An honest conversation about forest policy

[Thunderbeast]

The National Forests HAVE been neglected and mis-managed for a century. Their primary goal has always been timber production. Secondary goals of environmental stewardship have only been on their radar for relatively short time.

For most of the 20th Century, forest practices dictated that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management would build roads into the forests to allow logging. The sales of timber often did not cover the cost of the roads, but the roads provided access for fire suppression.

Until fairly recently, the role of fire was not understood, especially in dry climate pine forests. Fire once regularly cleaned out the understory while leaving most of the trees charred, but alive. These fires rarely got to the canopy. A century of fire prevention let the fuels on the forest floor grow beyond their natural condition. Insects that were once sterilized by fire now thrive in the pines. Fire now is devastating. They are hotter and reach the canopy more often. The extreme prolonged heat sterilizes the soils making recovery difficult.

As other values began to change federal forest policy, timber harvests were reduced. With the diminishing revenues, other forest management practices such as thinning, understory removal, and controlled burns were under-funded. Firefighting has eaten up much of the budgets.

While we laugh at the thought of raking the forest (my previous posts included), there is an element of truth to it. The destructive fires could be mitigated with a crash program to maintain public forests (especially pine forests in dry climates) by clearing bush and doing the work that fire used to do. Much of the biomass removed could be used for energy production, but it does not create the large trees that the timber industry covets. Their preferred solution involves more clearcuts...not a desirable solution.

This work is not cheap, and will not be financially self-sustaining. If we are truly interested in preserving forests that serve ecosystem diversity, recreation, clean water, as well as timber production, investments are required. They should be part of any infrastructure plan being proposed.