The Paradigm Shifts!!!!
“Our testimony focuses on forest restoration in the National Forests of Oregon and Washington… To conserve these forests, we need to modify stand structure (e.g., treat fuels) on one-half to two-thirds of the landscape.” - Johnson and Franklin, December 13, 2007
Today the Forest Paradigm shifted in public, just a little bit. Drs. K. Norman Johnson and Jerry F. Franklin gave public testimony calling for forest restoration, protection, and maintenance. The statement was given before the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests (Chair Ron Wyden, OR), who heard testimony regarding forest restoration and hazardous fuels reduction efforts in the forests of Oregon and Washington in Hearing Room SD-366 today.
Drs. Johnson and Franklin are famously (or infamously) two members of the Gang of Four, the cabal that took over the USFS in 1993 and engendered the Northwest Forest Plan (1994), among other forest-destructive actions.
The set-aside of 25 million acres of public forests (and some private, too) into No Touch Zones has led to catastrophic megafires such as the Biscuit Fire (2002). Moreover, the Northwest Forest Plan has failed to save any spotted owls, spotted owl habitat, or to protect rural and regional economies, all key goals of the NWFP. Indeed, after nearly 14 years of the NWFP, the situation is much worse in all regards.
But the worm has turned. The idea that abandonment is good forest stewardship has been chucked into the dustbin of history by two of its (former) proponents. Shocking but true, and a very good thing. Today is a welcome and historic day for our forests.
Excerpts from the Testimony:
Forest Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction Efforts in the Forests of Oregon and Washington
Testimony of K. Norman Johnson Jerry F. Franklin
December 13, 2007 - Hearing of the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
I am Dr. K. Norman Johnson and I am here today to give testimony for myself and Dr. Jerry F. Franklin regarding forest restoration and hazardous fuel reduction efforts in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. I am a University Distinguished Professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Jerry Franklin is Professor of Ecosystem Sciences in the College of Forest Resources at University of Washington. These comments represent our view and not those of our respective institutions.
Our testimony focuses on forest restoration in the National Forests of Oregon and Washington…
Our definition of “restoration” is the re-establishment of ecological structures and processes on these forests where they have been degraded and, simultaneously, *restoration of economic and other social values on these lands*. One product of this restoration will be substantial reductions in uncharacteristic fuel loadings. We emphasize restoration activities in which ecological, economic, and other social goals are compatible…
Restoration of Forests Characterized by Frequent, Low- and Mixed-Severity Fire Regimes
We will lose these forests to catastrophic disturbance events unless we undertake aggressive active management programs. This is not simply an issue of fuels and fire; because of the density of these forests, there is a high potential for drought stress and related insect outbreaks. Surviving old-growth pine trees are now at high risk of death to both fire and western pine beetle, the latter resulting from drought stress and competition…
Without action, we are at high risk of losing these stands-and the residual old-growth trees that they contain-to fire and insects…
We know enough to take action (uncertainties should not paralyze us). Inaction is a much more risky option for a variety of ecological values, including preservation of Northern Spotted Owls and other old-growth related species. We need to learn as we go, but we need to take action now. Furthermore, it is critical for stakeholders to understand that active management is necessary in stands with existing old-growth trees in order to reduce the risk that those trees will be lost.
Unless we take immediate action with aggressive active management programs, our priceless heritage forests will be lost. Where have you heard that before? I don’t mean to gloat, but…
SOS Forests has been pounding on this point for two solid years now, 24/7/365. We were not the first, just the most incisive, acute, vociferous, and persistant in a very VOCAL way. We cannot take the credit, however, if others wish to parrot us. It is their choice to parrot or not. We merely supplied the original thoughts. By we, I mean all the key voices heard at SOSF for the past two years, including Bonnicksen, Zybach, Pyne, Bear Bait, me, and all the perceptive and courageous crew represented here.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Activities at the stand level need to focus on restoring ecosystems to sustainable composition and structure-not simply to acceptable fuel levels. Objectives of these treatments need to include: Retention of existing old-growth tree populations; shifting stand densities, basal areas, diameter distributions, and proportions of drought- and fire-tolerant species (e.g., ponderosa pine and western larch) toward historical levels… Finally, restoring old-growth tree populations to, and maintaining them at, historical levels should be a goal of restoration management…
We need more than “fuel management.” We need silviculture that recreates historical development pathways leading to open, park-like forests. That means serious thinning to wide spacings and maintaining the resulting open, park-like stands with anthropogenic fire. Historically and ecologically, human beings administered the key partial disturbances that maintained sustainable forests: frequent, regular, seasonal, human-set fire.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Restoration programs must be planned and implemented at the landscape scale to be effective; management over the last century has altered entire landscapes and created the potential for very large wildfires and insect outbreaks. Treating isolated stands within these landscapes will not be effective…
Creating fuel treatment patches and strips is a useful first step to help control wildfire, but is not sufficient to save these forests or the important array of values that they provide, including owls and old-growth trees. Many of the intervening areas will eventually burn and, even if they do not, old-growth trees will succumb to insects during periodic drought, since they are surrounded by dense competing vegetation.
