Diversity and species conservation

ReWild(life)ing of the US…

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This is not the incident described below in the Bend Bulletin, but the internet is full of related photos and stories.

While researching a future post yesterday, I came across this in the Bend Bulletin

Bend Dog Attacked by Deer in Backyard.

Steven George, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Bend, said humans aren’t really in danger of an attack — but if there’s a reason, they can go after dogs.

“The deer don’t differentiate between whether it’s a domestic dog or coyote,” George said. “They see a dog as a predator to them. It’s something that wants to hurt them, or even kill them. And so they’re going to be fairly defensive, and they can be defensive to the point of being aggressive toward that animal.”

George said attacks like this aren’t an everyday occurrence, and happen maybe once a month. And, in in the fall, deer are less likely to be aggressive compared to the spring.

“This time of the year, it’s usually a buck that’s associated with any kind of attack, but not always,” George said. “In the spring, it’s more normal, typically, a doe or a doe with a fawn associated with it.”

George said the most important thing people can do is keep their dogs on a leash.

“Typically, 99 percent of the time, when a dog gets injured, it’s because it’s not leashed — and it takes off after the deer,” George said.

Then, serendipitously, Terry Seyden sent this article “America Gone Wild” from the Wall Street Journal. The article is by Jim Sterba and adapted from his book “Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds” to be published Nov. 13.

There’s a great photo in the article.

Below are some excerpts.

This year, Princeton, N.J., has hired sharpshooters to cull 250 deer from the town’s herd of 550 over the winter. The cost: $58,700. Columbia, S.C., is spending $1 million to rid its drainage systems of beavers and their dams. The 2009 “miracle on the Hudson,” when US Airways LCC -0.16% flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing after its engines ingested Canada geese, saved 155 passengers and crew, but the $60 million A320 Airbus was a complete loss. In the U.S., the total cost of wildlife damage to crops, landscaping and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year ($1.5 billion from deer-vehicle crashes alone), according to Michael Conover of Utah State University, who monitors conflicts between people and wildlife.

There are several paragraphs about how trees have come back to the East.

The founders of the conservation movement would have been astonished to learn that by the 2000 Census, a majority of Americans lived not in cities or on working farms but in that vast doughnut of sprawl in between. They envisioned neither sprawl nor today’s conflicts between people and wildlife. The assertion by animal protectionists that these conflicts are our fault because we encroached on wildlife habitat is only half the story. As our population multiplies and spreads, many wild creatures encroach right back—even species thought to be people-shy, such as wild turkeys and coyotes. (In Chicago alone, there are an estimated 2,000 coyotes.)

Why? Our habitat is better than theirs. We offer plenty of food, water, shelter and protection. We plant grass, trees, shrubs and gardens, put out birdseed, mulch and garbage.

Sprawl supports a lot more critters than a people-free forest does. For many species, sprawl’s biological carrying capacity—the population limit the food and habitat can sustain—is far greater than a forest’s. Its ecological carrying capacity (the point at which a species adversely affects the habitat and the other animals and plants in it) isn’t necessarily greater. The rub for many species is what’s called social carrying capacity, which is subjective. It means the point at which the damage a creature does outweighs its benefits in the public mind. And that’s where many battles in today’s wildlife wars start.

What to do? Learn to live with them? Move them? Fool them into going away? Sterilize them? Kill them? For every option and every creature there is a constituency. We have bird lovers against cat lovers; people who would save beavers from cruel traps and people who would save yards and roads from beaver flooding; Bambi saviors versus forest and garden protectors.

Wildlife biologists say that we should be managing our ecosystems for the good of all inhabitants, including people. Many people don’t want to and don’t know how. We have forsaken not only our ancestors’ destructive ways but much of their hands-on nature know-how as well. Our knowledge of nature arrives on screens, where wild animals are often packaged to act like cuddly little people that our Earth Day instincts tell us to protect. Animal rights people say killing, culling, lethal management, “human-directed mortality” or whatever euphemism you choose is inhumane and simply creates a vacuum that more critters refill. By that logic, why pull garden weeds or trap basement rats

Forest Service logs (err, “thins”) old-growth to help aspen

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Earlier this summer Sharon had a post titled, “Tree vs. Tree: An Aspen Restoration Project,” which looked at some of the issues surrounding the Tahoe National Forest’s “Outback Aspen Restoration Project.”

