DeFazio Forest Bill

[sandnsea]

I wish we could save more of the old-growth, I worry about whether they're going to actually thin and not log, but maybe this would work? I'd like to see plenty of money for thinning around communities too.

"He's unveiling his proposed "Rural Employment and Forest Restoration Act" in Springfield this morning.

The act would require the U.S. Forest Service to aggressively thin federal forests while selling enough of the removed trees to more than double the annual timber harvest in Northwest forests to about 500 million board feet.

The proposal, in the meantime, would ban the controversial logging of about one million acres of old growth stands in areas now open to timber sales."

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/07/30/c1.cr.defazio.0730.html

[SCAROLINAHISTORYCOCK]

1. Some thinning will have to occur....

As a State Employee for the South Carolina Dept of Natural Resources and having grown up in a house full of Wildlife Biologists and Forestry Majors I watch the forests of the west burn and I wonder why every one comes unglued. These forests have historically burned approximately every 80 to 100 years. By thinning, if that is what will actually occur, they help prevent the wildfires. There is a thin line between protecting our natural resources intelligently and being overprotective to the point of harming ecosystems. We can see this in the wildfires every summer in the west, no thinning/cutting regulations have created a situation where these ecosystems need to burn to regenerate. Its a tough line to walk

[sandnsea]

2. Only part of the story

96% of the forests aren't natural forests. So whatever happened naturally, historically, isn't remotely relevant to today. Forests have been logged, usually several times, and what has been replanted has no resemblance to a historical forest. When a fire goes through these lands, it can burn everything, not just the underbrush or unhealthy trees that used to be burned. Even if these forests are left to regenerate naturally, they often don't grow with the same trees or mix as they would have because the amount of sunlight to the forest floor is different. There are alot of factors involved in getting our forests to a healthy state. Controlled fire is fine, particularly in Old Growth. Wild raging fires, in forests that were never meant to burn that way, are not okay. Particularly when they are so hot that they begin to burn old growth down to the ground as well.

[depakid]

3. Thinning typically doesn't happen

because it's not "costs as possible onto the general public. The only way that they will go in and thin on federal land is if the Forest Service economical" for timber companies, who have a long history here of externalizing (read- socializing) as many or BLM forces them to do so as a part of their contract. Of course, that historically hasn't happened, so we end up with dense second growth that's susceptible to unusually devastating fires- quite different from the ones that you'd expect in a mature forest or even one in a natural stage of succession.

Another problem is that the monocultures that the Forest Service promotes are vulnerable to widespread disease and insect infestation. Couple that with drought, and even the old growth forests burn relentlessly.

While controlled burns may be a good idea in certain areas, they need to be properly implemented, because just like slash burns, they can and do get out of control when they're poorly supervised (which, unfortunately, is probably the rule rather than the exception).

[0rganism]

4. Old growth forests DON'T burn the way the 2nd-growth tree farms do

That's the problem for you, right there. If they did, we wouldn't HAVE old growth forests, because they'd "burn every 80-100 years", and never get to be 500 years old. When old growth forests burn, it's actually healthy -- the older trunks get a bit scorched but most survive, while a lot of the undergrowth clears out. These aren't necessarily disasters. You gotta know, there are species of trees that evolved over millions of years to reproduce during forest fires, it takes fire heat to crack open the seed pods.

Of course, once those big tree forests are clearcut away and the logging company replants a single species of ridiculously dense seedlings in its place, we get fires that spread like all hell, especially during droughts. Everything's acting like a thicket of undergrowth. These stands DESPARATELY need to be thinned -- not clearcut, but thinned. And regularly. As dk mentioned, they're hardly real forests as it is anyway. The logging industry reps like to brag about how "trees are a renewable resource", but they haven't come anywehere near to showing that forests are renewable.

Humanity's greatest conceit is imagining that ecosystems which have sustained themselves and developed over millenia before there were even humans on the planet suddenly need our divinely-inspired management skills to survive. The biosphere is much bigger and older than we are, and it would have done just fine if we'd left it the fuck alone. But noooo, our ancestors decided to pretend we're in charge of everything, and it's like having a two-year-old trying to operate a semiconductor fab. We don't know what we're doing, things are getting messy, and suddenly a lot of disasters are becoming our fault.

Credit Rep. DeFazio for actually proposing a way to clean up some of the mess we made without wrecking what little unspoiled forest remains in the Pacific Northwest.