Thoughtful essay. Excerpt: “[Sen.] Wyden’s support of pre-fire management is certainly a step in the right direction. But without equal attention given to post-fire management, Oregon’s legacy of beautiful, forest landscapes will evolve into forestland deserts covered by brush and dead, gray-ghost trees.”
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Shalom Smokey: A Place for Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Politics and All That
Some TSW readers, including at least one Anonymous, seem to have energy around discussing the political, philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings of the issues we deal with. To that end , I’m opening a special section called Shalom Smokey. As with everything, it’s an experiment, and we’ll see how it goes.
So back to our discussion of my post about Taking a Deep Breath. Mike said:
“People will trust their own observations over any level of rhetoric.” That simply isn’t true and there is a plethora of research that proves it is wrong. In fact, what happens is the rhetoric “informs” people how they should interpret their observations. The rise in and effectiveness of dissemination of misinformation and its effectiveness should be enough evidence all by itself to help you understand your statement is incorrect.
I think many disagreements are simply that we talk past each other, because we are thinking of different examples. Mesic or dry forests, American chestnut or spotted owls. In my case, I wasn’t thinking of politics at all. I was thinking of two of my other favorite non-forest topics, mysticism in religion, and parapsychology/mediums/near-death experiences. People who have these experiences traditionally have not been able to be argued out of them by authorities. That’s why authorities had to burn people at the stake. Imagine you went to a medium and know in some way that you have communicated with a non-living relative. If you read a book by a materialist scientist who tells you it isn’t possible.. or a religious authority who tells you you were really speaking to diabolic forces, most people I talk to (which may not be a random sample) will just nod their head, but you actually haven’t changed their mind.
What I’ve noticed from my experience, is that many people have had these experiences, but they may not feel that it is safe to talk about them. So they effectively keep their beliefs underground. There’s a corollary here also.. mistrust of people who tell you to believe something you know not to be true. I think it’s more obvious in spiritual belief world.. who are you to tell me what to believe? Do your ideas count more than my experiences? Why are you interested in converting me, can’t you leave me alone? What’s in it for you? The Inquisition folks thought they were right. In fact, the US founders were escaping wars between people who thought they were right and they should tell other people what to do. Think Munster Rebellion.
Or one of my favorite stories is a presentation at an SAF convention probably 30 years ago now. A professor had done research on Red-Cockaded Woodpecker. A field forester in the audience afterwards pointed out that he had seen a bird somewhere not predicted by the model. So to me this was the most magical of moments.. how can both things be true? What’s going on there? Sadly, the prof just said basically “your observation is not in the literature.” As if there are observations, and there is literature, and it’s not important for them to meet to get at the truth. Do you think the field forester changed his mind about what he saw and where it was?
Both people were good-hearted, I’m sure. The problem was that at the time, the places to have that kind of dialogue did not exist. Now it does. Or should, IMHO.
Yesterday, I was on a Zoom call with Dr. Frank Luntz, a political scientist who seems to know a lot of stuff (an article based on his data is coming out in the New York Times supposedly on Tuesday). He sounded disappointed that people trust institutions less. But institutions have to act trustworthy to retain trust. Think about prescribed fire, the 90 day stand-down, and the public’s involvement in the analysis and release of findings. Compare that to say, the question of Covid origins. So to my mind, people have to trust you for them to allow you to question their experiences. And so we’re back to relationships and trust.
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Toby pointed out “However, the weak point is figuring out how to convince the truly ignorant that there is better information available, or to at least to entertain the notion that perhaps there are other perspectives that are more informed by and consistent with reality. I’d appreciate some guidance on this one.”
Again, I start from the premise “why can’t we leave the ignorami alone?” And when is diversity of views a good thing, and when a bad thing, and why?
And some more academic research about diverse views, via our friends the fisheries folks..
In this work, we draw on collective intelligence (CI) theory and hypothesize that the aggregation of LK from diverse stakeholder groups can produce more complete and potentially more accurate representations of complex problems with interconnected social and environmental components. CI is typically defined as a group phenomenon that enables a group to accomplish complex tasks where individuals or any subset within it might fail (12). This group advantage may emerge when a collective of individuals either collaborate or independently aggregate their knowledge to address a problem (12⇓–14). The group may, therefore, benefit from a larger, more refined, or recombined body of knowledge, because aggregation mechanisms filter out errors and biases, compensate for individuals’ insufficiencies, or result in innovative solutions (e.g., refs. 15⇓–17)
For sure, that’s not politics exactly, but still..
