From gbarry@forests.org Wed Oct  1 14:11:57 2003
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 11:38:52 -0500
From: Glen Barry 
To: gbarry@forests.org
Subject: FORESTS: Forests Burn Making Baby Forests

***********************************************
FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Forests Burn Making Baby Forests
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
 
 http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal
  http://www.EnvironmentalSustainability.info/ -- Eco-Portal
    http://www.ClimateArk.org/ -- Climate Change Portal
      http://www.WaterConserve.info/ -- Water Conservation Portal
 
September 1, 2003
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Most forests burn periodically and from the ashes come new, baby 
forests.  In forests that have become adapted to fires, the 
absence of fire for some period frequently means subsequent fires 
are more severe.  Thus it has been for millennia.  

Forest fires are natural phenomena - you can not have one without 
the other - and after even the most severe fires, forests are 
renewed (remember Yellowstone?).  While we have become aware that 
suppression of forest fires was not a good idea, historically 
there have certainly been periods of a century or longer where 
climatic conditions had the same impact.  And when the climate 
heated up and dried out again, the forests burned more intensely.  
Thus it has been for millennia.  

Emperor Bush and his court assert that only heavy commercial 
logging of fire-prone forests can stop them from burning.  The 
now in vogue concept of logging forests to save them is yet 
another mistake that will lead to even more frequent and 
catastrophic forest fires.  The resulting road construction, 
piles of logging debris, loss of large old trees - to say nothing 
of climate change - is certain to further exacerbate the problem.

Each of the areas that have burned recently in the United States 
will, as Yellowstone did, recover if left to their own devices.  
If they are logged for salvage, their soil is disrupted by 
logging machinery, and/or roads bring grasses and exotic plants - 
they very well may not recover and will be more likely to burn 
unnaturally.  Human beings are part of nature, and need large 
natural and relatively intact ecosystems to survive.  This 
requires allowing for forest renewal.  Thus it has been for 
millennia.  

Forest policy must move beyond the pathology of command and 
control solutions under the false notion that humans are above 
nature.  The time to: 1) end logging of old-growth and primary 
forests in America and worldwide, 2) control housing sprawl in 
natural forests susceptible to fires, and 3) let fires burn that 
do not threaten communities while carrying out prescribed burns 
and forest thinning near settlements; are all long past due.  

Once again an emperor has no clothes and a proclivity for lying.  
Thus it has been for millennia.

Glen Barry
President
Forests.org, Inc.

P.S. I have been on "vacation" finishing my phd and addressing a 
family emergency.  I am back now.  Several pledges during the 
fund raising drive last month have not arrived yet - please get 
them in when you can.  Making the goal was based upon these.

*******************************
 
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
 
ITEM #1
Title:  Yellowstone rejuvenation defies predictions
Source:  Copyright 2003, Associated Press
Date:  September 1, 2003 
Byline:  MIKE STARK

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - This place was supposed to 
be dead.

After the fires of 1988 finally were extinguished by rain and 
snow, the blackened landscape looked destroyed. Some spots, 
observers said, were cooked beyond the point where soil again 
would host plants line and trees.

Roy Renkin is at the edge of one of those places: a flat stretch 
near Norris Geyser Basin where wind blew down hundreds of 
lodgepole pine trees, which then roasted in some of that hot 
summer' s hottest fires.

''There was all sorts of talk that this place was sterilized. I 
remember walking out here after the fires and it was like walking 
on the moon,'' says Renkin, a fire ecologist at Yellowstone. 
''Every step put up this little cloud of ash.''

He climbs nimbly over felled trees and around young green 
lodgepoles about waist-high. The soil once deemed dead is home to 
a burgeoning young forest full of healthy trees, plants and 
plenty of rodents, bugs and birds.

Renkin pats a young tree. ''These guys are enjoying life. They're 
really robust,'' he says.

He pushes farther into the tangle of old trees and new.

''Let me show you,'' he says excitedly. ''This is what really 
blows me away.''

