Managed Forests     Don Bertolette
   Aug 30, 2003 22:12 PDT 

Bob/Rory-

A good part of the forests around here are the result of an irruption of
pines dating back to 1919, when a serendipitous combination of climatic
pieces came together in just the right way and time. Those same trees that
were seedlings in 1919 are now the dense understory that is competing oh so
successfully against the pre-existing old yellow-barks...at the end of an
unusually warm and wet 80 years. Ending five years ago, with a significant
drought. Dendrological records from bristlecone pines up on our San
Francisco Peaks indicate that the severity of this drought was last matched
in the 1400's.
With both young and old ponderosa pines stressed by drought, they've been
unable to fully pitch out in response to an increasingly serious bark beetle
attack. Consequently, young and old ponderosas are dying at an alarming
rate. In the area around Prescott to the south and west of here, up to 80%
of the ponderosas have already died.
Later next week, our forest health technician and I will be on a flight
photographing the South Rim drought/bark beetle mortality. Pinon pine and
junipers are particularly hard hit, as they run out to the extents of their
range.
A good question to ask is, isn't this going to naturally thin the forest,
and isn't that what we need? Were it not for the unnaturally dense
understory that has developed in the absence of a natural fire regime, yes.
Am I advocating removal of large old yellow barked ponderosa pines. Not
live ones. Dead ones? When it gets to the point that Prescott has
experienced (80% mortality), I begin to waver...such a sudden and complete
regional mortality is outside of the known range of variability for this
area.
What are your thoughts?
-Don
Managed Forests and Instincts    dbhg-@comcast.net
   Aug 31, 2003 04:51 PDT 

Don:

   I think if I were to see a significant area of forest suffering such a high
rate of mortality as you describe, killing old and young trees alike and
leaving the landscape with a stark, standing dead forest, I'd waiver just as
you've described yourself as doing. I've often thought about the situation we
have with the hemlocks here in the East. In terms of the situation you
describe, I'd be wavering as you are doing for several reasons:

   1. I'd be thinking about the impact on others seeing a standing dead forest
and how that would work counter to images that I'd want to be in peoples' minds
when thinking about old growth. That is something that extremists such as in
ELF don't factor in.

   2. I'd worry about the unchecked spread of the insect infestation. Natural
or not, at some point infestations become problems that need to be addressed.

   3. I'd worry about the increased fire danger and all that implies for public
safety the and general support I'd want from the public on issues of
preservation.

   4. I'd worry that if actions weren't taken then elements of the public who
want to fulfill economic agendas would gain control.

   5. On the other hand, I'd worry that going ahead with a treatment could set
a precedent that would work to the advantage of that part of the timber
community which is always waiting to exploit such situations.

With these concerns uppermost in my mind, I'd follow my gut instinct on what
to do. I suspect that gut instinct would tell me be to thin all the little
stuff, take out large standing dead or nearly dead trees that I judged were
substantially increasing the possibility of fire or further spread of the
infestation. I'd try my best to spare live, large trees, but if I felt a few
needed to be taken down to increase the chances of controlling the infestation,
and increasing the chances of survival for others, I'd do that.   

Afterwards, would I have second thoughts? Probably, but I would know that my
reasons for acting were good ones. I would know that I was trying to prevent
the loss of virtually all of the large, old trees that had survived everything
else nature had thrown at them, but weren't going to survive the present
challenges.

Follow your instincts, Don, knowing you as I do, I don't think they will
betray you and good luck.

Bob
Re: Managed Forests and Instincts    Don Bertolette
   Aug 31, 2003 10:22 PDT 
Bob-

In Zorzin-like fashion, I'll intersperse my reply in the body of your text...
  Don:

    I think if I were to see a significant area of forest suffering such a high
rate of mortality as you describe, killing old and young trees alike and
leaving the landscape with a stark, standing dead forest, I'd waiver just as
you've described yourself as doing. I've often thought about the situation we
have with the hemlocks here in the East.

