US Forest Service fakes Sierra photos

[KQ]

Forest Service criticized for use of photos

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/West/04/11/forest.photos.ap/story.forest.photo.1.ap.jpg
This 1909 photo, featured in the Sierra Nevada brochure, was taken in Montana and shows conditions after logging.

RENO, Nevada (AP) -- The Forest Service has been accused of misrepresenting forest conditions by using misleading photographs in a brochure that urges more logging to prevent wildfires in the Sierra Nevada.

The pamphlet, created by a public relations firm, explains that fire risks have risen as the Sierra's forests have grown more dense the past century.

Six small black-and-white photos spanning 80 years appear beside descriptions of how the "forests of the past" had fewer trees and less underbrush, making them less susceptible to fire.

The 1909 photo shows an open, park-like forest with large trees spaced widely apart. More trees and underbrush appear in each successive picture -- 1948, 1958, 1968, 1979 -- and finally a photograph thick with trees in 1989.

"Today's forests, dense with green, may seem beautiful, but in fact are deadly," the pamphlet reads. "Our old-growth forests are choking with brush, tinder-dry debris and dead trees which make the risk of catastrophic fire high."

However, the 1909 photo does not depict natural conditions -- it was taken just after the forest had been logged.

And the pictured forest is nowhere near the Sierra Nevada. It's in Montana.

"I was looking at the picture and I thought it looked awful familiar," said Chad Hanson, director of the John Muir Project in Cedar Ridge, California. "I started looking around and sure enough, the industry has used it before in Montana. It's from the Bitterroot Valley."

Then Hanson used a magnifying glass to make another discovery.

"You can see huge slash piles and stumps in the background," he said. "They give the impression this represents natural, pre-settlement conditions, but the picture was taken after logging had occurred and most of the trees had been removed."

The same shot taken near Como Lake in the Bitterroot National Forest southwest of Hamilton, Montana, appeared in a 1983 Forest Service research report entitled "Fire and Vegetative Trends in the Northern Rockies: Interpretations from 1871-1982 photographs."

The caption in that report said the photo shows "cleanup operations on the Lick Creek timber sale."

The site also appears in another agency research paper in 1995 depicting an old-growth ponderosa pine stand at Lick Creek in 1909 "immediately before partial cutting." That photo shows a forest three to four times more dense than the post-logging photo.

The agency has used the same photos -- minus the pre-logging shot -- in support of logging in the Pacific Northwest, too.

"I can't believe they are still doing this," said Timothy Ingalsbee of the Western Fire Ecology Center in Eugene, Oregon. He said the agency used the same sequence of photos in 1998 "and misrepresented it to make it seem like it came from the forest just above Ashland, Oregon."

Forest Service officials confirmed the photos in the Sierra brochure are from Montana. They were used because they were typical of pine stands across much of the West, officials said.

"It is difficult to find a good series of repeat photographs of the same place over almost 100 years," Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said.

"We used this one because it is an accurate record of how stands -- including those in the Sierra Nevada -- become increasingly dense without active management or wildfire," he said.

Although the photos in the six-page color brochure have no caption, Hanson said the Sierra Nevada is the only region discussed.

"The clear implication is that this is in the Sierra Nevada. It is very misleading," Hanson said.

The Forest Service spent $23,000 to produce and print 15,000 copies of the brochures as part of the "Forests for a Future" campaign that brought criticism from some members of Congress because the agency hired a private public relations firm.

Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Washington, and Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia, asked for an inspector general's investigation into whether the agency broke any laws by spending $90,000 on the contract with OneWorld Communications Inc. of San Francisco.

The Forest Service defends using outside help and said the photos from Montana were not intended to mislead.

Mathes said the fact the forest was logged before the 1909 picture was taken does not matter. "The idea here was to show increasing density over time, which visibly did occur," he said.

"Our goal here was to ... increase the clarity and understandability of our message," he said. "We needed to be accurate but not necessarily precise to the 99th degree."

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said the use of the Montana photos is "misleading" and said people "are smart enough to make up their own minds when presented with accurate facts, but this approach is disingenuous."

[sandytheskier]

SO what are your thoughts on the topic?