He stops at a blackened log and crouches to touch a skinny, 3-
inch stem growing in the shadow.

''Populus tremuloides,'' he grins. ''Aspen.''

The tiny aspen may not seem like much, but it's not supposed to 
be here.

It and thousands of others like it scattered throughout the park 
represent an extraordinary consequence of the fires.

Most likely, the seeds were blown in the wind during and after 
the fires and found a home miles away in the soil of burned 
areas, places where they were never known to grow before. The 
seedlings were some of the first evidence that aspen, a key food 
source for elk, could reproduce by seed rather than the 
underground root system that connects clusters of aspens.

The discovery is one of many that have left scientists and 
visitors marveling in the aftermath of the most ferocious fire 
season in Yellowstone in recorded history.

For Renkin, the past 15 years have been a once-in-a-lifetime 
chance to work in a giant natural laboratory documenting how a 
complex and thriving ecosystem responds to a major fire.

''Man, I learn something new every day,'' Renkin says, tromping 
over more downed logs. ''To be able to watch how things come back 
here has been phenomenal. It boggles the mind.''

The aftermath of the Yellowstone fires, one senator predicted in 
1988, would be ''a blighted wasteland for generations to come.''
But what resulted was something entirely different.

The wildfires prompted what pioneering naturalist John Muir once 
called ''an outburst of organic life.''

In the spring of 1989, new green growth was already starting to 
carpet the blackened forest floors of Yellowstone. Within a few 
years, grasslands were replenishing themselves and new forests of 
lodgepole pine and other trees were shooting up among the charred 
remains of their ancestors.

The new growth is part of a fire cycle that has repeated itself 
in Yellowstone for countless generations.

Fire spawns changes, direct and indirect, that ripple through the 
ecosystem.''

In an ecological setting, you tug on one little string and a 
whole bunch of things - even distantly - can start to wiggle,'' 
said John Varley, Yellowstone's chief of resources, a few years 
after the fires.

Although fire killed many thousands of trees in 1988, most plants 
only had their tops burned off; the underground root systems 
survived. The fire was hot enough to kill seeds in only about 0.1 
percent in the park; most others endured, waiting for moisture.

Where there was water, regrowth started sometimes within hours. 
Elsewhere, in drier soils, it didn't kick in until spring.  
Wildland fires release carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus - all   
elements for fostering new growth. And when big trees are burned 
away, the forest floor gets more sunlight, allowing plants and 
new trees to flourish.

The recovering forest also is a boon to wildlife.

Rodents that eat seeds and insects have more to eat in burned 
areas . Hawks and other hunting birds have an easier time finding 
prey in the newly opened landscape. Bluebirds find more places to 
nest, woodpeckers have more food sources in burned snags while 
elk and other ungulates get better forage.

In 1988, more than 300 large animals, mostly elk with some deer 
and bears, were killed by fire. Many more struggled during the 
next winter.

The animal populations, though, bounced back within a few years, 
except for moose, which declined where old-growth habitat was 
lost.

In the long view, the fires played a key role in reinvigorating 
new forests in Yellowstone, recycling nutrients and creating a 
landscape mosaic that included burns, partial burns and areas 
untouched by flames.

Nowhere in Yellowstone, Renkin says, is there an area burned so 
severely that nothing has grown.

''I'm not aware of any,'' he says. ''I don't see anywhere in the 
park where these areas are just disasters.''

Don Despain has been roaming Yellowstone and the surrounding area 
as a scientist for more than three decades.

His life and his life's work have been entangled with fire in 
Yellowstone for nearly as long. He was one of the early advocates 
for allowing some wildfire to return to the park as a natural 
part of the system.

A native of Lovell, Despain is a plant ecologist, fire behavior 
expert and a curious student of nature who has followed fire in 
Yellowstone both as a firefighter and a scientist.

''I recognized quite quickly that fire was a major part of the 
ecosystem here,'' he said.