Well, this morning, the Sacramento Bee’s Tom Knudson took another look at the project, this time with local residents, who are not too happy with the Forest Service and with the Tahoe National Forest supervisor, who is not too disappointed with the project.  Although, in fairness, the Forest Service supervisor did decide to halt logging (or do we call it “thinning?”) of trees 40 inches in diameter or greater on the remaining 190 acres of the project.  Here are some highlights from the article:

Standing amid a scattering of stumps last week, an official from the U.S. Forest Service acknowledged the agency made mistakes by logging too many pine trees, including majestic old-growth giants, in an effort to help another Tahoe species: the quaking aspen.

But he rejected calls from local residents that the Tahoe National Forest sharply scale back the cutting along Independence Creek north of Truckee.

“Are there places where there are some trees that I’ve seen out here – some live trees still standing and some stumps – that I would have preferred be marked for retention? Yes,” said Tom Quinn, supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest….The extensive cutting has incensed residents and conservationists, who were out in force at Friday’s meeting.

“We are shocked at the situation, the catastrophic damage being done by our government with absolutely no care for public input,” said Mary Leavell, who grazes cattle in the national forest with her husband.

“We all ultimately want forest health,” said Lauren Ranz, who lives part-time on a former 450-acre ranch near the logging zone. “But I don’t think this is the way to get it.”

Despite his concerns about cutting too many large, old trees, Quinn defended the project…He said the agency’s decision to allow the cutting of old-growth trees was consistent with the goal of aspen restoration, even though it angered neighbors.  “They were probably social mistakes, more than ecological mistakes,” he said of the agency’s actions.

To try to quell criticism, Quinn announced that Forest Service officials have decided to halt logging of conifers 40 inches in diameter or greater on the remaining 190 acres of the 479-acre project. But he rejected suggestions to limit cutting to trees 30 inches in diameter or less….

“I’m extremely disappointed,” said Fred Mitchell who lives on 80 acres near where the cutting is taking place. “There are so few trees 40 inches and above, anyway.

“They’re brushing off the public like we are a minor nuisance, like we don’t count for anything,” Mitchell added.

Mitchell is one of a group of residents who have marshaled opposition by handing out flyers, contacting lawyers, political representatives and environmentalists, even placing mock tombstones on the stumps of large trees – some more than two centuries old – that have been logged.

“It’s not what they told us it would be,” said Gary Risse, a part-time area resident who is among those opposed. “I can tell you without a doubt there was no mention of clear-cuts whatsoever. That would have stopped it.”

…Chad Hanson, director and staff ecologist for the John Muir Project, said other agency projects have succeeded with less intense cutting.

“Scientific studies … do not support the assumption that you need to clear-cut forests, especially 150 feet or more away from aspen stands, or that you need to remove old- growth trees,” he said. “That is not scientifically necessary.”…

“I’ve covered about 300 acres of this project looking for legacy (old-growth) trees,” Mitchell said. “From what I can gather, there has only been one legacy tree left for every four and a quarter acres, which is not a very good number.”

The Tyranny of Nativehood, Species-in-the-Sierra Style

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This range map is from the California Nature Mapping Program http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/ca/

Here’s the link and below are excerpts.

If beaver will perform a useful hydrological function in an era of coming drought, does it matter how “native” they are? Do they have to have been shown (by whom? how many?) to be in a drainage, a watershed, a mountain range? If Kokanee are not native, should they not be celebrated?

If the “ecosystem” needs all species that were there at some point in the past, and yet the different species like different conditions, and managing the conditions to make sure they are all provided for takes lots of money, and neither California nor the Federal government is rife with money..

