The following press release and article come from the Geos Insitute. – mk
Ashland, Oregon – Scientists released new findings today on the importance of mature and old-growth forests in preparing the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southwest Oregon and northern California for global climate disruptions. Published in the January edition of The Natural Areas Journal (Volume 32: 65-74) by the Natural Areas Association, the study calls on regional land managers to protect mature and old-growth forests as an insurance policy for fish and wildlife facing mounting climate change pressures from rising temperatures, declining snow levels, and reductions in fog along the coast. Click here to read the article.
The project was led by the Ashland-based Geos Institute who brought together scientists with back grounds in climate change science, Klamath-Siskiyou regional ecology, and conservation planning to comb through data on temperature and precipitation changes and to develop recommendations to help adapt ecosystems while the ecological and economic costs are relatively low.
According to Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist & President of Geos Institute, who led the project team, “for millennia our region’s mature and old-growth forests have been a wellspring for nature and they now hold the keys to sustaining the very ecosystem benefits we will increasingly depend on for fresh water, clean air, and viable fish and wildlife populations as global climate disruptions increasingly impact our area.”
One of the authors of the study, Reed Noss, Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Central Florida, underscored the importance of the studies findings for land managers. “Climate change, combined with habitat loss and fragmentation, is the greatest threat we face to nature. This study shows that land managers can reduce impacts of climate change by protecting older forests in a region whose biological diversity has been recognized globally as among the top ten coniferous forests on earth.”
The study used computer mapping and extensive data sets on regional climate and wildlife distributions to determine what areas are most likely to hang on to their local climatic conditions for wildlife seeking refuge from rising temperatures and changes to precipitation caused by climate change disruption. Old growth and mature forests, with their closed canopies and moist environments, are predicted to remain cooler for longer periods of time, therefore providing refuge for species that depend on these conditions.
Key Findings:
• Based on related studies undertaken by Geos Institute and partners, climate disruptions in the Rogue basin, for instance, will likely include: (1) an increase in average annual temperatures from 1 to 3° F by around 2040 and 4 to 8° F by around 2080; (2) substantial increases in summer temperatures of 7 to 15° F by 2080; and (3) snow turning more often to rain in lower elevations with a decrease in average January snowpack and corresponding decline in spring runoff and stream flows. Other studies document significant reductions in fog along the coast, which pose risks to coastal redwoods.
• While all of the regions’ older forests are important, those on north-facing slopes and in canyon bottoms, lower- and middle-elevations, and wetter coastal mountains will provide for cooler, moister conditions as the rest of the region heats up.
• Several areas deserve immediate conservation attention because they contain high concentrations of older forests with preferred climatic conditions, including along the southern bend of the Klamath River Northern in California; lower slopes of the Klamath River from around China Point eastwards to Hamburg in California; northern slope of the Scott Bar Mountains and along the lower Scott River in California; coastal areas in Oregon and in the foothills behind the redwood belt in northwestern California; the Middle Smith River in California; areas west of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, southwest Oregon; southeastern watersheds of the Siskiyou Mountains (e.g., Dillon and Rock Creek area, California); and the northern Siskiyou Mountains to western Siskiyou Crest region, California. These areas are likely to serve as wellsprings of nature as the climate increasingly shifts.
• BLM landholdings in western Oregon are noteworthy as they contain over 1.6 million acres of mature and old-growth forests, which are critical for threatened species like the spotted owl and marbled murrelet, and 1.8 million acres of habitat critical to coho salmon recovery. These are some of the last low-elevation forests in the region that can still function as a climate refuge but are at the biggest risk from logging proposals being championed by Congress.
• Reducing non-climate stressors from logging, roads, and other land uses is the single most important adaptation measure that land managers can take now to reduce climate related impacts.
A methane drainage well, or MDW, as they are known for shortWhat does this question have to do with the Forest Service, you might ask? Well, under Forest Service managed land lies some underground coal mines in Colorado, Utah and out East. Some of these coal seams require the methane to be removed to protect workers. Currently, it is vented into the atmosphere- a potent greenhouse gas. The problem the agencies have is that greenhouse gases are not regulated at this point in time. One idea was a surgical piece of federal legislation that would require capture for underground coal mines on federal land. Environmental groups have been convincing agencies to analyze capture of the methane in their NEPA documents. So we have longer NEPA documents but still no actual improvement in the environment. Here is apparently a potential solution- if it would work, good news for GHG reduction. So far there don’t seem to be a lot of competitive policy options on the table, unless I am missing something.
P.S. You gotta love someone quoting Voltaire in an article about Colorado coal mines!
The merits of methane harvesting
A proposal before the Senate seems like a no-brainer, but environmental groups are inexplicably against it.
Posted: 03/18/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT
By Allen Best Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News (The Denver Post | handout)
The French philosopher Voltaire in the 1700s warned against letting the better, or perfect, be the enemy of the good. That advice would seem to apply to an attempt by environmental groups in Colorado to block a market mechanism that could yield immediate reductions in emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas.
The proposal going before the Colorado Senate this week is whether to expand the state’s renewable portfolio standard to include electricity generated by burning methane emissions being vented from coal mines, both active and abandoned. The current legislation already allows electricity produced by burning methane emitted by landfills.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency says the heat-trapping properties of methane are 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, the more common greenhouse gas. That means generating just minor amounts of electricity from coal-mine emissions could substantially reduce Colorado’s emissions of greenhouse gases.
Energy analyst Randy Udall, who has been working the numbers of coal-mine methane for a decade, calculates just 5 megawatts of electricity generated from coal-mine methane emissions, at a capital cost of $10 million, would offset more carbon than all the solar so far installed in Colorado as of 2010, which has cost roughly $700 million. Total methane harvesting from coal mines near Paonia could produce 20 megawatts, using fairly simple technology, say advocates, and, with more challenge, up to 50 megawatts.
That’s an important point to digest. In terms of reducing the risk to our climate during the next century, just a few megawatts planned at the West Elk Mine could have as much impact as all the solar panels erected on rooftops at DIA and everywhere else in Colorado so far. As Udall puts it, renewable energy is the means, not the end unto itself. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This bill’s politics has the bewildering aspects of a Mobius strip. Introduced by one of the most conservative members of the legislature, Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, House Bill 1160 passed the House by a 34-29 vote. Only Rep. Wes McKinley, the self-described cowboy from southeast Colorado (that’s what it says on the legislature’s website), bucked fellow Democrats to join Republicans, who were unanimous in support.
