Threats to Forests - Bugs and Disease

Bugs and Disease

There are always bugs and diseases in the forest making their living by chewing on various parts of the trees.  That’s ok, it’s natural and, to an extent, plays a part in forests’ health. When something in the environment goes hay-wire allowing a particular bug or disease to go epidemic, that’s when there is a problem.  Research and quick forest management actions are the tools people have to stop a disease or insect epidemic in the forest.  We didn’t have the right tools, or they didn’t work, when chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease and white pine blister rust epidemics took off.  These diseases reduced American chestnut, American elm and western white pine populations to a few scattered individuals that survived.  These  events were huge ecological and economic losses.  Sometimes research and management actions can’t stop an epidemic, but they’re the tools we have and we need to constantly improve them and keep trying every time a forest is threatened.

The tussock moth, bark beetle and spruce bud worm are insect threats that from time-to-time have become epidemic, killing large areas of forest.  Forest researchers have developed some techniques to limit the spread of these insects when populations threaten to become epidemic, for example, combating bark beetles usually involves cutting and removing trees that have been attacked.  Harvesting the attacked tree has to be done at the stage in the beetles life cycle when they are still chewing their way through the soft phloem and cambium layers just under the bark.  Cutting and removing an infected trees at this stage of the beetle’s life cycle sends millions of them to a sawmill where they die.  If the tree is left standing in the forest, the beetles dine all winter, then in the spring they burrow outside the bark and fly until they bump into another tree to burrow into and begin eating the phloem and cambium, killing that tree also by girdling it from the inside.  Another year, a whole lot more dead trees, and the cycle escalates, whole forests are threatened.  After a die-off of thousands or millions of trees, they are potent fuel for large, hot fires.

The technique of cutting and removing beetle trees can’t always happen, sometimes the costs are too great, sometimes there is no access, sometimes there is political opposition to cutting the infected trees. 

Probably the biggest factor in preventing insect or disease epidemic is to have a healthy forest, young and middle-aged forests are generally healthy, old forests aren’t - just like people.  Bugs can get a start in old forests, attacking trees with low vigor, once inside the bark they eat, lay their eggs, fly, eat, increase their numbers until there are enough to successfully attack healthy trees.  The epidemic is off and running.   Healthy trees fight a bug attack by sending a rush of sap to a spot where a beetle has burrowed into the cambium.  The sap encases the bug and flushes it back outside the hole it made in the bark - dead bug.  But, evan a young healthy tree can fight off only so many beetle attacks until some make it through and then the tree has lost.

It’s a constant battle for survival out there in the forest, for the trees, the bugs, the fungi and other disease critters.   We people are usually cheering for the trees and doing what we can through research and management to keep the trees healthy, growing and beautiful.

Shore lines on Mount Jumbo from ancient Glacial Lake Missoula

 

Threats to Forests - A Fire

*Intermission*

A Fire

The spring of 1981 in the Northern Rockies was a dry one, the forests had not had not felt moisture since the last snow fall in May and by early June the winter’s snows were gone.  In the evening of June 29 a powerful thunderstorm rolled out of the west.  Lois and I noticed the far off flashes against the dark clouds; about half a minute later the muffled thunder.   It was about six miles away and, from the looks of it, the cloud would cover a big swath of the Ninemile District where I was the ranger.   

We took a seat on the picnic table outside the kitchen door of the Ranger’s house at the Station to watch the show in the sky and it was a spectacular one.  Down-strikes of lightning all along the ridges that form the boundary of the Ninemile drainage and further to the south.  We watched it from the picnic table until dark came and the storm had spent its furious energy - and there was a lot of it.  Through it all not a drop of rain fell on us,  a dry lightning storm.  There would be fire starts in the forest.

The next morning I met early with the district fire staff officer, the timber management officer, head engineer, minerals guy and recreation guy to map out a strategy for attacking the fires we knew would show up.   All of the 140 people that worked at the ranger station would be on fire alert.  Fire crews were held at the ranger station, timber crews, engineering crews, recreation and trail crews would be in constant radio contact and take fire tools with them so they could be dispatched to a fire from where they were working.  Everyone, regardless of their regular duties, had fire training and were expected to fight fires when needed.   

