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OCR for page 171
8
A FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE
FOREST MANAGEMENT
/ntroc/uction
Each of the goals iclentifiec3 by the committee (sustain viable populations
of indigenous species, maintain properly functioning ecological
processes, meet human needs for forest commodities, and satisfy
cultural and aesthetic values) depends on the functioning of key
ecological or ecosystem processes. Maintaining these processes is being
adopted as the fundamental goal for sustainable forest management.
Not all goals can be maximized concurrently; therefore, balancing partly
incompatible goals through forest-management practices is the major
challenge facing forest managers. Although much of the debate over
forest management has focused on old-growth stands in forested
landscapes and on effects of clearcut harvesting on biodiversity,
sediment flow, and fisheries, forest-management practices have been in
constant transition. Partial-harvest practices have become more widely
used, newer harvest and replanting practices have lowered effects on
soils and streams, and landscape analyses are being cleveloped to
address issues of representation and connectedness of key habitat types.
As they have in the past, forest-management practices will continue to
change in response to new information and changing societal values.
ELEMENTS OF FOREST MANAGEMENT
Forest management has come to represent far more than simply logging
771
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Pacific Northwest Forests
anct silviculture aimed at fiber extraction. It is the variety of actions
applied to forested landscapes to achieve the goals clescribed above. In
more specific terms, the committee viewed forest management to
comprise four elements:
Allocation: the allocation of land to particular uses or combinations
of uses.
Rationing: rationing or scheduling use, such as levels of timber
harvest, permitted recreation use, ant! bag limits on game and fish.
Harvest: determining how to harvest or take forest products, which
are often related to plans for the next cycle of management.
Investment: investment in the productive resources of the land,
including protection against wilcifire, insects, disease, and other threats;
holding trees as Umber and resource capital; management practices
such as fertilization or irrigation intended to increase value of forest
products; and roads and infrastructure.
Land A//ocation
At the regional level, basic patterns of forest land ownership in relation
to other uses such as development and agriculture have already been
largely made. Congress has used ant] continues to use, its plenary
authority over the federal lands to designate national parks, wilderness
areas, wild anct scenic rivers, national recreation areas, ancl others.
These decisions, while having a broad regional impact, have usually
been made individually with little relation to each other or to other land
categories, and with little attention to a regional scheme.
The ecological consequences of regional land allocations among
ownerships and jurisdictions have become increasingly clear. At the
extreme, the so-called "checkerboard lands" have allocated uses and
defined boundaries with no regard for ecological processes such as
hydrology, natural disturbance, or wildlife behavior. Allocation of uses
within particular classes of land ownership (e.g., federal, state, private,
etc.) is generally macLe with little cognizance of ecological processes
occurring at larger scales or of surrounding land uses and objectives.
Although Congress has been specific in setting uses of some desig-
nated federal areas, it has left allocating uses on the bulk of the national
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773
forest and BUM land up to the land-management agencies. The Forest
Service and BEM use a planning process for allocating land uses under
broad multiple-use guidelines that give the agencies wide discretion in
allocating federal lands to specific uses or mixture of uses. This
planning process identifies streamside and scenic influence zones,
special wildlife habitat, and intensive recreation use areas as well as
timber management and harvest areas. Consideration is given is
required to some extent- to landscape- or watershed-level consider-
ations but for the most part, those plans are for federal lands only.
Although they may be based partly on recognition of prior decisions on
intermingled Private lands—em. patterns of previous locking in a
0 1 0 ' 1 1
· · · r ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ · ~ A
watershed—decisions in federal land-use plans only control actions on
federal land.
At the private and state levels, the Endangered Species Act has
affected land avocation by means of habitat conservation plans,
regulatory actions, and state programs and agreements. A notable
example is the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds, which has as
a goal to restore populations and fisheries to productive and sustainable
levels that will provide substantial environmental, cultural, and
economic benefits. Only on the larger private ownerships, usually those
of forest industry firms, can private forest owners make decisions that
encompass entire landscapes or watersheds. But, even the largest
private forest ownerships in the re=mon are usually fragmented and
intermingled with those of other owners. Each owner can allocate its
forest lands to uses and intensities of use that depend on the owner's
objectives. Land-use controls, such as those of the Oregon Land
Conservation and Development Commission, may limit an owner's
ability to change from forest to nonforest uses, but they typically do not
require the owner to devote the land to particular forest uses.