Now, in the Senate, it is sponsored by Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, whose base includes some of the most diligent global warming warriors in the state.
Udall has to be considered one of those warriors, and it’s a further irony that he is aligned in this case with Bill Koch, owner of the nearby Elk Creek Mine and a member of the family that has been stirring the undertow of opposition to climate-change action. However, there’s no evidence that Koch has been involved in this case. <note Allen Best corrected this story to clarify that Koch is the owner of Elk Creek Mine and not the West Elk Mine>.
Are you confused? You’re not alone. Del Worley, general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, an electrical cooperative that provides electricity to the Aspen and Vail areas, says he’s baffled. “The politics are mind-boggling to me,” he says. “If you’re truly trying to stop global warming, this is one of the best bills out there. It’s not a giant resource, but why waste it? It should be a no-brainer.”
Regardless of whether HB 1160 passes, Worley’s co-op has agreed to buy 3 megawatts of electricity produced by burning coal-mine methane near Paonia. Like other co-ops in Colorado, Holy Cross is required to provide 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Holy Cross exceeded that mark last year. Now, directors have adopted an internal goal of 20 percent by 2015. Although terms have not been disclosed, they are apparently willing to pay a higher price to achieve that, both with a biomass plant proposed at Gypsum and with purchase of the methane-produced electricity.
Driving this bill is Tom Vessels, a Denver-based entrepreneur who now heads North Fork Energy. He was stirred to innovate by what he saw in Germany, where coal-mine emissions are harnessed to produce electricity. The same is true in Australia and China. But in the United States, almost nothing has happened, he says.
This is despite a 2004 EPA report that found active mines contributed 10 percent and abandoned mines 5 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. (This is from emissions of methane, not from burning coal).
While he is also tapping methane from an inactive mine in Pennsylvania, Vessels argues that Colorado can demonstrate how to tap the existing resource — and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To make the numbers work, however, Vessels needs more customers than Holy Cross who are willing to pay a premium for electricity. He approached more than a dozen utilities. All rejected him — because they couldn’t count it toward their renewable portfolio standard mandate.
His other income stream would be carbon offsets, mostly generated by the California market.
Vessels charges that the existing renewable portfolio standard has now become the “business as usual” model. It’s thwarting innovation and stifling opportunity.
“It has been said that (renewable portfolio standards) were originally passed with the goal of supporting the new energy technologies of the legislature,” Vessels said. “The legislature a few years ago decided that solar and wind were the technologies of the future. But the Germans kept their eye on the ball and said, ‘If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we do it by building up wind and solar — and these other things.’ I think here in Colorado we missed the ‘and other things.’ ”
Among the powerful environmental groups opposing HB 1160 has been Western Resource Advocates. John Nielsen, the group’s energy program director, argues that the existing legislation is not well thought out. While the goal of reducing methane emissions is a worthy one, he says, it’s not clear the bill will actually achieve it — and might hinder better efforts in the future. “Are there better tools out there to get this done?” he asks.
But there’s another possibility that seems to bother Western Resource Advocates and other groups. If coal-mine emissions can be considered as renewable, he says, then does that mean that fugitive emissions of methane from natural gas drilling and pipeline transport can similarly be tapped someday to produce electricity under renewable portfolio standards?
Nielsen agrees that this tempest in Colorado can be considered a forerunner of a broader national debate about the clean-energy standard proposed by President Barack Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address. That debate will be about whether technology should be agnostic in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At its heart, the debate is whether we can realistically hope to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon. Most sober assessments have concluded that it will be impossible. That point is even more emphatic if the Chinese, Indians and Indonesians are brought into the conversation, as they absolutely must be.
Can we someday wean ourselves entirely off fossil fuels? Perhaps, but we’re going to have to live with coal for a few more decades, possibly longer. The current pushback by environmental groups and their Democratic allies smells of a litmus test of ideological purity. It confuses battles with the war.
If the war is against dangerous accumulations of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, this is a bill that should land on the desk of Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News.
Read more: The merits of methane harvesting – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_20183852/merits-methane-harvesting#comments#ixzz1pVs0TxbS
(Below is a press release from the researchers. A copy of the study is available here. – mk)
New research shows that western dry forests were not uniform, open forests, as commonly thought, before widespread logging and grazing, but included both dense and open forests, as well as large high-intensity fires previously considered rare in these forests. The study used detailed analysis of records from land surveys, conducted in the late-1800s, to reconstruct forest structure over very large dry-forest landscapes, often dominated by ponderosa pine forests. The area analyzed included about 4.1 million acres on the Mogollon Plateau and Black Mesa in northern Arizona, in the Blue Mountains in northeastern Oregon, and in the Colorado Front Range.
The reconstructions, which are based on about 13,000 first-hand descriptions of forests from early land surveyors along section-lines, supplemented by data for about 28,000 trees, do not support the common idea that dry forests historically consisted of uniform park-like stands of large, old trees. Previous studies that found this were hampered by the limitations inherent in tree-ring reconstructions from small, isolated field plots that may be unrepresentative of larger landscapes.
“The land surveys provide us with an unprecedented spatially extensive and detailed view of these dry-forest landscapes before widespread alteration” said Dr. William Baker, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming. “And, what we see from this is that these forests were highly variable, with dense areas, open areas, recently burned areas, young forests, and areas of old-growth forests, often in a complex mosaic.”
The study also does not support the idea that frequent low-intensity fires historically prevented high-intensity fires in dry forests.
“Moderate- and high-severity fires were much more common in ponderosa pine and other dry forests than previously believed ” said Mark Williams, senior author of the study and recent PhD graduate of the University of Wyoming’s Program in Ecology.
“While higher-severity fires have been documented in at least parts of the Front Range of Colorado, they were not believed to play a major role in the historical dynamics of southwestern dry forests .”
Some large modern wildfires, such as Arizona’s Rodeo-Chediski fire of 2002 and the Wallow fire of 2011 that have been commonly perceived as unnatural or catastrophic fires actually were similar to fires that occurred historically in these dry forests.
The findings suggest that national programs that seek to uniformly reduce the density of these forests and lower the intensity of fires will not restore these forests, but instead alter them further, with negative consequences for wildlife. Special-concern species whose habitat includes dense forest patches, such as spotted owls, or whose habitat includes recently burned forests, such as black-backed woodpeckers, are likely to be adversely affected by current fuel-reduction programs.
The findings of the study suggest that if the goal is to perpetuate native fish and wildlife in western dry forests, it is appropriate to restore and manage for variability in forest density and fire intensity, including areas of dense forests and high-intensity fire.