The lookouts were scanning the mountains looking for wisps of smoke and an aerial patrol plane was flying early to look for smokes.   If we could get to every fire before it had a chance to get up and going in the heat of the day we’d have a chance to keep them small.   Fire reports started coming into the District Fire Management Officer (FMO).   The fires that appeared to be small and a crew could get to in a hurry got a crew of five.   Bigger smokes or ones that would take hours to get to had up to ten people headed that way.  Smoke jumpers were ordered on fires that were miles from a road.   Loggers were contacted to send their bulldozers to fires where they could help the hand crews.  On the Ninemile District we had 25 fires the lookouts had reported.  By afternoon we had district timber crews, fire crews, brush disposal crews, trail crews, our hot-shot crew and smokejumper crews fighting all these fires trying to catch them before they got big.  The ranger districts around us had similar situations. 

By six p.m. I was feeling pretty good about our chances of keeping all the fires small.  Reports from the crews were coming in, they had dug and held their fire lines through the day and would work through the night to strengthen lines.  They had food and water to carry them through to the next day.

It was about then that Stark Mountain Lookout called in, Virginia spotted another fire on a shoulder of Ch-paa-qnQ Peak.  Lookouts keep track of all the fires they can see and which ones have people on them, she thought it was unmanned and it was now putting up a big smoke.  

At this point the Fire Management Officer (FMO) and I were the only two people on the District that were not on a fire, we’d been coordinating the whole thing.  The FMO had to stay by the radio and phones to handle any emergency so I grabbed a radio and headed out to see what could be done on the Ch-paa-qn Peak fire.  It took about an hour to get there.   The fire was burning where there were a lot of old down trees on the ground, probably from a wind storm many years ago, there was also thick brush under the tall living trees so there was a lot of fuel.  The fire would likely burn hot and spread all night.   But maybe I could do something.   There was a bulldozer at a logging operation about a mile from the fire.   I radioed the FMO to see if he could contact the logging company and get a cat skinner to start building fire line.  I had been scouting the fire to see how to fight it and I thought “cat line” could be built along the bottom of the fire to at least keep it from burning down the slope.   The two sides of the fire and the upper edge were too steep for the bulldozer to work safely, it would take hand crews to stop the fire.   It took a long time to get a cat operator, fuel, and lights to the bulldozer and “walk” it to the portion of the fire I wanted it to work.   But, about midnight the cat was ready to build fire line.   

Meanwhile, the FMO had called one of the crews off the fire they had been working.  They’d leave two people on their fire and ten would come back to the ranger station for some food and then go to the Ch-paa-qn Peak fire.   It was Charlie’s crew.  Charlie was trail crew foreman and that day he had his trail crew plus district fire crew people, they were in shape.   

I spent some time with the cat skinner telling him what I wanted done and flagged a line that he should work  Then I started to scout the fire again flagging a line for hand crews where it would be effective to hold the fire.  I flagged a line around the fire and was working my way back to where the cat was working when I first heard the chain saws, it was 2:00 am.   

I had been in radio contact with Charlie, they were following my flagged line up the steep slope.   Charlie, with his chain saw was in the lead.   Working as close to the flames as the heat would permit, yellow reflecting off his hard hat and the sweat on his face, his huge arms inside the fire resistant shirt moving the heavy powerful chainsaw like a sword, graceful, every movement counts, logs collapse under assault, a swath six feet wide opens up.   Charlie keeps moving.    The saw behind him is cutting brush stems as big as your wrist  with no pause in the motion.  Forward movement is steady.   Behind the second saw are two “chuckers” throwing the severed logs and brush to the outside of the fire line so those fuels it will never burn.  Next are the pulaskis, chopping roots, tearing at the duff to expose soil and rocks.   The lead pulaski digs until the guy behind tells him to “bump-up;”  at that command he moves up 20 feet and digs way at the forest floor, the second pulaski works on that 20 foot space until it’s done then bumps up again, always, digging, moving forward.   Behind the pulaskis the shovels scrape and clear the line wider and deeper to rocks and dirt until there is a line 18 inches wide within the six foot swath.   There is nothing that will burn within the line.   Team work, team work, team work - the line progresses through down logs and brush; up slopes too steep to  be on;  within a few feet of roaring flames.  Nearby trees explode into candles throwing sparks like a rain shower.   The “shovels” have to find any sparks outside the line and put them out, they throw shovels full of dirt on flames that threaten to jump the thin dirt line — that’s how the line holds, fire fighters hold it!   This crew has been working at this level since the morning before, at least  16 hours and they still had a long way to go.  They’d do it.   By sunrise the fire was contained within a fire line.   It would be days before it was out, but it was contained that night.   