Where you have a mixed deciduous/conifer forest, you'll end up with a void...our ponderosa pine forest is essentially a monoculture, until you get to the lower extent of it's elevational range, where you have pinyon and juniper, which are taking an even harder hit. If the bark beetle is 100% effective, it's not just a void in the middle of a forest, it's the forest.

I
  n terms of the situation you  describe, I'd be waivering as you are doing for several reasons:
 

A subtle but important distinction...

      1. I'd be thinking about the impact on others seeing a standing dead forest
and how that would work counter to images that I'd want to be in peoples' minds
when thinking about old growth. That is something that extremists such as in
ELF don't factor in.

A subtle but important distinction...
      2. I'd worry about the unchecked spread of the insect infestation. Natural
or not, at some point infestations become problems that need to be addressed.

You may recall a similar scenario I described in SE Alaska, where the spruce bark beetle ended up with about 95% mortality of spruces in SE and SouthCentral Alaska...by the time it's unavoidably detectable it's too late. Act before it's readily apparent, and you've no support, particularly in a no trust scenario...
      3. I'd worry about the increased fire danger and all that implies for public
safety the and general support I'd want from the public on issues of
preservation.

There is a period of surprisingly short duration where the fire danger is higher, but after the one- and ten- hour fuels are rather quickly decayed, the hundred- and thousand-hour fuels are not easily ignited. Public safety however is subject to a longer period of risk. As the Park's Hazard Tree Coordinator, the reality of dying trees falling on public thoroughfares, walkways, employees residences, and other structures is a sobering responsibility, and subject to liability. I have 681 trees to contract out to limb or remove...I'm ready to do it now, but am in the compliance phase where time grinds slowly.
      4. I'd worry that if actions weren't taken then elements of the public who
want to fulfill economic agendas would gain control.

I would accept the former, but could not countenance the gain control part...there must be a way to retain control, and for contractors to fulfill their economic agendas (or at least make a reasonable profit...we can only expect the USFS to not make a profit, or at least until foes advocated for a service agency to become a profit making entity...people weren't being careful what they wished for!)
      5. On the other hand, I'd worry that going ahead with a treatment could set
a precedent that would work to the advantage of that part of the timber
community which is always waiting to exploit such situations.

I'd be for controlled exploitation
     With these concerns uppermost in my mind, I'd follow my gut instinct on what
to do. I suspect that gut instinct would tell me be to thin all the little
stuff, take out large standing dead or nearly dead trees that I judged were
substantially increasing the possibility of fire or further spread of the
infestation. I'd try my best to spare live, large trees, but if I felt a few
needed to be taken down to increase the chances of controlling the infestation,
and increasing the chances of survival for others, I'd do that.
   
 This is EXACTLY what the Coconino National Forest is doing in the Kachina Forest Health Project...right in my own back yard.
     Afterwards, would I have second thoughts? Probably, but I would know that my
reasons for acting were good ones. I would know that I was trying to prevent
the loss of virtually all of the large, old trees that had survived everything
else nature had thrown at them, but weren't going to survive the present
challenges.

I am concerned about the political environment that the CNF is working in, with the temptations of relatively unrestrained management possible with the current administrations stance...fortunately the constraints of the KFHP are already in place...future Forest Health Projects may be another story.
     Follow your instincts, Don, knowing you as I do, I don't think they will
betray you and good luck.

Thanks!
  Bob
RE: Managed Forests    Robie Hubley
   Aug 31, 2003 10:47 PDT 

Sadly, the two types of thinning operations are indistinguishable except in
the heart of the operator, and the primary psychological experience of the
operator is ultimately inaccessible to anyone but him/herself.

