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SPEAKOUT: Logging could have saved forests

By Angie Many

Published February 16, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Various newspapers have carried articles lately about the devastation that mountain pine beetles have caused to Colorado's forests. Professionals estimate that the state's lodgepoles may be wiped out in five years by the beetle. That scenario is already almost fact in some counties.

Drought, warmer weather in our region, and the advanced age of forests have created ideal conditions for pine beetles (and spruce beetles) to thrive.

The articles neglected to mention, however, that the bugs could have been stopped in some areas. Many trees could have been saved with proper forest management.

Years ago, the Forest Service actually managed forests, taking out some trees so that others would better withstand fire or epidemics and creating stands of varying-aged trees. It was called "logging."

When ever-present beetles started to proliferate, the agency acted quickly. Loggers would remove beetle-hit trees before the insects flew out of them, and they would thin surrounding trees. Such thinning enabled remaining trees to receive larger shares of light, water and nutrients. Just as people can better fight off "bugs" when they're healthy, healthy trees can better resist insects and disease.

Then environists ("environmentalists" without the "mental") convinced the public and our politicians that cutting trees was akin to murder, and the Forest Service, always subject to public and political pressure, began a policy of "nonmanagement." By the time the public realized that "Oops! Our trees are all dying" and began to understand that perhaps some trees should be harvested, it was too late.

Once the beetles reach the enormous populations that exist today, only unseasonable or extreme cold can stop them - or a lack of green trees to hit.

And now that people want to clear the dead trees off their properties, they find that instead of being paid for their trees, they're having to pay for the removal. There are few places to sell the logs because, in the last two decades, mills across the West have closed - for lack of raw material. If we had harvested enough to keep mills viable, they could process the dead trees today.

Conversely, if we'd harvested that much, the epidemic would likely have been stopped 15 years ago, before it got to this point!

The talk of building new sawmills and biomass mills has remained just that - talk. Few people want to make such long-term investments when 10 years from now, a misinformed public might once again decide that it doesn't want trees cut.

Yes, our forests will grow back. But it will take decades, and in the meantime, we will live with dead trees, increased risks of catastrophic fires, and degraded vistas and wildlife habitat. It could all have been avoided, or at least minimized, if we had continued to manage our trees instead of letting nature manage by killing them all.

Angie Many is the past chair of the Federated Women in Timber and is a partner in Woodland Treatment Specialists LLP. She has testified twice before congressional subcommittees regarding forest health and forest management and their effect on rural communities.

Comments

  • February 16, 2008

    12:44 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Fedwatcher writes:

    The folks within the Forest Service upper management have placed their management direction on hopes of "herd immunity" in dealing with the bark beetle outbreaks.

    Let everything die... let it burn... problem solved?

    If it were so simple.

    The risks towards our communities, and the risks of type conversion of natural resources seems to be on the back burner nowadays.

    Those of us in the middle management of the Forest Service are disgusted by the direction that political appointees in upper management are destroying forest management.

  • February 16, 2008

    9:17 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    kathyM writes:

    Wow. Being new to Colorado, I didn't realize the pine beetle problem has been around for so long, nor so badly managed. Sounds like nothing will be done until we have a couple catastrophic fires that burn up some zillion-dollar mountain homes.

  • February 16, 2008

    9:31 a.m.

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    gary writes:

    Hey....we now have someone telling us the truth. I agree 100% with
    Angie Many. What a group of stupid enviros have fed the public for years and the majority has believed them. Well people take a look a what you have now. It will not get better unless it is changed. Look how beautiful Yellowstone Park turned into a charred mess after the fires went through. Yet even while it was burning the enviros did not want it put out. Let it burn, it is nature was the chant. We need to manage all of our forests. It is for the good of the forest as well as the American people. How many billions of dollars have we spent fighting the forest fires?? Then comes the water pollution afterwards. Wake up people... a managed forest contributes to our economy. An unmangaed forest costs more and more money and creates problems for everyone.

    It is time to get real and use our forests wisely.

    Enuff Said

  • February 16, 2008

    10:24 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    ollie writes:

    With the Forest Service budget being reduced every year to pay for our wonderful war, how are they supposed to manage any better.