I found this discussion fascinating, because, like the fire issue, within the discussion is an idea “nativeness in the past” that is said to determine today’s policy.

The articles have caught the attention of the California Department of Fish and Game, which is re-examining its beaver policies in the Sierra, said Matt Meshiry, an environmental scientist with the department.

“If they are a native component, then we need to examine land use and species management … in terms of maintaining and preserving the ecosystem,” Meshiry said.

Pister, the retired fisheries biologist, is skeptical, saying beaver have harmed golden trout – the California state fish and a native species – in the eastern Sierra.

“We found beaver dams prevent migration and genetic interchange between populations while silting in the best food-producing and spawning areas,” he said. “Trout would grow larger in beaver ponds, but at a biological price.”

And of course, population differentiation from separation of populations, and interchange or migration, are both important evolutionary processes.

But this year, beavers built a dam not far from the facility, threatening to flood it and a trail. The Sierra Wildlife Coalition urged the Forest Service not to disturb the dam, suggesting a piping system be installed to permit water to flow through the dam, preventing flooding and protecting beaver – or that the level of the pathway be raised.

On Sept. 26, Forest Service crews dismantled the dam instead. The beaver weren’t harmed but Guzzi fears for their future.

“They have to stockpile food for the winter because they don’t hibernate,” she said. “So this is taking away their food. And they could starve.”

“It’s a strange corner for the Forest Service to be backed into because it’s all artificial,” Guzzi added. “It’s a little ironic, to say the least.”

Heck, the Forest Service spokeswoman, acknowledged the subject is challenging.

“There are a lot of complex issues,” she said. “Are you dealing with two non-native species and balancing their needs? Are you balancing a native and a non-native? There has been quite a bit of conversation.”

She also said dismantling the dam was the right decision.

“Essentially, we were hoping we could discourage them (the beaver) from rebuilding in that location while allowing downstream dams to persist.”

“It’s one thing to suggest things. It’s another to be the entity that has to implement solutions,” Heck added. “We have to look at what the maintenance load would be (and) whether it’s actually going to work.”

Also up for discussion is the focus of the popular fall festival on a non-native species.

“It does take some thought about how to shift an event like that,” Heck said. “What would that new theme be? How are we going to talk about both the kokanee and native species?”

It’s strange that all these folks, most of whom contain large numbers of non-native genes, are having this discussion. Somehow it seems to have gotten into folks’ understanding that non-natives are undesirable. Some are, but we need to decide which ones, and agree on why they are undesirable, if so, what can we do about it, can we afford it, and will it work- not judge a species solely on its ancestry.

Logging debris matters: better soil, fewer invasive plants

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New research from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station and authors Timoth B. Harrington and John Kirkland:

Abstract: The logging debris that remains after timber harvest traditionally has been seen as a nuisance. It can make subsequent tree planting more difficult and become fuel for wildfire. It is commonly piled, burned, or taken off site. Logging debris, however, contains significant amounts of carbon and nitrogen—elements critical to soil productivity. Its physical presence in the regenerating forest creates microclimates that influence a broad range of soil and plant processes. Researchers Tim Harrington of the Pacific Northwest Research Station; Robert Slesak, a soil scientist with the Minnesota Forest Resources Council; and Stephen Schoenholtz, a professor of forest hydrology and soils at Virginia Tech, conducted a five-year study at two sites in Washington and Oregon to see how retaining logging debris affected the soil and other growing conditions at each locale. They found that keeping logging debris in place improved soil fertility, especially in areas with coarse-textured, nutrient-poor soils. Soil nitrogen and other nutrients important to tree growth increased, and soil water availability increased due to the debris’ mulching effect. The debris cooled the soil, which slowed the breakdown and release of soil carbon into the atmosphere. It also helped prevent invasive species such as Scotch broom and trailing blackberry from dominating the sites. Forest managers are using this information to help maximize the land’s productivity while reducing their costs associated with debris disposal.