Like Renkin, Despain, who now works for the U.S. Geological 
Service, has been meticulously monitoring the aftermath of the 
1988 fires.

Early on, Despain compared some of the burned areas to the bottom 
of his barbecue pit. Touring those areas 15 years later, Despain 
points out that the landscape is returning to what it looked like 
before the fires.

''Fire doesn't destroy much, especially in an ecosystem sense,'' 
he says, standing among blackened lodgepoles and their fledgling 
offspring near Canyon. ''Over time, I've decided fire is pretty 
superficial in the larger picture. This was a lodgepole pine 
forest and it's still a lodgepole pine forest. The fire doesn't 
change that.''

Some believed that fires burning at 1,200 degrees would cook the 
soil so that it could forever transform forests into meadows.

''But it didn't create any meadows,'' Despain says. ''Fire just 
isn't enough of a factor to cause that kind of a change.''

Over the years, the post-fire recovery has depended less on how 
severely it was burned and more on the characteristics of the and 
before it burned.

Soil is a key factor.

The fires didn't change the soil types, Despain says, so it 
didn't change what kinds of plants and trees would grow from the 
ashes.  

Other factors, such as climate and elevation, play a role in how 
a burned forest rejuvenates, he said. Nearly all of the burned 
forests in the park have restocked themselves with seedlings in 
recent years. In some places, hundreds of trees pack each acre in 
competition for sun and water. Elsewhere, the trees are more 
spread out.

Meanwhile, Douglas fir, Engelman spruce and whitebark pine have 
also returned along with fireweed and other plants that thrive 
off changes in the landscape and recycled nutrients.

Over time, Despain says, the complex combination of 
characteristics at each burned area will foster a forest or a 
meadow or something similar to what was there before the summer 
of 1988. And eventually it will become primed for another fire.

In our short lifespans, those cycles of fire seem violent and 
destructive, robbing us of what we think Yellowstone should look 
like. But in the perspective of geologic time - in which an 
ecosystem evolves over thousands or even millions of years - 
catastrophic fires and the subsequent recovery are small steps in 
a very long journey.

''If we lived to be a million years old,'' Despain says, ''we'd 
see fires come and go like we see winters come and go.''

What happened in Yellowstone during the summer of 1988 presented 
the humbling lesson that fire, in some cases, can't and won't be 
controlled. People will continue to have an uneasy relationship 
with fire, but to ignore its role in the Yellowstone ecosystem is 
to ignore one of the principal architects of its awesome beauty.

''Sooner or later it's going to burn again,'' says Phil Perkins, 
who fought the 1988 fires and is now the Yellowstone's fire 
management officer. ''That's the way it's supposed to be.''


ITEM #2
Title:  Declare harvest of old-growth forests off-limits and move 
  on
Source:  Copyright 2003, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date:  August 24, 2003 
Byline:  MIKE DOMBECK and JACK WARD THOMAS, Guest Columnists

We write as former chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service with 
combined experience of more than a half-century dealing with 
national forest issues. For three decades, an increasingly 
acrimonious debate over old-growth forests has raged. It is time 
to declare old growth off-limits to logging and move on. Why?

First, although no one knows exactly how much old growth remains, 
what's left is but a small fraction of what once was and will 
ever be again. And what remains did not survive by accident. Most 
remaining old-growth stands occur in rugged terrain where the 
economic and environmental costs are simply too high.

Second, scientists increasingly appreciate old-growth forests as 
reservoirs of biodiversity with associated "banks" of genetic 
material. Most stands are protected as habitat for threatened or 
endangered (and associated) species -- to meet the purpose of the 
Endangered Species Act "... to provide a means whereby the 
ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species 
depend may be conserved. ..." It's time to stop fighting over 
what little old growth remains unprotected.

Third, a large and growing number of people want old-growth 
forests preserved for posterity. Values associated with "beauty," 
"spirituality" or "connection with the past" are expressed in 
other terms applied to old growth such as "ancient" or 
"cathedral" forests. These values are as real as those determined 
for commodities in the marketplace and clearly exceed the values 
as timber.