These people made a team, athleticism, commitment, dedication to a purpose, courage and the guts to keep going when there isn’t anything left to go on but guts — that’s a team no athletic game can compare to - and there is no TV sportscaster to give a score and say who was the star, no big salaries or endorsements, just government workers, dedicated people doing what they do, service to people and forests.

It was my privilege to work with many hundreds of these people through numerous days and nights over thirty years.  I’m thankful for it,  I hope I learned from them.  

Jerry Covault

   

Threats to Forests - Thinking About Fire in Forests

Evolving Thoughts About Fire and Forests

For the better part of a couple hundred years we took the attitude that all fires in the forest were bad and needed to be put out as quick as possible.  If they weren’t put out they could burn our houses, barns and towns.  People were right, fires did all that and burned people in the process.  But, people didn’t deal with why fires got to be so big and destructive.  They knew it was all the slash (limbs, tree tops, rotten logs, etc.) left from logging that burned so hot, but they continued to leave the slash behind and keep moving into new forest areas.    After all, if there were ways to reduce the slash fuels it would cost a lot and who wants to pay for a dead horse? - so to speak.   So, the slash was left in the wake of logging and forest fires got bigger and more destructive.  As people learned more about forests, they organized to put fires out while they were small.  Requirements came into effect that tree harvesting operations include the cost of reducing slash.   Recently logged areas were broadcast burned when the weather was cool and rain was forecast, in other areas the limbs and tops were piled and burned in winter.  Foresters started to gets control of the big, bad fires by preventing them.  

At the same time the small cool fires were being prevented, or put out when they were small, if left alone small fires could turn big and destructive.  The Forest Service's “10 am policy” (every fire should be put out before 10 am the day after it was discovered) was effective at putting out most fires on National Forest while they were small.  Of course some fires got away and became big, but generally, fire was greatly reduced in the forest.

Harold Weaver graduated in forestry from Oregon State University in 1928 and wove his way into the Department of Interior’s Indian Service, now the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).  The Indian Service had responsibility for technical advice for managing Reservation lands including considerable forest land.  The Indian Service, (BIA), did not have a fire policy eliminating all fire from the forests.  This allowed their foresters to really think about forest fire and all of its effects.  Harold Weaver did just that, he observed and thought about what he was seeing, then he took the extra step and wrote his findings and, in 1941, submitted his article to the technical forestry journal of the time  (today’s The Journal of Forestry).  Weaver’s article was titled “Fire as an Ecological and Silvicultural Factor in the Ponderosa Pine Region of the Pacific Slope.”  Weaver questioned that all forest fires should be put out as soon as possible and showed how fire could benefit a forest.  The Forest Service already had answered that question and opposed Weaver’s reopening the discussion.  But, somehow, through all the small “p” politics and review levels and opposition the article was published in the 1943 Journal.  It got people to thinking and about fire in a different way.  By the early 1950’s other respected forest scientists  began to support Weaver’s thoughts backed by peer reviewed research.  Weaver’s observations began to get traction. 

In the 1970’s forest scientists began speaking out that without small cool fires running around, the natural accumulation of needles, limbs and fallen trees was building on forest floors everywhere.  Also, stands of crowded, small, shade-tolerant trees with limbs all the way to the ground were everywhere growing under the bigger taller trees - ladder fuels!  Whole forests were becoming ripe for stand replacement fires, big bad ones. 

The last forty years, foresters have been dealing with this threat by using prescribed fire.  Prescribed fires are deliberately set to accomplish specific goals and objectives that can be achieved when the weather, fuels, and boundaries are right, that is, “in prescription.”  A written fire prescription states the objectives for a burn, it may be to reduce slash, to improve browse for wildlife, to kill some crowded small trees, to reduce fuels near buildings or communities, to make the site better for preferred species of trees.  Most prescriptions are designed to accomplish several of these desired results.  Prescribed fires are a proven good tool, they are widely used on public forests and timber company forests, but they need to be used on many more acres.  The problems are, prescribed fire is expensive, but then, so are mega fires, and there is always the chance that a prescribed fire will get away and do damage.  When that happens the “ain’t it awful” group and the lawyers have a great time at the expense of forest managers.

