sooner. He attributes the inertia to the nation’s love affair with the idea of ranchers.

“People move here partly to play out the fantasy of being a cowboy,” he says. “Rather than having attitudes different from long-term residents, they were trying to imitate or share in many of those attitudes.”

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.

On the Virtues of Living in Town

ON THE VIRTUES OF LIVING IN TOWN

George Wuerthner






I just got back from the store where I picked up a newspaper and some fresh fruit. Along the way I made a quick stop at the bank where I retrieved some money from the ATM. Since I was just across from the post office, I picked up my mail. And on the way home, I stopped at the café to get a cup of coffee and visit with a friend. The “trip” to town was a nice break from sitting in front of a computer and gave me a chance to even socialize a bit. It was possible for me to do all these things without once getting in my vehicle because I live in town. In fact, all the places I visited are within a few blocks of my home.

Though I sometimes use my vehicle when the weather is particularly nasty or time is limited, I can usually do many of my activities by walking or riding a bike if I choose. And living in the shadow of Peak Oil, I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of being in a village, town or city where I can reduce my reliance upon the automobile.

Because I live in town, both of my kids have a freedom that most children lack these days—they can walk to school, to friends, to soccer games, and other events. My daughter tells me that out of 90 kids in her 7th grade, only 4 of them regularly walk to school. The rest ride a bus or are driven by parents. Their lives are highly regulated by the availability of their parents as chaffers or school bus transport. Given how few kids walk to school or any place else any more, it’s no wonder that childhood obesity is such a problem.

The majority of people in my community live out on their one to five acre tracts scattered along the rural roads away from the central village. They believe they are living the American dream or from my perspective the American nightmare. Their homes fragment wildlife habitat and chew up open space. Their septic tanks leach pollution into the local waterways. Worse of all they spend a lot of their free time driving. Driving the kids to school. Driving to the grocery store. Driving to work. Driving to play. Driving just to be driving.

Where I live today is such a contrast from where I thought I would wind up when I was in my twenties. Then it was my dream to live in a remote cabin somewhere in Alaska, and I did so for short periods of time as well as other remote locations around the Rockies. But I always came back to town—either because I needed to work or go to school. After a while I realized that I was tied to town whether I liked it or not.

Over time I actually came to understand that I liked living in town but the real epiphany for me occurred because of an old girlfriend. I was back in Montana going to the University of Montana (I was a perennial student on and off for years). My girlfriend at the time rented a cabin down on the flanks of the Bitterroot Range south of Stevensville. It was a romantic location—you could sit on the front porch of the cabin and take in a good sweep of the valley all the way to the Sapphire Range. It was quiet. There were elk and deer nearby. And, of course, you could ski or hike out the door—as my girlfriend always liked to tell people when she would brag about where she was living.

But she rarely had time to go hiking or skiing. She, like me, was a student which meant that she had to come into town every day to attend class. It would take an hour to get from the cabin to the classroom—assuming the car would start when it was 20 below and the snow wasn’t too deep, and the roads weren’t too slick with ice or snow. She spent about two hours a day commuting from her lovely cabin in the woods to the university and back again. By the time the weekend would roll around and I would ask her to go hiking or skiing, she would often decline. She had to do the laundry, clean the cabin, chop wood, buy the groceries, and sometimes just catch up on the sleep she didn’t get during the week. She didn’t have time to enjoy the woods in her backyard because she spent too much time sitting in a car driving into town and back.

I, on the other hand, lived about four blocks from the campus and could roll out of bed fifteen or twenty minutes before a class, and ride my bike to the campus with time to spare. Since I lived so close to the school, it was easy to use the library, go home for lunch or whatever, and I almost always got most of my studying done during the week so my weekends were often free to explore the Montana countryside.

Since that time, I have always chosen to live in town. And now that I have kids, I’m even more convinced that living in town is the right place to be—because it gives them as well as me, more freedom. In town I can take advantage of all the things that towns can provide kids from the public library to the public swimming pool. There are many other reasons to encourage people to live in town. Studies have shown that it’s far more costly to provide services to people who live outside of communities than those in town. There’s also a loss of community civil life. Plus people who are constantly driving here and there have less time to devote to community endeavors and less time to know their neighbors. And in many parts of the West if you live out of town, you are almost surely on some former big game winter range or in the potential path of a wildfire. If you have to live someplace—think about living in town and/or at least on its edge—both the wildlife and other taxpayers will thank you.

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.

Interview Ecological Value of Wildfire

Dispelling the Cowboy Myth Interview by Tim Lengerich

COW-DAMAGED RIPARIAN AREA ON TNC'S DUGOUT RANCH UTAH

The original interview of me by activist Tim Lengerich of Arizona was done a few years ago when I was living in Eugene. It can be assessed on Earthsave International Web site: http://www.earthsave.org/news/03summer/cowboy_myth.htm

Dispelling the Cowboy Myth

"One friend reports having a flash of understanding when he stood by a fence that separated grazed and ungrazed portions of the same creekbed. One side was lush and verdant. The other side looked like the face of the moon. Moo." --- Donald M. Peters, Arizona Republic, 1990

By Tim Lengerich


There is a tremendous irony in public-lands ranching. On one hand, ranchers and cowboys are canonized in the cowboy myth as icons of stalwartness, hard work and an aw-shucks, salt-of-the-earth mentality. In reality, ranchers are the most pervasively destructive force on our public land, with logging as a distant second. Via outlandish subsidies, you, I and Uncle Sam support the cattle industry with drought and fire relief, fencing, water tanks, windmills and bargain-basement grazing fees. Our government kills hundreds of thousands of wild creatures each year to protect ranchers' herds against predators such as wolves, mountain lions and coyotes.

In return we get erosion, endangered species, habitat destruction, flash floods, exotic weeds, desertification and some of the most degraded landscape on Earth. Much of it will never recover.

George Wuerthner of Eugene, Ore., is one of the most outspoken leaders against public-lands ranching. He dispels the cowboy myth and forecasts the demise of public-lands ranching, one of the biggest farces in American history.

Wuerthner evolved gradually into a grazing activist. He worked at a fast-food hamburger joint in high school, where he considered the free hamburgers a major perk, and on a couple of ranches in college.

"I have some firsthand experience with ranching and its lifestyle," he says. "It has its attractions-especially if you ignore the environmental costs."

Wuerthner began to reassess his views on ranching as a result of his college experiences. As an undergraduate he studied wildlife biology and botany. He went to graduate school in range science, hoping for a job as a range conservationist with the government.

"In other words, I was not inherently hostile to livestock production or ranching," he says. "But as I looked more and more at the ultimate causes of many Western environmental issues, I kept coming back to one industry-the livestock industry. I came to conclude that the cumulative environmental effects of this industry easily outstrip all others, hence my conversion to a grazing activist."