  • February 16, 2008

    12:47 p.m.

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    chendricks writes:

    Congratulations to Angie Many, as she understands the issue and nailed the lack of forest management as the primary reason for the debacle. The beetles now have the upper hand, and the land, resources, quality watersheds, wildlife habitats, recreation activities and other wildland values are at great risk. She also has it correct that no forest industry and/or investor wants to take the chance with the agencies and future public policy that may do in the future what was done to them in the past - dry up the raw material supply and bankrupt the industry.
    Chuck Hendricks
    Retired, U. S. Forest Service

  • February 16, 2008

    5:56 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    BMat writes:

    Ollie - most whacko fringe leftists are apt to blame anything including the mountain pine beetle on W.

    Now he doesn't do anything to improve his own standing I'll admit, but I hope you don't think the beetle problem started when we invaded Iraq?

    I mean that's just stupid. And I don't even like W.

  • February 16, 2008

    7:42 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    freethinker07 writes:

    I remember this discussion about the beetle epidemic in 1970. Same arguments.

    "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
    George Santayana

  • February 17, 2008

    4:50 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vudumom writes:

    I remember when I moved here 13 years ago. I saw stories on the local news about the problem. I seem to remember the story was around the Steamboat Springs area.The Roan forest?The story said if something wasn't done the pine beetle would spread and it could be devastating.They showed ariel views and it looked like something should have been at least started back then.Logging it said was a no-no and enviromentalists were going to fight to let nature take it's course.
    Now flash forward to 13 years later.Nothing was done and now there is massive widespread problems that are too late to fix.
    If someone does the math ,I moved here 13 years ago and that means George W. Bush was not in office at that time.There was no Iraq war.Bill Clinton was in office literally,the country was in a period of economic strength and business was booming.So what will be the liberals excuse for Bill Clintons inaction?

  • February 17, 2008

    8:21 a.m.

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    greenleaf writes:

    vudumom,

    We are ALL going to miss these forests. This IS a totally man-made problem. Where I disagree with you is in putting blame on one group or another. We are ALL to blame!

    It started a century ago when the old growth forests were clear cut to build cities and to supply mine timbers and wood for the rail roads. This is how the single age forest began in the first place. A healthy forest would have old growth trees towering over medium age and younger trees representing several generations.

    We then began controlling forest fires for various reasons, including safety, the protection of man-made structures and so that we could harvest the wood ourselves. We have NEVER totally left this era of "Smokey the Bear".

    Angie, who obviously has an industry bias, mentioned that the Forest Service once managed the forests by thinning and creating fire resistant stands of trees. I'm certain that they DID do some of that. The problem is that in the 1960's and forward they made it easier for industry to harvest trees with the concept of "clear cutting". This and the cutting of the few remaining naturally managed old growth forests is what the environmental movement fought against.

    The environmentalists were too effective in getting the attention of our elected representatives. This resulted in a period of wrenching self analysis in the forest service. This slowed but never stopped lumber sales and clear cutting. The concept of "prescribed burns" came into play and is still being used today. A few years ago it was considered controversial, now much less so.

    Today, we can see massive threats to the forest in the form of man's building millions of second homes in previously wild areas, all of which we try to protect from fire. Drought has weakened these overcrowded trees. Acid rain from power plants as far away as China has it's effects.

    Last, but not least, the winters are now so mild that we rarely get temperatures cold enough to kill beetles. A dwindling number don't believe man has caused this warming. I do, and I believe that makes us all to blame on some level.

    It's time to stop pointing fingers and to work together toward a solution for the forests our grandchildren will inherit.

  • February 17, 2008

    10:08 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    jgd writes:

    Greenleaf,

    I agree with the majority of the your post, with the possible exception of "man causing this warming". What I found ironic was your statement regarding the millions of second homes being built in previously wild area. I have no polls or links to verify this statement, however in my personal inactions with some of the people building these second homes, many of them are self admitted liberals and environmentalists. Not wanting to point any fingers, but I do find it ironic the group fighting to save the forest could be doing it the most harm.