The major land avocations affecting forest land in the region are those
in the Northwest Forest Plan. Those allocations of federal forests
override previous allocations made in the planning process, but not
those made by Congress. The allocations create a set of reserved old-
growth forest areas, riparian reserves, and adaptive management areas
on federal forests in the spotted owl-region, each with a specific set of
management and use restrictions and guidelines. These old-growth
reserves cover some 7million acres, about30% of the total area of federal
forests in the spotted-owl region and roughly the same total area of
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Pacific Northwest Forests
forest that was already in congressionally withdrawn areas. in addition,
the Northwest Forest Plan put about 9% of the federal forests ~ riparian
reserves (pending watershed analyses) and 6% in adaptive management
areas (FEMAT 1993~. Whether parallel allocations wiD be extended to
Eastside federal forests as a result of current studies is uncertain at this
time.
Rationing Uses
A basic forest-management and conservation method is to ration or
schedule use over long periods to avoid depleting the ability of the
forest to maintain productivity. This is common practice not only
among government agencies, but also for forest industry firms in
managing for timber production. The main management laws guiding
the Forest Service and BEM require sustained yield (high-level annual
or periodic flows) of all forest resources over time from federal forests.
The Forest Service has interpreted this as meaning "nondeclining-even-
flow" of timber from national forests.
The idea of harvest scheduling is also captured in the concept of "bag
limits" for fish and game, as wed as in the "carrying capacity" of
rangelands. These are thought of as maximum sustainable levels of
harvest in view of the availability of food and habitat for the species in
question. For fish and wildlife, bag limits (population management) for
all lands are set and enforced by the states. The level and timing of uses
should be determined by an understanding of the capacity of forested
ecosystems to produce desired goods and services sustainably as well
as by market demand. Such "supply-side" rationing has been the stated
goal on public and many private lands.
Forest-management agencies and most forest-industry firms take a
relatively long-term view and plan for relatively even and sustained
annual timber harvests. Private forest owners other then fores/-industry
firms are more likely to vary timber harvests based on market conditions
and other factors, and they are unlikely to be committed to specific Tong-
term harvest schedules. Timber-harvest schedules for a national forest
or industrial forest are based on the size of the forest, the existing timber
inventory, productivity of the land, expected investments in growing
timber, and expected revenues, ah over a period of as much as several
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775
decades. In the case of industrial forests, market strategies and the
expected availability of timber from other owners may also play a role
in sewing harvest schedules. Rationing or harvest scheduling is usually
done for individual ownerships, or in the case of federal lands, for fairly
large units such as nationalforests. Rarely is such rationing done across
ownerships or jurisdictions. To the extent that an individual ownership
or national forest encompasses a landscape or watershed or larger area,
the rationing can be said to be done on a landscape/watershed or even
a regional basis.
The rotation age or time between successive cuts is an important
element in setting timber harvest schedules. This could be the age at
which the maximum total fiber is available for harvest, but today it is
often the age at which forest stands are judged to be "financially
mature." This is usually taken to mean the age at which the cost of
holding trees for another period of time exceeds the increase in value
that is expected over that time period. Financial maturity is influenced
by the rate of increase in the volume of fiber or merchantable wood, the
value of the trees, potential earnings from alternative investments
(opportunity costs), and expected changes in real prices for wood. The
importance of these factors varies depending on owner's objectives,
expected markets, site productivity, and alternative opportunities for
investing the money currently represented in the standing trees. No
single rotation age fits all goals or circumstances, but the financial
rotation age is generally considerably lower than the age at which the
maximum total fiber is present. For many private owners in this region,
planned rotation ages are 40-60 years, while the goal for public forests
is generally longer.
Over the past 60 years, the age structure of Pacific Northwest forests
has been changed by logging, but generally with an eye ultimately to
balancing the annual timber cut with annual growth over the long term.
In the process, most of the old-growth was cut, the overall average age
of the forest was reduced, and timber growth rates have increased.
Although timber harvest schedules were not set jointly for public and
private forests (except in the special case of the Cooperative Sustained
Yield Unit in Shelton, Washington), expected harvests from federal and
other public forests surely had some influence on harvest schedules for
private forests.