[The AD]

I propose the quote "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" should be modified to "there are lies, damn lies, and the U.S. Government."

[KQ]

Originally posted by sandytheskier
SO what are your thoughts on the topic?

My thoughts are less about logging (that's a whole 'nother subject) and more about what appears to be an increased use of half-truths and deceptions on the part of our government and their agencies.

Everythings got a spin to it now days. Up is down, war is peace etc. etc.

[sandytheskier]

I think you think too much. But that is cool.

[char]

"It is difficult to find a good series of repeat photographs of the same place over almost 100 years," Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said.

"We used this one because it is an accurate record of how stands -- including those in the Sierra Nevada -- become increasingly dense without active management or wildfire," he said.

Yup, and if they are using the Bitterroot series I am thinking of, it is probably pretty indicative of what is going on in our forests. In fact, that series is used quite frequently in forestry classes that are covering fire management.

They should have mentioned it in the brochure though.

[hardrider]

Originally posted by KQ
what appears to be an increased use of half-truths and deceptions on the part of our government and their agencies.

Everythings got a spin to it now days. Up is down, war is peace etc. etc.


and your contention is that the US government or rather any government for that matter was more truthful in the past? That is so incredibly nieve it's frightening.

[char]

Also KQ, you're subject heading is misleading, they didn't fake anything, they just mislabled the photos.

And I'm with Hardrider on this one, every admin has spun, lied, etc. And jumping from calling out the USFS on a brochure it made, to calling out the whole admin for lying seems like quite a jump.

[grrrr]

I can see where you are coming from, and I agree that using accurate information is just as crucial in public relations as it would be in forest research, for example.

I think that the comments, however, are overblown. People who live in the Western United States need to be dope-slapped.

YOU LIVE IN A FIRE ENVIRONEMNT. WE NEED TO ALLOW FIRES TO BURN TO KEEP THE FOREST HEALTHY. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE YOUR HOME FIRESAFE.

Forests have to be burned, thinned or otherwise treated to maintain the native ecosystems. Poeple howl when their homes burn, but not allowing the forests to clean naturally means bigger fires in the future.

I recently attended a symposium on long range fire weather modelling. If their models are accurate, you ain't seen nothin' yet. By 2040, fires of 1 to 5 million acres will not be uncommon. Forest lands are expected to increase into sage and desert lands, and the Southeast will shift to largely coniferous forests, with resulting higher fire danger.

Maybe there are better ways to get the message out, but one way or another it needs to get out.

[KQ]

Hey - I just posted a news paper article. I can change the title if you want. Part of the problem of posting and not talking face to face is that you could have asked for a clarification and I could have done so right away. With the gap of posting you are left with a question that has to wait to be replied to.

As far as being naive - that I'm not. Yes, they've all had their lies and perhaps it's just news coverage but it seems to me that more and greater deceptions have been perpetrated and at a higher rate than in the past.

Naive? no.

Hopeful that our government holds our best interested at heart? Yes.

Saddened by the turn of events? Very much so.

[KQ]

Changed it - better? (changed on the inside of thread)

I don't really care. "Fake" was just the word that came to mind. I posted the article as a point of interest since we are ppl who use the outdoors and in particular that area.

[hardrider]

Originally posted by KQ

Naive? no.
.


DAMN, I wish I could spell.:mad:

[KQ]

Originally posted by hardrider
DAMN, I wish I could spell.:mad:

LOL!!! Didn't even notice. You got your point across. It's all good.

Here - for future reference:



Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/)

[Dantheman]

The issue that needs to be addressed here is that the policies this brochure is pushing are a crock of shit. If forests need to be logged and managed to be healthy, why did they grow so well before we came along?

On an unrelated note, Evian is naive spelled backwards. French bastards ;)

[hardrider]

Originally posted by KQ
LOL!!! Didn't even notice.