The “Fire Wise” program that encourages home owners in forested areas to reduce fuels around buildings is gaining acceptance, but it is usually a voluntary program.  It needs to be fully funded and required wherever buildings exist within forests.  That will require financing and cooperation between property owners, local governments, insurance companies and subdividers.  That will be very difficult.  Perhaps, in the long run, perspective homeowners will realize that charming forested house sites at the end of a dead end road are basically fuel and someday will burn, possibly trapping them in the burning house.  That discouraging realization may help reduce the problem of houses being fuel

Threats to Forests - People - Forests - Fire

People - Forests - Fire

Fire has been a companion to settlement from the first, both as a controlled tool and out of control terror.  Through the years we’ve learned a lot about controlling fires: fire science, more forest roads, trained fire crews, smokejumpers, better vehicles, bulldozers, air attack with fire retardant, helicopters, pumpers and hose lines, infrared photos that see through smoke to show where the fire is, better planning, better food, showers for fire fighters are all in the fire fighting arsenal these days.  These and other improvements in fire science and technology allowed settlement to move further into the forest.  People thought, it was finally safe to live among the trees.  Firearms had taken care of animal threats and now fires were stopped - we thought.  Local governments saw no need for zoning against developments in forested areas so houses and forests began to coexist.  People bought forested lots and built their dream home and thought it was great.  Then in the fire season of 1988 people began to learn the assumption that wild fires could be stopped was wrong.

Do we really want this
next our dream home?

With the onset of the “forested subdivision” there was more happening in the forest than house building. Natural fuels were allowed to build up on forest floors, small trees (ladder fuels) were planted, or saved, close to buildings, whole subdivisions of houses were gradually becoming at risk of burning and it was hard to notice in day-to-day life.   Since the summer of ’88 thousands of homes in forests have burned and scores of fire fighters have lost their lives and millions and millions of dollars have been spent trying to save buildings that were not savable as raging wildfire approaches. 

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s Hobbit, he says, “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”  Good advice - and, Fire is a dragon.  We have not calculated all the fire problems associated with houses in forests.  We have not been aware enough of fuels building-up throughout the forests and where we’ve been aware of it, there hasn’t seemed to be much we could do about fuels.  Controlled fires to reduce fuels are not an answer, they could get out of control and burn houses, that wouldn’t do.  There has been no money to use manpower and machines to remove dead wood and small trees from forest subdivisions.  Unstoppable fires continued to happen and a new fuel type had come to the forest, houses, they burn very hot. 

What can be done?  Controlling hot, fast moving, crown fires that overwhelm forest and homes has to begin before the fire starts.  For years Smokey Bear told us to be careful with fire.  Smoky’s message has not been enough. Fuels continued to build throughout most forested areas under the policy of never letting fire in the woods.  With an abundance of fuels, including houses, wildfires are going to happen when weather conditions are ripe for an inferno.  Maybe not here, maybe not this year, but certainly, here and everywhere, some year.  All fire starts simply can’t be prevented, there is too much lightning, too many people and it only takes a small careless, or vicious, act.  And all fire starts can’t be put out while they are small, sometimes the fuel and weather conditions are simply too explosive (and that’s the right term).  One thing that can be done is reduce fuels on the ground so when a fire-start happens it will be a low intensity fire that can be controlled.

Reducing fuels is expensive and someone has to pay for it.  Where houses already exist in the forest, homeowners can make the area around their buildings more resistant to a wild fire consuming their home.  They can clean all the small fuels and cut and remove small trees that would be ladder fuels.  They can thin out the medium and larger trees so tree crowns are not touching one another, or any buildings.  These things should be done for as many hundreds of feet around buildings as is possible.  Buildings should have metal roofs and flammable materials near buildings should be removed.   

Local governments have the responsibility and authority to zone private lands to prevent housing subdivisions in forested areas that someday will burn. Where forested subdivisions presently exist, local governments and insurance companies need to require that all homeowners create “fire-wise” space within and around every home and subdivision lot.  This is necessary because it doesn’t help much for one home owner within a subdivision to make their property fire-wise and those around them to do nothing.  Everyone has to participate and that takes local government to make it happen.