Key findings:
• Only 23-40% of the study areas fit the common idea that dry forests were open, park-like and composed of large trees.
• Frequent low-intensity fires did not prevent high-intensity fires, as 38-97% of the study landscapes had evidence of intense fires that killed trees over large areas of dry forests.
• The rate of higher-severity fires in dry forests over the past few decades is lower than that which occurred historically, regardless of fire suppression impacts.
The study was published online last week in the international scientific journal, Global Ecology and Biogeography. The published article can be accessed online here. The title is: Spatially extensive reconstructions show variable-severity fire and heterogeneous structure in historical western United States dry forests.
The authors are Dr. Mark A. Williams and Dr. William L. Baker, who are scientists in the Program in Ecology and Department of Geography at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Mark A. Williams is a 2010 PhD graduate, and Dr. William L. Baker is a professor, both in the Program in Ecology and Department of Geography. In Dr. Williams’s PhD, he developed and applied new scientific methods for reconstructing historical structure and fire across large land areas in dry western forests. Dr. Baker teaches and researches fire ecology and landscape ecology at the University of Wyoming and is author of a 2009 book on “Fire Ecology in Rocky Mountain Landscapes.”
Contact Information:
Dr. Mark A. Williams, Program in Ecology and Department of Geography, Dept. 3371, 1000 E. University Ave., University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Email: [email protected].
Dr. William L. Baker, Program in Ecology and Department of Geography, Dept. 3371, 1000 E. University Ave., University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Phone: 307-766- 2925, Email: [email protected].
Thanks to the Wildlife Society for providing the following. There are 16 Federal agencies on the steering committee and I assume that USDA is one of those.
Obama proposal battles climate change impact on wildlife
Western Farm Press
In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama administration released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change on species, ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them. MORE
Social acceptance of fire needed in climate-changing forests
From Climate wire
my comments in italics
Published: Monday, January 23, 2012
The future of managing wildfires in the face of climate change is going to require different tools and strategies, but also something a bit more difficult to swallow — encouraging burning instead of stifling it.
In the future, forest managers will need to “try to work with fire, rather than fighting it,” said David Peterson, research biologist at the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Station. “If we allowed more wildfires to burn, that could be beneficial,” he added. Fire is considered part of a natural cycle in forest ecology, and encouraging small fires could help prevent bigger, more damaging ones.
The U.S. Forest Service has issued a report on how to address forest management in the face of climate change, looking at resource management on national forests and, potentially, other federal lands. Fire management, pest control and watershed management are some of the areas where practices will need to change, said report co-author Peterson in an interview with ClimateWire.
Letting fires burn, instead of stifling them at all costs, is not an easy sell politically or socially, said Peterson. But those who live in the wildland-urban interface, the transitional zone between residential clusters and the wilderness, are becoming more aware.
“I think they’re getting much more savvy about the scientific concept of fire,” he said, calling the interface one of the biggest social challenges for the Forest Service.
It’s not clear what this means- if they understand “the scientific concept” does that mean they are not as interested in fire suppression around their homes? Also notice that wildland-urban is defined as “the transitional zone between residential clusters and the wilderness”. There are plenty of lands that are adjacent to communities that are “wildlands” but not “wilderness.”
More partnerships between federal, state and private lands would bring together a fragmented landscape to tackle some of the climate-driven problems that have plagued forests in the past years. These include fires, pine beetle epidemics and floods.
“They don’t care about where that dotted map is, and they don’t care about any individual ownership,” Peterson said.
Water, roads and infrastructure are also at risk, said Peterson who has seen a distinctive change in the flows, levels and patterns of rivers. Floods, mudslides and other severe events that were once considered 100-year events are occurring more frequently.
‘Forest thinning’ gets a new boost
The Forest Service compiled several existing management changes across their forests to provide examples for the framework. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, for example, foresters took on an effort to completely redesign the roads and culverts to withstand a higher water load, expected as torrential rains become more frequent. In California’s Inyo National Forest, staff created a decisionmaking tool that offered the implications of hundreds of different possible decisions, given a likely climate change scenario.
“In taking a risk management approach to adaptation, what we are doing is preparing for changes rather than changing what’s there,” said the Forest Service’s climate change adviser, David Cleaves.
Forest thinning, part of the “fuel treatments” that the Forest Service employs to reduce fire risk, will also increase given future predictions for climate change, said Peterson. Last year, legislators in Western states expressed frustration at a perceived lack of preventive action to halt forest fires, mandated under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Last year saw some record-breaking wildfires, including Arizona’s 550,000-acre Wallow fire.
But forest thinning, and its possibility of increase, has come under scrutiny. A report from Oregon State University issued last May questioned the practice of thinning as an effective climate strategy, as it reduces the size of forest carbon sinks — the wood mass that absorbs and holds carbon from entering into the atmosphere.
So we are doing fuel treatments to protect communities from fire, which is expected to increase due to climate change, but doing so is not an “effective climate strategy” based on this study. So confusing as we are mixing adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change. Also, to me it’s not that clear that we would not have to do WUI fuel treatments if there were no climate change.. in other words in the absence of climate change, given western ecosystems’ historic fire patterns, it still would be a good idea to do WUI fuel treatment.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as other environmental groups, has cast doubt on the use of forest thinnings to burn for biomass electricity, saying the rising demand may soon damage forests more than help them.
Thinning forests, and thinning them and using the thinned material for biomass, are two different things. This is confusing because we should be clear on whether NRDC and others doubt thinning for fuels reduction, as perhaps needed for fires under climate change, or doubt using the products for biomass. Based on this NRDC fears are based on scale, and not the technology per se.
“There have been a number of these types of articles,” said Peterson of the study. “Some say it’s a net deficit [of carbon], some say it’s a net positive, some say it’s neutral.”
For now, the Forest Service do not consider carbon sequestration when planning fuel treatments. The risks of devastating burning and millions of dollars in damage tip the scale to meeting current needs, said Cleaves.
“You may have to incur [carbon] emissions costs to achieve risk reduction,” he said. “You don’t have to do that in every situation, but it sure is possible.”
stock photo of wind turbines from Bennington paper
I have heard (but cannot say for sure) that this is the first commercial wind project approved on national forest land. If you know of others, please comment and let us know.
KEITH WHITCOMB JR.
Staff Writer
SEARSBURG — The U.S. Forest Service has decided to approve 15 of the 17 wind turbines proposed on public land by Deerfield Wind, LLC, a subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables.