Wuerthner says a key problem with public-lands ranching is that it affects more public land than any other activity. Some 90% of all Bureau of Land Management lands, 70% of Forest Service lands, dozens of national parks, wildlife refuges, state land and even county land are affected by livestock production.

GEOGRAPHIC IMPACT

"Because of its huge geographical scope, even if it were a benign use of the landscape, it would be a concern," Wuerthner says.

"But it's anything but benign. It is the No. 1 source of water pollution in the West. It's the No. 1 source of soil erosion in the West. It's the No. 1 cause of species endangerment in the West. It's the reason we don't have wolves throughout the West. It's one of the major reasons that more than four-fifths of all native fish west of the Continental Divide are endangered or threatened."

Public lands play a crucial role in this country's biodiversity crisis too, Wuerthner says. Although protection of private lands is desirable, it probably will never achieve more than spotty results, he says. But because of their sheer size, public lands are where "landscape-scale ecological processes like wildfire and predation can operate."

"We can grow cows elsewhere if we insist on growing cows anywhere," Wuerthner points out. "And there are certainly far better places to do this than our Western public lands."

COWS VS CONDOS--A FALSE CHOICE

One obstacle to land-use reform is the "cows-vs.-condos" argument that eliminating livestock production, particularly on public lands, fosters greater sprawl and development. Even many environmentalists, as well as the industry itself, suggest that the way to protect open space is to protect the livestock industry, Wuerthner says.

The appeal of the cows-vs.-condos theory is understandable, Wuerthner says: "Most of us live in cities or towns that are growing. … It is only natural to assume that sprawl is necessarily worse than livestock production. It is something that we all experience every day. Most of us don't directly experience the negative effects of livestock on a daily basis. So this colors our perception of the issue.

"On an acre-by-acre comparison, sprawl and urban development are highly destructive and probably far more damaging than having some cows munching on weeds," Wuerthner concedes.

But, he says, although sprawl is a real problem that needs to be controlled where it occurs, it's not a fair comparison because the amount of land directly affected by sprawl and development is actually quite small: Based on analysis of aerial photos, only 4% of California's landscape is developed.

"I know that may be difficult to believe if you are living in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area," Wuerthner says, "but think again: You have millions of acres in the desert, in the Sierra Nevada and along the North Coast that are virtually uninhabited. Much of this is public land-half of California is public land-and will never be developed. Even most of the agricultural lands are used for livestock production-with hay and pasture accounting for more crop acreage than any other crops grown in the state.

"Where I differ from others is that I believe we need to control, guide or eliminate livestock production as well as sprawl. Neither is good for ecosystems or native species. It's not a choice of one or the other. We should be fighting both."

Wuerthner points out that when the effects of farming are factored in-bearing in mind that most of the agricultural land in the U.S. is used to grow crops to feed livestock-livestock production is responsible for more endangered species than any other human activity, including urbanization.

"Livestock production affects nearly 70% to 75% of the entire U.S. That includes the public and private range land used for grazing, the lands used for crop production like hay or corn and the lands used as pasture. It's a huge amount of land. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3% of the U.S. land area. So if you are talking about total ecological impacts, the effects of livestock production are far greater than sprawl simply based on geographical scales," Wuerthner says.

The picture becomes even more skewed toward livestock when you look at other Western states, he says-95% of Montana, for example, has less than four people per square mile. Using the 1890 U.S. Census definition, that's frontier. The state's population growth is taking place on only 0.17% of its total land area. And most of Montana's nonforested land is used for agricultural production, including livestock.

"So most of the West is dominated by open space, not urbanization or sprawl," Wuerthner says. But "open space isn't necessarily good for wildlife or ecosystem protection. If that were the case, then Montana would not have any endangered species. There would be bison, wolves, grizzlies and sage grouse everywhere-but these species are on the verge of extinction," not because of sprawl, obviously, but because of agriculture-primarily livestock production.

"The problem with the cows vs. condos myth is that it saps public support for alternatives," Wuerthner says. "If people think we can have our cake and eat it too-i.e. having ranching and the cowboy myth preserved and not have to cough up money for land acquisition or debate about zoning issues, they are going to avoid biting the bullet and seriously discussing these proven alternatives. Those promoting ranching as a means of preserving open space are actually fiddling while Rome burns."

Fortunately, Wuerthner believes the Western livestock industry is dying out, largely because of rising land prices. Today's prices make it impossible to buy land and pay it off by running cattle, which prevents young people from entering the business unless they have outside money, so old ranchers are not being replaced when they retire. Also, it is more difficult to pass on a ranch to family members, since even small ranches are now worth millions.

This leaves ranching families with little choice but to sell, he says, which in some places will mean subdividing the land and in others means selling to a wealthy buyer who will run the ranch as a 'trophy' or hobby.

"That is not altogether a bad fate, since it keeps the land intact," Wuerthner says, "but if you are rich, you don't need to run cows."

Wuerthner believes the death of ranching can be hastened by putting pressure on ranchers, particularly public-lands ranchers, thereby making it "less fun" to be into ranching. Also, making it less prestigious to be a rancher could effectively change the status of this occupation for the wealthy and elite that are coming to dominate the Western livestock business-similar to "making it less desirable to be a slave owner."

"Once this is no longer socially acceptable, far fewer wealthy individuals will run cows on their lands," Wuerthner says. "They might seek status in a different way-restoring ecosystems-as Ted Turner has done.

"We should try to shape the debate so that ecosystem restoration is what the wealthy do-not run cows."

Tim Lengreth lives in Ajo, Arizona, and is a grazing activist who believes only public awareness can bring about resolutions to the public lands ranching disaster.

Logging, thinning would not curtail wildfires

Guest Viewpoint


Logging, thinning would not curtail wildfires

By George Wuerthner

Published: Dec 26, 2008 09:26AM
Opinion: Editorials & Letters: Story

Kathy Lynn’s guest viewpoint in the Dec. 17 edition of The Register-­Guard about wildfires and protecting communities was full of flawed assumptions, and consequently flawed solutions.

Lynn correctly noted that acreage burned by wildfire has increased, but she implied that somehow this was a result of “unhealthy” forests — and her implied solution is more logging.

Unfortunately in ecology, what seems obvious is not always accurate. Remember, the sun does appear to go around the Earth.

Contrary to common opinion, large blazes are not driven primarily by fuels, but by climatic conditions. When you have high winds, high temperatures, low humidity and severe drought, you have the right ingredients for large fires.

Not surprisingly, the past decade has been a period of severe drought, high summer temperatures and low humidity. Those conditions have been coupled at times with high winds — so naturally we would expect more large blazes.

