The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, 1994) employed concepts from conservation biology in an attempt to protect old-growth habitat and associated species, including aquatic organisms, while providing a sustained level of timber harvest. Protection was to be achieved by severely limiting timber harvest, the major contemporary source of old forest loss, primarily through an extensive network of Late-Successional and Riparian Reserves. A sustained level of timber harvest was planned in the residual Matrix lands, though planned harvest levels never materialized.
The NWFP successfully protected old-growth forests from logging, perhaps too successfully for those counting on the promised levels of timber harvest. But old forests continue to decline in large portions of the planning area because the plan failed to address the primary disturbance process resulting in loss of old forests in the 21st century: wildfire. Though conditions vary greatly across the region of the NWFP, widespread loss of old forest due to a renewed era of wildfire is significant and undeniable in the Oregon Cascades, the focal subregion of Johnson referenced in a recent TSW post and of particular interest to me. Neither the NWFP nor any of the proposed revisions plan for or respond to wildfire in meaningful ways, particularly for seasonally moist, westside forests.
How do I know wildfires are having significant effects on old forests in the Oregon Cascades? By going out and looking, and by documenting with text, maps and photos. As a spare-time project, I authored a series of old-growth hiking guides from 1991-2003 (out-of-print) showing the location and type of old growth along hiking trails in the Oregon and Washington Cascades. And now, 30 years later (2022-2026), I’ve gone back and revisited over 100 of these hikes in the Oregon Cascades (book in review.)
Many agents of change have been at work over the past 30 years, including those furthering development of complex old-forest habitat, but wildfire has overwhelmingly been the primary phenomenon driving loss of old forests. To put this into context, of the 120 old-growth hikes in the Oregon Cascades I documented 30 years ago, most of the old growth has since severely burned on 31 (26%) of those hikes, and an additional 16 (13%) hikes experienced a significant loss of old growth due to wildfire. Though widely distributed across forest and habitat types, these hikes are not a representative sample of the region. Nevertheless, 39% of the hikes have had significant loss of old growth along trails due to wildfire, over 30 years, most occurring over the last 20 years. A key point to understand is that these losses are occurring in seasonally moist forests on the westside.
Essentially all large fires contain a mix of fire severities, and fire effects in today’s old forests are quite varied. Large areas often burn at high severity though, and even in areas burned at lower severity the post-fire forest will take many decades to fully recover the lush and complex understory communities typical of these forests. Even with surface fires, significant mortality often arises from root and root collar damage due to uncharacteristically high fuel loads and warming summers. Recent fire history and anthropological studies point to an approximate 200-year period of fire exclusion and suppression in these forests.
Fire is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part of these ecosystems, but old forests have been greatly diminished and fragmented from 50 years of dispersed clearcutting and recent wildfires on national forests. And on nonfederal lands old forests have been essentially eliminated. The result is greatly reduced habitat and vital ecosystem services, e.g., carbon sequestration. There simply isn’t much old forest left to carry the load while burned forests recover.
Wildfire poses many challenges that often defy control, but a NWFP for the 21st century must directly address and integrate wildland fire in all its dimensions. It is hard to imagine a successful conservation plan that doesn’t address the primary disturbance process causing loss of old forests. And wildfire will almost certainly remain the primary source of old-forest loss throughout the Oregon Cascades in the coming decades. Ideally, the full suite of fire prevention, mitigation, fuels treatment, wildfire response and recovery priorities and strategies will be integrated with protection and conservation of old forests.
What would that look like? I have notions, but a key point is that fire operations and management staff must be enlisted to help craft solutions. They are the ones with the practical experience and on-the-ground knowledge, and they are the ones who have a strong vested interest in getting this right. Resource specialists and ecologists working with fire personnel can best articulate how protection and conservation of old forests can be integrated throughout wildland fire operations.
Protection of old forests in the 21st century likely means a different conservation strategy than one based on Late Successional Reserves (LSRs.) LSRs were sized and located based on habitat needs of the northern spotted owl, a species that is functionally extirpated throughout most of the Oregon Cascades. Fire protection and management needs were not integrated into LSR siting, and significant portions of several Oregon Cascade LSRs have already severely burned. Proposed NWFP revisions appropriately include measures to protect all mature and old forests from logging wherever they are found, obviating the primary purpose of LSRs.
Potential fire refugia may provide a sounder basis for protection and conservation of old forests. Refugia, places that stand a higher probability of avoiding or surviving fire, might be locations that have a biophysical basis for protection, such as cirque basins or adjoining wetlands. Operational reasons may also define high-priority refugia, such as places where existing roads or other features delineate a defendable space. Potential fire refugia could usefully inform all aspects of fire prevention, fuels planning, and wildfire response and recovery.
My goal with this post has been to identify a clear need to update the NWFP to account for the actually occurring primary source of old-forest loss in the Oregon Cascades: wildfire. There are many issues important to the conservation of old forests beyond the scope of this post, e.g., post-fire reforestation and salvage, treatment of young stands, the importance of mature forests, and the risks from continued atmospheric warming other than fire. But wildfire can no longer be treated as an inconvenient, exogenous variable to grand plans and theories of conservation. Continued loss of old forest at the current rate will doom these forests well before the end of the century.
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John Cissel is retired from a 35-year professional career, including roles as:
1) Director, Joint Fire Science Program (2007-2016), 2) Research Coordinator, Oregon BLM (2003-2006), 3) HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Research Liaison, US Forest Service and Oregon State University (1990-2002), 4) Planning Analyst and Team Leader, US Forest Service (1981-1989.)