Scheduling decisions on one category of land ownership clearly
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Pacific Northwest Forests
influence demand and, therefore, decisions regarding the rationing of
uses on other lands. The harvest schedules under the Northwest Forest
Plan recognized the age structure of timber available for harvest. The
plan left available a significant volume of timber outside of the late-
successional and riparian reserves for planned harvesting. It was
specifically planned to provide for most of the annual timber harvest
until younger stands were oIcE enough to be cut. In addition, a consicler-
able volume of young Ember was placed in the late-successional
reserves that was to be available for certain kinds of commercial
thinning. And habitat conservation plans (HCPs) implementecl uncLer
the aegis of the Endangered Species Act that limit or eliminate harvest
activities from particular public or private lancts will likely influence
scheduling decisions on lands not included in the HCPs.
Harvesting
I egging is the most visible and probably the single forest-management
action having the greatest impact on forests and their ecological
processes. From the 1940s through the 19SOs, forest cutting on managed
federal lands in the Douglas-fir region was accomplished with dispersed
cutting units of approximately 40 acres in size. The resulting landscape
was composed of many small forest patches and young plantations with
extensive areas In altered microclimates, maximum edge habitat, and
minimum interior habitat (Swanson and Franklin 1992) . This dispersing
pattern was a stark contrast to the practices on private lands where
progressive clear-cutting of large areas was employed.
Among harvest
methods, clearcutting
in which all overstory
trees are removed in a
single operation has
attracted the greatest
attention. Reforestation
of clear cuts is obtained by artificial planting, natural seeding from
adjacent stances or frown trees cut during logging. Seed tree harvests
involve removal of most of the overstory trees in a single operation,
leaving behind singly or in groups a small number of seed producing
togging is the most visible and
probably the sing/e forest-
management action having the
greatest impact on forests and
their eco/ogica/ processes.
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777
trees. In shelterwood cuts, the mature stand is removed in a series of
cuttings that extend over a relatively short period of the rotation. An
even-aged cohort of juvenile trees is thus encouraged in the shelter of
uncut trees over the harvest period. A] of these harvest methods are
associated with even-aged forest management (Smith 1986~.
Uneven-aged forest management is used to maintain stands of trees
with a full range of age classes up to the rotation age. it is generally
used when the most commercially important species are relatively
shade-tolerant and can grow under the shade of older trees. Trees are
harvested as single, scattered individuals or in small groups at relatively
frequent intervals throughout the stand and continuous regeneration of
new trees is encouraged.
Although the decision to harvest particular stands is generally a part
of harvest scheduling for entire public and forest-industry ownerships,
the choice of logging methods and associated regeneration actions (e.g.,
site preparation, planting, and vegetation control) is typically made on
the basis of conditions specific to each site or stand. Even-aged
management is suited to regeneration of relatively shade-intolerant tree
species such as pines and Douglas fir, whereas single tree harvest and
uneven-aged management work best for species such as hemlock and
true firs which can establish and grow in partial shade. Even-aged
systems are most widely associated with single-species stands; uneven-
aged systems are more frequently used for multispecies management
(Smith 1962~.
Even-aged management initiated with clearcutting the forest
overstory is generally used on industry and, at least until recently, on
most federal lands on the Westside. Nonindustrial private forest owners
are more likely to use some form of uneven-aged management or multi-
entry even-aged management where overstories are partially removed
(partial cutting) on the Westside, although clearcutting is still generally
preferred. Partial cubing is occasionally used on all ownerships in other
parts of the region.
Typically, logging on steeper slopes (grade more than 30%) is done
using cable systems to suspend logs and move them from the stumps to
the loading deck. In especially sensitive areas logs may be transported
by helicopter or balloon, although these techniques are comparatively
expensive. On less-steep terrain, logs are moved with rubber-tired or
tracked ground skidding machinery.
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Pacific Northwest Forests
The usual practice following harvesting on federal and state lands,
forestry industry lands, and some nonindustrial private lands is to do
some form of site preparation prior to planting or natural regeneration.
Depending on the character of the forest, type of harvest, tree species
wanted in the subsequent forest, and condition of the site following
logging, site preparation can include broadcast burning of logging slash
and undergrowth, piling logging slash with or without subsequent
burning, scarification of the soil or killing brush with herbicides.