Such weather-driven blazes are unstoppable and go out only when the weather changes — not because of a lack of fuels.

Although we are seeing more charred acres in recent year, the idea that this trend is unnatural is skewed by our limited time perspective.

The years between 1940 and late 1980s were moister and cooler than, say, the turn of the century or in the past decade. Unfavorable conditions for fire ignitions kept the annual acreage of wildfires down to historically low levels.

However, if you go back even to the turn of the century, you will find that tens of millions of acres burned annually — including a single fire in Idaho and Montana that in 1910 charred more than 3.5 million acres. One researcher in California recently estimated that prior to 1850, an average of 5 million to 6 million acres burned annually in California alone.

Healthy ecosystems burn, and often burn by the tens of millions of acres. The spate of large wildfires we are experiencing now are not “abnormal” or an indication of “unhealthy” forest. Rather, we are seeing the natural response of a healthy forest ecosystem.

Given that wildfire was so common for thousands of years, it is not surprising that recent research shows that wildfires, particularly severe wildfires, increase biodiversity.

If anything, we probably need more wildfire, not less. With global warming we will probably get it, as vegetative communities adapt to new climatic realities.

Another surprising finding is that mechanical fuels treatment, commonly known as logging and thinning, typically has little effect on the spread of wildfires. In fact, in some cases, it can increase wildfires’ spread and severity by increasing the fine fuels on the ground (slash) and by opening the forest to greater wind and solar penetration, drying fuels faster than in unlogged forests.

Although we are really unable to stop fires, nor prevent their spread by logging and thinning, that doesn’t mean we need to let fire burn down homes.

Research by Jack Cohen at the Missoula Fire Lab in Montana has found that the most effective strategy for protecting homes and communities is accomplished by reducing the flammability of homes. Replacing wooden shingles with metal roofs, removing firewood from around a home, keeping gutters free of debris and other simple measures can significantly reduce the likelihood that a home will burn.

Logging the forests is not the answer to protecting our communities from wildfire, nor does the sun circle the Earth.

George Wuerthner is a part-time resident of Eugene. He is an ecologist, and the author of 34 books, including “Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

ECOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOGGING AND WILDFIRE

GEORGE WUERTHNER

Though many may perceive there to be no difference between a tree killed by a fire or a tree killed by a chainsaw as part of a logging operation, there are vast ecological differences. Furthermore, logging based upon the presumption that reduction in fuels will reduce or eliminate large blazes is based upon flawed premises. We need big fires.

Across many landscapes, intensive timber cutting has replaced fire in ecological significance, but not in ecological effect. Because of some commonalities between effects of logging and fire, there is a perception held by many people is that logging emulates natural disturbances like wildfire. For instance, the draft legislation for the Beaverhead Deerlodge Partnership, suggests that logging can mimic wildfires. There are, however, substantial ecological differences between logging and wildfire.

A second assumption inherent in many assertions made by timber industry proponents is that logging can reduce large blazes. As a corollary to this assumption, most proponents of fire control believe suppression of large blazes is desirable. Such assertions are self-serving and play upon ecological ignorance and nuances in the ecological literature to create what appears on first review to be a plausible argument in favor of logging––an argument, however, that ignores many ecological realities.

Wildfire, whether from natural sources like lightning or a result of human ignition, has been a major influence on many ecosystems around the world. One mapping of presettlement fire patterns found that more than half of the United States burned on a fire return interval of between 1 and 12 years. Though much of this was grasslands as well as forests, particularly in the Southeast, it nevertheless, demonstrates the ecological importance of fires in many regions of the country. In the native plant communities of the western United States, fires have probably played a more critical role in shaping ecosystems than any other ecological factor.

Fire affects both forest structure and ecosystem processes. How a tree dies and is ultimately utilized is critically important to the long-term health of a forest. A tree removed by logging has a different effect on soils, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and, ultimately, biodiversity than one killed by fire and left on-site.

Superficially, logging and wildfire have some gross similarities; however, fire differs from logging in many ways. Fires vary in intensity thus create many small, and occasional very large, burn patches in a shifting mosaic across the landscape. For instance, in Yellowstone National Park, 83 percent of all natural fires are less than 1.2 acres in size, and 94 percent of all natural fires burn less than 100 acres, but the occasional large blazes––such as those in 1988––burn hundreds of thousands of acres. For this reason, fires tend to have a landscape-scale diversifying influence. Logging tends to create more evenly spaced, evenly sized habitat patches and does not alter all forest stands—particularly lands dominated by noncommercial forest species.

Fire alters an ecosystem by chemical processes; logging, by the mechanical process of tree removal. Fire rapidly recycles nutrients, kills pathogens, and selectively favors fire-adapted species. Logging leads to the loss of soil nutrients and organic matter and increases soil compaction, thereby reducing water infiltration. Fires do not leave a large road network in place (assuming the blaze was not suppressed otherwise there may be dozer lines, etc.). Logging creates roads that fragment habitat and generally increase human access, both of which affect the use of the land by wildlife. Moreover, roads and logging equipment can become vectors for the dispersal of weeds.

It is widely recognized in the scientific community that past commercial logging, road building, livestock grazing, and aggressive firefighting are the sources of many “forest health” problems, including unnaturally severe wildfires. According to the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project’s final report to Congress, a government report that reviewed the ecosystem health of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains: “Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate, and fuels accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent human activity.”

Impacts Associated with Logging
Logging is more than the removal of trees. It typically involves a road network, which has a substantial and diverse array of impacts on the land. Since most areas are not logged all at one time and are repeatedly cut over a century, logging has many additional effects, including periodic human invasion and disturbance from human activities. Soil erosion from logging roads is a major impact, particularly on aquatic ecosystems. Logging also significantly increases debris slides. One northern California study, for example, found that 61 percent of the soil displacement (erosion) resulted from logging roads.

Structural changes in the forest are obvious effects of logging, particularly with clearcutting. Timber harvest tends to leave few or no snags (standing dead trees). Even when logging leaves snags behind, the usual prescription is to have only one or two per acre which is considerably fewer than needed for cavity-nesting animals. Plus snags as they rot provide a long-term nutrient supply so there removal short circuits nutrient cycling on the site.. Even selective cutting can radically alter forest stand dynamics since most commercial logging selects for larger-diameter trees—the very individuals that under a natural fire regime are most likely to survive a blaze and persist on the site.

Commercial logging tends to remove the larger trees—exactly the ones most resistant to fire. By contrast, fires tend to kill the smaller trees, reducing competition for water and light among remaining trees. In addition, the process of logging takes away the least flammable portion of trees––their main stems––and leaves behind the most flammable parts of the tree, the limbs and needles.