I thought you used it twice just to make fun of me.;)

[KQ]

Originally posted by hardrider
I thought you used it twice just to make fun of me.;)

Oh Gawd no - just getting old and repeating myself. :p

[Summit]

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/West/04/11/forest.photos.ap/story.forest.photo.1.ap.jpg
(taken with a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye using a magnesium flashpan)

Image Copyright: Me

[grrrr]

Originally posted by Dantheman
The issue that needs to be addressed here is that the policies this brochure is pushing are a crock of shit. If forests need to be logged and managed to be healthy, why did they grow so well before we came along?



Because they burned before we came along. You've got your choice, let the forests burn, or find another way to simulate burning.

[Skidawg]

I didn't even know we still had a Forest Service. Shhh!

[The AD]

Originally posted by char
And I'm with Hardrider on this one, every admin has spun, lied, etc. And jumping from calling out the USFS on a brochure it made, to calling out the whole admin for lying seems like quite a jump.

If this were an isolated case, yes it would be a jump. Unfortunately it seems to fit into a pattern that this administration has been following that has been reported in this forum and elesewhere.

[Summit]

I'm with Char and Hardrider


Originally posted by Dantheman
The issue that needs to be addressed here is that the policies this brochure is pushing are a crock of shit. If forests need to be logged and managed to be healthy, why did they grow so well before we came along?

Because you are ignorant of the history of USFS wildlands management policies for the last century.

After a freak large fire darkened the skies of a major city (now a regular occurance) the USFS instituted a no-fire-ever policy. The USFS policy was to extuinguish all fires, natural or otherwise, ASAP, preferably within 24 hours. This style of fire control removed a natural part of the forest ecosystem that is necissary for healthy forests: fire.

A century of this no fire policy lead to large numbers of new saplings reaching full maturity wheras many would have otherwise been burned, thusly the forests are now denser than they used to be.

What is more, rather than having frequent ground level only fires that would burn off the small sappling, more importantly they would burn off tinder, needles, deadwood, standing sick and dead trees, and debris. Without those ground fuels being consumed regularly, the fuel has built up continuosly to dangerous levels. This, combined with other environmental fires, is why we are seeing small fires becoming catasrophicly large wheras if the USFS had mostly allowed natural processes for the last century, catastrophic fires that consume forests in entirety would be far more rare as they were in the past.

The USFS fucked up and now they are seeing it and trying to correct it.

Another example of how fire is a natural part of the ecosystem: seqoua trees for some reason stopped sprouting new trees... people did not understand why. When a small fire burned in part of the forest, rangers noted new saplings. Fire is required to activate the seeds.

Fire for those trees were as necissary as the digestive system of the Dodo to the trees of Mauritius.

[Dantheman]

Originally posted by grrrr
Because they burned before we came along. You've got your choice, let the forests burn, or find another way to simulate burning.
So require fire breaks around homes in wooded areas and let them burn. Logging in the name of thinning will not work for two reasons. First, it costs one helluva lot less to let small, natural fires burn than to thin them ourselves. Second, logging companies will not thin effectively. Thinning requires cutting lot's of small spindly trees which yield little if any marketable timber. I'm sure lot's of companies are intersted in cutting trees that they can't sell jst because it's the right thing to do. What this program does do though, is fast-track (guberment speak for no public comment period and no EIS) these cuts and exempt them from most environmental regulations, virtually guaranteeing the failure of their stated goals.

edit for SC1776: My question was mostly rhetorical. I am very aware of how damaging USFS fire policy has been and how critical fire is to natural forest ecosystems. My problem with this policy is that it not being undertaken to protect people or forests, it is a giveaway to the "Forest Product" industry that is doomed to failure.

[iceman]

Originally posted by SummitCo 1776
Because you are ignorant of the history of USFS wildlands management policies for the last century.


Since he was talking about logging, not fire, you may wish to mitigate this little bit of obnoxiousness.


Fire for those trees were as necissary as the digestive system of the Dodo to the trees of Mauritius.

Spewage copyright: Him.

[Summit]

Originally posted by iceman
[B]Since he was talking about logging, not fire, you may wish to mitigate this little bit of obnoxiousness.


And you can't see the relationship between fire and logging...
you are smarter than that iceman.

[iceman]

He gets it, I get it, grrr gets it, even you get it. But you called Dan ignorant about something which he is not ignorant of, and which he was not even talking specifically about, and that is why I critiqued your statement.