And of course, there are post-modernist views that it is impossible to have facts outside of their social construction. From a class at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research that apparently was held last year called Michel Foucault: Truth and Power
Does the genealogical method of inquiry necessarily undermine the idea of objective truths that are stable across place and time? What are the implications of arguing, as Foucault does, that human history is characterized by ruptures and discontinuities in what we hold to be true? What is a discourse, and how does it render certain ideas credible and others beyond the pale? What are the means through which “regimes of truth” have historically operated, and to what effect? Is it still possible to speak of facts outside of their social construction? And to what extent is the debunking of objectivity associated with Foucault and his followers implicated in our own world of alternative facts?
So there’s many places this discussion could lead us, let’s continue.
Signs of a new tree mortality event showing up in the Sierra Nevada
From the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. A natural thinning — natural and due to climate change.
In 2022, preliminary results from the U.S. Forest Service’s Aerial Detection Survey, and field observations, suggest the emergence of a new tree mortality event disproportionately impacting higher-elevation fir forests in the northern and central parts of the state.
For some Californians, it has evoked a not-so-distant memory of the devastating southern Sierra tree mortality outbreak on the heels of the 2012–2016 drought, and the dangerous and unprecedented behavior of the 2020 Creek Fire that burned through the heavily impacted areas. For others, particularly in the central and northern part of our state that was largely unaffected by that event, it raises new concerns about forest ecosystem health and mounting wildfire risk.
What happens next will depend on future weather patterns, and whether land managers can catch up on long-needed, forest-restoration efforts.
Drivers of tree mortality
Large-scale tree mortality is mainly driven by abnormally high temperatures and prolonged drought, as scarcity of water strains otherwise healthy trees. The lack of water supply is exacerbated by increased competition among trees located in dense forests.
Unfortunately, many forests throughout the Sierra Nevada are two to five times denser than historical levels, largely due to removal of fire from the landscape. The dense stands of weakened water-stressed trees are more susceptible to diseases and insect infestations.
Management vs. Preservation
Two articles listed in Nick Smith’s HFHC email today, with radically different views:
First, a biased article, IMHO — more of an op-ed — from The Hill. DellaSala get a lot of ink. :”Government failing to protect US forests most critical to fighting climate change, activists say.”
Excerpt:
“It’s the large trees — the oldest trees in the forest — that are our best carbon reservoirs,” forest scientist Dominick DellaSala of advocacy group Wild Heritage told reporters on Tuesday.
About 35 percent of U.S. forestland is composed of these forests, principally on federal land, according to a study DellaSala co-authored in September, published in Frontiers.
Yet only a quarter of those most valuable forests are under explicit protection, the authors found — and if logged over the next decade, would result in a significant uptick in U.S. emissions.
Logging of these old stands is unlikely. However, Michelle Connolly, of forestry nonprofit Conservation North, says: “Left alone, forests will largely balance themselves, she argued. “Emissions released from insects and fire are largely out of our control, whereas forestry emissions are under our direct control,” she said.”
Next, from The Daily Californian, a UC Berkeley newspaper. “UC Berkeley researchers study damages to forests, wildlife.” Researchers get the ink.
Excerpt:
“The more dense a forest is, the more vulnerable it is to disturbance,” said Zack Steel, a research scientist with the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.
Compact forests, Steel added, make it easier for fires and [the impacts of] droughts to spread, consequently endangering the animals inhabiting them.
Considering the effects of the disturbances during the past decade, the UC Berkeley study noted that management efforts are necessary for forest preservation. For example, prescribed burnings aim to rid forest floors of potential wildfire fuel, such as pine needles and fallen trees. Furthermore, in drought season, fewer trees means less competition for water within the forest.
Brandon Collins, a researcher for the study and associate adjunct professor in campus’s Rausser College of Natural Resources, noted a relevant dilemma in conservation and preservation efforts: Tension exists between temporarily placing stress on natural environments versus simply leaving an already struggling forest alone.
“We need to figure out a way to minimize the risks of actively managing these forests, while also being able to do the work we need to increase resilience in the landscape,” Steel said.