In addition, partially buried and buried wood debris can make up as much as 50 percent of all surface organic matter in old-growth forests and remain for centuries. Logging eliminates the potential for creating additional soil wood.

The activities associated with logging, including the coming and going of workers and vehicles, can displace wildlife sensitive to human presence. Because of this human activity, the impacts of logging-created fragmentation are worsened by human access, reducing the effectiveness of remaining habitat patches for wildlife sensitive to human intrusions. This disturbance may be semi-permanent, since logging roads often remain open for subsequent timber harvest or public access. Human activity along roads has been shown to reduce habitat use by elk for up to a half mile on either side.

A recent study by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks found that grizzly bears avoid roaded areas, often for years after timber activities ceased. A severe loss of suitable habitat may occur even if the amount of land that is directly disturbed is quite small. Increased access for human trappers and hunters also changes or reduces population structure in species sought. Poaching may increase. Road closures can mitigate some, but usually not all, of these impacts. Research has demonstrated no road is better than a closed road.

The physical impact of logging upon site topography and soil profile is another difference between timber harvest and fires. Heavy logging equipment compacts soils. Studies done by the Forest Service have demonstrated that compaction inhibits forest regeneration and slows growth of tree seedlings that do manage to emerge. Fires, on the other hand, often provide ideal seedbeds for the reestablishment of plant cover.

Weed invasion is another problem often associated with timber harvest, particularly because roads serve as vectors for weed dispersal. Seeds of spotted knapweed and many other invasive exotic species are carried on the chassis of logging trucks to new locations. If the logging roads are left open for public access after a logging operation, other vehicles may also disperse weed seed. And the disturbed soils along bulldozed roads provide ideal habitat for the proliferation of weed species.

Wildfire mosaics maintain natural curves and lines, while logging introduces abrupt edges and scars from logging roads and skid trails that take decades to heal. Edge effects are generally more severe with logging than with fire.

The timing of stand-destroying fires differs substantially from the timing of stand-destroying clearcuts. In many managed forests, the goal is to eliminate older trees to favor faster-growing younger ones. The loss of old-growth structural features in a managed forest has many ecological ramifications, including changes in nutrient flows and storage, and in wildlife habitat parameters. Though fires do occasionally burn up substantial acreages of old growth, in many ecosystems, the old-growth stands are relatively fireproof except under extreme conditions, such as severe drought. Since standard forestry management practice is to cut trees at or shortly after they reach peak wood production efficiency, most managed timber stands will never possess old-growth features.

Some of the above negative features associated with logging can perhaps be mitigated or reduced by changing timber harvest methods, but one factor that almost certainly cannot be emulated by foresters is the randomness of fire disturbance. Though fire ecologists make predictions about fire frequency and “average” size, wildfires are essentially unpredictable. Logging does not emulate this randomness, and we do know how important it may be to ecosystem integrity and function.

Finally, fire performs many of the above ecological services at no economic cost––unless, of course, it threatens human life or habitation. Foresters claim that timber harvest can achieve the same ends, but frequently it costs far more to taxpayers per treated acre––particularly in places like the Rocky Mountains, where the value of timber is low––than can be recouped from the timber sales. In contrast, a prescribed-natural-burn policy, particularly if there are no fire suppression costs, is very cost-effective––no more than pennies per acre burned in monitoring costs.

Large Fires Are Necessary

There is an inherent assumption by many people, including those who support wildfires in general, that large blazes are somehow abnormal or destructive. Yet it is large fires, not the ordinary small blaze, which set the ecological parameters of western ecosystems. Large blazes are usually weather-driven—favored by drought and wind. Furthermore, since fuels are not the driving force behind most large blazes, small prescribed burns, and even “salvage” logging and/or mechanical thinning to reduce fuel loading, generally do not have an effect on large fires, nor would this be desirable. In most ecosystems, we should be encouraging, not discouraging, large fires. Current forestry policies of fire suppression, road building to facilitate suppression, fuel reduction, and so on, all contribute to the fragmentation of fire habitat, distorting natural fire regimes. Big fires are as ecologically important to functioning and healthy ecosystems as large predators are to wildlife populations. Just as large predators are “top-down” regulators of other species, fire serves a similar ecological function for ecosystems.

This is why we need large, protected nature sanctuaries such as large national parks, wilderness areas, and other preserves. Large natural areas are necessary so that big blazes can “roam” freely across the landscape, just as preserving habitat for wide-ranging species like grizzlies and wolves is important to sustaining natural biodiversity.

Ecosystem Functions Performed by Fires

Most fires perform a variety of ecosystem services that are not normally associated with logging. For example, fires cleanse a forest. Heat from fires can kill forest pathogens in the soil, including root rots, as well as insects and fungi that may be found in fallen trees or snags.

Heating and subsequent rapid cooling of rocks and boulders cracks and breaks them apart. Repeated numerous times over the centuries, this is an important soil-building process. Logging, of course, provides no such benefits.

The influence of fires often extends beyond the blaze perimeter.

Laboratory studies have demonstrated that smoke from fires will kill certain arboreal forest pathogens, reducing, for a time, the influence of some tree diseases. Smoke also aids the germination of some plant species.
Fires also change nutrient flows. Dead litter burns and turns to ash. The heat and combustion change the chemical composition of soils. Depending on how hot they burn, fires can volatilize certain nutrients, like nitrogen, that are lost as gases into the atmosphere. However, the nitrogen pool available to plants is large relative to most fire-induced losses, plus nitrogen is quickly replaced in the soil through nitrogen fixation by bacteria, which usually increase significantly after a burn in most western U.S. ecosystems. Studies have shown that bacteria and other nitrogen fixers typically make up all the losses to volatilization within two years of a burn. Other important plant nutrients, including phosphorus and calcium, are released from litter by fires and leached into the top layers of the soil. Despite some losses to waterways and the atmosphere, the overall effect of all but the most intense fires is the redistribution of nutrients from the forest canopy and floor into the soil, thus increasing soil fertility. For instance, one study in a Southwest ponderosa pine forest found that ammonium nitrogen levels were 80 times greater after a recent burn than before.

In some forests, more than a third of the nitrogen-fixing capacity is provided by microorganisms responsible for decaying wood on the soil surface and in the soil itself, again emphasizing the importance of retaining wood debris even after a fire.
Nutrients may also wind up in waterways by directly washing into a stream or lake or settling as ash from the air. Periodic nutrient enrichment from fires may be necessary for the maintenance of aquatic ecosystems, particularly those at higher elevations, which tend to be low in nutrient inputs.