Another problem, measures used to control decomposition organisms actually
succeed in selecting strains of the decomposition agents immune to the
control measures: the Achilles heel of the "disease" metaphor.
Re: Managed Forests    Don Bertolette
   Aug 31, 2003 12:08 PDT 

Robie-
Actually, they are quite different, other than they are most efficiently
performed with a chainsaw. The removal of 5" and smaller unnaturally dense
understory trees that would have/should have been thinned by periodic
frequent but low burn severity fires, is crux of ongoing research at the
park. Variations on size, spatial relationships, increments, are being
studied locally and extensively to come up with a variety of silvicultural
tools that more effectively return our forests to a more natural fire
regime, where in the future, lightning strike caused fires can be monitored
instead of costly suppression. Robie, there is a world of difference
between this, and the thinning of old-growth that the current Republican
administration is trying to implement.

If your objection is to a chainsaw, then we're talking a whole different
topic. Having just recently overseen research that investigated the
differences between the thinning of trees 5" and smaller, by hand and by
chainsaw, I can actually provide you with numbers and photos, and graphs
that attest to a significant difference.

Controlling decomposition?
-Don
Re: Managed Forests    Robie Hubley
   Sep 01, 2003 06:28 PDT 

I expect the companies will go into the forests with chainsaws or other
measures under the rubric of doing exactly what you are saying but
despising your proposition and using the opportunity to make it arguably
what you are saying but actually a good old fashioned cut.

And I expect the administration will state baldly after the fact that the
cut that has been done is precisely what you are saying it should be; they
seem to have no compunctions about stating that everything is exactly what
is politically expedient for them.

I would rather they take fire control measures around existing structures
and allow the rest to wait for a natural burn. I emphatically oppose US
taxpayers building roads through presently roadless areas destroying
wilderness to the profit of big timber companies.

And on the matter of calling decompositional processes 'disease' I maintain
my original point that the control measures select strains that are immune
to the controls.
Re: Managed Forests    Don Bertolette
   Sep 01, 2003 10:18 PDT 

Robie-
I want to say from the start, that I am not a US Forest Service employee
(although I was one, a decade or more ago). I am a National Park Service
restoration forester working for the Grand Canyon National Park.

Locally, here in Flagstaff Arizona, I am member of the Partnership Advisory
Board that consists of partners in the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership
(GFFP), a partnership founded to bring stakeholders together, to work at
collaborating for a common goal...that of making our community safer, and
our forests healthier). Members include the Grand Canyon Trust (an
environmental organization with considerable status and influence in
environmental issues throughout the Southwest), Northern Arizona University
(School of Ecosystem Science and Management), city, county, state, and
federal land management and fire protection agencies, the Ecological
Restoration Institute, etc.).

It is just the kind of dogmatic adherence to past perceptions characterized
by your post below, that blinds one to the advent of change. The Coconino
National Forest has marked the trees for all to see. I am familiar with the
before (as marked) and after (thinning) changes in appearance, I've marked
and harvested trees myself, in earlier times of my career. From what I've
seen, many of the small trees are being thinned, and few of the large trees
are being cut. This is borne out by the numbers...the tally has less than
1% of the trees taken are over 16" (yellow-barked, pre-settlement
'old-growth), with the oversight of external agency wildlife biologists, in
an effort to improve wildlife habitat for wild turkey, elk, deer, and
raptors. "Good old-fashioned cut"? This collaboration has developed trust
between environmental organizations and the Coconino National Forest. I
attended the public meetings required by NEPA, and provided input, just as
did members of the Sierra Club, the Southwest Center for Biodiversity, and
others. Our inputs are part of the record. The Kachina Village Forest
Health Project (KVHFP)was conducted under the full compliance to NEPA
processes (I too, share with you, I would guess, a distrust of our current
administrations attempts to circumvent the NEPA process), and it was notable
that the KVFHP was not appealed.

Your cynicism is I'm sure well-founded, based on past transgressions of
local and regional agencies. From everything I've heard on this listserve,
they have been well-documented, and apparently still are. But your cynicism
applied to what's going on out in the Southwest, is seemingly out of place.
We have the support of a few major and minor environmental organizations,
because they've been involved in the collaborative process. It has been
your kind of cynicism that has been hardest to replace with trust.
The Coconino NF will continue to use the forest health prescription that was
developed before this current administration came in. This forest health
prescription was developed with input from collaborating partners . It was a
long, and at times contentious process. But it was collaborative, and it
did arrive at a consensus, that ALL have endorsed.

