Saving forests, jobs
Wallace Covington and Diane Vosick
Published November 26, 2007 at 10:32 a.m.
Updated November 26, 2007 at 10:32 a.m.
We have reached the end of another fire season, and another record one at that. Across the Rocky Mountain West this summer, massive fires devastated forests and homes in countless communities. These wildfires of unprecedented severity, acreage and effects are an alarming symptom of a larger crisis. The ecological, social and economic sustainability of our region is increasingly threatened by declining forest health.
This is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1924, Aldo Leopold warned that forests in southern Arizona were manifesting symptoms of ill health. From the 1930s through the 1960s, other foresters noted increasing symptoms of ecological decline that included unnatural fire and unprecedented disease and insect outbreaks. In concert with other human-induced changes like logging and grazing, the elimination of fire's natural role as the regulator of tree populations, fuel build-up and nutrient recycling has created the forest health crisis confronting our forests today. Nowhere are these deleterious changes greater than in the ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forest types of the Rocky Mountain West.
We have an opportunity now to restore these forests, and protect the health of the forests and our communities. We have much to gain from restoring forests and more to lose if we do not. A restored forest will provide improved environmental services, jobs during and following restoration, and woody biomass fuel that can be used to offset our energy dependence on oil.
Ecological restoration is a practical approach for restoring degraded ecosystems.
For frequent-fire forests of the Rocky Mountain West, ecological restoration involves scientifically and economically sound fuel-reduction treatments that treat not only wildfire symptoms, but also attack the underlying causes of ecosystem health decline.
In the last 20 years, the economic value of extractive products from forests — minerals, timber and forage for livestock — have slipped in relation to the value of environmental services provided by a healthy forest. These valuable resources include functioning watersheds and groundwater recharge, wildlife and wildlife habitat, aesthetic and spiritual amenities and carbon storage, to name only a few. Relying on these resources are the cities and agricultural production of the West, recreation-based rural economies, and highly stressed, amenity-seeking urbanites who go to the woods for renewal.
As forest restoration activities ramp up to reduce hazardous fuels, there will be new opportunities for creating a restoration-based economy. Restoration-based private-sector businesses can be diverse and appropriately scaled to the amount of wood byproducts generated by restoration. In addition, many of these jobs will be for a skilled, well-paid work force, avoiding the problems created by previous boom-and-bust economic cycles that led to political pressure on forest managers to generate wood for the sake of industry at levels inconsistent with sustainable forest management.
One of those restoration byproducts is a valuable domestic source of energy for our country, helping to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Generally referred to as "biomass," this woody material can be burned directly using current technology at both ends of the scale — from power plants to wood stoves in homes.
We know enough to conduct restoration treatments at the pace and scale commensurate with the problem. However, in many respects, creating the science has been simple when compared to negotiating the social contract needed to proceed. The environmental conflict that permeates land management discussions and actions has created fitful land management. But without coordinated action at the landscape scale, the prospects look grim for the quality of life not only of the forest and woodland ecosystems of the Rocky Mountain West, but also for the human populations that rely on these resources.
After many years of confounded land management, we are on the brink of a new, more inclusive approach to forest management. The new paradigm is arriving just in time to set the stage for the actions needed to restore the forests of the Rocky Mountain West.
Wallace Covington is the director of the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University and a senior fellow with Western Progress. Diane Vosick is the associate director of the Ecological Restoration Institute.
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November 26, 2007
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Suggest removal
Brian writes:
Thank you for your perceptive editorial about restoration of forests. As you point out, the hardest part of the problem has been to bring diverse interests together around agreed restoration principles to guide work on the ground.
Major progess has recently been made on that front by the Montana Forests Restoration Committee, an informal working group including industry, environmental, motorized, state and federal representatives. Their work product -- proposed restoration principles and innovative guidelines for implementation--can be obtained from the Montana Department of Natural Resources--Forestry Division, 2705 Spurgin Rd, Missoula, MT 59804. Ask for the booklet, Restoring Montana's National Forest Lands.
MFRC is now working to put the principles into practice on the ground.
Brian Kahn
Artemis Common Ground
PO Box 748
Helena, Montana 59624
November 26, 2007
8:13 p.m.
Suggest removal
JimRich1 writes:
Thank you for bringing to attention the needed restoration of our forests.
I recently read a statistic stating upwards of 340 million trees were damaged or destroyed by hurricanes Ritta and Katrina. Researchers say the carbon released by the dying vegetation will contribute heavily to greenhouse-gas emissions, nearly canceling out the total absorbed by trees in the U.S. through photosynthesis.
Clearly, the need for large-scale replanting of trees, to include our urban forests, and protecting the health of existing forests should be a focus of all citizens.