By contrast, timber harvest removes nutrients from the ecosystem since trees are transported out of the area. The severity of this removal depends on logging practices. In conifers, most nutrients are stored in the branches and needles; thus, the more slash left on site, the less actual nutrient removal. Nevertheless, to replace the nutrients lost, even when only the boles are extracted, takes longer than the timber rotation period (time between logging episodes) on many sites. As a result, over time, repeated timber harvest may gradually deplete a site of important nutrients.

By removing forest canopies and increasing sunlight, logging may stimulate the growth of nitrogen-fixing plants, but usually not enough to match the quantities that grow after a fire. Furthermore, foresters usually attempt to truncate such early successional stages in order to hasten the restocking of forests with commercial species. For instance, in the Pacific Northwest, where red alder is an important nitrogen-fixing species that colonizes burned or logged areas, it is standard practice to treat such sites with herbicides to kill off the hardwoods like alder so that commercially preferred conifers can quickly regenerate.

In many forests, another important source of nitrogen input is arboreal lichens. Nitrogen-fixing lichen species are common on the branches and bark of older, larger trees. Rainwater percolating through these lichen-covered branches leaches and transports nitrogen to the soil. Since the rotational age (age when trees are large enough to cut profitably) when trees are cut is usually far shorter than the age at which they might otherwise burn, the amount of old growth in managed forests is usually substantially less than in wild, natural forests, reducing the potential input of nitrogen from lichens. How important such contributions may be to forest productivity and health is unknown.

Logging may provide a temporary flush of nutrients, but this is often accompanied by a flush of sediment as well. True, fire-bared slopes will at times wash high sediment loads into river systems, particularly if heavy rains occur immediately after a burn. However, on most sites, within a year or two of a fire, vegetation covers the ground, since fires typically do not kill underground tubers or seeds that may be lodged in the soil. However, logging roads are seldom removed or decommissioned, and thus they are a long-term and unending source of sedimentation.

Also, the snags that are left on a burn site often fall across the slope, creating check dams that slow erosion and reduce sediment yield to streams. Again logging, particularly “salvage” logging, removes such snags, hence increasing sedimentation and its many negative effects.

In addition, the soil disturbance caused by logging and heavy equipment strips away soil and the buried seeds and roots that might otherwise sprout and quickly cover a slope. Logging roads are notorious for generating high sediment loads, even higher than typically found on the logged or burned slopes themselves.

Of course, the amount of sedimentation, whether because of fire or because of logging, is largely determined by such things as soil type, gradient, seasonality of runoff, and timing between periodic natural floods. Logging nearly always increases sedimentation over natural levels associated with most, but not all, burns. High sedimentation kills aquatic insects and fish, and changes stream channel patterns.
Fires may temporarily reduce the amount of organic matter in aquatic ecosystems, to the detriment of aquatic invertebrates, particularly in smaller streams. However, within a few years, the flush of new vegetation begins to compensate for these losses.

Unless the blaze is extremely hot, fires do not totally consume a forest. Typically, hundreds of snags per acre remain. These snags serve a number of important ecological functions. Woodpeckers carve cavities that provide an abundance of homes for many birds and mammal species, including bluebirds and nuthatches and flying squirrels. Snags offer perching sites for flycatchers, swallows, and raptors.
Furthermore, many of these standing fire-killed trees (snags) are invaded by wood-eating beetles and other insects. These in turn provide an abundant food source for woodpeckers and other insect feeders. Some species, like the black backed woodpecker, show tremendous increases for three or four years after a fire, then decline. The woodpecker is one of several species that may depend on fire-shaped landscapes to maintain adequate population levels. Populations of black backed woodpecker do not increase on logged sites since few standing dead trees are left after harvest.

Dead trees continue to play important ecological roles, even after they fall over. On the ground they provide habitat and hiding cover for a mostly different group of invertebrates, as well as rabbits, voles, shrews, and other small mammals. These animals in turn provide a food source for predators like pine marten and lynx. In addition, as these fallen snags molder and rot, they gradually add organic matter to the soil, which increases its fertility and water-holding capacity.

Trees that fall into waterways are important to aquatic ecosystems. Fallen logs create pools and riffles, which provide habitat for aquatic invertebrates and fish. Logs also help to stabilize stream banks, deflecting or reducing the erosive force of water. Furthermore, since submerged logs rot slowly, they are important long-term sources of nutrients for aquatic ecosystems.

Finally, though naturally a live forest provides more cover than the snags left after a blaze, dead tree boles still provide some thermal and hiding cover––much more than found in a clearcut. A burned area thus has far more value as security cover to big game and other hunted species than a logged area. Since snags typically remain for 50 to 100 years after a blaze, they commonly survive until the new forest has a chance to mature sufficiently to provide new hiding and thermal cover.


In sum, wildfire is an important ecological process not emulated by logging practices. Some kinds of timber harvest, such as selective cutting of young, small-diameter trees, may superficially mimic the structural influence of fire––creating, for example, open stands of large-diameter trees––but it fails to emulate the ecosystem processes associated with fires. Forest structure is just an outward manifestation of ecosystem processes. If we must husband anything, it should be ecosystem processes, not preconceived notions of “proper” structural appearance.
Maintaining fire as an ecosystem process is still an option. Acknowledging that many people have inappropriately built towns and homes in what is the fire equivalent of a floodplain does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that we have no choice but to suppress wildfires. Indeed, a wise course of action is to make a few areas defensible against wildfire by frequent prescribed burning and the surgical use of limited, selective logging around towns, and around other structures deemed worthy of protection. In the rest of forested areas, wildfires should be permitted to burn unsuppressed. Our goal should be ecosystem maintenance, not ecosystem management.
Large wildfires have many of the same characteristics as large carnivores. They range widely, occur in relatively small numbers, are often in conflict with human exploitation schemes, and thus can only exist in large wildlands. They contribute to the ecological processes that maintain ecosystems. A western wilderness without large, episodic wildfires is as ecologically bankrupt as one without grizzlies and wolves. Without them all, our wildlands are no longer truly wild, no longer ecologically intact.

REFERENCES:

Pyne, S. World Fire: the culture of fire on earth. 1997. U of Washington Press, Seattle.

C. C. Frost, “Resettlement Fire Frequency Regimes of the United States: A First Approximation,” Proceedings of the Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference No. 20 (Tallahassee, Fla.: Tall Timbers Research Station, 1998).

David R. Foster, Dennis H. Knight, and Jerry F. Franklin, “Landscape Patterns and Legacies Resulting from Large, Infrequent Forest Disturbances,” Ecosystems 1, no. 6 (1998): 497-510.

National Park Service, “Fire Facts,” on “The Official Website of Yellowstone National Park,” http://www.nps.gov/yell/technical/fire/factoid.htm, updated 20 October 2003.