  • February 17, 2008

    10:33 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Hi jgd,

    Actually, I don't disagree with your point at all. It merely supports my argument that on some level, we are ALL to blame. As to the millions of homes comment, consider it to be semi anecdotal, based upon what I have read in several sources. However, it isn't hard for me to believe when I drive into the mountains and see the wild areas of my youth filled with mountain subdivisions!

    I believe, too, that the issue of global warming is sorting itself out as more and more scientists join the ranks of believers and leave those of the skeptics. I do respect your position though jgd. We both need to keep an open mind! Nice hearing from you again!

  • February 19, 2008

    2:43 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nancylaplaca writes:

    Earth to Angie: the forests were doing fine for many thousands of years before we altered the climate and didn't allow the burning that used to happen.

    But to suggest that the our forests are burning down because environmentalists have pushed back against clear-cuts and salvage logging is bizarre.

    In case you haven't noticed, the bark beetles are proliferating because the temperatures are so high that the beetle population is exploding. Virtually 85% of global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels.

    And your statement that only "unseasonable cold" will stop the beetles. Gee, it's been unseasonably WARM. But never mind. People with so obvious a financial interest in their position ("Woodland Treatment Specialists") are not very rational.

    Just wait a few years, or better yet, a few decades. Our stupidity in refusing to deal with global warming will be painfully obvious.

    And Woodland Treatment Specialists will be out of trees to "treat."

  • February 19, 2008

    3:24 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nancylaplaca writes:

    Published on Friday, July 7, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times
    Wildfire Increase Linked to Climate

    Higher temperatures over 34 years -- rather than land-use changes -- have led to more blazes, researchers say. They're sure it's not a fluke.

    by Robert Lee Hotz

    Rising temperatures throughout the West have stoked an increase in large wildfires over the past 34 years as spring comes earlier, mountain snows melt sooner and forests dry to tinder, scientists reported Thursday.

    More than land-use changes or forest management practices, the changing climate was the most important factor driving a four-fold increase in the average number of large wildfires in the Western United States since 1970, the researchers concluded.

    The average spring and summer temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees higher in Western states between 1987 and 2003 than during the previous 17 years. In fact, the seasonal temperatures were the warmest since record-keeping started in 1895, the researchers said.

    While the researchers stopped short of linking increased wildfire intensity to global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, they were confident that they had documented a broad climate trend and not a fluke of natural weather variability.

    All told, the average fire season has grown more than two months longer, while fires have become more frequent, longer-burning and harder to extinguish. They destroy 6.5 times more land than in the 1970s, the researchers found. Last year was the worst wildfire season on record, with over 8.53 million acres burned nationwide by the end of December. So far this year, more than 60,000 wildfires have charred almost 3.9 million acres — twice the number of fires during the same period last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

    "I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States," said Thomas W. Swetnam, an expert at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

    In the first detailed study of its kind, scientists at Scripps and the University of Arizona analyzed 34 years of wildfire activity, temperature records, snow-melt trends, stream flows and other climate-related data.

    The research, published online Thursday by the journal Science, was funded by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Energy Commission. The researchers studied more than 1,100 large wildfires between 1970 and 2003.

    They reported that almost seven times more forested federal land burned between 1987 and 2003 than during the previous 17 years. During the same period, the length of the wildfire season increased by 78 days. The average time between a fire's discovery and its extinguishment also lengthened — from 7.5 days to 37.1 days.Wildfires cost more than $1 billion a year in federal firefighting expenses, plus untold property damages.

  • February 20, 2008

    8:21 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    gary writes:

    Well...then why hasn't private forest lands burned up? 3M logs lots of thier own private forests. When was the last time they had one burn thousands of acres of trees? Canada logs millions of acres of trees...why do they not have lots of fires like America's
    US Forest Service on Federal land? The so called global warming should affect all forests. But then, keeping temps since 1895 and using the last 34 years to say we are having global warming is a sham. The Earth's weather has been changing for millions of years and will continue to change. No matter what man does or doesn't do. Logging and controlling our National Forests is way better, more profitable than letting millions of acres of trees burn to the ground.
    Get real people...let's use some common sense for once.

    Nuff Said