The entire study can be downloaded here.

Bozeman’s water supply less vulnerable to fire

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According to Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, all of the trees in this picture that are not painted orange would be cut down as part of the Bozeman Watershed logging project. Photo by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center.

The Gallatin National Forest’s Bozeman Watershed Logging Project has been the subject of much debate and commenting here at the blog.   Well, it appears as if the next chapter of the story has been written, as the Bozeman Daily Chronicle took another look at the issue in this morning’s paper.  Excerpts from the article are highlighted below [emphasis added]:

This summer’s Millie fire prompted renewed calls for thinning the forests south of Bozeman to protect the city’s water supply from fire. However, upgrades to the water plant are nullifying the argument that the water supply needs protection.  The Bozeman water plant’s antiquated filtration system, built in 1984, couldn’t filter much more sediment than what is carried by the streams on a normal day. Any increase in the amount of sediment in Bozeman or Hyalite creeks was a source of concern.

But that will change when a new $43 million system comes online in a little more than a year, said water treatment supervisor Rick Moroney. Construction started a year ago.  “It adds an important extra step – sedimentation – which makes it vastly superior,” Moroney said. “I can’t guarantee it could handle everything, but it will be able to handle the sediment from a fire.”

The new facility removes the urgency from one side’s argument in what is now a 2-year-old battle over a forest-thinning project.

In March 2010, the Gallatin National Forest published its Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project, a plan devised with the city to harvest, thin and burn 4,800 acres in the Hyalite and Bozeman creek watersheds.

The $2 million project had the stated objective of protecting the watersheds that provide 80 percent of the city’s summer water supply from being polluted after a severe fire. But wildfire doesn’t pose the only risk to water quality.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Montana Ecosystems Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council opposed the project because more than seven miles of new logging roads would be required, and such roads can add as much sediment to area streams as a fire….

Hydrologist Mark Story said decades of research show roads are responsible for 90 percent of the sediment produced during logging. The groups argued thinning wouldn’t prevent a wildfire, which would add still more sediment.  “There’s no science that will fireproof a watershed,” said Michael Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “We have no problem with thinning as long as they can do it without building roads that are just as bad for the watershed.”

 

Fire scientists continue debate in the comments section

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Last week this blog featured a couple of recent news articles with fire scientists discussing their latest research and understanding of the role severe fire plays in some western landsacpes.  One of those articles I highlighted was Emily Guerin’s piece over at High Country News “Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.”

As interesting as Guerin’s original article was, perhaps even just as interesting has been the discussion taking place in the comments section to the article – a discussion that includes some of the leading fire scientists themselves.  Below are some excerpts from the on-line comments section, but the entire comments section is certainly worth a read:

Richard Hutto
Sep 19, 2012 09:02 AM

Swetnam and Brown “…questioned how ponderosa pines could regenerate if Baker and Williams are correct about severe fires having scarred Western landscapes for generations.” They regenerate the same way most wingless pine seeds do–by animal dispersal. I have numerous photos of Clark’s nutcrackers and Mexican jays extracting seeds from cones on severely burned ponderosa pines (see photo evidence on our facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/AvianScienceCenter). The more you learn about severe-fire ecology, the more it all makes sense–plant, beetle, and bird adaptations that are apparent even in many of our dry mixed-conifer forest types!

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Chad Hanson
Sep 22, 2012 12:54 PM