Logging for profit can reduce fuels in general forest areas and within subdivisions, but it takes agreement and cooperation.  Logging has helped with fuels reduction for many decades in commercial timber management areas.  Treatment of the slash and ladder fuels has been paid for by the value of the big logs removed.  It reduces the profit margin, but it can and must be done to reduce the chance of destructive fires.   However, in very dry conditions even well done fuels reduction projects, will not prevent destructive fires. 

There are millions and millions of acres of forest that do not have enough commercial size trees to pay for making the forest resistant to mega fires (the big ones that destroy all trees, burn homes, cook the soil, burn wild animals, result in erosion that pollutes streams and rivers and kills fish).  These millions of acres also need fuels reduced.  Tax dollars are about the only alternative for doing work in these stands. 

BEGINNING A NEW CHAPTER - Threats to Forests

Fire,

Two kinds of fire

Most people agree there are two kinds of fires, the good kinds that cook our food and warm our homes and the bad kind that burns down our homes.   Of course, today, electricity does the cooking and warming, but most of that electricity is generated by a fire at a power plant at the other end of the power line, we just don't see it.

Hurting, but still some green.
Resilience !

 

  

Forests and individual trees view fire a lot like people do, there are good fires and bad fires.  From the tree's point of view, good fires are low intensity, that is they are not too hot.  The flames stay close to the ground, mostly less than eight feet high, they creep around burning the grass, bushes, limbs and trees that have fallen.  These “cool” fires will kill small trees, but larger trees with thick insulating bark, like Ponderosa pine, will survive low intensity fires – no problem.  A year after a “cool” fire, the grass grows back from its roots, so do most shrubs and the forest looks clean and fresh.  The small trees that were burned were killed, no coming back from the roots for them.  That's generally good because it makes fewer trees in the area so each live tree has more space to use available sunlight, soil and water.  That makes for fewer and bigger trees rather than a lot of small trees crowded together where none get enough sun, water and soil nutrients to grow big — we like forests with big trees.

Fires in forests aren't normally a solid wall of flame moving across the landscape.  Within the perimeter of a fire there are many areas that are not touched by flames.   There are lots of reasons for unburned areas inside a fire's perimeter,  the humidity may come up causing the flames to quiet down, the wind may change, or fuels become sparse, topography affects fire behavior, or night comes on and the fire lays down. All these and more factors are at work determining what burns and what doesn't burn.  That's why fire is so unpredictable.  This is the way it is for both hot fires with flame lengths twice as high as the trees and for cool fires with flame lengths that don't reach the low limbs.  Of course, small trees and everything else survive in unburned areas, smoky air doesn’t kill trees like it does people.

Low intensity fires and forests get along very well, in fact, they need each other.  Hot fires are a different story, forests fear them and so do people - for good reasons, they’ll kill you.  Why are some fires so hot that flame lengths may be 200 feet or more and trees are destroyed?  There are three big factors in that that question, fuels, topography and weather.  Fuels are the factor we can do something about.  Natural fuels, of course, come from the forest itself, the fallen limbs, needles, dead trees, small live trees with limbs near the ground - they’re all fuel.  Fires start on the ground, either by lightning or by people.  If there is an accumulation of dry fuels at the point of ignition and if the weather is hot, dry, and windy, the fire spreads.  The flames may stay on the ground if there are no ladder fuels.  Ladder fuels are limbs on small or medium size trees that grow clear to the ground like a good Christmas tree.  When the needles or leaves are dry enough to carry fire, flames explode up the small trees, reach the crowns of the big trees and rush up forested mountain sides, tree top to tree top - that’s a crown fire - flame lengths may be twice the tree heights moving with frightening speed, intensity, and heat.  

Crown fires, kill everything in their path.  Intense crown fires may bake the soil so even the roots of grasses and shrubs are killed, only the tree skeletons remain standing, but they’re dead, the cones and seeds burned.  When a hot crown fire has past, the forest has experienced what foresters call “a stand replacement fire.”  The forest that was there before the fire is no more, it will be replaced with something else.  It may be different kinds of trees, it may be brush, it may be grass, it may be weeds, and in severe burns only bare soil and rock may be left.  It’s no wonder forests fear these hot fires, so do people. 