Together the turbines will produce 30 megawatts of power. Eight turbines will be located on a ridge line to the west of Route 8 in Readsboro, while seven will be built to the east in Searsburg. The project area will take up around 80 acres, with the turbines painted off-white and spaced half a mile apart. At roughly 400 feet high, each will have flashing red lights in the nighttime.
The decision was issued by Colleen Pelles Madrid, forest supervisor for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forest, who said it is consistent with a decision made in 2009 by the Vermont Public Service Board giving the project a certificate of public good.
The decision comes with the approval of 4.5 miles of new roadway and the upgrading of 1.03 miles to existing roads, which will impact 47 acres of forest.
The decision is being criticized by Vermonters for a Clean Environment, which according to its website is a non-profit group that promotes environmental health.
“Conflict of interest”
“The decision is based on a process plagued with conflict of interest — experts were working for Iberdrola, the developer on a wind project in New Hampshire, at the same time they prepared the supposedly independent analysis for the Forest Service,” said Annette Smith, executive director of VCE, contending the project adversely affects the nearby George D. Aiken Wilderness.
The group says the project also impacts bear habitat and does more damage than it prevents in terms of offsetting carbon emissions.
Ethan Ready, spokesman for the Green Mountain National Forest, said the forest service has been working on the phases of the environmental impact assessment since 2004. He said a draft statement was issued in 2008, then a supplemental draft in 2010. The final assessment is over 400 pages and can be found at http://data.ecosystem-management.org/nepaweb/fs-usda-pop.php?project=7838.
The final document at the bottom of the page is the decision and record.
He said the public comment period was also extended, netting over 1,000 comments and prompting the forest service to directly respond to about half.
Ready said once a legal notice is posted in the Rutland Herald, the service’s paper of record, there will a 45-day appeal period. Ready said anyone who expressed an interest in the project during a formal comment period can appeal the decision.
It will be interesting to follow the appeal and points raised, if an appeal is filed.
So I was intrigued by Matthew’s post here on the scientists’ letter denigrating Tom Bonnicksen’s work (note this was in 2006, but Matthew just raised the issue, so it’s worth examining now). As many NCFP readers know, many years of work in this field have left me with a sense when something sounds a bit off (or some have put it, I don’t believe anything I read).
I thought after following climate science for a while, that no ad hominem attacks (in the guise of “science” could shock me.. but this is our world here). Back in the day we were trained to be hard on ideas and data, that was science.. not figuring out ways to skewer scientists who disagree with us (yes, scientists are human, but..).
It shocked me because having followed these debates for almost 40 years now, I had never heard of these folks (except Norm, but not with regard to fire science). Here’s the text of what Matthew found in the LA Times and referred to in this comment.
Logging Proponent’s Credentials Questioned
An emeritus professor has been highly visible in the push to log on federal land. He has a contract with a timber industry foundation.
October 21, 2006|Bettina Boxall | Times Staff Writer
In the perennial battle over how the West’s vast acreage of federal forests should be managed, science is a favorite weapon. And on the pro-logging side no academic has been as visible as Thomas M. Bonnicksen, particularly in California.
The Texas A&M emeritus professor of forest science has testified before Congress 13 times, written numerous op-ed pieces and been widely quoted in Western newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Always he sounds the same theme: Logging is the key to restoring public lands to their former fire-resistant state.
In his writings, Bonnicksen has commonly disclosed that he sits on the advisory board of the Auburn, Calif.-based Forest Foundation.
What he hasn’t divulged is how lucrative his connection with the pro-logging timber industry-funded foundation has been. According to public tax documents, Bonnicksen collected $109,000 from the foundation in the last two years as an independent contractor.
“He’s always introduced as the leading expert on forest recovery, and he’s just not. There’s nothing in his record other than just talking and hand-waving,” said UCLA ecology professor Philip Rundel, one of several academics who issued an open letter to the media this week questioning Bonnicksen’s credentials.
“I don’t care if people print his stuff or not. But he needs to be identified for what he is … a lobbyist.”
The letter, signed by two other UC faculty members and the founding dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, accused Bonnicksen of having misrepresented scientific facts, and advancing views that “fall far outside the mainstream of scientific opinion.”
The letter also disputed Bonnicksen’s claim of an affiliation with the University of California. Although he has identified himself repeatedly as a visiting professor at UC Davis, officials there say that although Bonnicksen was once offered that title, he was never formally named a visiting professor.
Bonnicksen, who lives in Florida but frequently gives talks in California, said the letter writers were acting unethically and trying to silence him.
“I am a full professor for life,” he said. “I have academic freedom. I may speak as I wish, and I’ve always tried to do that as honestly as possible and using the science I know and have access to.”
Cheryl Rubin, vice president of communications for the Forest Foundation and its sister organization, the California Forest Products Commission, said Bonnicksen was paid “for the work he performed to educate Californians and people nationally: interacting with journalists, policymakers, students, professors. He gives speeches.
“We’ve always identified him with the Forest Foundation,” she added. “I don’t believe it’s a common practice to say paid…. How would you expect it to be revealed in an op-ed?”
So first, I tried to find the letter (being charitable, perhaps 2006 was pre-linking) and found it here (although, conceivably, the authors of the blog may not have posted it accurately). As posted, it feels pretty creepy to me.
We are sending you this letter as a concerned group of forest scientists and/or fire resource managers at major research universities. We feel compelled to write to you in response to the many letters, opinion articles, and commentaries that Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen has been sending to newspapers across the United States. Most of us have served on federal and state committees reviewing the fire management policies of the
National Park Service and other agencies, and we all maintain active research programs. We feel very strongly that not only do the views and statements of Dr. Bonnicksen fall far outside the mainstream of scientific opinion, but more importantly that Dr. Bonnicksen has misrepresented himself and his qualifications to speak to these issues.
These misrepresentations include:
University Affiliation: In all of his contacts with the media over the past several years, Dr. Bonnicksen has in part justified his credibility by identifying himself as Visiting Professor at University of California Davis. This is false. Dr. Bonnicksen does not now, nor has he ever had, an appointment at UC Davis. The University of California has now sent Dr. Bonnicksen a “cease and desist” letter demanding that he not use their name.
We find this misrepresentation extremely troubling, particularly to those of us on the faculty of the University of California.
Credibility: Dr. Bonnicksen introduces himself, as do his supporters, as one of the leading national experts on such topics as forest management, fire ecology, and forest history. In fact, there is nothing in his academic record of research or experience to justify such a characterization. By any major university standard of achievement, his academic record is weak, consisting largely of letters to the editor and oped articles. This is not a record that would achieve tenure at a major research university.