To Collins, the long-term benefits of preservation outweigh the short-term losses caused by preservation strategies such as prescribed burnings. While forests and wildlife may be temporarily affected by these tactics, they also ensure that people will be able to enjoy these landscapes for many years to come.”
More Evidence that Rx Fire and Thinning Can Help Slow Wildfires
Article from the Yakima Herald-Republic. Includes maps.
“Scientists reviewing the impact of forest health treatments within the footprint of the Schneider Springs Fire have found that areas treated with both forest thinning and prescribed burns in the decades leading up to the blaze fared better than untreated areas, helping firefighters during the response.”
The article mentions an assessment by Washington DNR forest health scientists — intersting reading. Excerpt:
“The 2021 wildfires included many examples where prior treatments burned at low severity (<25% tree mortality) and gave fire managers more options to directly engage and safely manage fires. However, exceptionally hot and dry weather, high winds, and other factors led to moderate and high severity in other treatments. Based on limited field observations, treatments that included prescribed fire or piling and burning to reduce surface fuels were more likely to be effective, whereas mechanical only treatments often experienced higher tree mortality.”
Mechanical thinning, but not fuels removal.
What’s the Hurry? Take a Deep Breath.. and Reset the Rhetoric
I’ve been thinking about the urge to speed to reach conclusions that occurs in the present day, and perhaps is part of the media subculture at present. Again, there is a depressing book worth reading on this called “Trust Me, I’m Lying” by Ryan Holiday. But for a new better thing to be born, sometimes the old thing has to be broken; both are part of the cycle of progression.
Let’s take a few examples. We discussed the arrest of the Burn Boss a few weeks ago, during which The Hotshot Wakeup Person urged us to “take a deep breath” and wait until the facts surface. For many fire reviews, we wait months to get the After Action Report. There’s an old quote “truth is the friend of time.”
I was suggesting this to a person on Twitter, and they responded “what, and hold it (my breath), until Election Day?”. Which I thought was funny.
And here we are, it’s Election Day. Our President is worried (or says he is, who knows?) about democracy. I’m not.
“Academic experts” are trying to predict the future to a degree of detail.. (more than 2?) that sounds pretty specific.
According to the most recent Bright Line Watch survey, American Democracy on the Eve of the 2022 Midterms, academic experts see a roughly 75 percent chance that more than two high-profile Republican candidates, running for national or statewide offices in the midterm elections, may refuse to concede an election loss.
They did a survey of experts in October to predict what will happen in November. Again, what’s the hurry? What’s the argument for attempting to predict versus waiting and seeing?
Here’s my view. No matter what happens, the great machinery of elections and our system of governance will muddle through with all its inefficiencies and unnecessary drama- not new, as we know or unique to the 21st century. If R’s take over, they are likely to waste time in unnecessary finger pointing exercises, but what party should be casting stones here? There will be lots of hearings and lots of witnesses and occasionally a good thing will get through (e.g. GAOA, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill).
We can all check in with our predictions in two years.
The Secretary General of the UN said yesterday:
And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.
If tipping points didn’t exist, they would have to be invented. Unpredictable bad things can happen with climate, for sure. But not-predicted (or predicted by less-important in currently less-preferred disciplines) bad things can also happen outside of climate, including worldwide pandemics and wars among countries with nuclear capabilities- which, of course, have impacts on climate.
Here are my observations:
- People will trust their own observations over any level of rhetoric.
- If you want to win over people, don’t tell them that they are stupid, malevolent, or ignorant, or that their own experiences are unimportant.
- People who speak or act histrionically perhaps think that they are mobilizing people to act.
- In reality, they are triggering hatred, fear, depression and anxiety in people who believe them.
- And mistrust from people who don’t, who either ignore them or react.
- And if the people who don’t believe them react, they are targeted by more rhetoric, and so a negative cycle continues.
But it can’t continue forever, as “the end of democracy” and “the end of the world” is pretty much.. well… the end.
So I propose that those with access to major media take a step back, take a deep breath, and tone it down. Because you might be making things worse instead of better. About the very things you say you care about.
For the rest of us:
What are your predictions?
Happy Election Day, everyone!
Why a proposal inside Hoosier National Forest sees environmentalists facing off against forest managers
News from the other half of the country:
A controversial project slated for Hoosier National Forest underscores a larger struggle percolating over America’s trees.