Forests & People - Intermission, Bugling Elk

*Intermission*

My Top Ten Wildlife Experiences, #3

Bugling Elk

Fryingpan and Snowy Range

1972 to 1976

When I was Ranger on the Fryingpan District, Whiteriver National Forest, for the fun of it, I worked on the skill of bugling to elk by whistling through my fingers.  I developed a pretty good imitation of a bull elk and over the years, since 1971, have called to elk hundreds of times -- a few times I’ve even had an elk bugle back!  Twice it was memorable.

In the fall of 1972, Vinance Faver and I were riding the Basalt Mountain Cattle and Horse Allotment.  It was a beautiful fall day, we were looking at the grass utilization and seeing if the cows were in the area they were supposed to be.  Being with Vinance all day on a horse looking at cows  and grass was always a good day - and a learning day for me. 

Because the elk had started bugling, Vinance had brought along a small brass bugle he’d just bought - he didn’t hunt, it was just for fun.  As we rode he would get the thing out and blow it from time to time, but it was a pain to deal with and we were riding the oak brush country so that made it worse.  I started imitating the bugling by whistling through my fingers.  Vinance was impresses, so that was good, and from time to time I’d give it a try.  We were getting higher in the country working our way up through the oak brush and starting to get into scattered lodgepole pine when I got an answer to one of my whistles.  

There was an elk down there!  And he answered me!  I waited a few seconds, Vinance said “Answer him.”  I did.  He called back!  

We were riding up through the brush toward a small open knob, but it was a ways off yet.  As we worked our way up, the elk and I were increasing our conversation -- of course I had no idea what I was saying to him.  But, we could tell he was getting closer.  We thought that was a good thing - at least it was exciting.

Finally we reached the knob, it was open, no oak brush or pines, rocky and only about as big as a couple houses.  We looked around for a minute, I bugled again.  

The elk bugled back and all of a sudden there he was! - Crashing though the brush and onto the knob with us.  Madder than hell and five or six points on each antler - I wasn’t into making exact counts, but those points looked big!  He was dancing around, snorting, head and antlers held high, he looked like an elk ready to fight.  Our horses didn’t like the odds and started prancing around wild eyed looking for somewhere to run.  Vinance and I were about the same as our horses.  

That bull elk wasn’t leaving, but he wasn’t sure we were worth his effort to fight.   I definitely had quit bugling and Vinance was trying to shoo him away.  This was not a good place to try and dodge a charging bull elk and there wasn’t any place to get away.  

After a minute or so of hooting and hollering and hat waving the bull decided these weird critters weren’t  worth any more effort and he crashed down through the brush, returning to his harem.  He evidently figured we were no threat to his beautiful cows ~ and he was right!

------------

My other big bugling experience was September 13, 1976, by then I was ranger on the Laramie District of the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming.  Linn was the range technician and on this day we were riding the Snowy Range Sheep and Goat Allotment.  As I recall there were two or three bands (1000 head each - counting only ewes) on the allotment.  In mid September the grazing season was about over.  Snow that stays would certainly set in within a month.  So, we were checking forage utilization and problem areas.  

We unloaded the horses at the top of the pass on the highway that goes from Laramie to Encampment.  We headed east, just skirting the ecotome between the sub alpine and alpine.  It was early and the day was still cold, but the sky was clear so the sun would warm things up in due time.  We’d been riding a while so I let out an elk bugle whistle, it was the season.   Almost immediately I got a reply.  We were in alpine fir moving from one clump of trees to another.  I bugled back -  he replied.  He was coming closer. We kept moving, I called again.  He answered.  We kept riding, staying in the trees.  This went on for half an hour or more - an extremely long time for one of my wildlife experiences.  Finally the bull was in the same clump of alpine fir that we were.  These trees have branches that go all the way to the ground so sight distance is short. 

The bull was crashing around, snorting and bugling, trying to decide what to do about us.  We were moving around trying to peer through the limbs to get a better look at him.  He could have been, probably was, a six point or bigger (it’s my story and I’m saying six point.).  He was making a heck of a lot of noise and no more than thirty feet from us.  

After a bit of that we decided we’d better get out of his territory before things got out of hand.  We worked our way out of the stand of fir into the alpine.  Clearly acknowledging -- He’d won.  But, we had a neat experience.                             

Jerry

Forests & People - Next

Next!