Dr. Bonnicksen’s unusual theories of forest structure and stability, expressed many years ago were never widely accepted. The state of scientific and empirical knowledge regarding the fire ecology and management of these forests has grown exponentially since Dr. Bonnicksen collected his data three decades ago. Today we have a comprehensive and sophisticated picture of forest structure and fire ecology that has been measured, validated and published by members of the academic community,
the National Park Service, and the United States Geological Survey. In simple terms, there is no serious scientific support for Dr. Bonnicksen’s ideas of forest management.
As academic researchers, we welcome increased public understanding of scientific issues and an open discourse representing a diversity of credible views. However, we feel very strongly that Dr. Bonnicksen’s views and misrepresentations of factual material, as well as his academic credentials, should be labeled for the political views that they are and not presented as serious science. The opinions he presents are contradicted by all prevailing scientific data. We ask that you consider these issues of credibility before publishing his oped articles and commentaries in the future, but of course these decisions are yours to make.
With all respect,
Philip W. Rundel
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Los Angeles
Michael F. Allen
Director of the Center for Conservation Biology
Professor of Plant Pathology and Biology
University of California, Riverside
Norman L. Christensen, Jr.
Founding Dean and Professor of Ecology
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Duke University
Jon E. Keeley
Adjunct Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Los Angeles
So I tried to do a 5 minute check of their credentials..
Here are the four folks who signed the letter:
Phillip Rundell
http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/indivfaculty.php?FacultyKey=2405
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Los Angeles
Michael F. Allen
http://www.facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=385
Director of the Center for Conservation Biology
Professor of Plant Pathology and Biology
University of California, Riverside
Norman L. Christensen, Jr.
http://fds.duke.edu/db/Nicholas/esp/faculty/normc/publications
Founding Dean and Professor of Ecology
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Duke University
Jon E. Keeley
http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/indivfaculty.php?FacultyKey=2772
Adjunct Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Los Angeles
Of these, only Keeley seems to have research related to studying fires in California.. but not much on vegetation management and fires. Note: the author of the LA Times piece could have done the same five minute check. Also note that she didn’t talk to Bonnicksen himself to get his point of view. And why would the LA Times be interested in logging at all? There have been no mills in the LA area since I can remember.
Here’s also the followup letter by 10 forest scientists.
October 2006
Letter to the Media:
We are appalled at the attack on Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen by four individuals who are attempting to silence debate. Their attack is a violation of professional standards of conduct in science: the free exchange of ideas and collegiality among scholars.
Dr. Bonnicksen earned a Ph.D. in forest policy from the University of California at Berkeley and served as Department Head at Texas A&M University before being granted emeritus status in forest science in 2004. His research in forest science spans decades and has been published widely in peer-reviewed scientific journals, reports and books. His 2000 book, America’s Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery, documents 18,000 years of forest history and has received many excellent book reviews. He has assisted community leaders throughout California using science in understanding forestry issues and addressing those issues.
While we may agree or disagree with Dr. Bonnicksen’s views on any particular issue, we adamantly oppose any effort to stifle his contribution to the debate on proper management of our nation’s forests.
Sincerely,
Robert Becker, Ph.D.
Professor & Director
Strom Thurmond Institute of Government & Public Affairs
Clemson University
James Bowyer, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Bio Products & Bio Systems Engineering
University of Minnesota
Director Responsible Materials Program
Dovetail Partners, Inc.
John Helms, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy & Management-Ecosystem Science
UC Berkeley
Robert G. Lee, Ph.D.
Professor
College of Forest Resources, AR-10
University of Washington
Bill Libby, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Forest Genetics
Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
College of Natural Resources
UC Berkeley
William McKillop, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Forest Economics
Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
College of Natural Resources
UC Berkeley
Chadwick Dearing Oliver, Ph.D.
Pinchot Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and
Director, Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Yale University
Scott E. Schlarbaum, Ph.D.
James R. Cox Professor of Forest Genetics
Department of Forestry, Wildlife & Fisheries
Institute of Agriculture
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
John Stuart, Ph.D.
Professor of Dendrology and Fire Ecology
Department of Forestry & Watershed Management
California State University, Humboldt
Gene Wood, Ph.D.
Professor of Wildlife Ecology/Conservation
Dept. of Forestry & Natural Resources
Clemson University
So then I tried to find a CV of Tom Bonnicksen on the internet, but couldn’t easily locate one; however I did find this interview with him in the High Country News..
Interesting that the word “attack” is in quotes in this “interview”;). I think accusing him of misrepresentation of his qualifications sounds kind of like an attack. Also this statement
“The opinions he presents are contradicted by all prevailing scientific data.” Really ALL? First you would have to know the entirety of data.. or at least data that is “prevailing”.. That’s just not scientist-talk.
Also, take a look at the comments on the 2008 HCN piece and some of them could have been written today.
Anyway, back to the circle of life. So whom did the HCN author ask about the Forest Service view?
Mark Nechodom, the agency’s climate science policy coordinator for the Pacific Southwest region, believes Bonnicksen overestimated the greenhouse gas emissions from the four fires he evaluated. But he also credits him for challenging scientists to find out more about how forests are affecting the carbon cycle. Bonnicksen’s work is sure to drive new scientific studies, some of them designed simply to prove him wrong. “We may disagree with Tom’s intensive management, but this is a good debate to be having, even if it makes some of us nervous,” Nechodom says.
This is the same Mark Nechodom who according to this news story from last Thursday was appointed head of California Department of Conservation, an interesting agency (website here, “managing California’s working lands”) which has responsibility for land conservation, mining, oil and gas and geology. It is a sister agency of the California Fish and Game, which received the request to list the black-backed woodpecker under the CESA. Here is the memorandum by them evaluating the petition.
Thanks to Matthew Koehler for finding this paper..it’s an interesting review paper. Here’s a summary from Science Daily:
Forest Health Versus Global Warming: Fuel Reduction Likely to Increase Carbon Emissions
Forest thinning, such as this work done in the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon, may be of value for some purposes but will also increase carbon emissions to atmosphere, researchers say. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2011) — Forest thinning to help prevent or reduce severe wildfire will release more carbon to the atmosphere than any amount saved by successful fire prevention, a new study concludes.
There may be valid reasons to thin forests — such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety — but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say.
In research just published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Oregon State University scientists conclude that even in fire-prone forests, it’s necessary to treat about 10 locations to influence fire behavior in one. There are high carbon losses associated with fuel treatment and only modest savings in reducing the severity of fire, they found.
