Another Good Article in Fair Chase

[BigHornRam]

Jack Ward Thomas (one of Shoots Straight's favorite writers) has a good article in the latest F. C. titled "Time for a New Approach to Forestry". He covered my thoughts on the topic very well. Since Buzz is a educated forestry expert, as well as a B. and C. member, maybe he can read the article and tell Jack and I where our thinking is flawed? Looking forward to Buzz's wisdom on the subject.

 

[JB]

BHR, post the article in question.

 

[Hangar18]

This is the article I believe.

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060713-082629-4601r

A future for forests and wildlife
By Jack Ward Thomas
Published July 14, 2006

A new age of forestry is needed in the United States. Recent dramatic declines in forest management have brought some undesirable consequences for forest health and wildlife.

Public concerns over retention of biodiversity (such as compliance with the intent of the Endangered Species Act) have thrust concerns for wildlife front and center in forest management debates. Where those debates lead remains to be seen.

A total preservationist approach to management -- standing back and letting nature take its course -- has become increasingly prevalent. While appealing on the surface, this is not tenable in the long-term as it will not protect forests, retain biodiversity, and provide some wood products over time.

A return to a totally economic-driven forestry is also not viable. Public reaction to past forest management practices, e.g., the visual effects of clearcutting precludes harvesting at "economic maturity" from being the dominant factor in forest management decisions.

Public backlash to forestry practices of 1950-1975 resulted in a plethora of federal and state laws and regulations that set forest management on course toward sustainability. Unfortunately, the pendulum of attitudes toward forest management has swung too far to the side of constraint.

Today, most old-growth stands on public lands are protected and provisions exist for recruiting additional old growth over the next decades and centuries. Many stands are in or moving into mid-successional forest condition -- the least productive stage for enhancing biodiversity. The key to overall biodiversity, therefore, will be creating and maintaining both younger early successional and late-successional forest stands.

Adding to the challenge of establishing the full spectrum of forest conditions essential to supporting the full spectrum of biodiversity is an unprecedented wood consumption in the United States. Our per capita wood consumption rate is the highest in the world and rising.

Increasingly, we depend on places beyond our borders to provide our wood -- places with far less resources and knowledge about how to manage forests responsibly. When we import wood products, we export not only environmental consequences but jobs and dollars.

Currently, creation of younger-forest conditions increasingly depends on stand replacing fire, insects and disease, and blow-down. Timber harvesting could play a similar role. The choice, to a large degree, is up to us.

The idea of "letting nature take its course" is seductive in its simplicity but has significant downsides. First, the timing, extent and results of stand-replacing events are only marginally under human control. With human populations increasingly ensconced in forested areas, forest health already degraded, and the ability to use controlled burns limited, "hands off" management -- even for public lands -- seems untenable in the long run. And increasingly depending on "elsewhere" for wood is morally bankrupt, economically unfeasible and wasteful.

Clearly there is work to be done in our forests. However, using taxpayer dollars for habitat alterations to provide for biodiversity associated with early succession forests and protect structures in the wildland/urban interface against large-scale fires will prove cost prohibitive. And, once such actions are begun they must be maintained with ever-mounting costs and lack of offsetting returns.

It seems the perfect time for a new forestry. Not a simple reinstitution of what has gone before, but a new approach -- in which the environmental benefits are as significant as the wood produced. We have the know-how, technology and trained professionals to do the job. Certainly the need is ever more apparent.

This new forestry must focus on the landscape and accept the need to provide myriad values from our forests, including biodiversity, wood products, clean air and water, and recreation. By doing so, and harvesting more trees from its private forestlands, our nation can enhance biodiversity and lessen the effect of our consumption on forests around the world.

Were the most fertile lands (usually in private ownership) intelligently managed more intensely for wood production, the pressure could be relieved on less productive lands. Those lands then could be managed with more emphasis on such things as biodiversity, scenic values and watershed integrity.

The answer to what some consider past management sins is not prohibition. Rather, it is a change in approach to forest management -- a new forestry. The old forestry is largely dead. But, we have learned much -- enough to institute more acceptable and more sustainable new approaches.

Like all species, humans, must exploit the environment in order to live. There is no question of that. The question is how such will be accomplished in a sustainable, and socially acceptable, fashion.


Jack Ward Thomas, Ph.D., holds degrees in wildlife biology and forestry. He served 27 years in Forest Service research, three years as chief of the Forest Service under President Clinton, and 10 years as the Boone and Crockett Professor of Conservation at the University of Montana. He has received numerous awards including the Aldo Leopold Medal from the Wildlife Society.

Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc.

 

[BigHornRam]

That's the one Hangar. Thanks for posting it.

 

[BigHornRam]

Hmmmm.....All the resident hunt talk tree huggers must agree with Jack and I. That or they don't have the the nuts to debate this topic. Come on Buzz or shoots crooked, share some wisdom!

 

[BuzzH]

BHR,

Jack dumbed down that article...so thats why you think its so good.

If he believed all that stuff he wrote in the article...he sure didnt practice much of it when he was Chief...HMMMM????

Theres many a flaw in his article...for instance:

"Today, most old-growth stands on public lands are protected and provisions exist for recruiting additional old growth over the next decades and centuries. Many stands are in or moving into mid-successional forest condition -- the least productive stage for enhancing biodiversity. The key to overall biodiversity, therefore, will be creating and maintaining both younger early successional and late-successional forest stands."

You cant create old growth by cutting all the mid-successional stands...in particular when "demand for wood is the highest its ever been".

This is a real peach here too:"Recent dramatic declines in forest management have brought some undesirable consequences for forest health and wildlife"

Recent dramatic declines? Apparently Jack has been asleep for the last 20 years, including the 3 years he served as Chief and let the FS budget get slashed to pieces. Pretty hard to implement forest management with less employees, less budget, and being forced by law to live under NEPA, NFMA, ESA, etc. etc. etc.

Ol' Jack is great at telling you what the problems are...but sure didnt do much to implement solutions when he was Chief...much like the tone of this article.

The article is great for explaining the problems...but I didnt see "Jack" shit about what his "new forestry" program should entail or how its going to to be implemented.

 

[shoots-straight]

BHR,

Anything that sounds intelligent, your on it. "Man, Jack and I" told ya. What a joke, come up with somthing on your own, and make sence of it.

No dought Jack's a smart man, as Buzz points out though his insight ends with implementation of his diagnosis.

The main part he got right was the backlash from managment from the sixties and seventies. "So now trust us to manage the forest now."

My dad always told me if somone screws you the first time damn them, but if you let them screw you twice it's damn you.

So sorry if I don't enbrace the new ideas that come down the pike. Seems in the Forest Circus that things tend to mutate for one reason or another. All good ideas go astray, politically, or otherwise.

Through the 70's and 80's the forest service would put a road through some of my prime hunting area's, then clearcut the snot out of it and lock the gate.
All the elk would migrate that first year to the logged over area bang flop, no more bulls. I'd move to another area, find good elk, next season same scenario. All the good habitat is now logged to death, easy to kill any good bull that wanders into the area. The forest service was afraid that if they didn't get to it first that the enviro's would get it put into wilderness. See how they managed back then. One area flown by our biologist wintered 47 bulls that were 6x6 or better some of the best bulls around were shot there.
After the road and log, 3 bulls where located and none of them were 6 points.

So BHR you if you want big bulls you have to be very carefull with the land that they call home.

 

[BigHornRam]

S. S.,

Share some of your pics of these "big bulls" of the good old days.