The history of people and forests has mostly been; people take from the forest and don’t pay much attention after we’ve taken.  We have thought of trees as God’s way of giving us the wood - at no cost - trees have always just been there.  The only cost was to turn the tree into 2x4 s or plywood by logging, manufacturing, and marketing.  The results have often been very bad for the land, for the forest, for the critters and for the people that follow.   Those days need to be behind us.  We’d do better to put science and forest sustainability and all the benefits of a healthy forest ahead of short-term dollar profits.  Like the famous, “No free lunch,” there are “No free trees,” yet we’ve been treating our forests that way.  Of course that means money, and it will have to come from paying more for the wood products we all use and from taxes for government to do the complete job of managing America’s forests.

We need to start considering forests a living partner with us in caring for this earth - because they are!  Partners get paid for what they do, they have benefits and an expectation of a healthy future.  People need to find ways to value natural beauty like we may value a beautiful painting, or a board.  Natural beauty has value for most of us, but we don’t have a way to put a price on it like we do a painting, or a 2x4, there are no “man-hours” into natural beauty, we don’t put a price on it, so it is “worthless” and too often gets destroyed.  Even when outstanding natural beauty is protected, we don’t know how to put a price on it and often, through tourism, we may even destroy the beauty we recognized, yet, what is beauty for if not to be seen?  We could use some art and science collaboration to figure-out what to do.

A dollar value on Carbon credits is a way to value the job forests do pulling carbon out of the air where we don’t want it, and making wood out of those pesky global-warming molecules.  We need to determine what clean water is worth, adding-up what it costs to  make dirty water clean isn’t the whole story.  We need a way to value soil in place on a mountain side rather than eroded downstream to the bottom of a reservoir or in an irrigation canal.   We need to place a dollar value on lumber that reflects the cost of planting the tree, protecting and culturing the tree for 30 to 125 years before cutting it for lumber.  These and other efforts will start to give us a realistic idea of the value of a forest.  Then we can think about how to pay for caring for forests. 

There is another factor, it may sound a little weird, it’s one of those, “I don’t believe in ghosts -- but they’re there,” things.  Forests have consciousness.  They do!  We need to try to understand that consciousness and work with it.  Now there’s a challenge!  It could be done.  If we can come to understand that consciousness, “knowing” will help us live better on this great “Blue Marble.”  That kind of “knowing” is beyond science and it is short of the pure faith that religions requires.  It is an area of knowledge we haven’t developed the tools to investigate, we need to get to work on it, because this Earth is talking to us.

Forests & People - Transparent Forest Planning

Forest Management Becomes Transparent

The 1976 National Forest Management Act made a big difference concerning management of the National Forests.  It requires every National Forest have a plan that shows clearly the kinds of management activities that will be done and where.  For example some areas are suitable and available for timber harvesting, some are suitable, but not available because of conflict with other uses or needs.  It’s not an easy thing to wrap your head around, but think of it as zoning, some areas are good for several kinds of uses, growing commercial timber crops, wildlife habitat and watershed.  Another area may be so valuable for watershed that timber management activities are greatly modified to put first priority on improving soil health and water quality.  The law requires that Forest Plans be done with public input.  The Forest Service forest planning effort took that seriously, nation-wide there has been more public input to forest planning than any other public activity, other than Presidential elections.

Forest plans combined forest science with public values and they describe the issues, the goals and the objectives.  The plans put costs to alternative management strategies and selects the management strategy that will be followed.  That is good, planning is good, transparent planning is good, but there has been a down side.  The planning effort that the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act require has led to never-ending litigation.  When the Forest Service or other government agency decides on an action or a project whether it is, a road, a timber harvest, a recreation development, wildlife improvement project -- whatever it is, someone or some group will oppose the project and take the agency to court to stop it.  Lawsuits often claim the Environmental Impact Statement is insufficient, even though it may include scores or hundreds of pages of scientific data, conclusions and recommendations concerning the project. This process puts forest management decisions into the legal arena where a judge will make decisions biased on legal words, not need, not cost, not good science.  How in the world did we come to that as a way to make good decisions?  Natural resources sciences are taking a back seat in federal forests and natural resource decision-making.  No matter who wins these cases, years of court delay are normal, so when projects involving time-sensitive issues, like salvaging fire killed timber before it rots, wildlife improvements, controlling insect outbreaks, the reason for doing the project may be lost by the legal delays.    