With regard to thinning priorities (only at the WUI (wildland-urban
interface), at the WUI and in the forest), we are in partial agreement...the
priorities of ALL wildfire/prescribed fire managment activities, has been
the following:
1)human lives,
2)structures,
3)the resources.
The concentration of 1) human lives, and 2) structures, at the WUI makes the
first thinning priority a no brainer...you thin IN and around your
communites first. I say IN, because that is where the greatest risk to
structures lies...fire wood stacked on the porch, next to the house, shrubs
and trees overhanging or abutting the house or structures, leaf and limb
litter sufficient to carry a ground fire, these are the hazards that make
the fire suppresion crews life threatening (remember, the first priority is
lives, including and especially, the fire fighters lives). Now every region
is different, and certainly NE forests have their own fire regimes. Here in
the SW, forests have had their natural fire regimes interrupted by WELL
MEANING, but WRONG THINKING land management agencies, for nearly a century.

The process of returning our forests to a more natural fire regime needs to
happen not just at the WUI. It needs to happen in the forests...and I'll be
the first to advocate for INCREMENTAL return. Which is to say, we don't
have to return the forests to their prior natural fire regime in one fell
swoop. But we must do it in less than the hundred years that it took to get
this way. It must take into consideration that the generations of wildlife
that adapted to increasingly dense understories, have a chance to adapt to
less dense understories. It must balance the presence of live and decadent
trees, and the downed and dead coarse woody debris...incrementally. This is
what I see happening in the Kachina Village Forest Health Project, as being
currently implemented by the Coconino National Forest.
No new roads were built. Something approaching half of the existing roads
were closed and most of those "obliterated" (soil lifted, or
"un-compacted").

With regard to your decomposition/disease process, I think we are in
agreement, I just wasn't clear on what you were trying to say...
-DonB
Re: Managed Forests    dbhg-@comcast.net
   Sep 01, 2003 12:49 PDT 

Don:

Your explanation is very clear. We in the East stand in admiration of what
you are accomplishing in Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP). One of
the big challenges, if not the biggest, to forming partnerships that work is
the very uneven performance that comes from the government, academic,
environmental, and business communities. One can go from a model of cooperation
and enlightenment, a model for all to emulate, in one area to the opposite
situation in a few miles. The inconsistency is a barrier to good ideas catching
on and now we've got a virulently anti-environmental administration. I hope the
NPS can hold on.

Bob
Re: Managed Forests    Fores-@aol.com
   Sep 01, 2003 17:19 PDT 
Robie:

I appreciate reading your opinion on the whole issue of "healthy" forests.
The ENTS forum has presented some of the most engaging reading and discourse I
have had the pleasure to find in my e-mail box.

I would hope that the situation really does not exist where this "healthy
forests initiative" is all just a scam to change land classification from
roadless to "working."

Also, in spite of my personal and professional reservations as to what the
"limited harvesting" could actually involve or encompass, I can also envision
circumstances where some limited commercial thinning could actually be
beneficial to returning the character of old growth ponderosa pine stands.

In the first half of the 1970s, I worked for the FS in Montana and traveled
extensively throughout the Northern Rockies. Most of the healthy old growth
stands I saw, especially in drier sites had an almost Savannah appearance and
structure. You could often see hundreds of feet through the forest and the
dominant old trees were scattered across the countryside with many stands where
the crowns of dominant trees rarely touched. In my FS work, I cruised many
areas of "old growth" where we had to use a prism or Relaskop with a BAF of 5 and
we often had stands with only 30 to 40 square feet of basal area. In many
cases, the only places we saw dense thickets of undergrowth were in protected
areas in the middle of talus slopes.