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McCashion, J. D. and R. M. Rice. 1983. Erosion on logging roads in northwestern California: How much is avoidable? Journal of Forestry 81: 23-26.

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D. S. Page-Dumroese et al., “Organic Matter Function in the Inland Northwest Soil System,” in Proceedings: Management and Productivity of Western Montane Forest Soils, ed. A. E. Harvey and L. F. Neuenschwander, General Technical Report INT-280 (Ogden, Utah: U.S. Forest Service, 1991).

Waller Mace et al., “Relationships among Grizzly Bears, Roads, and Habitat.”

Waller Mace et al., “Relationships among Grizzly Bears, Roads, and Habitat in the Swan Mountains, Montana,” Journal of Applied Ecology 33 (1996): 1395-1404

Purser, M. D. and T. W. Cundy. 1992. Changes in soil physical properties due to cable yarding and their hydrologic implications. Western Journal of Applied Forestry 7: 36-39.

Amaranthus, M. P., D. Page-Dumroese, A. Harvey, E. Cazares and L. F. Bednar. 1996. Soil compaction and organic matter affect conifer seedling nonmycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal root tip abundance and diversity. Research Paper PNW-RP-494. USDA Forest Service. Pacific Northwest Research Station. 12 p.

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Government admits logging losses (AP article) http://forests.org/archive/america/govadmit.htm
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http://depts.washington.edu/propplnt/2003guidelines/group1/Smoke
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Shiqiang Wan,Dafeng Hui, and Yiqi Luo 2000 Fire Effects on nitrogen pools and dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems: a meta analysis. Ecological Applications: Vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 1349–1365
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A. E. Harvey, M. F. Jurgensen, and R. T. Graham, “Fire-Soil Interactions Governing Site Productivity in the Northern Rocky Mountains,” in Prescribed Fire in the Intermountain Region: Forest Site Preparation and Range Improvements: Symposium Proceedings, ed. D. M. Baumgartner et al.(Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1989).

Lathrop, R.G. 1994. Impacts of the 1988 wildfires on the water quality of Yellowstone and Lewis Lakes, Wyoming. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 4(3):169-175.
Darwyn S. COXSON and Medea CURTEANU 2002.
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spp.) under snowpack in montane forest, Cariboo Mountains,
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JOHN F. LEHMKUHL, 1 U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 1133 North Western Avenue, Wenatchee, WA
98801, USA
RICHARD L. EVEREiT,2 U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 1133 North Western Avenue, Wenatchee, WA
98801, USA

JOHN F. LEHMKUHL, RICHARD L. EVEREiTT, RICHARD SCHELLHAAS, PETER OHLSON,DAVID KEENUM, HEIDI RIESTERER, and DONALD SPURBECK, 2003 Cavities in snages along a wildlife chronosequence in eastern Washington. J. Wildl. Manage. 67(1):2003


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Livestock as four legged picnic baskets

http://www.trib.com/articles/2008/12/18/editorial/letters/7a00966157831caf87257522008245b2.txt



Thursday, December 18, 2008 2:05 AM MST

Editor:

A recent AP article by Matt Brown reported 245 wolves were killed in the Northern Rockies this past year and it implies that wolves are the "blame" for livestock depredation. Yet much of the blame for livestock depredation is self created due to poor animal husbandry.

In our national parks it's illegal to leave out picnic baskets because it will lead to human-bear conflicts. To save bears, humans are fined if they fail to put away food.

But when it comes to ranchers, we have the exact opposite approach. Instead of fining them for leaving four legged picnic baskets scattered all over the landscape -- including most of our public lands -- we hold the wolves accountable any losses that are largely due to the livestock industry's poor management.

By killing wolves we are subsidizing ranchers. We permit ranchers to externalize one of the costs of doing business--namely implementing livestock management regimes that minimizes predator opportunities.

These include the use of herders, guard animals, prompt removal of dead animals, use of night time lambing and calving sheds, and other pro-active measures that are proven to reduce predator losses.

Additionally, we should, at minimum, never kill wolves preying on livestock grazing public lands. If ranchers choose to use public lands, they must accept the risks of predator losses.

The only way this conflict is going to be resolved is when society starts to demand that ranchers internalize one of the costs of doing business -- that is adopting mandatory preventive measures to reduce conflicts.

Mandatory preventative measures will not eliminate all conflicts, but it will go a long ways towards reducing the number of wolves and livestock killed annually.

GEORGE WUERTHNER, Richmond, Vt.

Logging not the Answer--A Response to Ellen Simpson

The December 15th Great Falls Tribune editorial by Ellen “No Brainer” Simpson of the Montana Woods Products Industry titled “Red and Dead” reminds me of the scare tactics of the Cold War Era when “better dead than Red” was the motto of some right wing fear mongers.

Throughout her editorial she used fear of fire as her major theme and asserted that it was a “no brainer” that logging was the cure. Towns are going to burn down if we don’t log the forests. People are going to be unemployed if we don’t log the forest. Hikers will be hit by fallen trees if we don’t log the forests.

More than that, she demonstrated that she didn’t use her brain or at least isn’t aware of some of the recent research on beetles, wildfire, and thinning.

It is only the ignorant or those with an agenda to profit from logging that sees wildfire and/or beetle killed forests as “unhealthy”. Unfortunately there is a lot of ignorance being spewed forth by the timber industry trying to exploit fear of fires and beetles.

As is typically the case in ecology, the truth is often the opposite of what seems intuitive. (Remember the world does appear flat.) Contrary to what might seem obvious, logging forests does not stop the kinds of large fires she envisions will engulf Montana communities.

Climate, not fuels, drives large fires. Under conditions of extreme drought, low humidity, high temperatures and high winds, fires are unstoppable. It doesn’t matter whether you have thinned, or even clearcut the land, any residual vegetation will burn and burn well.

I attended the Pacific Coast Fire Ecology Conference a few weeks ago where at least four different presentations showed recent research that documented in one fashion or another that mechanical thinning (i.e. logging) failed to stop fires and/or in some cases actually increased fire severity. Researchers found that logging, by leaving behind fire fuels on the ground, as well as opening up the forest to greater wind penetration and solar heating, can even assist fire spread and increase tree mortality.

If logging were able to stop fires, the Jocko Lake, Black Cat, Chippy Creek, Fish Lake and many other well known Montana fires would have never gotten large enough to make headlines since all burned through areas that had been previously logged and/or thinned.

And while Simpson tries to suggest that wildfires are somehow “bad’ for forest ecosystems, some recent studies suggest that biodiversity is highest in recently burned forests, particularly those with severe fires. From an ecologist’s perspective (and the forest ecosystem), dead trees are an important ecological component of a healthy forest ecosystem.