He has also authored a series of old-growth hiking guides in the 1990s, culminating in the book “Old-Growth Forest Hikes: Washington and Oregon Cascades” published in 2003. A new book “Field Guide to Old-Growth Forests in the Oregon Cascades” is currently in review (PNWOldGrowthHikesPNW.org.)
John says “Proposed NWFP revisions appropriately include measures to protect all mature and old forests from logging wherever they are found, obviating the primary purpose of LSRs.”
This misses an important purpose of LSRs which is to mititigate for extensive loss and fragmentation of habitat, by restoring large functional habitat patches where natural process can flourish mostly unmolested by management.
The remaining mature and old-growth is both too limited in extent and too fragmented to function properly and support viable populations of wildlife. Removing protection for LSRs will perpetuate the current condition (habitat shortage, fragmentation and degraded habitat condtions for wildlife large and small, mobile and immobile.)
While I don’t se John explicity calling for it, logging to save habitat from fire is a fool’s errand, because:
1) No one can predcit where or when or what svereity fire will occur;
2) There is alow probability that an particular fuel trreatment will interact with wildfire, so the negeative effects of logging are unlike yo be offset by modified fire behavior;
3) Treatments must be very extensive in order to have any chance of interacting with wildfire, in which case the cumulative effects of fuel logging vastly overwhelm any benefits;
4) The effects of fuel logging are modest. Fuel treatments only change the fire footprint by a few percentage points;
5) Mature and old-growth forests tends to be more fire resistant and resilient than logged forests;
6) Fuel logging can make things worse instead of better. Canopy reduction via logging has competing effects on fuels and microclimate (i) Logging removes fire resistant trees with thick bark and high canopies that help maintain a cool, moist microclimate that help maintain fuel moisture; (ii) Logging opens the forest and makes the stand hotter, drier, and windier all of which exacerbate fire behavior and increase evaporative demand and drought stress on remaining trees; (iii) Logging moves significant amounts of fine fuels from the canopy (where they are relatively unavailable for combustion by surface fires) to the ground, (where they are more available for combustion by surface fires), and such activity fuels often remain on the ground for extended periods before being treated; (iv) Logging opens the canopy which makes light, water, and nutrients available to stimulate the growth of future surface and ladder fuels; (v) A more open stand with more rapid growth of hazardous fuels requires more frequent and more expensive follow-up fuel treatments.
Thanks for the comments Anonymous. One thing we know for certain, barring a dramatic reversal of climatic trends, is that continuing as we have been will result in the continued widespread loss of old forests. A few clarifications:
1. I completely agree about the need to protect and restore functional habitat over time. But fire refugia may form a more effective basis for a conservation strategy than LSRs, because fire is the primary process shaping habitat across the landscape. A sound strategy needs to be founded on that understanding.
2. Hundreds of research papers have documented that fuel treatments can be effective at significantly reducing fire severity. Mechanical treatment followed by prescribed fire(s) works. Nevertheless, I agree with Anonymous that haphazard, one-off, or incompletely implemented treatments are unlikely to be useful. And I agree that the work needs to be done at scale to be consistently useful. That’s why a conservation strategy for old forests must integrate fuels management. In the end though, all strategies will fail without adequate funding.
3. There is tremendous variability in the Oregon Cascades, both in environmental conditions and in disturbance histories. Protecting old forests means different measures will be appropriate on different sites. I simply ask for an open consideration of what is most likely to be effective at specific places rather than blanket prescriptions or prohibitions.
4. By definition, mature and old forests contain a great volume of vegetation, known by some as fuel. Summer temperatures have been steadily climbing for at least 45 years in the Oregon Cascades and old forests are critically dry for significantly longer periods now than in the recent past. The old notion of the “Asbestos Forest” no longer applies. If you doubt that, get in touch, and I’ll send you a list of dozens of sites where you can see a sea of snags where old forests formerly stood.
Interesting point in #4, which basically says that every tree should be considered “fuel.” And therefore every logging project is a fuel treatment. I think there is more nuance needed here, that “fuel” is a probability function, which gets back to the point that the probability of a fire burning large trees varies by location and should be part of the planning process to identify old growth refugia.
I also think it’s a little glib to dismiss spotted owls as “functionally extirpated.” And even if that were true, any new northwest forest strategy can’t ignore the current obligation to provide habitat for a recovered population of this federally listed species.
I don’t know John Cissel, haven’t had time to read his article on NWFP but reading his response to a comment tells me he is one sharp dude! Too bad more information such as (his comments anyway) his post is not more widely shared!
I gotta get some drywall hung and finished and then I’ll read the whole thing….🤣
If we did barred owl management in many of the big NSO LSRs, NSO would show up and breed, but time is running out quickly for that to be a possibility.
Fire refugia are a good place to start for protections, but they will not work everywhere, and the devil is in the details. For example, the east Cascades in WA would have almost no habitat under the fire refugia models I have seen, without additional protections. The recovery plan sets up a framework that cannot be achieved by relying entirely on fire refugia in some areas.
I do think the current plan is adequate to do what is necessary in the dry forest LSRs, but no one has attempted to try. The NWFP allows for habitat alterations in the LSRs when it is necessary to reduce risk. To demonstrate activities are necessary, one could do an optimization model whereby treatments are done in a manner that maximizes habitat retention and wildfire risk reduction simultaneously. In other words, what is the minimum amount of habitat removal and degradation that can occur and still provide resilience. This is the opposite of how I see the LSRs are often managed. Most LSRs have been wholly ignored. We blame the plan for lack of action, but action has always been allowed.