Legal challenges have reduced the flow of forest products and services from the National Forests and other federal lands so effectively it has become a well worn strategy.  However, the nation’s demand for wood has not decreased, so we take more wood from private land and, more import, from other countries.  Trees  grown on private forest land and certainly wood imported from other countries is not normally managed for multiple use benefits.  So, by using a greater proportion of wood from private land and other countries, it may be reckoned, results in greater environmental damage to the Earth than the perceived damage that initiates a lawsuit against a project on US public lands.  (Read that sentence again and think about it.)   Look to the tropical forests and the destruction to wildlife habitat that is occurring in many countries, consider the carbon sequestering that is being lost with the reduction of the tropical forests, the associated burning that adds carbon to the atmosphere.  We need to think beyond boundaries when considering what is best for our forests, the critters, natural beauty, the soil, the water and the products that come from and depend on healthy forests.  

Forests & People - Change Happens

Yellowstone and People

Yellowstone continues to educate Americans about the natural world.  The news headlines of the 1988 fire summer typically used the words, “destroyed”, and “consumed”.  Well, fire will destroy a human made structure, it will consume a book or table and leave only a pile of ashes, but fire does NOT consume or destroy a forest.  It burns over or through a forest, it kills trees, but they grow back from seed.  The grass and shrubs grow back from their roots, the streams will run clean again.  Fire is nature’s way of turning a page, the trees that come back may be different species, they certainly start out smaller than the trees that were killed, but they are green, their roots hold the soil, their crowns intercept the snow and they’re beautiful.  Wild animals return, the new trees provide hiding cover and thermal cover, the new shrubs, forbs, and grasses are nutritious food for the plant eaters that are food for the meat eaters.   Most fires leave unburned patches between burned areas.  The forest lives, it evolves and continues being a forest, if we let it.  Yellowstone has shown America that a forest is not “destroyed” by fire, it is changed, made young again.  It is a matter of how time is viewed, a forest takes the long view, maybe there’s a lesson there.

Bitterrot

People - Forests - Change

Ever since that unknown visionary inserted the “Presidential Forest Reserve Authority“ into an unrelated law in 1891, America has been evolving how it treats forests and wild animals.  The last 50 years changes have been coming faster, and change is difficult.  Some people think change will hurt them financially and maybe emotionally so they resist.  Others look further into the future and believe change is essential to have a better future, or any future.  

Many who resist change have their working life or their financial investments committed to things staying the way they are, that’s huge to a working person and their family.  These people will struggle with every thing they have to prevent, or at least delay, change that will take away what they have worked so hard for.  You can imagine how a buggy-whip maker felt when he saw one of those “tin lizzys” going down the road instead of a horse-drawn surrey.  The buggy-whip craft is a metaphor for a lot of jobs these days.  Change is tough. 

Those who look years - or decades - ahead and believe passionately that change must happen usually don’t have their immediate livelihood at stake, but they have commitment to an idea, and that is powerful.  There is more than idealism involved here, there are jobs, and money.  Professional organizers, lobbyists, lawyers, writers, fund raisers and many others involved in the “change public perception business” make their living working for “causes’ - whatever the cause may be.  Their job relies on keeping a “cause” going and that makes a person committed.  

Those who resist change and those who work for change, these are the actors in the drama about how we treat our forests, wild animals, streams, rivers, oceans, and plains - our Earth.  

We the people are the audience, but we are an active audience.  We will decide if this play will change our actions, our life, or will we choose to just rock-along and figure what-will-be-will-be, let others do the heavy lifting.  Both sides in this drama, the economic side and the preserve-nature side, need some lifting, better understanding, compromise, and creative thinking.  If only one side “wins,” both sides will lose.  People need what nature offers, clean air, clean water, healthy soil, beauty, variety of plant and animal life, minerals, we need these elements to create a secure, comfortable (warm, well fed, healthy) life.  Nature can continue to provide these resources, but not at the rate people have been taking them.  People need to find ways to give back and use natural resources at a slower rate.  If people don’t moderate the nature-taking, she will shut us down.  On the other hand, if all we do is “preserve” nature, that doesn’t make for a very good quality of life for anyone. 

There is a poem, “Two Kinds of People,”  by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, it is about lifters and leaners.  The forests-and-people-issue 

needs more lifters.

Newly planted Douglas fir

An old Ponderosa at a tough place to make a living.