As for beetle-killed trees increasing fire hazard, again what seems intuitive is not quite what it seems. There is a growing body of scientific literature that finds little correlation between bark beetle-killed trees and wildfires.

Fires don’t burn because there are dead trees. To get the big fires we read about in the papers, you need a convergence of an ignition with severe fire weather conditions of wind, drought, high temperatures and low humidity. These kinds of weather conditions are relatively rare—which is why, for example, large wildfires in Yellowstone’s lodgepole pine forests only occur on average every 300-400 years.

Thus the probability that any particular stand of bug killed trees will burn is small during the few red needle years immediately after a bug kill when they are most vulnerable to fires. In fact, logging a stand of bug killed trees will actually increase the spread and intensity of any fire that should ignite by creating more slash on the ground than if you leave it alone.

Some recent scientific studies back up that contention. Researchers in Yellowstone found only a small relationship between beetle killed trees, and fire—and in one instance found that a recent beetle kill stand apparently had zero chance of increased burning. Another study in Alaska looked at the charcoal/pollen record going back 2,500 years, and could find no relationship between beetle outbreaks and wildfire.

The reason for this has to do with several factors. First, once the red needles and small branches fall off a tree—typically after its first winter--its flammability goes way down. Big upright standing logs just don’t burn that well. It’s the fine fuels that carry a fire as anyone who has tried to make a campfire knows.

Contrary to what you might think, very dry green trees are more flammable than a dead beetle killed tree. Under severe drought conditions the wood in live trees can become as dry as kiln dried lumber, yet still possesses fine fuels of small branches and needles which contain flammable resins.

As for beetles destroying the forest, a recent study found that bark beetles actually increase biodiversity in forest ecosystems, so from the forest ecosystem’s perspective are a welcome natural process.

If protecting Montana communities is the goal, research by Jack Cohen at the Missoula Fire Lab has shown that reducing the flammability of homes is the best and most cost effective strategy for reducing fire risk. Measures like metal roofs, removing wood piles from homes, and other tactic that any individual homeowner can do dramatically increases the chance that a home will survive even a stand replacement blaze.

Unfortunately, forest ecology is not as straight forward as some might suggest, and Ellen “No Brainer” Simpson hopes you don’t use your own brain in thinking about complex ecological issues.

Questions about Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Proposal

The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Proposal (BCSP) has gotten a lot of positive press, including most recently in an editorial in the Missoulian on December 1st and another on December 9 in the Billings Gazette. To put it bluntly, the BSCP appears to be a trade of public trees to the local timber industry in exchange for their support for wilderness designation.

The major part of the plan appears to be a public subsidy of the Pyramid Lumber Company based upon flawed assumptions about forest health, fire suppression, and the effectiveness of thinning as a fire hazard reduction mechanism. Other alternatives to achieve the same goals that would not involve logging are not given serious consideration. Plus, the real environmental costs of logging are ignored and glossed over to make this proposal sound environmentally benign or even environmentally beneficial.

One of the potentially positive aspects of the BCSP is the removal of culverts, closure of roads, and other activities that would benefit the environment. But how these removals and restoration activities are funded is problematic. Stewardship logging is an Orwellian idea whereby money generated by the presumed profits of timber sales will be used to repair land damaged by logging. With such an incentive, it’s easy to imagine that agencies will advocate more logging to do more repair of logging damaged lands. That’s like advocating more gambling to fund gambling addiction programs.

While I don’t doubt for a minute that the plan’s proponents have the best intentions and goals, I believe they may have deluded themselves into thinking the BCSP is a good thing for Montana and the public by ignoring and/or glossing over some potential problems. Nevertheless, I do want to acknowledge that the folks working on the Seeley Lake District, including the Tim Love, the district ranger, as well as all others involved in this proposal, are a very committed and honorable group of public employees and citizens. The Wilderness Society, for instance, has created a GIS program to evaluate where thinning might be most appropriate based upon such considerations as distance from roads, forest type, and other factors that help target logging to places where it might be most beneficial—if logging were to be done.

However, in their rush to reach consensus, there has been a tendency to forgo critical review of the plan’s underlying assumptions, particularly on the part of environmental groups who should be providing such a critique. Without such a balanced review of the pros and cons of the proposal, I, as well as the American people, cannot determine whether the BSCP is ultimately in the best interest of the country and the forest ecosystems of western Montana.

While I have serious reservations about the logging aspects of the BCSP, the designation of 87,000 acres of wilderness additions to the Bob Marshall and Mission Mountains Wildernesses would be a terrific net benefit. The area includes important grizzly, lynx and wolf habitat, plus spawning streams used by bull trout. Monture Creek, as well as other parts of the proposed wilderness additions, are important trail access points into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The closure and full restoration of old roads, if implemented, is welcomed as well.


FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS

Flawed assumption number one is that the forests in the Seeley Lake area are suffering from fire exclusion, hence more dense than would otherwise be “natural.” Yet recent research suggests that the role of fire exclusion on increased stand density and biomass accumulation may be exaggerated, especially for forest types other than those dominated by ponderosa pine.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that a fifty-year period of time between 1940s and late 1980s (ending with Yellowstone in1988) was a time of cooler and moister climatic conditions in the northern Rockies compared to the preceding decades, as well as the last few decades. Cool, moist weather would have limited the spread of fires, and also contributed to higher tree seedling survival—both of which would naturally lead to denser forest stands, more residual biomass, and fewer large fires.

Flawed assumption number two is that the current spate of large blazes in the Northern Rockies is a consequence of “fuels build up” due to fire suppression. One of the reasons for this flawed assumption is the widespread application of the Southwest Ponderosa pine fire regime model which postulates that frequent low intensity fires kept fuels and stand density low. Many apply this conceptual model to all forest types even though most of the forest stands within the BCSP, as well as the rest of the northern Rockies are not ponderosa pine, but species that tend to burn naturally with mixed to high severity fire regimes.

And to make matters more interesting, there are some researchers now suggesting that the Southwest model does not apply to even ponderosa pine outside of the Southwest, suggesting that stand replacement blazes may occasionally occur at longer intervals imposed over the shorter fire frequency in ponderosa pine in the Rockies and elsewhere.

Indeed, the majority of forest types burning in the northern Rockies in recent years are stands of lodgepole pine, western larch, grand fir, sub alpine fir, Douglas fir, aspen, and other species that are naturally characterized by mixed to high severity fire regimes and naturally longer intervals between fires than those found in pure ponderosa pine forests. It is doubtful that most of these forests—with the possible exception of dry Douglas fir stands have been significantly altered—even if one assumes that fire suppression, not climate, is responsible for current conditions.