In my recent trips to the Western part of the country where I spent time in
the back country, I have been amazed at how much "brush" has appeared in the
past 30 years.

Having had the opportunity to experience and work on dozens of forest fires
in my twenties, I can appreciate the significance of the now familiar term
"ladder fuels." During my fire fighting days, I only experienced two or three
truly out of control and running "crown" fires. However, I also saw first hand
how they get going....and how fast, scary and exciting they can be!

One of my most memorable experiences was a fire in Lolo NF near Superior
where there was a thick understory of subalpine fir, Douglas fir and ponderosa
pine saplings with an overstory of 350 to 400 year old trees. The old growth
subalpine fir had pitch blisters just under the bark that ranged from quarter to
half dollar size. As the fire moved up the slope burning the understory, it
also preheated the overstory fir to the point where the pitch blisters burst,
causing the pitch to run down the trunks of the old trees. At one point, the
firs started to explode in a series of thunderous roars into giant flaming
pyres. In just a few moments all that remained of numerous tall, pointed and
graceful trees were blackened and charred tree-shaped stubs. The heat was so
intense that it started to jump directly to the tops of distant ponderosa pine
trees and it didn't stop until it got to the top of the mountain....fortunately,
we were working on the downhill side of the fire.

If cutting or removing some of the understory could prevent or mitigate the
damage from such disastrous crown fires, I would definitely support it.

However, if it is just smoke and mirrors for the media...I am not sure how I
would react.   

As a grower of ginseng and other woodland medicinals, I like to think of dead
trees as worm food, amphibian habitat and fertilizer.

Russ Richardson
Re: Managed Forests    Robie Hubley
   Sep 01, 2003 18:51 PDT 

Don

I am very happy to be engaged in this conversation with you. I respect
what you say and it gives me some hope. If they put you in charge of the
whole operation I'd be much more confidant.

I was in the western national forests when Nixon was President, and I
talked with forest personnel who told me what Nixon was ordering them to
do, and they simply told me that had no intention of doing what he said.
That gave me alot of empathy with foresters on the land, but made me
unflinchingly and unapologetically cynical as you call it, dubious the way
I feel it, about anything proposed for the forests by someone like Bush.
It is Bush's plans that I am reacting to, and it is what I hear about his
proposals to cut big trees to pay for cutting brush, and resuming putting
roads into roadless areas in the national forests that makes me EXTREMELY
dubious I would call it, even if it seems cynical to you.

I will take more time to read carefully what you say here and get back to
you ASAP.

Again, thank you for your clear and informed concern for the national
forests. I deeply fear that they are in danger of destruction.

Robie
Re: Managed Forests    dbhg-@comcast.net
   Sep 01, 2003 19:12 PDT 

Russ:

   Very informative. The open park-like environments were also spread
throughout s surprising amount of the East. Buffalo in Virginia and North
Carolina utilized the open terrain. How much there was though or how park-like
is truly was, I've never fully understood.

Bob
Re: Managed Forests    Don Bertolette
   Sep 01, 2003 20:22 PDT 
Russ-
I was interested to read of the ponderosas of the northern rockies. From looking at USFS fuel model photo guides, the northern variety is different, but similar in many ways too. Our forests got dense after the irruption around 1919. In our study of the Grand Canyon NP's ponderosa pine forests, we ran across accounts of deer herbivory so serious that the population crashed in what is now know as a classic case (deer explosion was caused by the hunting of mountain lions, made popular by Teddy Roosevelt)...from mid-thirties, forest grew without significant disturbance outside of the suppression of wildfires. So it looks like we have a 35 year head start on you, on understory growth.

During that same time, white fir regeneration began invading the ponderosa pine forest, at the interface with mixed conifer forest type. We now have white fir regen ranging from seedlings to 40 and 50 year old white fir. I can't imagine a more effective ladder fuel than the white fir, with its habit of growing from the ground up, and its high concentration of extractives.

We are in the middle of our Fire Management Plan EIS, and it's these kinds of scenarios we are grappling with.

-DonB