In the artice Malcolm North incorrectly states that the General Land Office data used by Williams and Baker is a “very scant data set” that does not allow for extrapolation to the landscape scale. In fact, this GLO data comprises thousands of sites over entire landscapes. The data used by Williams and Baker, in fact, is by far the largest data set ever used to address the historic occurrence of high-severity fire in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests. As for the comments by Swetnam and Brown, who imply that ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forest does not naturally regenerate after high-severity fire, this assumption is contradicted by the scientific literature. Savage and Mast (2005) (Table 3) found hundreds of stems per hectare of natural regeneration following high-severity fire in Southwest ponderosa pine forest. Haire and McGarigal (2008) and Haire and McGarigal (2010) had similar findings, indicating substantial natural regeneration of ponderosa pine and other tree species even in large high-severity fire patches, especially within about 200 meters from the edge of high-severity fire patches (which accounts for most of the area experiencing high-severity fire), and lower but still significant levels (for the purposes of establishing new forest stands) even farther than 200 meters into high-severity fire patches. Similar results have been reported outside of the Southwest in mixed-conifer and ponderosa pine forests (Donato et al. 2006, Shatford et al. 2007, Donato et al. 2009, Collins et al. 2011 [Plumas Lassen Study 2010 Annual Report]). There are likely numerous mechanisms for this, including seed survival (which may occur more often that some assume), dispersal by animals, and dispersal by wind.

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Peter Brown
Sep 25, 2012 02:34 PM

Hey, all I know is what the photo above shows: recent high severity fires in Front Range ponderosa pine forests are not coming back as dense even-aged stands of trees. Far from it, in fact. That photo was taken this past June, almost 10 yrs to the day after Hayman took out about 50,000 acres of forest with nary a living tree left. You could search for days for a seedling that was not planted by either FS and Denver Water (they’ve planted a few 1000s of acres, but still a lot of treeless landscape out there). Maybe those corvids are busy as bees somewhere, but they’re not having much luck with re-establishing those 50,000 acres very fast. And it’s not just Hayman; wander around in any recent fires in the Front Range and see how treeless those areas still are.

And this is in the exact same area we reconstructed fire history before the fire (published in 1999) that was the first fire history in a ponderosa ecosystem that provided concrete evidence of crown fire. But the crown fire patches we reconstructed were acres to 10s of acres in size, not the 1000s to 10000s of acres we’re seeing today.

And hence the crux of the question: what was the scale of crown fire relative to surface fire in the historical forest, and how has that changed today? No one disputes that *passive* crown fires occurred (where fire spread across the landscape was primarily through surface fuels, but occasional trees or patches or trees would crown), whereas current fires are dominated by *active* crown fires (with fire spread mainly through aerial fuels). One other point about the uncharacteristic nature of recent fires, at least Hayman: 400-600 yr old trees we sampled in our 1999 study that had recorded multiple fire scars (i.e., had experienced 6, 8, 10, 15 *surface fires* in their lifetimes) all died during Hayman. Hanson, I have to laugh every time I see your report on “the myth of catastrophic fire” [link here, added by MK] because in the cover photograph there is what looks to be a dead tree that takes up the entire left side of the photo, with what sure looks to be a catface with maybe 8-10 fire scars recorded in it. An incredibly unintended ironic comment on your entire thesis in that paper. Here’s a tree that experienced 8-10 surface fires in its lifetime, and then dies in a recent high-severity fire.

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Richard Hutto
Sep 25, 2012 02:54 PM

The picture above is indeed instructive; it shows that there are no big ponderosa pines! Why? They were all harvested before or after the severe fire event…might that have something to do with the fact that there is little recruitment? The more unnatural treatment a forest gets, the more unnatural the result.

The fact that charcoal trees have fire-scars is also instructive. Of course fire-scarred trees eventually burn down…that’s the point! If they didn’t burn down every 300 years or so, on average, they’d live 4,000-5,000 years, just as the other tree species that REALLY have a history of avoiding severe fire do. A little more perspective from evolutionary ecology might help here.

Again, nobody is arguing that some dry PIPO forests are in an unnatural state, and getting unnatural results from recent fires…the BIG point is that the story applies to a small proportion of western forests, and to almost none of the mixed-conifer forest types.

Analysis of Angora Project 9th Circuit Appeal Decision

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Below is an analysis of the Angora Opinion, and here is a link to the opinion. For those of you who think that litigation is about making the FS follow the law when it egregiously oversteps, check out what the judges had to say about the plaintiff’s points.. it’s not a long read but does show you the complexity of the legal framework (check out the discussion of MIS monitoring) and the nature of the plaintiffs’ arguments in general.