The large blazes we are witnessing are likely more a consequence of changing global climate than due to fuels. When you have drought, low humidity and winds, you get conditions that make fires unstoppable. We are experiencing longer periods of hot weather, often coupled with drought and frequent high winds. Under these conditions, fires burn through all kinds of forest stands and densities with equal ferocity.

So the impressive blazes we are experiencing are less likely due to “forest health” but largely to climatic conditions favorable to rapid fire spread.


EFFECTIVENESS OF FUEL REDUCTIONS

This brings up another problem with the BCSP. Proponents argue that logging can reduce fuels and thus reduce fire risk. On the surface this seems to make sense. Reduce fuels, lower fire risk. However, there is a lot of research that finds mechanical thinning of the forest is seldom effective at stopping or even reducing fire intensity under severe fire conditions. And severe fire conditions are the only ones that are of real concern since these are the only fires that typically are a threat to communities. In some cases, due to the increase in fine fuel residue left by logging operations, it can actually increase fire risk.

Mechanically thinning by hand, followed by piling of debris and burning has been shown to be more effective at reducing fire intensity and spread, but this is a very costly operation, often running into the thousands of dollars per acre. Furthermore, it requires continued repeat treatments to maintain effectiveness since removal of small trees and shrubs by fuels reduction projects leads to less competition and enhance rapid growth of new trees and shrubs. In other words, you don’t do this once and call it good. As a consequence, this might be an appropriate strategy if used in a surgical manner in and near Seeley Lake, but it is unlikely to be implemented across the landscape as a whole simply due to cost.

We should not forget that the National Park Service does a tremendous job of fuels management without logging, but the Forest Service always seems to see logging as the answer to all that ails the forests. Much like the old time doctors who always advocated bleeding a person to rid the body of “bad” blood that was presumed to be causing illness, the Forest Service tends to default to logging as the “cure” for all ills real or imaginary.

A far more effective and less costly way to protect Seeley Lake home owners is to reduce the flammability of homes themselves by mandatory metal roofs, keeping gutters free of debris, and other means that are remarkably successful at reducing home losses to fires.

LOGGING IMPACTS

One of the biggest problems in the plan is that it fails to consider the full range of negative impacts associated with logging. Logging always degrades the forest ecosystem. Logging roads and skid trails become vectors for the spread of weeds. Yes you can spray herbicides on these weed infestations, but spraying is seldom 100% effective, so every time you log, you help to spread weeds, which in the long run may be one of the worse threats to ecosystem health.

Logging roads cut slopes, severing down slope water flow, and capturing water on roadbeds, which then runs off with greater volume and erosive power. Not surprisingly, logging roads are a major cause of sedimentation in streams, negatively impacting fish, and aquatic life.

Logging roads also act as vectors for human entry through illegal ORV activity. A study by the MDFWP has shown that closed logging roads facilitates easier hiking by hunters, thus increases access, leading to a reduction in security for hunted and trapped species.

Logging equipment compacts soils, decreasing water infiltration and reducing soil productivity by eliminating space for soil microbes from bacteria to nematodes.

Logging removes biomass, much of necessary for future forest growth. Live trees, dead logs on the ground and snags are not a “wasted” or “excess” resource that can be removed without impacting the future resiliency of the forest. These physical structures provide the home and feeding areas for many species. Dead trees, in particular, have great, but mostly unappreciated ecological importance in the maintenance of the forest ecosystem health.

Logging alters stand age structure, species composition, and other variables in ways that we don’t fully appreciate or acknowledge.

The full and complete restoration of roads is more than putting up a gate. It requires the restoration of slope and replacement of top soil, removal of culverts and naturalization of stream channels, and revegetation. To fully restore a road is a costly endeavor, and seldom occurs. So ask a lot of questions about just what the BCSP means when they say they will “restore” or “close” a road and how will they pay for this?

Yes one can mitigate some of the worse aspects of logging impacts—if you even know what these impacts are—but logging has many impacts that appear to be glossed over by all the parties to the BCSP.


ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

But beyond the problem that we are creating more environmental damage by logging so we can fix the damage created by past logging, there is the issue of implementation. Given that the demand for lumber is at near record lows, the demand for public logs will likely result in very low bids. Some proponents expect timber demand to rise in the future, making the plan’s economic assumptions more viable. However, at this time it’s not clear there will be sufficient additional funds over and above the cost of implementing the timber sales to do other restorative work like road closures. With such uncertainty, there should be no logging. On other stewardship contracts in the Montana, the trees were cut, but much of the lauded restoration work that was supposed to happen did not occur.

Furthermore, we don’t need to log the forest to pay for these activities. Keep in mind that the BCSP is advocating a subsidy of $12 million for implementation of the plan, much of it a direct subsidy to Pyramid Lumber to facilitate its purchase of a biomass burner to reduce the energy costs of its operations to the company. If we had $12 million to throw at Pyramid Lumber and the Seeley Lake Ranger District, we could use that money to fund road removal and other activities that would both create jobs and benefit the environment without the negative impacts of logging.

Even if one believed that it was in the public interest to subsidize the economic opportunities of Seeley Lake, one can question whether other ways of spending the money might produce greater long-term benefits. Perhaps using that same amount of money to hire more teachers for the Seeley Lake schools might result in more long-term good than subsidizing a lumber company. Or maybe creating more cross country ski, mountain biking, and hiking trails in the area might ultimately result in greater economic activity than subsidizing a logging company. I have not seen any evidence that the BCSP has considered any other options.

THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

That the timber industry and Forest Service would gloss over logging impacts is not surprising, but it’s unforgivable that environmental organizations like TNC, TU, NWF, MWA, TWS all fail to articulate these costs. If environmentalists fail to articulate the real environmental costs of logging, who will?

Given the uncertainty about many of the basic assumptions of the BCSP such as the need for “restoration” and whether thinning will reduce fire risk, and other issues of economic viability of the stewardship proposals, one would hope that environmental organizations would default towards no manipulation of the land and/or the least intrusive methods that could accomplish the goals (like NPS fuels reduction, and mandatory regulations to reduce flammability of homes) rather than advocating intrusive and often environmentally destructive logging activities as a cure to questionable ailments. How can the public decide whether this BCSP serves the real interests of the American people if all we get is a one-sided view of the proposal that clearly serves the timber industry?

Is the BCSP worthy of public support? It is impossible to tell given the one-sided support for the proposal we have seen so far. One thing is certain; many of the real environmental and economic costs are ignored, while the presumed benefits are exaggerated. The BCSP might be a good starting point for further discussion, but without revisions, as it now stands, one can’t determine whether it’s really a public benefit or just a benefit to the local timber company.