I do not not however, know much about Dodo shit in Mauritius.

[mr_gyptian]

Anyone been to Yellowstone lately???

this is from Gregg Easterbrook's weblog...EASTERBLOGG


NATURE'S REVENGE ON THE CALIFORNIA RECALL: Why is Southern California burning? Because it's supposed to, as far as nature is concerned, at least.

Before people began interfering with forests in the arid Western United States by "managing" them--and research shows that indigenous Americans were engaged in significant forest management long before Europeans arrived--a natural cycle of forest fire and regrowth was standard. Douglas fir, the grand tree of the Pacific Northwest, has been specialized by evolution to rise rapidly in open fields where there is no shade. A tree can't spring up in an open field naturally unless nature has just cleared the field, by fire. (Most tree species of the humid Eastern United States are "shade-tolerant" and evolved to grow slowly amidst other trees, because forest-leveling fires are rare east of the Mississippi.) California's lodgepole pine makes cones sealed in hard resin. Toss a lodgepole pinecone on the ground and nothing will ever happen. Toss one of the cones into a fire, however, and heat melts the resin, releasing seeds. Natural selection conditioned this tree's seeds to survive wildfires and then repopulate the forest.

When men and women settled the American West in large numbers in the nineteenth century, they began fighting wildfires. One result was that forests became denser, because the periodic minor conflagrations that occurred naturally in the West, removing brush and tinder ("fuel," to foresters) stopped occurring. When Lewis and Clark and others of the period arrived at West Coast forests in the nineteenth century, they described open woodlands through which anyone could easily stroll. Today, most forest areas of the West are so thick you can't go off-trail without a machete. Periodic small fires no longer take out underbrush and "understory," the medium-sized vegetation that dies, dries, and provides fuel to heat trees to the temperature at which they burn. Stopping periodic small Western forest fires allows fuel to accumulate, increasing the chance of an eventual fierce, uncontrollable fire that heats trees to the flame point across a large area. Stopping periodic small fires, and thus allowing the woods to grow dense, also means the condition people think of today as "natural" for Western forests--thick growth and lots of very old trees--is in most cases artificial.

About 25 years ago environmentalists, preservationists, and others began to argue against most active management of forests and other public lands. Nature should be left to its own devices, they maintained: including the ending of deliberate "thinning" of forests to reduce fuel, and the resumption of natural fire cycles. Managers of Yellowstone National Park adopted a let-it-burn philosophy and the result did not take long to arrive, in the form of the catastrophic Yellowstone fire of 1988. As far as nature is concerned, Yellowstone is already fine again--forest regrowth was spectacular and rapid, since natural selection conditioned the species of Yellowstone for regrowth in the wake of fire. The "real" property (buildings) destroyed in 1988, on the other hand, did not regrow. The money spent rebuilding them could have been used on something else. Health care, say.

Because standard assumptions about forests and other public lands have in the last 25 years trended toward disdain for active management, especially toward disdain for fire management, the time-line of wildfires shows they were common in the nineteenth century; declined in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century; and have been on the rise again since. Here is the National Interagency Fire Center's chart of "historically significant wildfires". Nineteen of the 32 historically significant wildfires have happened since the year 1980.

Although environmentalist sentiment is behind the fad for disdaining forest management, it's important to bear in mind that Sierra Club lawsuits and similar things are not, of themselves, to blame for the recent surge in wildfires--a charge sometimes heard from the Tom DeLays of the world. Fire cycles are natural; no form of woodland management could prevent all fires. In addition, people's voluntary choices have, over the last generation, increased the likelihood of wildfires, and the likelihood they will do significant property harm. Recent decades have seen construction of millions of homes too close to forested or brushland areas (sometimes, of course, spectacular vacation homes built by people who consider themselves environmentalists), putting men and women increasingly into the natural paths of wildfires. Also, building expensive homes in places that might burn increases the property-loss consequence of wildfires. The Sierra Club is not to blame for the fact that affluent Americans want fancy homes with spectacular views.