Excerpts:
Inside the heart of Hoosier National Forest, the last truly wild place in Indiana, a deep chasm has formed – between longtime area residents like Heinrich, environmental advocates, and U.S. Forest Service managers – over the proposed Buffalo Springs Restoration Project.
Forest Service leaders maintain that burning, cutting, and spraying thousands of acres of mature trees is necessary to preserve the forest’s “overall health.” They say it will protect the wilderness near Patoka Lake in southern Indiana from the impending stressors of climate change.
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The project would further a larger U.S. Forest Service initiative to sustain oak-hickory ecosystems in the forest, which they said are “important to keep…on the landscape as many wildlife species have evolved with it and depend on it.”
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“Our forest is all pretty much the same age. We call it even-aged. That’s not good to have trees that are all the same age, because they’re all going to get old together. Which isn’t a bad thing in some part of the forest, but you want to have that diversity. You want to have those younger trees coming on too,” Thornton said.
But several environmental advocacy groups, including the Indiana Forest Alliance, Sierra Club, Protect Our Forest, Save Hoosier National Forest and the Hoosier Environmental Council, believe the Forest Service is making a mistake.
They maintain the Forest Service is operating within an archaic framework that profoundly – and erroneously – simplifies the makeup of a complex forest system, and that the real reason the Forest Service is moving forward with the Buffalo Springs Restoration Project is because they want to auction off its most valuable trees for profit.
Coming Out of the Wood Closet: Some Forested EU Countries in Tension With EU Centralization
Here’s a news story from the Helsinki Times. Finland’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Antti Kurvinen, has some interesting ideas. Some of it may sound familiar to those in North America. I too wonder exactly how forest policy has become a subset of climate and environmental policy. But then so has energy policy, I guess, and also agricultural policy. It seems to be a form of what I call disciplinary swamping.. where people who have worked on the topic for years become displaced by different, more trendy and important (or at least self-important) disciplines.
There are two strains that I see..
1) less wood, less food because of more “protection”; likely to raise prices on the basics of shelter and food. The UN biodiversity targets call for “at least 30 percent of land and sea” to be conserved through “systems of protected areas.”
2) Local people don’t know best how to manage their forests, rangelands and croplands, “we” do. Folks working in private coastal universities, international ENGO’s, the UN and so on.
There’s an inherent top-downishness in both these strains that I find puzzling. Translating ideas into practice, it seems to me, requires the input of both practitioners, and those likely to be affected.
I don’t really get the recipe here- some arrogance, some groupthink, with strong dose of catastrophizing and a dash of moralizing? Doesn’t seem very tasty to me.
A quarter of EU countries with large forest reserves have established a collaborative group to defend the interests of their national forest industries in the 27-country bloc, reports Helsingin Sanomat.
“A coming-out took place today. We’ve now come out of the wood closet. Forested EU countries have set up a collaboration group that we call by the name of For Forest,” Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Antti Kurvinen (Centre) announced on Monday.
Helsingin Sanomat wrote that the quartet is ultimately seeking to make sure more emphasis is placed on forests and forest industry activities in the EU.
The European Commission’s upcoming proposal on collecting data and monitoring the state of forests will offer the countries the first opportunity to wield their clout. The Finnish government is of the view that the commission has failed to sufficiently include member states in the preparatory work.
Austria and Finland have already secured support from 17 other member states for their position that research data on forests should be collected primarily through national mechanisms.
“You shouldn’t create a new system at the EU level. The supreme authority in forest policy belongs to member states,” argued Kurvinen.
Kurvinen on Monday aired a number of grievances about earlier and upcoming forest-related legislative proposals from the European Commission. The proposals, he stated, have been neither coordinated nor examined in terms of their overall impact on the use of forests, economic effects and social effects.
“I think it’s wrong to examine forest policy both in Finland and the EU solely through climate and environmental policy. You have to pay equal attention to competitiveness and employment,” he said.
He stated that the 27-country bloc is trying to squeeze all member states into the same forest-policy mould despite the fact that some members have hardly any forests in natural state. It is also “extremely problematic” that there is very little forest-industry expertise in Brussels.
“Expertise related to wood, forest growth and forest industry must be augmented in the EU, so that initiatives based on erroneous facts and initiatives not based on research data don’t move forward.”
Kurvinen, however, toned down his accusations when pressed to provide examples of such initiatives by Helsingin Sanomat.