Inasmuch as state forest regulations in all of the Pacific Northwest states
except Montana require that logged areas be substantially regenerated
to commercially desirable trees, site preparation is an economically
integral part of timber harvesting.
Silvicultural practices in the Pacific Northwest have been the subject
of a great deal of scrutiny, and many new techniques and innovations
are becoming evident. Among these are variable retention harvesting
(Kohm and Franklin 1997), biodiversity pathways modeling, and
increased rotation times. As use of new techniques becomes more
frequent, they are being evaluated for their ability to achieve environ-
mental objectives in managed stands and landscapes. Silvicultural
approaches have been evaluated from the standpoint of providing
wildlife habitat, plant species diversity, and aesthetic values (McComb
et al. 1994; Hansen et al. 1995; Boyle et al 1997~.
Franklin et al. (1997) reviewed alternative approaches to timber
harvest that may be more accommodating to concerns about the
conservation of biodiversity or key ecosystem processes. Although
longer rotations certainly provide benefits in this regard, those benefits
can be enhanced considerably if longer rotations are coupled to a
"variable retention harvest system." This system is based on the
strategy of retaining structural elements of the harvest stand woody
debris, snags, seedtrees and shelterwood for at least the next rotation.
Franklin et al. (1997) argue that retention of structural complexity serves
three major purposes, "lifeboating," "structural enrichment," and
"enhancing connectivity." Lifeboating refers to retained structures that
provide refugia for biological elements that might otherwise be lost from
the area. By structural enrichment they refer to the fact that the
retention of structural complexity accelerates the eventual reinvasion of
harvested stands by species lost at harvest (e.g., Carey 1995~. Retention
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A Framework for Sustainable Forest Management
779
of complexity diminishes the extent of fragmentation of habitat created
by harvesting by enhancing among stand connectivity on managed
landscapes.
Implementation of specific prescriptions for harvest retention is
clearly limited by existing knowledge of the importance of particular
structural elements in the diversity of Pacific Northwest forest types.
That said, FrankI~net al. (1997) ar~emuchinformation does exist upon
which to inaugurate such programs and that they should in any case be
coupled to carefully designed monitoring programs and an adaptive
management philosophy.
Investment
Forest-management investments include investments in protection
(from wildfire, insects, diseases, and other depredations), in various
management practices (e.g., planting trees), in infrastructure such as
access roads and recreation facilities, and in developing management
information. The major investment is usually in the trees themselves,
whether they are held for timber production or for other purposes, and
it increases with age and size of the trees. As a result, most forest
management is very capital intensive. Federal forests typically carry
much heavier timber inventories—and thus have greater investments in
timber—than private forests in the region. Timber inventories (on a per
acre basis) on federal lands are often two to three times those for
privately managed lands. This has been identified by some as an
example of "inefficient" management of federal timber (CIawson 1976),
but different management objectives may account for the differences.
Forest-management investments are often thought of as applying
only to growing and using timber, but investments are also required to
provide nonwood products such as wildlife. Such investments include
the opportunity cost of holding timber inventories to protect riparian
and special wildlife habitat, to provide for landscape and other
amenities that are attractive to both active and passive users of the
forest, and to provide for the production of such miscellaneous products
as Pacific yew and mushrooms. And just as there are opportunity costs
in holding valuable timber off the market in order to get these
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Pacific Northwest Forests
nontimber benefits, there are opportunity costs associated with losing
nontimber benefits In order to harvest timber and get its economic
value. Those costs apply to both public and private forest owners.
Examples of forest investment
Postharvest Site Preparation. The objectives of site preparation include
eliminating logging slash and other debris, reducing competition,
modifying animal habitat, preparing a mineral seemed, mitigating
compaction, improving drainage, creating a more favorable microsite for
seedling establishment, and controlling disease. Depending on the
character of the forest, type of harvest, tree species wanted in the
subsequent forest, and condition of the site following logging, site
preparation can include broadcast burning of logging slash and
undergrowth, piling logging stash with or without subsequent burning,
scarification of the soil, killing brush with herbicides, and application of
fertilizers.