But the disdain for (and, in recent years, sometimes legal banning of) human "management" of the woods plays a role in the rising of dangerous wildfires. Time to drop the illusion that everything can be natural in a society of 285 million citizens. People are here and we're not going to go away; people and forests and brushlands are in closer contact all the time; this leaves us little choice but to return to some version of managing lands to exert power over natural fire.

"Thinning" must be practiced in many forests--enviros don't like it, but the main effect of thinning is to restore, mechanically, the pre-European open-forest condition. Environmental restrictions on some lands must be eased. Many "scrub" lands in southern California have for about 20 years been off-limits to anything much beyond game wardens on foot, owing to lawsuits involving the California gnatcatcher; the result is buildup of scrub land undergrowth, which has now dried and caught fire. What foresters call "defensible areas"--the boundaries between housing developments and forest, the sorts of places lighting up in the current California fires--must especially be managed to prevent wildfires. There's no pure-ecologist theory that can describe any of this. What's needed now are pragmatic steps to manage wooded areas so they don't erupt into uncontrollable flames.

Note that, since it is fashionable to deride George W. Bush's environmental policies, the president's "healthy forest" initiative, unveiled months ago, contains many provisions aimed at exactly the sort of pragmatic management that would reduce wildfires. The "healthy forest" bill was blocked in the Senate by Democrats and enviro lobbyists, who expressed horror at the thought of artificial intervention in the forest. Wednesday, as San Diego burned, the Senate passed the legislation 97-1. Bush's plan is far from perfect, but will move forest management back toward realism.

And, yes, the Bush plan will lead to some increased logging. After loggers come through there is a big, denuded open field. A big, denuded open field is also what is left after a wildfire. Better to arrive at the big, denuded open field artificially, avoiding death and destruction while creating logging jobs--since the Douglas fir will be just as happy to grow in the big open field regards of whether nature's fire or people's saws cleared the land.

[lemon boy]

Summit-

You're argument is somewhat of a perversion of the "facts."

1. In the US we have only had about 50-60 years of "effective" fire fighting (coinsides with the mechanization of the country), even then we don't have as much control as you're implying.
2. The fire return rate (rate between "natural fires") ranges from a couple of years (CA chapparall) [2a] to several hundred years (most of the old growth forests and the big stands of timber as in CO, OR, WA, MT) [2b].

So it depends on how you combine these two things for what kind of answer you get for policy making purposes. You've coupled 1 and 2a, if I couple 1 and 2b then it is just as true to say that humans have had almost no effect on the fire cycle in the nations forests. Pretty neat huh?

The shorter the fire return cycle is in an an area the greater our impact has been and the converse is true with long cycle forests. Some forests do benefit a great deal from thinning projects and others benefit very little. Guess which kind of forest the money is in....

Of course the "danger" is there for both but the 2a combo is the one with the most danger, caused by us humans. As the urban/forest interface grows larger and deeper this will start to become a bigger problem. The unfortunate complication is that most of the lands that would give the most thinning benefit are those least likely to actually get logged. Even here in CO, the front range is a perfect example. So much of that land is private and the people living there want to live in a FOREST, not a clear cut so they oppose logging (NIMBY) but outside forces push for logging of public lands that are adjacent to the private danger lands, yielding no real benefit to the residents or the forest.

The value of a forest is much more than its combined board feet. And yes, I'd rather see some burn than get logged (btw- logging takes nutrients locked in the trees OUT of the forest). I am also not against logging, I just want to see it done right.

Telenater sent me this link a while ago, great read:
http://geography.uoregon.edu/whitlock/geog423/readings/pdfs/Floydetal.pdf

BURN BABY BURN

[L7]

You should try living in a national park with a Canadian gov't bureaucracy doing the spin doctoring. Whether it's grizzly protecition, ski hill development, mountain bike trails, wolves, elk (non native), snails, or convention centres they will make a decision based on whatever criteria and then do surveys and environmental studies slanted towards justifying their decisions. On one hand if you think about it too much you would go crazy on the other hand a pipe bomb at a policy board meeting seems like it could clear a lot of useless burearcrats.

[grrrr]

Originally posted by Dantheman
So require fire breaks around homes in wooded areas and let them burn.