This is from the AFRC newsletter by Scott Horngren.

In a significant opinion issued on September 20, the Ninth Circuit emphasized that an environmental assessment (EA) is not subject to the same requirements as an environmental impact statement (EIS). The case, Earth Island Institute v. Forest Service, involved a challenge to the EA prepared to salvage and rehabilitate the area damaged by the Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe.

Previous Ninth Circuit opinions have indicated that the requirements for an EA are not similar to the requirements for an EIS. The Angora opinion builds on those cases and makes a definitive statement that where the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations impose an analytical requirement for an EIS, that requirement does not apply by implication to an EA. The Ninth Circuit explained that “a court should not impose upon the agency its own notion of which procedures are ‘best’ or most likely to further some vague, undefined public good.” Plaintiffs complained that the Forest Service had not responded to comments discussing black-backed woodpecker studies submitted by Dr. Chad Hansen. But the court held that “the duty to disclose and respond to responsible opposing viewpoints imposed by [the CEQ regulations] applies only to [EISs], not [EAs].”

The court also held that “an agency’s obligation to consider alternatives under an EA is a lesser one than under an EIS” and that an EA need only consider a no action alternative and a preferred alternative. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy (NEPA) by not considering an alternative that would limit removal of all snags greater than 16 inches in diameter. The court held that leaving these snags “weighing more than 1 ton per tree, would not achieve the Project objective of reducing the risk of severe wildfire.” When the purpose of the project is to reduce fire risk, “the Forest Service need not consider alternatives that would increase fire risk.”

Finally, the court explained that, under the 1982 viability planning rule as amended by the 2000 interpretative rule, the species viability requirements apply only to the extent that they are incorporated into the relevant forest plan. The court found that the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) Forest Plan did not incorporate any species monitoring requirements for viability at the project level. Therefore, population monitoring was only required at the forest level under the LTBMU plan. Significantly, the court also held that, at the project level, the Forest Service need not assess the habitat quality and quantity for species if there is no population monitoring requirement at the project level. Additionally, the court held that since the Forest Service was not required to monitor populations at the project level, it also did not have to determine the quantity and quality of habitat needed for viability at the project level, given that the analysis of habitat quality and quantity for a species is in effect a proxy for population monitoring. Therefore, an absence of detailed information about the habitat quality and quantity to “maintain viability” of the blacked-backed woodpecker at the project level did not violate the National Forest Management Act (NFMA).

This case is a significant victory for common sense in NEPA and NFMA compliance by the Forest Service in the Ninth Circuit. Its implementation by the agency should free up resources that can be better used to improve the health of our federal forests and the infrastructure that depends upon them.

Salamanders under fire: Burning forests among threats as feds contemplate endangered status

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Jemez mountains salamander
Thanks to Terry Seyden for this link.

Well, we’ve been discussing a woodpecker who likes fires and specifically post-fire habitat.

In this story we find an animal that apparently doesn’t like them so much and appears to be also rare. I wonder how a pattern of burning for woodpecker habitat in the Sierra would affect their local salamanders?

Here’s the link, and below is an excerpt.

One of the chief threats facing the lung-less amphibian is the combination of an overgrown forest and the likelihood of severe wildfire, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
While the salamander has evolved over centuries with low-intensity fire, the waves of fast-moving, intense fires that have charred tens of millions of acres in the West over the last decade is a problem.
Biologists say that between 1995 and 2010, severe fires have burned more than one-third of known salamander habitat on national forest lands.

In 2011, the Las Conchas Fire burned nearly 18,000 acres of salamander habitat.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service points to fire restoration, logging, grazing, roads, trails and recreation as other threats to the salamander.

Aside from the proposed listing, the agency is suggesting setting aside more than 140 square miles in three New Mexico counties as critical habitat for the salamander.
The agency will make a final decision on the salamander after a 60-day comment period.
Environmentalists have been pushing for salamander protections for more than two decades.

