Guest Opinion: George Wuerthner's On the Range Is Sustainable Forestry
Sustainable? From NewWest [1] By George Wuerthner, 9-22-07 We hear praise for
sustainable forestry from the timber industry, politicians, and even among
many environmental groups. While sustainability is an admirable goal, most of
what I have seen touted as sustainable practices are far from ecologically
sustainable, especially when compared to wild landscapes. In nearly all
instances that I have observed, the so called “sustainable” logging,
grazing, farming-- fill in the blank-- is only sustainable by externalizing
most of the real costs (ecological impacts) of production. That doesn’t
prevent people from trying to claim that they have achieved the Holy Grail
and found a way to exploit nature and protect it too. Everyone wants to think
they can take from nature and somehow not have to pay the full cost. It’s
the free lunch syndrome. Sustainable forestry as practiced today is usually
more of an economic definition than an ecological one. By sustainable, timber
companies and their supporters in the “sustainable forestry” movement
engage in practices that ensure a continual long term timber supply, not a
sustainable forest. A couple of weeks ago I toured a highly ballyhooed
sustainable forestry site in California. The company whose property we viewed
was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as a sustainable forestry
wood producer. Certification by FSC permits a company to sell its wood for a
premium and supposedly gives consumers reassurance that the wood they are
buying is environmentally benign or may even enhance ecosystem function. The
company land was, by the standards of the industry, well managed. They did no
clearcutting. They left buffers along streams. They didn’t cut any
remaining patches of old growth. In short, they were a model timber
operation. Their land still had trees, but did it still have a forest? For
many the mere presence of trees is taken as proof that logging on the site
was sustainable. But a continuous supply of trees for the mill doesn’t
necessarily mean you are preserving or sustaining a forest ecosystem. The
company owners and foresters who led the tour were proud of their efforts. I
don’t want to denigrate their practices, which, on the whole, were much
better than those followed by other timber companies. But that doesn’t mean
their logging practices were perpetuating a forest ecosystem. For instance,
the company owner showed the tour group growth rings of a tree that grew on
the site before his company began to manage the area. Because of the
competition with other trees, the tree had grown slowly and the rings were
close and tight. Then he showed us a segment of a tree that had grown up
after they had selectively cut some trees. The growth rings were wide and
spaced far apart, demonstrating--in his mind--how thinning “improved” the
forest. Now he was growing “more” wood on the land than when it was a
“wild” forest. But my first thought when I saw the two tree segments was
“what good are trees that grow under slow conditions”? Do trees with
tight growth rings resist rot longer? If so would they remain as a biological
legacy on the site far longer than a tree grown under “sustainable forestry
practices?” While a fast growing tree may be good from the lumber
company’s perspective, a fast growing tree is not necessarily good from a
forest ecosystem perspective. Company representatives believed they were
“tidying up” the forest—much as a gardener weeds a flower bed—by
selectively weeding out the “bad” or “damaged” trees, and leaving the
fast growing “healthy” trees. This practice may seem like good
forestry—especially from the prospective of creating more timber to
cut--but it may not be what is needed in the long run to preserve forest
genetic diversity. No one, including myself, has any idea what genetic
properties are valuable to the forest ecosystem. Fast growth or any other
trait we may select to preserve in the trees is not necessarily what is
needed to preserve the forest ecosystem. It may be the trees we cull—the
deformed trees, the slower growing trees, or trees that have other
“defects”--that may hold the secret to the future. They may be the very
trees, for instance, that might be best adapted to survive a warming climate.
Who knows—but certainly not the forester marking such trees for removal
believing he is “improving” the forest. The company’s forest management
plan called for the eventual cutting of all trees on its land—just not all
trees at the same time as in a clearcut. You might call this a “rolling
clearcut”. Because of this practice, no trees will ever again attain old
growth dimensions or status before it is cut and hauled off to the mill. So
how does this affect forest ecosystem sustainability? After the tour, I
visited a nearby state park that had wild (unmanaged) forests. Though the
differences might not be apparent to the causal visitor, I saw substantial
physical differences between the managed company lands and the wild forest.
First, the wild forest had a much higher percentage of big, old trees.
Furthermore, these disparities will grow ever greater the longer the company
lands are managed for “sustainable” timber production. While on the wild
forest, the percentage of old growth will vary over time depending on things
like wildfire or insect attacks, but no matter what disturbs the forest—the
wild forest will at least have the potential to grow significant amounts of
old growth. Given what we know about the value of older, bigger trees, this
can’t help but affect the forest ecosystem. For example, big trees take
longer to rot. They remain longer on the ground, in streams, and provide
structural diversity to the forest floor and stream channels. One of the
noticeable things about the managed forest we visited was the absence of big
woody debris (logs) on the forest floor compared to the nearby wild forest.
And though the company foresters had a prescription that left a few snags per
acre, the number of large snags on their managed lands was considerably less
than what I observed in the wild forest. Another contrast between the so
called “sustainable” forestry site and the wild forest were differences
in the amount of wood in the streams. In the wild forest there was an
abundance of logs that had fallen into the creek. These logs help to create
fish habitat, and armor the banks against erosion. On the managed landscape,
there were far fewer logs in the streambed, despite the fact that the company
did maintain some narrow buffers of unlogged land along all creeks. In
addition to these physical differences, there were other potentially
important ecological losses. Among other things, the timber company did not
permit wildfires to burn through its “sustainable” forest tracts. Yet in
this particular part of California, wildfire was an important ecological
factor that on occasion would normally burn at least some of the forest
stands. Typically such fires would create a mosaic of burned and unburned
forests, release nutrients, kill smaller trees, create some snags of the
larger trees as legacy logs, and cleanse the forest. In the managed forest,
the company was doing everything it could to keep fire from burning up its
profits. Without fire, it is doubtful this forest stand was really emulating
a sustainable ecosystem. In the “sustainable” forest, the company
representatives admitted that the disturbed habitat created by logging roads
and skid trails facilitated invasion by exotic weeds—but they handled it by
spraying herbicides along roadways. In the nearby wild forest there were no
roads and even few trails. Weeds were far less of a problem as a consequence.
Soil erosion, particularly that from logging roads, was also an issue and one
that never disappeared because once they constructed their main roads for
timber management access, they did not remove them. Thus they remained as a
long term source of sedimentation. Do all these differences compromise
ecological sustainability? I don’t know. But I am willing to assert it is
premature to claim that such forestry practices are sustainable. While they
may be an improvement over the kind of butchery that occurred in the
past--and is still the dominant paradigm on many timber lands including
public forests--I question whether such techniques are sustainable from a
forest ecosystem perspective. And in the long run that is the only
perspective that really counts. My guess is that far too many ecological
costs are externalized and uncounted and the only thing we are sustaining are
company profits.
[1] http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/is_sustainable_forestry_sustainable/C38/L38/
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