Reproduction. The next stand of trees may be naturally seeded from
nearby trees or planted with seedlings, in which case reproduction costs
are quite low. Naturally seeded sites typically have very high stem
densities and often require thinning at various stages in stand
development. As stands develop in stature more of the thinned material
can be sent to market, compensating for thinning costs. in many areas,
particularly on large cuts or where natural seed rain is limiting, stands
are regenerated by artificial planting. In many areas genetically
improved seedling stock derived from parent trees selected to favor
rapid growth or desired wood qualities is favored (Farnum et al. 1983~.
Planting of trees at Tower densities significantly accelerates the
establishment of the stand in the first five years after cutting.
Intermediate SiZviculturaZ Investments. During the growth of a forest
stand, a variety of treatments may be applied aimed at improving the
existing forest stand, regulating its growth, or providing early financial
Such treatments include pre-commercial and commercial
thinning, improvement cuttings, pruning, release operations, and
fertilization. Plantations and naturally-seeded stands typically have
stem densities significantly higher than wid survive to maturity or that
are desirable for optimal tree growth. A proportion of the trees in the
overstory are cut at an early age (typically S-12 years) to thin tree density
returns.
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787
and accelerate growth on the remaining trees. Historically, Dinned
trees have been left on site to decompose, but as stands mature some of
the thinned material may be merchantable. Pruning of the lower tree
branches at a young age is used in some cases to enhance future log
value by providing knot-free wood.
As in agricultural crops, research has shown that augmenting the soil
with fertilizer can significantly increase tree growth (Wild and Breeze
1981~. Most commonly, nitrogen fertilizer in the form of urea pellets is
applied from the air to the site approximately every 5 years. No other
type of fertilizer is widely used. Where insect pests present serious
risks, pesticides may be applied from the air.
At nearly ad stages of stand development protection from wildfire is
practiced, particularly in more arid regions. This may take the form of
investment in personnel and machinery necessary to suppress fires or
maintain protective structures such as fuel breaks and fire lanes.
Increasingly, emphasis is being placed on the management of fuels by
means of prescribed fire or brush removal.
Grave} and dirt roads are the primary delivery system for logs from
forest to mill. The vast forest road network that currently exists in the
region represents a major technical and financial commitment of federal
and state agencies and private landowners.
Positive and negative
incentives to forest investment
Investment decisions are made in response to incentives and disincen-
tives. Incentives might include increases in timber prices or the
availability of tax breaks or cost-sharing by the public. Disincentives,
such as uncertainty about the future, can reduce investments. For
example, early in this century, perceived and real risks associated with
wildfire and forest pathogens and pests were strong disincentives for
forest investment on private lands (CIawson 1979~. Technological
advances such as fire-suppression techniques and pesticides provided
opportunities to reduce such risks and incentives for forestry invest-
ments across a range of ownerships. Ironically, some of these technolo-
gies (e.g., fire suppression) have led to landscape changes that have
increased risk and uncertainty and complicated investment options in
areas such as the Eastside of the Cascades. Positive and negative
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Pacific Northwest Forests
The biological crisis in the Pacific Northwest can be traced directly to
a severe imbalance in land-use types. During the latter half of the 20th
century, intensive forest management spread to cover a majority of the
regional landscape. With the possible exception of the northern Rockies
(~daho and western Montana), which have a high proportion of area in
designated wilderness, the amount of area in reserves was grossly
inadequate to sustain old-growth dependent species. Through
implementation of plans developed by FEMAT, this imbalance is being
redressed in the range of the northern spotted owl. Change is also
occurring on federal lands outside the range of the northern spotted owl,
especially in eastern Oregon and Washington, albeit more slowly.
Throughout the region, but especially outside the range of the northern
spotted owl, the degree to which changes are adequate to sustain
ecological processes and old-growth dependent species remains to be
seen. The interagency scientific analysis of the interior Columbia Basin
recommended a management option for federal lands that emphasizes
"active" management across the landscape rather than an increased
commitment to reserves, arguing that was the best way to ensure
restoration and maintenance of ecosystemhealth (USES 1996~. Managers
appear to be left with virtually complete discretion about what form
active management might take.
The basic challenges for federal lands throughout the region are to (a)
ensure a reasonable probability that the combined area in reserves and
forests managed for ecological values is sufficient to maintain ecological
functioning and biological diversity, and (b) address the scientific
questions necessary to accomplish that successfully. With regard to
reserves, the key questions center on how many, how large, where, and
the degree of management needed to restore and maintain forest health.