“The initiatives aren’t necessarily based on erroneous facts,” he replied. “In Brussels, the impression of Finnish forest industry is sometimes such that, in the worst case, some actors in the field of non-profits lay out photos of a string bog in Lapland, saying this is what felling looks like in Finland.”
He also called attention to a proposal to reduce the use of protected plant areas by 50 per cent, claiming that the figure is not based on research but simply one that “looks good in an Instagram Story”.
The European Commission’s regulation to restore degraded forests would be devastating for the forest industry because of the amount of land areas to be protected, according to him. “A few member states are made to pay so that the rest of the EU can have a better conscience,” he summed up.
Finland has already restored wetlands and natural habitats under the programmes Helmi and Metso. Kurvinen viewed that the country is now being punished for its pioneering work because the programmes are not recognised in the restoration regulation.
30% of forests in the central/southern Sierra Nevada dead
Headline: California tree carnage: A decade of drought and fire killed a third of Sierra Nevada forests
The analysis mentioned in the Steel report we’ve been discussing. Excerpt:
California has seen devastating bouts of drought and record-breaking wildfire events in the last several years. From 2011-2020, a combination of fire, drought and drought-related bark beetle infestations killed 30% of forests in the Sierra Nevada mountain range between Lake Tahoe and Kern County, according to the analysis.
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On top of the overall decline in total conifer forest in the region, half of mature forest habitat and 85% of high-density mature forests were either wiped out entirely or became low-density forests.
The study also found areas protected as habitat for the California spotted owl, an endangered bird at the center of a historic battle between environmental activists and the timber industry, saw worse declines in tree canopy than non-protected areas.
That finding led the study’s authors to call for a rejection of traditional conservation methods that preserve forests as-is, before the loss of all mature forests in the Sierras. Using fire as a tool for landscape regeneration and removing low-lying vegetation can keep fires from becoming as devastating.
SAF Letter to Forest Service on Old-Growth Forests
Folks, The Society of American Foresters recently released a letter to the US Forest Service on old-growth forests. The letter discusses three key themes:
- Functional and Dynamic Definitions. As reflected in previous definitions of old growth (circa 1989) set by the USDA Forest Service, functional definitions of mature and old growth must mirror the regional variation in ecology found across landscapes and forest types. The established definitions provide a useful foundation for this initiative. However, Section 2(b)’s efforts to also inventory these forests with the intention of long-term conservation requires a dynamic model that can adapt to advances in modern forest science and research as well as changes in conditions like climate, ecology, and disturbance threats. To be functional, therefore, definitions and inventories should include assessments of climate vulnerability, disturbance risks, and other important factors associated with adaptation and conservation, which will help to inform management strategies. Forest conditions, management objectives, and management strategies should be regularly revisited through an iterative administrative process to reflect the dynamic needs of our forests.
- Education and Outreach. Public perceptions of forestry often incorrectly portray the science of forest management and the values of forestry professionals. Education and outreach from the agencies will be an essential component of a successful campaign to conserve old-growth and mature forests. In large part, our professional community is aligned on the management techniques and strategies required to conserve our forested resources, but public perceptions remain a hinderance to fulfilling these objectives at scale. As attendees noted, the forestry community requires a “social license” from the public to steward our forested resources, particularly when active management is required to foster their conservation. For example, it is not always intuitive to the public that conservation may require active management, or that long-term stability of forest carbon stocks may require near-term tree removal. The 2(b) initiative stands as an opportunity for the US to become a leader in a new era of forestry, one in which we learn to conserve our forests in a changing climate while providing more resources to a growing population. However, this requires a prolific and successful public relations campaign. A successful education and outreach campaign will inform the public that there is a spectrum of science-based strategies for conservation and that forest management can balance conservation objectives while continuing to produce the suite of essential resources that forests provide to humans.
- Collaboration with Non-Federal Partners. It is vital that the USDA Forest Service and the DOI Bureau of Land Management work with partners to plan and execute the tasks outlined under Section (2)b of E.O. 14072. This includes state, tribal, and local governments as well as universities, industry, and non-profits. Collaboration is important not only to mobilizing the resources necessary to achieve our goals at scale and across boundaries, but also for building a diverse portfolio of knowledge and objectives. In our efforts to connect and educate the public, collaboration will also be a valuable platform for building trust between the federal government and the public.