“Some researchers have suggested that various levels of tree removal are consistent with efforts to sequester carbon in forest biomass, and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels,” said John Campbell, an OSU research associate in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “That may make common sense, but it’s based on unrealistic assumptions and not supported by the science.”
A century of fire suppression in many forests across the West has created a wide range of problems, including over-crowded forests, increased problems with insect and pathogen attack, greater risk of catastrophic fire and declining forest health.
Forest thinning and fuel reduction may help address some of those issues, and some believe that it would also help prevent more carbon release to the atmosphere if it successfully reduced wildfire.
“There is no doubt you can change fire behavior by managing fuels and there may be other reasons to do it,” said Mark Harmon, holder of the Richardson Chair in Forest Science at OSU. “But the carbon does not just disappear, even if it’s used for wood products or other purposes. We have to be honest about the carbon cost and consider it along with the other reasons for this type of forest management.”
Even if wood removed by thinning is used for biofuels it will not eliminate the concern. Previous studies at OSU have indicated that, in most of western Oregon, use of wood for biofuels will result in a net loss of carbon sequestration for at least 100 years, and probably much longer.
In the new analysis, researchers analyzed the effect of fuel treatments on wildfire and carbon stocks in several scenarios, including a single forest patch or disturbance, an entire forest landscape and multiple disturbances.
One key finding was that even a low-severity fire released 70 percent as much carbon as did a high-severity fire that killed most trees. The majority of carbon emissions result from combustion of surface fuels, which occur in any type of fire.
The researchers also said that the basic principles in these evaluations would apply to a wide range of forest types and conditions, and are not specific to just a few locations.
“People want to believe that every situation is different, but in fact the basic relationships are consistent,” Campbell said. “We may want to do fuel reduction across much of the West, these are real concerns. But if so we’ll have to accept that it will likely increase carbon emissions.”
Note from Sharon: I like the fact that they state:
There may be valid reasons to thin forests — such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety — but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say.
I think it’s just an illustration (if true as generally as the authors claim) that climate change makes what used to be considered a simple problem of “protecting the environment” more complex. As in coal versus natural gas.
I also think carbon cycling is by far one of the most complex and difficult to explain concepts we have dealt with since I have been working in this arena. I think it’s because you have to look at it over a long timespan, and each action you do leads to both some release of GHGs (at different rates) and some opportunity for sequestration on the area where the release has happened. Further, not doing things can in some cases lead to tree death of overstocked stands (say, by beetles) which could lead to either quick release through fires or slower release by the use of forest products or the logs just lying there and releasing carbon. I often think a diagram of release by scenario over time would be really helpful to visualize and understand. Clearly there are a number of assumptions associated with the likelihood of different scenarios, and sensitivity analysis of these assumptions would also be helpful.
Three things will combine to radically transform Montana forests in the next 50 years: bugs, fire and politics.
Mountain pine beetles have killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees. Those dead stands, combined with a progressively drier climate, will likely burn in wilder, more intense fashion. The biological aftermath should bring a wider mix of tree species, open areas and wildlife habitat, according to new computer models.
How humans tinker with that progression remains a wildcard. During this month’s Society for Conservation Biology research symposium at the University of Montana, several scientists demonstrated a technique called landscape simulation modeling. They’ve built software that juggles invasive weeds, weather patterns, logging plans, road removal and a lot of other factors to see how a forest will change over time.
“We see more of a natural sequence of events that could result in a more normal habitat distribution,” Michael Hillis of Missoula’s Ecosystem Research Group said of his model for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. “But the forest will look much different.”
The “B-bar-D” forest covers 3.4 million acres of southwest Montana, bigger than Glacier and Yellowstone national parks combined. Hillis said most of its spruce and Douglas fir stands were logged a century ago for the state’s mining industry. The resulting lodgepole stands grew up and matured at the same time, producing what Hillis called the “forest demographics of a rest home” at the perfect age for a beetle epidemic.
Many of those dead trees will then fuel forest fires. While the research is mixed whether a beetle-killed stand burns more dangerously than a green canopy, Hillis said the certain result is more fire scars on the landscape. Those scars in turn will eventually hobble later fires with a matrix of burned and unburned patches. Burned areas may return as new lodgepole stands, which regenerate best after a fire. But the unburned zones could see a return of fir, spruce and other tree species that get a chance to grow without the lodgepoles’ choking shade.
Assuming that model is correct, what do humans do with the information? Hillis, a Forest Service researcher before he moved to private practice, said his analysis helped inspire the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, a coalition of conservationists and loggers who proposed a new way of managing the national forest. Their plan eventually became a cornerstone of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
That legislation has also drawn critics who warn that tinkering with the forest’s natural process could produce bad results.
“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”
***
Tester’s bill would designate about 1 million acres of new wilderness and recreation areas in Montana. It would also require the Forest Service to open at least 100,000 acres of timber over 15 years to logging, thinning or other mechanical treatment in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Lolo and Kootenai national forests. Last month, the senator successfully got it inserted in the Interior Department’s spending bill, which is awaiting congressional action.
Nikas and other opponents have objected to the bill’s mixing of land protections and land management orders. The forest treatment requirements “devolve public lands into local fiefdoms, allowing individual senators to write management plans into law for national forests,” he said.
But Nikas further argued actions like thinning hazardous fuels around the edges of communities is a waste of taxpayer dollars at the forest’s expense.
“If the problem is a risk of fire on the wildland-urban interface, then we need to put zoning restrictions on building, or adopt policies that say if you want to do it, good luck,” Nikas said. “You can’t manipulate forests because of decisions people are making to build in the forest. It’s just like not encouraging people to build in the floodplain.”
John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association is one of Nikas’ regular debating partners. His organization was one of the founding members of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. He said the Forest Service’s inability to get either logging or habitat work done helped form the compromise.
“There were 106 watershed projects backlogged on the B-D that were not happening,” Gatchell said. “When you look at the landscapes and the condition they should be in, you start seeing all the work that needs to be done.”
Hillis’ research looked into some of the treatments, such as fuels thinning and prescribed burns. His conclusion was that where work took place, the result was better habitat connectivity, a more varied mix of trees and a 50 percent reduction in fire incidence and severity.
“Opponents who don’t like selling trees say this is wrong,” Hillis said. “But the objective research shows thinning provides long-term benefits for forest health.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]
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Note from Sharon: I thought this paragraph was particularly interesting..there are different ways of dealing with uncertainty. Some are arguing for managing based on down-scaled model results (the “best available science”?), and some admitting we just don’t know. Admitting we don’t know can also lead us down a number of different paths, though, at least partially depending on our previous predilictions.