It is actually more complex than that, but essentially, you are on the right track. We are heavily invested right now in a program that teaches homeowners how to manage their own property for fire safety and ecosystem maintenance.

As I said before, If you live in a fire ecosystem, you are responsible for your own home.

Fire is generally less expensive than mechanical thinning, but there still is a cost, and it is a cost we as a society have not shown ourselves capable of paying. It requires several things: an educated populace, personal responsibility, tolorence for smoke and flames, and a willingness to adequately fund prescribed fire management.

Hell, we can't even fund reactive fire management adequately, how the heck will we ever buck up to do the rest of those things.

[Dantheman]

Originally posted by grrrr

Hell, we can't even fund reactive fire management adequately, how the heck will we ever buck up to do the rest of those things.
Isn't reactive fire mangement (i.e. putting out fires as soon as possible after they start and thus letting fuels unnaturally accumulate) basically the root of the problem?

And mr. gyptian, using fires in Southern California chapparall to justify thinning in conifer forests is ludicris. Those two ecosystems are in no way comparable.

[The AD]

That Easterbrook piece doesn't mention at all one of the other big problems: lots of second-growth forests. These previously logged areas seem to be one of the big culprits for dense growth. Contrary to what he says ("the condition people think of today as 'natural' for Western forests--thick growth and lots of very old trees") the old growth forests I've seen DON'T seem to have thick growth. There are fairly widely spaced, large trees without much growing under them.

It seems to me more clearcuts isn't going to solve this problem. If anything it will make it worse down the road.

[grrrr]

The idea that the "10 am policy" is the root of the problem is an oversimplification. In addition to fire suppression, there is climatic change, ecotype regression and special invasion.

Further, simply dropping a suppression policy without regard to the current status of our wildlands would be disastrous, not only to homes, but also to the wildlands. For example, here, we are slowly trying to combat fir-pine invasion into oak savannah. The former grasslands are now dense reprod lodgepole and fir. Fires would be stand-replacing events, and would severley damage even the fire-resistant species, such as the Garry oak or the local endangered prickly pear.

It would takes years, perhaps even decades, to reach the point of being able to step back from suppression entirely.

[Viva]

Originally posted by The AD
That Easterbrook piece doesn't mention at all one of the other big problems: lots of second-growth forests. These previously logged areas seem to be one of the big culprits for dense growth. Contrary to what he says ("the condition people think of today as 'natural' for Western forests--thick growth and lots of very old trees") the old growth forests I've seen DON'T seem to have thick growth. There are fairly widely spaced, large trees without much growing under them.

It seems to me more clearcuts isn't going to solve this problem. If anything it will make it worse down the road.

DING, DING, DING!!!!

[Viva]

Originally posted by grrrr
...and special invasion.

Great, now we're talking about Iraq again?

[Summit]

yes fire is cheaper... but not so easy... when a forest is primed to blow up and burn out of control, thinning is usually the easiest and safest way to go

controlled burns are really hard... you have to have *just* the right temp, humidity, wind direction, available personel, etc etc etc

they have been wanting to do a control burn here on Swan Mountain... but for SIX YEARS they have failed to have appropriate conditions for a safe controlled burn...

connifer forests are competely different yes... but they are mostly much the same in that they too have massive amounts of available fuel... dangerous amounts.

i dont think the healthy forests initiative calls for clear cutting... does it?
clear cutting wouldn't solve the problem so much... its supposed to call for thinning, removal of sick/dead trees, and removal of fuel i thought

[grrrr]

AD - Again, it is a complex issue. In the case of Coastal Fir-Cedar-Hemlock, then logging does in fact dramatically increase the fire danger. In those forests, the fire return interval drops from 300-500 year to 30-50 year. (BTW, some models are showing significant likelihood of fires in this forest type this season. If that occurs, then watch out. They are the largest and deadliest fires.)

"Thinning" and "clearcutting" are two separate animals. In the case of ponderosa, thinning dramatically reduces fire danger, while clearcutting increases it. One issue with that is that thinning generally costs more than can be recovered by the product removed.