Hmm. I hope if they figure it’s hard to stop fires, they won’t shut instead stop “fire restoration,” logging, grazing, roads, trails and recreation instead…

Denver Post on Making Land Management Decisions in the Courtroom : Rocky Mountain Park Elk

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National Park Service photo

Various folks, from former Chief of the Forest Service and elk biologist Jack Ward Thomas, have questioned the idea of making land management decisions in the courtroom. This is apparently also apparent to members of the Denver Post editorial board. In Colorado, we have commissions, task forces and a variety of other mechanisms of interested and knowledgeable parties getting together to solve tough issues (e.g. oil and gas regulation). So perhaps it seems more obvious here that an appeals court is suboptimal. Given our discussion of “nit-picking” this week, I also italicized a relevant sentence. Another note: it’s obviously not just the Forest Service who deals with this.

Here’s the link, and below is an excerpt.

Yet not everyone is happy. Some environmentalists objected to the plan from the outset because it rejected the option of introducing wolves to reduce the number of elk. And just this week, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an appeal from WildEarth Guardians of a lower-court decision that upheld the Park Service’s plan.

We hope the appeals court supports the lower-court decision. It would be a shame — indeed a travesty — if the professional judgment of the Park Service on behalf of the health of the park was second-guessed in this fashion.

It’s not that we have anything against wolves. The reintroduction of gray wolves in the mid-1990s from Canada to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming must be judged a conservation triumph. They reproduced and thrived — so much so that the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded they could even be removed from the endangered species list.

Moreover, in Yellowstone the wolves scattered elk herds just as predicted, thereby allowing the recovery of willow and other battered species.

But reintroducing wolves is not something to be undertaken lightly or in haste. While Rocky Mountain National Park, at 415 square miles, is huge, wolf packs can range even farther. Wolves would inevitably encroach onto private property and even into lightly populated areas.

As we noted back in 2006, any plan to import wolves into the park would therefore provoke a lengthy political and legal battle — even if wolves might turn out to be part of the long-term solution for elk control.

The Park Service didn’t have the luxury of years to wait for a solution to its elk problem — not if it wanted to be a responsible steward of Rocky Mountain park.

Like so many environmental court cases, this one is based upon claims that federal officials failed to dot every “i” and cross every “t” of the law in reaching their decision.

For example, WildEarth Guardians maintains that culling the herd with trained volunteers is tantamount to hunting, which is banned in the park. But this is legal word play. No one considers killing elk for ecological reasons to be a form of sport — and hunters do not benefit from it.

The future of the wolf in Colorado is a fascinating topic worthy of serious debate. But it shouldn’t be decided by an appeals court.

NY Times: Forest fire research questions wisdom of fuel reduction

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Yesterday, Jim Robbins (a Montana-based science writer for the New York Times) had a very interesting article in the paper, which featured a few of the scientists/researchers we’ve highlighted before on this blog.

Robbins was lucky enough to spend a day in the woods with Dr. Richard Hutto, professor of biology and the director of the University of Montana’s Avian Science Center.  Dr. Hutto’s research has been brought up on this blog a few times in the past.  A few years ago, Dr. Hutto put together a short video titled, “Portraits in Black,” which is a  series of images from severely burned forests to help illustrate the value of such forests to those who might not believe such value exists (such as some of the readers and commenters of this blog?).

MISSOULA, Mont. — On a forested mountainside that was charred in a wildfire in 2003, Richard Hutto, a University of Montana ornithologist, plays a recording of a black-backed woodpecker drumming on a tree.

The distinctive tattoo goes unanswered until Dr. Hutto is ready to leave. Then, at the top of a tree burned to charcoal, a woodpecker with black feathers, a white breast and a yellow slash on its crown hammers a rhythmic response.

“This forest may have burned,” says Dr. Hutto, smiling, “but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. There’s a lot going on.”

The black-backed woodpecker’s drum signals more than the return of life to the forest. It also may be an important clue toward resolving a debate about how much, and even whether, to try to prevent large forest fires.

