Forest Dialogue

A great example of the way ClimateConcern Group brings together ideas and experts to inform the world

Malcolm asks:

However attractive it may be to have pristine forest, will it be sufficiently protected against major forest fires as the climate changes?

No. While some parts of the planet may get warmer and wetter, where forests are in regions getting warmer and drier are going to burn, period. Already, in areas where heat and drought combine, we are seeing forests burn through pristine forest, logged forest, and even through forest that had been "thinned" to prevent such burning. Give it a year or so more, and the fire story will be as widely reported and publicly discussed as the ice story is now.

What is the long term strategy to reduce forest fires?

Well, for one, I'd urge closing down old logging roads in my own part of the world -- the western United States. The presence of these roads makes easy access into fire-prone forests. Accidents happen, such as sparks from vehicles moving down the road. In 1988, one of the biggest fires that swept through Yellowstone National Park was started by a chain saw beside a logging road in a National Forest just outside the Park boundary. (Roads also increase mortality rates in local wildlife species. For example, elk males in roadless areas tend to live long enough to grow the spectacular antlers typical to adult males in their peak years. But the elk in areas with logging roads don't live that long. Why? Because the presence of roads make easy access for large numbers of hunters. )

Plans to grow timber to slow the growing CO2 levels come to nothing if that timber goes up in smoke.

Growing timber to sequester CO2 is apparently going to be a matter of significant uncertainty anyway.

I don't mean to imply an utterly treeless world in anything I say here, but things are going to undergo some very significant changes, and massive levels of forest death will be part of it. Already, massive change has been recorded from, for example, all the way from Mexico to Alaska

Logging is preferable to this as the timber production forms some long term sinks as well as the shorter term reversion to the atmosphere.

That's going to be the logging/construction industries' argument. And there's sufficient logic in it that it will pass muster, in some quarters, especially when the debate is early in the game. But there's already a good body of scientific evidence ready to be brought into the picture as the "logging is preferable" stance gets closer review.I can't get into the detail here, or now, but a good place to start would be a Google search for articles on forest carbon by Oregon State University's Mark Harmon.

Would it be possible to cut all forests which are endangered by forest fires into squares with sufficient firebreaks between them to reduce fire activity?

That'd be both capital-intensive and energy-intensive. And, if the forests you're thinking of are in a region getting both hotter and drier, it could be a lot of money and energy spent for little or no real gain.

What size should the squares be to support wildlife?

In a region with, say, 300 different species of vertebrate animals, answers will vary for every species. And there's reason to be wary of making decisions based on the needs of just a few of these animals. For example, a Columbian ground squirrel might only require X square meters of land, but if you manage for just one squirrel, you've doomed the population to extinction. And if you manage only for ground squirrels, you've likely to mess up the habitat needed by the likes of the western tanager. Or consider the case of the black-backed woodpecker, which depends on trees affected by fire. Manage your whole area for the black-backed woodpecker's benefit, and you'll want lots of fire.

Lance Olsen

Malcolm

01865 351984

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In a message dated 02/01/2008 03:42:32 GMT Standard Time, lance@wildrockies.org writes:

"The Colorado announcement follows last week's

similar announcement that the Forest Service will

begin consideration of a plan to open millions of roadless

acres in Idaho to logging, mining and road building."

Environment News Service

U.S. Forest Service Plans to Lift Roadless Area Protections

DENVER, Colorado, December 31, 2007 (ENS) - The Bush administration

intends to remove existing legal protections from over 4.4 million acres

of roadless areas in the national forests of Colorado. The U.S. Forest

Service formally announced Wednesday that it is beginning a process to

establish a new rule for managing Colorado's roadless areas.

This rulemaking is the result of a petition submitted by Governor Bill

Ritter on behalf of the State of Colorado requesting specific regulatory

protections with certain management flexibility.

The state-by-state roadless rulemaking process is a Bush administration

replacement for the Clinton era Roadless Rule, that would have protected

58 million acres of inventoried roadless areas across the United States

from development.

The Colorado proposal would remove roadless protections from approximately

300,000 acres of wild forestlands, and weaken them for the remaining 4.1

million acres.

The Colorado announcement follows last week's similar announcement that

the Forest Service will begin consideration of a plan to open millions of

roadless acres in Idaho to logging, mining and road building.

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"One study estimated that more than half (59 percent) of 1598 species exhibited measurable changes in their phenologies and/or distributions over the past 20 to 140 years .... high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 C)."

Parmesan, Camille. ' Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change.' Annual Review of Evolution, Ecology, and Systematics. 2006. 37: 637-69

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