[The AD]

Originally posted by SummitCo 1776
i dont think the healthy forests initiative calls for clear cutting... does it?
clear cutting wouldn't solve the problem so much... its supposed to call for thinning, removal of sick/dead trees, and removal of fuel i thought

I'm not sure. It was my understanding that it calls for thinning--like you said. I was responding to this from the Easterbrook article: "After loggers come through there is a big, denuded open field. A big, denuded open field is also what is left after a wildfire. Better to arrive at the big, denuded open field artificially, avoiding death and destruction while creating logging jobs--since the Douglas fir will be just as happy to grow in the big open field regards of whether nature's fire or people's saws cleared the land."

[grrrr]

Originally posted by SummitCo 1776
i dont think the healthy forests initiative calls for clear cutting... does it?
clear cutting wouldn't solve the problem so much... its supposed to call for thinning, removal of sick/dead trees, and removal of fuel i thought

One major problem with the HFI is that it removes environmental review from small scale logging projects - regardless of whether the project is actually a fuel reduction project or a logging project. So, yes, they can now clear cut on Forests with much less red tape. It was a bone the Bush administration threw in to his logging supporters

[Buzzworthy]

Originally posted by Dantheman
If forests need to be logged and managed to be healthy, why did they grow so well before we came along?


And we know they were healthy how before we came along? If I would have paid a bit more attention in college I could tell you the state of our forests at that time. Although I did get my BSF in Natural Resouces Management in the College of Forestry does not mean I was paying attention the whole time, so I am by no means an expert. I now wish I did.

I get the point you are trying to get across, but the fact is, NOW more than ever our forests need managed, for a variety of reasons. Healthy forests do not just mean that the trees are standing up, there is disease, insects, excess fuel, growth percentage, how you "manage" the forest, cuts (sustainable yield or thinning or selective thinning)........

Fire season alone is enough to tell you the state of health our forests are in. Some fires are meant to be, a natural process, but not to the extent they run these days. But that is a whole nother story and Char and Shera would be way more knowledgeable on this subject.

Management is needed.

[mtbakerskier]

Fuck the Forest service, there just a bunch of buercratic dipshits, and cant effectivly manage shit.

[char]

After loggers come through there is a big, denuded open field. A big, denuded open field is also what is left after a wildfire. Better to arrive at the big, denuded open field artificially, avoiding death and destruction while creating logging jobs--since the Douglas fir will be just as happy to grow in the big open field regards of whether nature's fire or people's saws cleared the land."


False! Fires only remove 10-20% of forest biomass, max. A clearcut is closer to 70-80%. They are taling about monocultured stands, which by their very nature are proving to be un-sustainable. The beauty of a fire and other natural distubances is that they leave substantial amounts of biological legacies which add to the structure and nutrient cycling of the ecosystem.


Dan- Firebreaks are great in theory but don't always work. There are many great examples of fires jumping fire breaks. Here is one, in Austrailia they built a 100 meter wide fuelbreak (no fuel, basically just gravel), a fire started, jumped the fuelbreak and burned something like 300 houses. It's not as simple as just cutting down and removing the fuel around your house.

IMO, we will never return to natural fire intervals. The public is simply intolerant of blackened forest, especially when it is in their backyard.

mtbaker- The USFS can't manage shit because everytime they try to do something it often is lawsuited, even if it is a good thing to do. Groups interested in zero resource extraction will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

I'm not advocating clearcutting, but rather a holistic take on stand management. This means longer stand rotations, multi-storied, unevened aged stands. It all depends on what we want to manage for. Old-growth? Mature stands? Owls? Board feet? Mushrooms? Recreation?

[Blurred Elevens]

Thanks a lot you guys.

Instead of SummitCo172833848 picking up a snowmobile trailer and dropping off slide film he's been asked to do for a month, he wasted yet another day arguing about shit on the internet with people he's never met. Please ignore him and remind him of these two things in REAL LIFE that he needs to get off his ass and do. Thanks for your participation in the SummitCo1235823485 intervention plan. Many Colorado crew maggots appreciate your cooperation.

[Arty50]

Just in case some of you haven't read this it relates to this somewhat:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/mann.htm