Fourth, if the past is prologue, harvest of old growth will be 
publicly resisted in sequential and predictable steps -- appeals, 
legal actions, protests and, in the end, civil disobedience. In 
the Pacific Northwest, where most old growth remains, costs of 
making old-growth timber sales are disproportionately high with 
very low chance of ultimate success given environmental 
constraints and process requirements. Ten-year-old plans that 
envisioned some old-growth harvest have been overcome by events -
- legal, political, social, scientific and economic.

Fifth, few sawmills remain in business that can process large 
old-growth logs. The mills that have survived are geared to 
efficiently process smaller second-growth trees. 

Sixth, and most important, the never-ending fight is draining 
time, money, energy and political capital needed to address more 
pressing problems.

Forest management should focus on restoring forest health and 
reducing fire risk, initially in areas where risk to human life 
and property are greatest -- the so-called wildland/urban 
interface. Then, appropriate management practices should be 
strategically targeted in the right places and at the right 
scales across the landscape. The knowledge gained in the 
wildland/urban interface should then set the course for any 
expanded management actions. That's a prescription that draws on 
pragmatic combinations of economic need, political reality and 
the application of adaptive management based on research and 
experience. 

Meanwhile, younger trees -- some quite large -- now inhabit old-
growth stands as a result of a century of fire suppression that 
prevented periodic low-intensity ground fires that naturally thin 
the forests. Such trees provide "ladder fuels" that can carry 
fire into the crowns of old-growth trees. These are the trees 
that should be thinned and harvested to reduce the potential fire 
mortality of the old-growth trees. Redwood and sequoia stands in 
northern California are particularly vulnerable. 

Those who have won the past fights to protect old growth should 
now support forest management -- including thinning -- to address 
forest health problems, reduce susceptibility to fire and provide 
a sustainable supply of wood in the spirit of the multiple-use 
mandate. As our demands for wood increase, is it ethical to 
import more timber from nations with weaker environmental 
protections and less technical capabilities and ignore our own 
sources of supply? We think not.

Several decades ago, the Forest Service struggled to meet targets 
to harvest more than 10 billion board feet a year from the 
national forests. Most now agree that was unsustainable. Today, 
circumstances have reduced harvest levels to below 2 billion 
board feet a year -- considerably below what could be sustained 
while meeting multiple-use mandates.

It is time to move beyond the "board feet of timber debate." The 
performance standard should be "acres treated" based on state-of-
the-art science and in compliance with the law. In the spirit of 
multiple use, all applicable values should come into play, 
including cultural/archaeological, water, timber, biodiversity, 
recreation, fish and wildlife habitat, wilderness, non-timber 
forest products and grazing. The work of improving forest health 
and restoring watersheds on national forests has great potential 
to provide jobs and economic opportunities to many of the same 
communities caught up in the "cut vs. no-cut" battles of the 
past.

Should we protect remaining old growth? We say yes. In turn, 
should we expect agreement on the mandate of the Organic 
Administration Act of 1987 that states: "No national forest shall 
be established except to protect the forest within the 
boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions 
of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for 
the use and necessities of the citizens of the United States." 
Again, we answer yes. 

A saying common in India comes to mind. "When elephants fight 
only the grass suffers." Rural communities, and the forests, have 
suffered enough from strife too long sustained and management too 
long delayed. It is time to move on. Recognizing that harvest of 
old growth from the national forests should come to an end is a 
good start.

Mike Dombeck is professor of global environmental management at 
the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Jack Ward Thomas is 
professor of wildlife biology at the University of Montana.


ITEM #3
Title:  Bush's Forest Plan Worse Than Fire   
Source:  Copyright 2003, Newsday
Date:  August 29, 2003 
Byline:  Edward O. Wilson
 
The fires that have savaged forests of western North America this 
summer are the ecologist's equivalent of a perfect storm. 

