The Forest Service as Noah

High-elevation headwater streams that provide refuge for native bull trout and cutthroat trout would remain cold enough even under the worst warming scenarios to protect and support them. These streams, in places like Central Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains, can carry these native trout through the global warming bottleneck – when many species will disappear – that scientists say the world faces even if nations are able to stop the rise in greenhouse gases. “They are like Noah’s ark for bull trout and cutthroat,” Isaak said.

In February, Isaak and Young briefed forest officials and others working collaboratively across Idaho to restore the health of forest ecosystems while providing jobs for rural communities. The briefing gave local land managers like those on the Boise National Forest a chance to see how their plans fit into these “climate shields.” “There were a few areas in the Lowman District and in the upper Boise,” said David Olson, a Boise National Forest spokesman.

Said Isaak: “The hope is that the information provides a strategic tool that can be used to make more efficient local investments in stream restoration and protection projects, so that the broadest possible distributions of cutthroat trout and bull trout remain later this century.”

Isaak’s Noah’s ark approach won’t just help aquatic species, but also can help managers determine what other habitat will remain viable as warmer winters, earlier runoff and increased wildfire accelerate with warming temperatures. Wolverine biologists are looking at many of the same areas, Young said. Pika, lynx and other mammals that depend on cool summers or good snowpack may find refuge in Idaho’s high country.

This story describes a concrete step towards being strategic about climate change by identifying areas that should be used to build the ‘ark.’  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the connection to national forest plans, where strategic choices about management priorities need to be made.  It will be interesting to see how the Nez Perce-Clearwater forest plan revision incorporates this strategy.

5 thoughts on “The Forest Service as Noah”

  1. Noah’s Ark is all well and good, but Noah didn’t build his ark as a tinder box or leaky sieve. Until the Forest Service takes that part of the Organic Act that directs the management of its holdings for “securing favorable conditions of water flows,” the protections described in the article are going to be tenuous at best. Involve those cold streams in a catastrophic wildfire, and how many fish are you going to have?

    Reply
  2. Noah.. was pretty sure the flood was intended by God to recede in his lifetime. I don’t know what the projections are of future returns to current (or past) climates, and I would bet they would depend on a variety of known and unknown factors (which means we don’t really know, even if someone really really smart, with a very very large computer, models it). So we don’t know whether the world will ever go back to what it was, but history tells us that people will adjust to what comes and maybe not even hanker after the past (e.g. mastodons, passenger pigeons, etc.)

    I wish scientists wouldn’t use expressions like “Noah’s Ark”..it makes the world seem less dynamic than scientists know it really is.

    Reply
    • it’s just a metaphor, scientists often borrow from mythology to make a point more vivid and memorable. I have a paper with Vishnu and Shiva in it, not meant to be taken literally, hopefully 🙂

      Reply
  3. Yes, but I think science (finding about how the real world works) is wonderful on its own, without the need to make points more “vivid and memorable” by appealing to metaphor- especially ones that are not accurate and indirectly reflect a static world. Hopefully Vishnu and Shiva do not ;).

    Reply
  4. I think the “global warming bottleneck” metaphor was added by the writer of the article. I think the strategy could also be valid for more of a higher “plateau” on a warmer planet (this research was based on climate models). (I did think the metaphor of an ark for fish was a little strange.)

    Reply

Leave a Comment