To conserve these forests, we need to modify stand structure (e.g., treat fuels) on one-half to two-thirds of the landscape.
One-half to two-thirds of the landscape requires restoration forestry to protect, maintain, and perpetuate old-growth forests. That means the Northwest Forest Plan must be suspended and a new Plan developed. The NWFP set-aside 85 percent of the landscape in No Touch Zones. The NWFP is thus not compatible with old-growth forest protection, maintenance, and perpetuation, according to the experts who drafted it.
More from KNJ and JFF:
This level of restoration will create a matrix of more natural and sustainable forest, which has a greatly reduced potential for stand-replacement fire and insect mortality, interspersed with islands of dense stands. These interspersed dense stands will provide habitat for species like the Northern Spotted Owl that utilize such areas. In fact, an approach that results in restoring conditions on the majority of the dry forest landscapes is the only way in which sustainable habitat for Northern Spotted Owls can be provided.
The only way to sustain spotted owl habitat is through aggressive active management to reduce the potential for stand-replacement fires. Restoration forestry can save wildlife populations and even whole species. In fact, across much of the landscape, restoration forestry is the ONLY way to do that.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Key elements of actions to restore these forests include: Conserving old growth trees as a first priority.
Utilizing historical conditions, such as historical densities and distributions of tree sizes, as an ecological guide…
Combining conservation of old growth trees, stand density targets, and emphasis on drought and fire-tolerant species as an overall guide to action.
We suggest moving away from approaches based on diameter limits.
The wording in the Testimony here is a little fuzzy. What they meant to say is that tree AGE distributions are the best historical and ecological guides. Diameters don’t matter and diameter limits on restoration forestry are blockages that serve only to sabotage the end goals of protection, maintenance, and perpetuation of old-growth, heritage forests.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Focusing on areas with concentrations of old growth structure as a high priority for treatment. Recognition that such areas should receive early attention is recent; there has been a tendency to think that stands with numerous old-growth trees should be left alone or, at least, be of much lower priority for treatment. The reality is the opposite! Forests that still retain substantial numbers of old-growth trees should be priorities for treatment because these are irreplaceable structures that are at great risk from uncharacteristic wildfire and bark beetle attack. Hence, reducing the potential for accelerated loss of these old trees should be at the top of the agenda.
I strongly agree that there has been a tendency to think that stands with numerous old-growth trees should be left alone. Not around here, but that thinking has been endemic for quite a while in other teaching and research institutions. However, no need to rub it in.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Many areas that characteristically had frequent, low-frequency fire regimes no longer do… Reversing these effects will be needed…
Prescribed fire is a useful tool in forest restoration but is not sufficient alone—mechanical silvicultural activities typically will be required…
Difficulties exist in safely dealing with the build-up in fuel; in many cases harvest is required to help reduce fuel loads…
Harvest can help pay for actions and provide useful economic and social benefits, but additional funds will be needed. Significant commercial volumes need to be removed to restore these forests. They can provide the funds for treatment and also help maintain milling capacity and communities…
Commercial harvest, though, will not pay for all that needs to be done. Fire or other actions must follow harvest to reduce the short-term fuel hazards…
What can I say? SOS Forests publicly adopted that line a few years back, approximately upon the occasion of our inaugural post more than two years ago.
More from KNJ and JFF:
Rarely has there been such a coming together of ecological, economic, and social considerations.
The debate is over. We have reached consensus. Finally. This particular consensus is that restoration forestry is the ONLY practice that can stem the destruction of America’s priceless, heritage forests by catastrophic wildfire. So from my point of view, it’s a good consensus.
