News from the other half of the country:
A controversial project slated for Hoosier National Forest underscores a larger struggle percolating over America’s trees.
Excerpts:
Inside the heart of Hoosier National Forest, the last truly wild place in Indiana, a deep chasm has formed – between longtime area residents like Heinrich, environmental advocates, and U.S. Forest Service managers – over the proposed Buffalo Springs Restoration Project.
Forest Service leaders maintain that burning, cutting, and spraying thousands of acres of mature trees is necessary to preserve the forest’s “overall health.” They say it will protect the wilderness near Patoka Lake in southern Indiana from the impending stressors of climate change.
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The project would further a larger U.S. Forest Service initiative to sustain oak-hickory ecosystems in the forest, which they said are “important to keep…on the landscape as many wildlife species have evolved with it and depend on it.”
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“Our forest is all pretty much the same age. We call it even-aged. That’s not good to have trees that are all the same age, because they’re all going to get old together. Which isn’t a bad thing in some part of the forest, but you want to have that diversity. You want to have those younger trees coming on too,” Thornton said.
But several environmental advocacy groups, including the Indiana Forest Alliance, Sierra Club, Protect Our Forest, Save Hoosier National Forest and the Hoosier Environmental Council, believe the Forest Service is making a mistake.
They maintain the Forest Service is operating within an archaic framework that profoundly – and erroneously – simplifies the makeup of a complex forest system, and that the real reason the Forest Service is moving forward with the Buffalo Springs Restoration Project is because they want to auction off its most valuable trees for profit.
How can it be simplifying if they are trying to get more diverse age classes and complexity?
As a native Hoosier with some good memories of that country, I looked for a rebuttal of the Forest Service position: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/04/the-battle-to-save-buffalo-springs/
The Forest Plan states the desired condition of this area is to maintain 4 to 12 percent of the area in young forest habitat. Opponents point out that the plan was adopted in 2006, and is overdue for revision.
Also, “At the same time they grossly undercount the earliest age class because they ignore what is happening on adjacent privately owned land which makes up 12,000 acres or 41% of the Buffalo Springs project area.” (Under the 2012 Planning Rule, the desired condition should be based on the ecosystem, regardless of ownership, with the FS possibly playing a compensating role.)
The Forest Service points to the non-native pines it would remove. The response: “The Forest Service expresses deep concern for the declining proportion of oaks in the forest. And yet the primary focus of their solution to this problem is to cut down hundreds of oak trees.” There is also apparently some debate about what the desired species composition should be based on what point in history should be the reference condition.
And here is what they say about $: “Those FS employees whose training or philosophical approach are most closely aligned with the activities that enhance the Forest Service budget are those most like(l)y to wind up in positions of responsibility and decision-making authority.”
The article linked in the original post says that the enviro groups who oppose the plan say that “the real reason the Forest Service is moving forward with the Buffalo Springs Restoration Project is because they want to auction off its most valuable trees for profit.”
I toured the Hoosier a few years ago to look at the forest’s restoration efforts. The USFS folks didn’t make much mention of timber revenue, but spoke at length and passionately about restoring the areas with planted pines to hardwoods and managing the existing hardwoods for resilience and health, and values such as wildlife habitat, water, etc.
I have another thought about the “compensating” idea. If all the wildlife that likes early successional habitat is on private land, then does that mean that the FS gives up its recreation (e.g. hunting) responsibility? And if early successional habitat promotes biodiversity, if the FS counts on it, what’s to keep the private folks from subdividing and decreasing the quality of the habitat? I think the compensating idea has some problems.
And I thought NRV wasn’t exactly HRV.. so is “reference condition” still relevant?
Early successional habitat can be created pretty quickly on a national forest if private land becomes non-habitat (even if it requires a plan amendment based on changed conditions).
I think the concept of “reference condition” has been broadened to include the other factors (e.g. climate) going into NRV. On the other hand, it looks like this forest has not looked beyond historic conditions as a basis for this project (which may be appropriate in this location).
Natural disturbance can be counted on to diversify the age-class structure of the forest. This is especially true in the current era of climate change which amplifies many forms of disturbance.
Climate change is likely to make early seral forests more common, and later seral forests more rare.
“Natural disturbance can be counted on to diversify the age-class structure of the forest.”
2nd Law, are you willing to accept whatever nature decides what diversity is? Me, I prefer to work with Nature and science to the aim for the best mix of diversity, values, products, and etc., for both nature and human societies.
2nd, I think it depends on the nature of the disturbance. I don’t think the IPCC is clear on all forms of disturbance, e.g. windstorms. Also there are human factors (like fire suppression) that intervene between a stressor and actual impacts to trees.
AND, pray tell, what about all those unnatural disturbances, which far outnumber the ‘natural’ disturbances? Are you saying that human-caused wildfires are equivalent with lightning fires? Are you saying that the massive bark beetle blooms are good for forests? Are you saying that overstocked forests under drought stress are “just fine”.
In fact, a reliance on ‘nature’, in today’s human-dominated world, is a recipe for the massive ongoing slow-motion disaster we are currently seeing in unhealthy western forests. Most people do not want massive mortality and firestorms. It is not “natural and beneficial”, although you (and others) keep pushing that flawed concept.