Steve Wilent

News from the other half of the country:

Soul of the Forest: Why a proposal inside Hoosier National Forest sees environmentalists facing off against forest managers

A controversial project slated for Hoosier National Forest underscores a larger struggle percolating over America’s trees.

Excerpts:

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Headline: California tree carnage: A decade of drought and fire killed a third of Sierra Nevada forests 

The analysis mentioned in the Steel report we’ve been discussing. Excerpt:

California has seen devastating bouts of drought and record-breaking wildfire events in the last several years. From 2011-2020, a combination of fire, drought and drought-related bark beetle infestations killed 30% of forests in the Sierra Nevada mountain range between Lake Tahoe and Kern County, according to the analysis.

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On top of the overall decline in total conifer forest in the region, half of mature forest habitat and 85% of high-density mature forests were either wiped out entirely or became low-density forests.

The study also found areas protected as habitat for the California spotted owl, an endangered bird at the center of a historic battle between environmental activists and the timber industry, saw worse declines in tree canopy than non-protected areas.

That finding led the study’s authors to call for a rejection of traditional conservation methods that preserve forests as-is, before the loss of all mature forests in the Sierras. Using fire as a tool for landscape regeneration and removing low-lying vegetation can keep fires from becoming as devastating.

Folks, The Society of American Foresters recently released a letter to the US Forest Service on old-growth forests. The letter discusses three key themes:

• Functional and Dynamic Definitions. As reflected in previous definitions of old growth (circa 1989) set by the USDA Forest Service, functional definitions of mature and old growth must mirror the regional variation in ecology found across landscapes and forest types. The established definitions provide a useful foundation for this initiative. However, Section 2(b)’s efforts to also inventory these forests with the intention of long-term conservation requires a dynamic model that can adapt to advances in modern forest science and research as well as changes in conditions like climate, ecology, and disturbance threats. To be functional, therefore, definitions and inventories should include assessments of climate vulnerability, disturbance risks, and other important factors associated with adaptation and conservation, which will help to inform management strategies. Forest conditions, management objectives, and management strategies should be regularly revisited through an iterative administrative process to reflect the dynamic needs of our forests.
• Education and Outreach. Public perceptions of forestry often incorrectly portray the science of forest management and the values of forestry professionals. Education and outreach from the agencies will be an essential component of a successful campaign to conserve old-growth and mature forests. In large part, our professional community is aligned on the management techniques and strategies required to conserve our forested resources, but public perceptions remain a hinderance to fulfilling these objectives at scale. As attendees noted, the forestry community requires a “social license” from the public to steward our forested resources, particularly when active management is required to foster their conservation. For example, it is not always intuitive to the public that conservation may require active management, or that long-term stability of forest carbon stocks may require near-term tree removal. The 2(b) initiative stands as an opportunity for the US to become a leader in a new era of forestry, one in which we learn to conserve our forests in a changing climate while providing more resources to a growing population. However, this requires a prolific and successful public relations campaign. A successful education and outreach campaign will inform the public that there is a spectrum of science-based strategies for conservation and that forest management can balance conservation objectives while continuing to produce the suite of essential resources that forests provide to humans.
• Collaboration with Non-Federal Partners. It is vital that the USDA Forest Service and the DOI Bureau of Land Management work with partners to plan and execute the tasks outlined under Section (2)b of E.O. 14072. This includes state, tribal, and local governments as well as universities, industry, and non-profits. Collaboration is important not only to mobilizing the resources necessary to achieve our goals at scale and across boundaries, but also for building a diverse portfolio of knowledge and objectives. In our efforts to connect and educate the public, collaboration will also be a valuable platform for building trust between the federal government and the public.

From a press release, Thursday, October 13, 2022

Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, and Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources, sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore highlighting the significance of Tribal stewardship over lands and waters that make up the National Forest System, and the need to continue collaborative participation from Tribal leadership and governments and the federal government. In their letter, the Senators request the development of a policy for Tribal co-management and stewardship of federal forests and grasslands.

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We encourage the Forest Service to initiate a process for engaging tribal perspectives on co-stewardship, making recommendations for statutory language to further the goals of co-stewardship and to better integrate the core principles of tribal co-stewardship into federal land management.

Excerpt (subscription):

GREENWIRE | Hundreds of Bureau of Land Management staffers have voted to join the National Treasury Employees Union, partly in response to the Trump-era relocation of the bureau’s Washington headquarters and the movement of hundreds of D.C. jobs to the West.

The decisions by about 200 non-supervisory headquarters employees in May, and another roughly 200 in the New Mexico state office in February and in the Taos and Rio Puerco field offices there last spring, were also spurred by the Biden administration’s efforts to undo the Trump BLM reorganization.

They likely will not be the last bureau employees to join the union, NTEU President Tony Reardon said.

“We continue to hear from a lot of BLM employees, not only in New Mexico, but really in states throughout the Western part of the country,” he said. “And so we are right now in the process of determining what the level of interest in those various locations are.”

Excerpts from a UC Berkeley Forest Research and Outreach blog post, with info aimed at landowners. It reminds us that thinning and fuels reduction isn’t only about reducing fire intensity/severity: it’s also about forest health.