Having never been in a consensus before, I’m not sure what to do next. Do we all sign a letter?
Can I have the symposium I always wanted, where the top researchers and scholars of restoration forestry get together to compare notes?
Norm, Jerry, give me a call. I’m on your side, now. From my perspective it appears the shift has been towards me, but let’s not quibble about it.
The Paradigm shifted, just a little bit, today in Washington DC. Maybe now we can start saving forests instead of burning them up.
[Sidenote to Gail: do you have any idea how far off the track you've wandered? The train just left the station and you are not on board. Get it together, Wild Woman. The future is stewardship, tending the land, not holocaust and wasteland prowled by hungry wolves.]
by History Buff
by John Marker
The testimony given by Johnson and Franklin echoes many points made by other foresters. However, they forgot to talk to the issue of why the public forest lands were created. This issue seems to me be of significant importance when describing forest management prescriptions.
by Forrest Grump
Two hours ago when I first read this, I was shocked wordless. Now that I have scraped myself off the wall…
I should have known something like this was coming from those two self-aggrandizing, shameless, exhibitionist jerks. Mister Peer Review Himself now flips over so hard MY neck hurts. I am glad they have done so, but they should not share in any accolades or position themselves as the “leaders” of this charge.
I hereby declare a vendetta.
Now, now, Grump. Put the pitchfork down. You make a valid point, but vengence is not your property.
I feel your pain as I too gaze across a national landscape pockmarked with mega burns, as I too live in a rural community brought to its knees by the No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot anti-forest, anti-human, pseudo-science crowd. I cannot deny it: a large measure of bitterness remains and will remain.
But let us seize the moment and move ahead. There is a hole in their line; now take the ball and charge on through. Keep your eyes on the prize and run for daylight.
There is no more support for megafire holocausts. There is no more reason to stand idly by and allow our priceless, heritage forests to be incinerated to tick brush.
Now is the time to crush the Whoofoo Program with the Sledgehammer of Common Sense. Now is the time to throw the anarchist arsonists out of the US Forest Service. Now is the time to clean house at the Wildland Fire Leadership Council and kick the BINGOs to the curb.
Now is the time to stick a microphone in the face of every politician in America and demand to know where their allegiance lies, with holocaust or with stewardship. Now is the time for holding feet to the fire until the wackos cry uncle.
by Forrest Grump
Vendetta!
Certainly, these two have presented an opportunity for a fresh debate, but that’s all. They are smart guys, able to see a loser (eventually) yet they are behind the intellectual power curve. Never mind their academic fecklessness has been destructive to the institution of science-based forestry as well as society at large.
I’ve been trying to find the originals. The committee site had nothing. Who testified, where are the goods?
And especially destructive to forests!!!
The goods? It appears that SOS Forests is the only source in the world right now (scoop, scoop, who’s got the scoop?).
Full text [here].
For the last 10 years I’ve been saying exactly what they said yesterday. This quote confuses me, though.
Comparable structural goals should guide management before and after wildfire; these will certainly differ depending upon whether the management focus is primarily on ecological processes or wood production. Where ecological objectives are primary, proposed salvage operations should retain structures of the same size and density as those developed for the green forest. Old-growth trees should be conserved, whether alive or dead. This approach provides a solid reference for action and can eliminate intense arguments over such issues as the probabilities that burned trees will die.
Does this mean that there should never be any fire or insect salvage? As he just said, shouldn’t the snag density be the same on burned land as in green stands? In a dense old growth stand that has 100% mortality, do we let it rot and burn again, at higher intensity? Burn salvage is now a fuels issue, rather than a timber sale. Timber volume is just a nice side effect of reducing fuels in burned forests.
Also, great scoop in this story. It needs to be spread far and wide!
I admit it. I cherry-picked the Testimony. I left out the CYA, self-defensive, self-contradictory whining crap.
There would be no salvage logging “issue” if our forests received stewardship instead of being abandoned to catastrophic holocaust.
That being said, it also makes zero sense to re-abandon incinerated forests to revert to tick brush. Stewardship is stewardship, and it is a far different thing from No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot.
And please feel free: send a link to everyone you know.
by Forrest Grump
Backster, the clause you question is right out of the Beschta camp. Old growth should be preserved alive or dead…that goes right into the “biological legacy” thinking of a paper Franklin participated in that was anti salvage all the way.