“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”
Scott Fitzwilliams, left, and Glenn Adams discuss the health of an aspen grove in the White River National Forest near Silt, Colorado. Photo by Michael Brands.
Thanks again to Terry Seyden for this catch!
It’s a bit hard to tell in this news story, but the story is about a couple of different things that if you weren’t following this story closely, might be confusing. I will try to help.
Chain saw environmentalism at cutting edge of forest fight
Aspen, Colo. • Here is the next front in America’s fight for its Western forests.
Too late to head off a wave of climate-fueled beetles that have altered the evergreen landscape for generations — if not forever — foresters still believe they can rejuvenate this resort town’s namesake. They say the white bark and fluttering yellow heart-shaped leaves that announce fall in the Rocky Mountains are due for a pruning.
It’s chain saw environmentalism, and some of the West’s most ardent wilderness lovers have signed on. They face strong opposition from groups that believe Mother Nature can best repair her own, and their struggle over how best to legally protect untrammeled wild lands will profoundly shape the future of these hills.
“It’s no longer as easy as just saying wilderness is good and everything else is bad,” said John Bennett, a former Aspen mayor and current executive director of the advocacy group For the Forest.
Will aspen shoots — food to elk and other cherished Rocky Mountain wildlife — keep springing from the slopes in a warming and drying region? Can they without human help?
Government foresters want to start cutting down swaths of century-old aspens in hopes that young “suckers” will sprout from the roots to build a new forest. It’s how many of the aspens would have reproduced naturally during the 1900s had Americans allowed fire to scour more of the old trees from the land.
Today, there is some urgency because a widespread collapse that accelerated during a 2004-08 drought foreshadowed dire predictions of climate-linked losses over the next 50 years. The die-off blighted nearly a fifth of Colorado’s aspen stands, researchers say, thinning about a quarter of the forest crown in most of them with precious little regrowth.
Cutting aspens now, in the absence of drought, could regrow vigorous young trees before the next dry spell strikes.
“We certainly don’t have any silver bullets,” said Jim Worrall, a U.S. Forest Service Forest Health Protection pathologist in Gunnison, Colo., who studied the past decade’s so-called Sudden Aspen Decline syndrome. “But we do know that aspen stands less than about 40 years old were not really affected by Sudden Aspen Decline.”
Thus, cutting for regrowth is a prescription that’s taken firm root with foresters and opened a divide among environmentalists who might have unified against logging — if not for the wild card of climate change.
“Nature knows best,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of Colorado’s Wilderness Workshop and a skeptic of the rush into forest interventions. He supports efforts to clear beetle-killed pines posing fire hazards and watershed threats around communities, but believes the aspens and other trees deep in the woods should adapt on their own.
“History is writ with many examples of humans monkeying in natural systems that have gone awry.”
OK, so the above is a question about cutting aspen for the purpose of trying to regenerate them.
That’s why Shoemaker and others with a more traditional wilderness ethic favor a hotly debated revision of Colorado’s roadless forest rule. The state and U.S. Forest Service are considering local changes to a nationwide 2001 rule protecting pristine forests from road construction, and one of several proposals under review would tighten restrictions considerably. It would generally ban tree cutting on 2.6 million acres of “upper-tier” protection zones — two-thirds of the state’s roadless areas.
Millions of acres of dead pines and spruces naturally give aspens new areas to colonize, Shoemaker said, while foresters seem fixated on old aspen stands in areas that aren’t likely to support them in the future. They want to prevent oak brush and other dryland species from taking over slopes that he believes are becoming ill-suited to aspens.
This next section is related to the aspen question because the “upper tier” acreage in the Proposed Colorado Rule does not allow tree cutting for wildlife habitat improvement, or restoration of endangered or sensitive species (fyi, aspen isn’t endangered or sensitive but it is good for wildlife). Note, this is not road building, it is tree cutting.. so people would have to walk in with chainsaws (or ride in on OHV’s) and drop the trees.
This aspect of the Upper Tier designation is of concern to some wildlife-oriented individuals as they may see the need for some cutting and burning to restore wildlife habitat in key corridors so animals can move (and also migrate based on future climate change).
Below is a quote from Colorado Roadless Q&A’s here.
“The Upper Tier designation was added based on public concern that exceptions found in the previous proposal would allow roads and tree cutting anywhere within CRAs. On Upper Tier acres, requirements are more restrictive than under the 2001 rule. The exceptions allow only road construction and reconstruction as allowed by statutes or treaties, and reserved or outstanding rights; and tree-cutting incidental to an activity not prohibited by the Colorado Roadless Rule and for personal or administrative use. ”
So now back to the news story.
“Trying to freeze an aspen stand in time,” he said, “is fighting nature.”
Sitting pretty
Others who love wilderness, and indeed moved here to live among it, point to the bark-beetle infestation — which stripped more than 6 million acres of Colorado evergreens — as evidence such hard-line protections are outdated.
“I’m a total wilderness advocate,” said Tom Cardamone, who moved here to work on a student-led wilderness campaign in 1972 and now directs the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies [ACES]. “Also, I recognize the increasing importance of hands-on forest management.”
ACES has a staff of naturalists whose mission statement seeks to nurture lifelong commitments to the Earth while “restoring the balance of natural communities.” Defining and championing proper balance can be difficult in a resort community where most residents moved because they liked things just the way they were — a problem Cardamone calls “the challenge of the perception of the pristine.”
If a place looks nice and attracts hikers and mountain bikers, he said, they don’t necessarily weigh whether its ecology is out of whack. Locals have battled the center’s efforts to restore a stretch of the Roaring Fork River from gravel mining and an alpine bog from peat removal, he said, because the areas remained pretty. Both projects went forward, and now both are hailed as ecological successes.
So it is with struggling forests, Cardamone believes. Residents don’t like the idea of roads and heavy equipment trudging through pristine wilderness, but “I’m also concerned about the damage of climate change to pristine wilderness.”
Confusing, because now we are not talking about Colorado Roadless nor upper tier. No one is proposing building roads for aspen treatments in roadless.
The bark beetles that have munched through at least 40 million acres of Western evergreens since 1997 served a warning. Aided by warming winters and lengthening summers, they attacked forests that were effectively overpopulated. Individual trees competed for soil moisture and daylight to steel themselves against the onslaught, and when it was too late for people to react on a landscape level, foresters started thinning trees in an effort to save favored recreation spots or reduce fire hazards.