What is forest resilience? Forest resilience is a measure of adaptability. It focuses on retaining a forest’s essential structure and composition to a range of stresses or complex disturbances. In other words, a resilient forest may lose some trees to drought, fire or insect attack, but the mortality rate will not overtake the forest’s ability to continue growing trees and provide habitat. Some will die, but many will live.

Today’s [Sierra] forests have huge increases in basal area and tree density compared to the historical record. Historically, forests were generally low in density yet highly variable in their structure, with open patches and clumps of trees. Twenty-two trees per acre was not uncommon in the Sierras, but those 22 trees were huge! The older and bigger trees get, the more adaptations they have, like thicker bark, a high canopy and higher levels of resilience to disturbances. We have normalized high density, homogeneous stand structure and high competition forests that would not have occurred historically. Today’s forests are more vulnerable to fire and drought related mortality due to a legacy of timber harvesting in early 1900’s that focused on large tree removal; a century of fire suppression policy and action, and climate change effects such as less humidity recovery in the night.

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Timber harvesting or commercial thinning:

• Sometimes you have to commercially thin in order to restore lower density forest conditions;
• You can leverage saw logs/forest products to pay for other management activities; and
• It is effective in reducing tree density in the canopy and ladder fuels and reduces competition for the remaining trees.

Commercial thinning plus prescribed fire: Very effective in reducing tree density, ladder fuels and surface fuels.  Combining meaningful thinning and prescribed fire can mitigate fire hazard and improved the growth and vigor of your trees to maximize resistance and resilience to wildfire and drought-related tree mortality!

At the risk of starting another round of acrimonious series of rants, here’s a well-written article from Audubon’s magazine, “It’s the Moment of Truth for Saving the Northern Spotted Owl.” It features some familiar names, such as Susan Jane Brown, senior attorney and wildlands program director with the Western Environmental Law Center, and Paul Henson, who led the US F&WS recovery program for the bird until his retirement in June. But also two folks from Green Diamond Resource Company who are working to save spotted owls on “industrial” timberland — and having some success.

Henson “says the situation calls for action on multiple fronts: Preserve the best remaining habitat, control the Barred Owl, and manage forests to avoid the most serious wildfires.”

These are points we might discuss, respectfully.

On the last point, for example, I agree that we need to manage forests — whether designated NSO habitat or not — to avoid the most serious wildfires. “That does not mean aggressively logging healthy forests, Henson stresses; what’s needed is targeted thinning and prescribed burning.”

IMHO, that includes targeted thinning and prescribed burning in late-successional reserves where stocking and fuel loads are higher than can be maintained going forward. Thinning being “commercial logging.” Like it or not, “commercial logging” is an important tool for conserving not just owls, but many other species and forest types. And Rx fire is risky, of course. To do nothing assures the NSO’s continued decline.

Maybe the folks involved with the NW Forest Plan revision process will consider all this.

Thanks to Nick Smith for including the article in his Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities email roundup today.

From E&E News (subscription) today:

Interior outlines tribal co-management steps for agencies

Here’s a review of a book that may be of interest to forest planners and other denizens of TSW, even if it has a focus on Canada: A Continent Transformed by Wildfire, Then and Now. Subtitle: ‘Dark Days at Noon’ author Ed Struzik on fire deniers, ‘pyro’ storms, a boreal forest ‘born to burn’ and more.

Excerpt:

You write a lot about Indigenous burning and how agencies like the national parks services on both sides of the border evicted Indigenous people from parks and protected areas — the topic of tomorrow’s Tyee excerpt from your book.

Indigenous fires reduced the amount of fuel on the ground for future fires to burn. With the end of this light burning and the strategy of full suppression that followed in and around 1910, we stacked up the woodpile, so to speak, to feed fire. Kicking Indigenous people out of national parks and protected areas because they burned lightly to regenerate grass for bison and young aspen for ungulates — there were other reasons — was unconscionable.

How do we get fire back on the landscape in a way that is beneficial rather than destructive?

We have to do more of the light burning that Indigenous people practiced. We also have to thin the forests that surround many communities in Canada. I would go as far as to suggest that cities such as Edmonton with urban forests that have not seen fire in more than a century, consider the idea before out-of-control fires come to them.

Well, of course. I was thinking about our discussions of post-fire hazard tree cutting as I was looking at the maps and photos of the Cedar Creek Fire in the central Oregon Cascades, which blew up on Friday and over the weekend to 18K acres. It ran north along the west side of Waldo Lake, a vert popular recreation area. North of the lake is the area burned by the 1996 Charlton Fire, which burned 10,000 acres on the north shore, mostly in the Waldo Lake Wilderness (the Pacific Crest Trail runs though it). The Cedar Creek Fire burned well into the older fire scar. This image from Google Earth Pro — 2016 imagery — shows a portion of the newly re-burned area in the wilderness, near a small lake. The image is interesting because it shows how little timber has returned — no restoration was done, since it’s a wilderness area. It also shows many downed trees (as well as the shadows of those still standing). Many of those downed trees probably stood for years, but of course over time they weakened and fell. This scene is typical of the Charlton Fire burn area. Dead trees do fall, which is one reason to cut them before they fall onto roads, power lines, and so on.