These guys haven’t changed their stripes. They’re just trying to get in position for the attitudinal shift the public is going through so that whatever subsidy money gets appropriated goes to their pals and not to real, pragmatic operators.
This is one of those times I wish I had a clone. I’m too busy right now to pick Team Zero (Cut) apart. I be back.
by bear bait
Academic whiplash. A parting of the seas. Is this all a mistake? Where is Chris Maser, of the 400 year rotting log? Where are the hangers on and acolytes?
For 20 years, I have said the road to salvation is to reduce fuel from the inside out… first look into the air and examine the canopy and then look at the trees you want to be there in another two centuries, and then paint the rest.
I have to wonder if Franklin, et al. just looked at an old growth fir, now with FEET of bark slough piled around its base, and figured out that tree cannot survive a ground fire, let alone a canopy fire.
I am dumbfounded. Mute. Bowled over. Steamrollered. Now I wonder what happens to Quislings in the Econazi world. Will the Ecofreaques turn on them, with world wide denouncements from the NGOs. You have to know that their statements have a bottom line impact on many, many tax forgiven trust sucking GreenSaviour organizations. It will be damned hard to get donations to start logging to save the Giant Sequoias of the Sierras, the Yellowbelly Pines of the Interior West, the Grand Sitka Spruce and Doug Fir of the West Coast. And damned hard to stop it if your science leaders have made a 180 on you. Your expert witnesses have had a course correction.
Jim Furnish had a piece in the paper heaping praise on all the working groups that allow the Siuslaw to log thinnings in plantations, and in doing that, no old growth is disturbed. News: Since its inception, the Siuslaw NF has had no more than 32,000 acres of land with one old growth tree, or more, on it. Those 32,000 acres of old growth are still there. 60,000 acres of the Siuslaw are homesteads bought back during the Depression, and planted by the CCC crews that also planted all the grassy balds, prairies and meadows, all remnant cultural burn sites from aboriginal times, all having 70 year old trees on them today, and they are there, too. Those also need thinning if we are to have more open forests and larger trees.
I logged North Nettle Skyline timber sale in 1971, on the Alsea District, and if you look at that sale today you cannot tell that logging took place. It was a thinning of 110 year old second growth, and was called a “pre-mortality salvage.” The trees that most likely would not be there in 30 years were logged. All green timber, of course. Prescient, that timber sale. A great example of accelerated growth to “old growth.” I cannot, today, see what ever harm was done in that logging, if there was any. It was an outside the box sale at the time, and difficult logging in the early sky car era. But today you would never know. It looks like an untouched piece of real estate. A good place to bore some samples to see the release, if any. And to see a viable stand density. Exactly the kind of result Franklin, et al. are looking for. You log the understory. From the inside out. From the bottom up. But first there has to be support for logging. That has yet to occur. I am not holding my breath.
So with Franklin, et al. no longer the enemy, it is hard to wage war. Or is this just a feint? It would seem that we should continue to beat our drum, ever so loudly, and see who shows up for or agin’ us. It seems so common sensical that fuels reduction and tree spacing would work, especially in drought areas, instead of having it burn up in some sort of hideous “I told you so” moment. I am of the wait and see class of skeptics.
Mike: This is remarkable. Norm and Jerry have reversed field 180-degrees from all that nonsense they’ve were peddling for the last 20 to 30 years that helped lead us directly into the mess we’re in today.
Priceless quote (among several): “Utilizing historical conditions, such as historical densities and distributions of tree sizes, as an ecological guide…”
These two scientists have been resistant to comparisons of their “blanket of old-growth” model with actual historical documentation. Photographs, historical maps, eyewitness accounts, and knowledgeable observers were all in agreement on those counts, but Franklin and Johnson were dead wrong. The historical record showed how, where, and why. And they are just now realizing this fact? Well, better late than never.
I recall Franklin’s proclamations that we needed to “save” old-growth by “preservation” (stopping logging). Lately his old-growth/spotted owl “preserves” have been bursting into flames. His old-growth management recommendations have been shown to be ill-founded and poorly considered. His NWFP has been a total and costly failure, paid for by taxpayers and rural residents.
It is good to see that their political positions have changed. Too bad our burned-to-a-quick old-growth forests cannot be resurrected.