The question now is whether active management would avoid a similar collapse among another key forest species, or whether it’s futile to play God. Which lesson should be taken?
Dangers of drought
Aspens host their own species of native bark beetles, and those can find heightened success during droughts. But it is the drought itself — heat coupled with drying soils — that scientists believe threatens to shrink aspen range, currently stretching along the Rockies from Mexico to Alaska.
The Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station has used greenhouse-gas projections to estimate that up to half the suitable aspen range in the central Rockies will vanish under something like permanent drought by 2060, eliminating low-elevation stands.
Some ecologists believe aspens are resilient, though, and argue that something besides logging could help them thrive.
“The prime culprits are the rising elk populations in the West and, in some cases, livestock,” said Paul Rogers, director of Utah State University’s Western Aspen Alliance. Hunting more elk, restoring wolves to push them around and better managing livestock, he said, would help aspen sprouts survive in many places.
Rogers doubts Sudden Aspen Decline is as widespread as others say. He doesn’t question that, for instance, 17 percent of Colorado’s aspen stands suffered in the past drought, but he doesn’t believe the roots are dead in most of those. Protect the areas from overgrazing and browsing, he said, and many would spring back. Aspens have expanded and contracted with previous climate shifts.
Logging trees, as the Forest Service wants, would stimulate new growth, Rogers said. But none of the sprouts would climb past “mouth-high” if wildlife and livestock aren’t managed accordingly.
“Don’t do anything,” he warned, “unless you have a way to protect [new growth] afterward.”
I’m not an expert on aspen decline, but it seems like it should be pretty clear if “sprouts are not coming up” or “sprouts are coming up and being eaten.” Certainly if you are successful at “sprouts coming up” you would have to manage “sprouts being eaten.” Not sure how this relates, unless it is impossible to manage “sprouts being eaten” so why spend money to help “sprouts come up?”
But to be relevant to the Upper Tier Roadless question, you would have to say that there are no situations for wildlife for any tree species that could be helped by tree falling -ever. Again, going from the specific to the general is a bit confusing.
Buying time
If fire suppression has built aspen forests that are unnaturally old and uniform in age, shaking them up makes sense to Cardamone. Doing so might stimulate young aspens and buy the forest time for humans to slow climate change.
Roadless protections for their own sake, he said, aren’t the ultimate goal anymore.
“Road or no road, if all the trees are dead because we didn’t do something wise,” Cardamone said, “we may regret that.”
That’s the plea echoing around the White River National Forest, which surrounds Aspen and shelters the nation’s largest elk herd. District rangers and Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams fear that if public pressure leads their agency bosses to choose the most restrictive alternative for their new roadless rule, the forest will shrivel. It’s not even about roads, he said, because the agency could cut trees without building any — if the roadless rule allows.
“We’re losing our aspen pretty quickly in this part of the world,” Fitzwilliams said on a recent drive into the Divide Creek Basin. And more than half the forest there is aspen, mostly tall, stout, old.
Eighty percent are mature to “overmature,” he said.
Fitzwilliams drove up dirt roads past elaborate hunting camps of tents and buses — even one big rig hauled into the woods to outfit enthusiasts — showing what draws elk hunters here, and what he believes is at stake.
Elk thrive among aspens, but here and there along Divide Creek, century-old trees are toppling under their own weight, with nothing but grass growing under them. Eventually, without active management, he believes spruces and firs will fill in some of these gaps, squeezing out elk and deer. Oak brush will creep up other slopes.
And Divide Creek, it turns out, is among those zones that his crews couldn’t touch if the Forest Service designates 2.6 million acres for full roadless protections. Step off the existing roads, Fitzwilliams said, and you couldn’t cut a tree in the name of forest health. “If this all becomes upper-tier roadless, I’m out of business.”
Those stricter protections are what the Pitkin County Commission, based in Aspen, requested in its official comments to the agency, and it’s a popular stand among lots of politicians in ski country. But Fitzwilliams has been trying to change minds.
“I’ve joked with the Town Council that they need to change [Aspen’s] name to Spruce-Fir,” he said.
‘Hidden gems’
Beyond ecology, Fitzwilliams said, there’s an economy and a people at stake.
West central Colorado’s wilds are interwoven with a string of ski resorts, highways, electric lines and forested homes. Further limitations on tree thinning would risk catastrophic fire.
Those are fears that many wilderness lovers share, and they accept logging around the edges to improve safety. But many also push not just for more roadless protections, but also for new congressionally designated wilderness areas to limit most man-made disturbances.
They’re pushing a campaign called “Hidden Gems” to expand wilderness areas by 342,000 acres in this part of Colorado, effectively moving the protected zones farther downhill into areas considered important winter range for wildlife.
Outdoor photographer Steven DeWitt, of Eagle County, Colo., is a hiking and snowboarding enthusiast who holds wildlands dear. He sees the need for action near towns and highways, he said, but “what we’ve got for wilderness now is all we’ve got left.”
The pine forest’s rapid decline saddened DeWitt to the point that he has been shooting photos since 2007 for a planned online essay that he hopes will motivate Americans to deal with climate change. But in the backcountry, he prefers to see forests regenerate on their own.
Chain saw environmentalism isn’t for him. Rooting around in wild places sets a precedent.
“It’s a bad cocktail,” he said of Forest Service hopes for logging the roadless areas. “Everybody’s good intentions before anything is cut are great, but a road in a wilderness is a bad idea.”
It seems like Scott Fitzwilliams valiantly keeps saying “we are not talking about roads, we are only talking about the ability to cut trees” but then others are quoted as “roads are bad and you shouldn’t have them.”
I think it would be really hard to understand what the issue is from reading this story. It would also have been a better story if the author had quoted someone from the wildlife community who are concerned about the prohibitions in the Upper Tier.
Some people might say that the Upper Tier acres are “more protective than the 2001” because they don’t allow tree cutting for wildlife habitat or endangered species.. yet what are you really “protecting” by not allowing those actions? Certainly not wildlife, nor endangered species. It’s all rather ideological, and not very real, IMHO.
Further, I don’t think it’s accurate to say you are “logging”, when the material is not removed (because there are no roads). You may be “cutting” but using that darn dictionary again (Merriam Webster online):
“log
verb
transitive verb
1 a : to cut (trees) for lumber b : to clear (land) of trees in lumbering.”
It’s also interesting everyone quoted in the story agrees on a need for tree cutting around towns and highways.