Scientists are at loggerheads over whether there is an ecological advantage to thinning forests and using prescribed fire to reduce fuel for subsequent fires — or whether those methods actually diminish ecological processes and biodiversity….

Recent research [some ecologists and environmentalists] say shows that nature often caused far more severe fires than tree ring records show. That means the ecology of Western forests depends on fires of varying degrees of severity, including what we think of as catastrophic fires, not just the kinds of low-intensity blazes that current Forest Service policy favors.

They say that large fires, far from destroying forests, can be a shot of adrenaline that stimulates biodiversity.

Robbins also speaks with Dr. William Baker, a fire ecologist at the University of Wyoming who’s recent research we’ve also discussed quite a bit on this blog.

William Baker, a fire and landscape ecologist at the University of Wyoming, contends that the kind of limited fires that are being employed to control bigger fires were not as common in nature as has been thought.

For a recent paper in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, published with Mark Williams, Dr. Baker employed an unorthodox method to reconstruct fire history that challenges current analysis of tree rings. (The study was financed by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture.)

Dr. Baker and Dr. Williams examined thousands of handwritten records created by agents of the federal General Land Office who surveyed undeveloped land in the West in the mid-19th century. The surveyors used an ax to mark trees at precise intervals and took meticulous notes on what the vegetation between marked trees looked like — meadow, burned forest or mature trees.

Altogether, Dr. Baker’s students combed through 13,000 handwritten records on 28,000 marked trees, and hiked miles in Oregon, Colorado and Arizona to find some of the trees and compare today’s conditions with those from the 1800s.

They found that low-intensity fires that occurred naturally were not as widespread as other research holds, and that they did not prevent more severe fires. Dr. Baker concluded that big fires are inevitable, and argues that it is best for ecosystems — and less expensive — to put up with them.

“Our research shows that reducing fuels isn’t going to reduce severity much,” he said. “Even if you reduce fuels, you are still going to have severe fires” because of extreme weather.

The article wraps up with some pretty good thoughts about the concept of “disturbance ecology” and a nice money quote from Dr. Hutto:

Proponents of the free-fire theory say that while human lives and property should be protected, beyond that widespread wildfires should be viewed as necessary ecological events that reset the clock on a landscape to provide habitats for numerous species for years and even decades to come. This principle stems from research into “disturbance ecology.” For instance, when a hurricane blows down a large swath of forest or a volcano erupts, it strongly stimulates an ecosystem, scientists have found.

“Disturbances are very important; they are huge,” said Mark Swanson, a Washington State University ecologist who recently published a paper noting that recovered areas thrived after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. “You actually have an increase in species richness, sometimes to regionally high levels.”

Dr. Hutto, the University of Montana ornithologist, said he believes the Forest Service approach was misguided. He pointed out that morel mushrooms thrive on charred ground, and birds, including the mountain bluebird and black-backed woodpecker, then move in.

Similarly, a plant called snowbush can remain dormant in the soil for centuries until heat from a fire cracks its seed coat, and it blooms profusely.

“The first year after a fire is when the magic really happens,” Dr. Hutto said.

UPDATE (Sept 19): The most recent issue of High Country News contains a related feature article, Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.

Another UPDATE (Sept 26):  Here’s an interesting comment made by Dr. Hutto on the HCN website:

Richard Hutto

Sep 19, 2012 09:02 AM

Swetnam and Brown “…questioned how ponderosa pines could regenerate if Baker and Williams are correct about severe fires having scarred Western landscapes for generations.” They regenerate the same way most wingless pine seeds do–by animal dispersal. I have numerous photos of Clark’s nutcrackers and Mexican jays extracting seeds from cones on severely burned ponderosa pines (see photo evidence on our facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/AvianScienceCenter). The more you learn about severe-fire ecology, the more it all makes sense–plant, beetle, and bird adaptations that are apparent even in many of our dry mixed-conifer forest types!