The best way to avoid these catastrophic fires is by trimming 
undergrowth and clearing debris, combined with natural burns of 
the kind that have sustained healthy forests in past millennia. 

Those procedures, guided by science and surgically precise 
forestry, can return forests to near their equilibrium condition, 
in which only minimal further intervention would be needed. 

On the other hand, the worst way to create healthy forests is to 
thin trees via increased logging, as proposed by the Bush 
administration. 

The health-by-logging approach reveals the wide separation 
between two opposing views concerning the best use of U.S. 
forests. 

The administration, seeing the forests as a source of extractive 
wealth, presses for more logging and road-building in wilderness 
areas. Its strategists appear determined to mute or override the 
provision of the 1976 National Forest Management Act requiring 
that forest plans "provide for the diversity of plant and animal 
communities." 

Environmentalists and ecologists, defending the provision, 
continue to argue that America's national forests are a priceless 
reservoir of biological diversity, as well as a historical 
treasure. In this view, the forests represent a public trust too 
valuable to be managed as tree farms for the production of pulp, 
paper and lumber. 

The economic argument for increased road-building and logging is 
unfounded. It is contradicted by the U.S. Forest Service's own 
measure of forests' contributions to the nation's economy. Of the 
$35 billion yielded in 1999 (the last year for which a 
comprehensive accounting was published), 77.8 percent came from 
recreation, fish and wildlife, only 13.7 percent from timber 
harvest, and the modest remainder from mining and ranching. 

Roughly the same disproportion existed in the percentages of the 
822,000 jobs generated by national forests. 

And that is only part of the story. 

The Forest Service's accounting does not include long-term 
profits that accrue indirectly from natural habitats. These add-
ons derive from peripheral tourist facilities and other 
businesses attracted by the amenities of pleasant environments. 

Such economic growth is all but absent in the case of logging and 
other extractive industries, for the obvious reason that 
Americans do not find mill towns and logging roads appealing. 

And there is more. If we have learned anything from scientific 
studies of forests, it is that their biological diversity creates 
a healthy ecosystem - a self-assembled powerhouse, generating 
clean water, productive soil and fresh air, all without human 
intervention and completely free of charge. 

Each kind of forest or any other natural ecosystem is a 
masterpiece of evolution, exquisitely well adapted to the 
environment it inhabits. The fauna and flora of the world are, 
moreover, the cradle of humanity, to which we, no less than the 
rest of life, are closely adapted in our physical and 
psychological needs. Each species and its descendant species 
live, very roughly, a million years before suffering natural 
extinction. Worldwide, habitat destruction combined with the 
other three of the four horsemen of environmental ruin - invasive 
species, pollution and unsustainable logging - have increased the 
rate of extinction by as much as a thousandfold, thereby 
shortening the average life spans of species by the same amount. 

Much of the loss of America's native plant and animal species is 
due to the replacement of biologically rich natural forests with 
tree farms. From the standpoint of species diversity and 
resilience, these cultivated woody crops rank as no more than 
cornfields. While tree farms can easily be expanded on private 
lands, national forests - the reservoirs of much of our nation's 
biological diversity - cannot. The euphemism used by the Bush 
administration and the timber industry to help justify this 
practice, the Healthy Forests Initiative, does no justice to the 
broad needs of the United States. 

America's national forests are a public trust of incalculable 
value.  They should be freed from commercial logging altogether. 
The time has come to free them from political partisanship and 
use their treasures to benefit all Americans, now and for 
generations to come. 

Edward O. Wilson, a professor emeritus at Harvard University, is 
author of many books, including "The Future of Life." 

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###
 
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is 
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior 
interest in receiving forest conservation informational materials 
for educational, personal and non-commercial use only.  
Recipients should seek permission from the source to reprint this 
PHOTOCOPY. All efforts are made to provide accurate, timely 
pieces, though ultimate responsibility for verifying all 
information rests with the reader.  For additional forest 
conservation news & information please see the Forest 
Conservation Portal at URL= http://forests.org/
 
Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org