With regard to lands managed with an emphasis on ecology rather than
production, the key question is what that means in terms of practices.
These issues, especially the latter, are not restricted to public lands. With
the growing influence of certification of forest products as having come
from forests that have been managed in an environmentally suitable
manner and general public awareness over environmental issues in
forestry, private landowners are increasingly exploring management
strategies that balance ecology and economics, a middle ground in
which both objectives are served to some degree. In the remainder of
this section we briefly discuss current efforts and ongoing issues related
to translating the principles of ecosystem management to the ground.
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Reserves
789
Reserves are areas "managed primarily to maintain (or restore) the
natural processes and conditions present prior to European settlement"
(Aber et al 2000~. Reserves typically exclude activities such as timber
harvest and road building, but may allow management aimed at
restoring or maintaining desired conditions. In some cases, limited
timber harvest may be permitted if deemed necessary to Tower risk of
catastrophic disturbances.
The science of reserve selection and placement has been recently
reviewed by Noss and Cooperrider (1994) and Schwartz et al. (2000~.
Recent models developed specifically for spotted owls include Andersen
and Mahato (1995) and Hof and Raphael (1997~. It is beyond the scope
of this report to deal with this topic in detail, however some specific
issues are important to address, particularly the current debate about
whether reserves are a wise strategy for maintaining diversity in the
long run. The literature on the topic points out that the majority of
scientists with expertise in this issue believe adequate and weB-
distributed reserves are essential components of any conservation
strategy (e.g. Noss ~ 983, Harris 1984, FEMAT 1993, Aber et al 2000~.
A contrarian view has been expressed by some forest managers and
academic foresters, who argue the best way to protect habitat in the long
run is active management, including timber harvest. This view was
expressed in greatest detail in the Report on Forest Health in the United
States, written by a panel chartered by Congressman Charles Taylor
(Oliver et al. 1997), and the approach was recommended by the Interior
Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (USFS 1996~. Propo-
nents of active timber harvest on all or most of the landscape argue their
approach reflects current ecological thinking, which recognizes nature
as inherently dynamic, from which it follows that attempts to freeze any
particular set of conditions are futile and misguided. Only through
active timber harvest can stands be maintained in a healthy condition
that continues to supply habitat (Oliver et al. 1997~. This view recently
was critiqued by a pane] of the Ecological Society of America (ESA),
which disagreed strongly with the conclusions of Oliver and colleagues
(Aber et al. 2000~. This committee concurs with the ESA panel, which
based its conclusions on three factors:
· Although current ecological thinking indeed recognizes nature as
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Pacific Northwest Forests
dynamic rather than static, what this implies for conservation is not that
reserves are a bad strategy, but that reserve design must account for
dynamism in nature, largely by (a) ensuring enough area in reserves to
subsume natural disturbance and recovery processes (e.g. FEMAT 1993),
and (b) designing reserves so as to reduce risk of catastrophic distur-
bance spreading from beyond their boundaries, which generally, though
not necessarily always, means relatively large reserves well buffered at
their boundaries (Noss 1983; Andersen and Mahato 1995; Schwartz et al.
2000~.
· There is little evidence that managed stands are healthier than
unmanaged stands. In fact, quite the contrary, experience both within
and without the Pacific Northwest shows stands managed for timber
are more susceptible to crown fires, pathogens, and insects than the
natural forests they replaced (Huff et al. 1995; Schowalter et al. 1 997;
Perry 1998; Aber et al. 2000~.
· Even in the eventuality that forests could be logged so as to
maintain habitat for the entire suite of old-growth dependent species,
reserves still play a vital aesthetic and spiritual role for humans.
A well-designed and properly managed reserve system, in which
appropriate levels of management may play a legitimate role is an
important feature of forest management.
togging to improve Forest Health
A number of forests in the Pacific Northwest that developed after
clearcutting (moist forest types) or high-grade logging coupled with fire
exclusion (dry forest types) are severely overstocked, a situation that
was apparently uncommon before the arrival EuroAmericans (Mutch et
al. 1993; Tappeiner et al. 1997~. Overstocking increases fire hazard in
moist forest types west of the Cascades crest, and creates a variety of
problems in dry forest types of the Klamath province and throughout
the interior, including increased susceptibility to crown fires, insects,
and pathogens (Perry 198Sb; Mutch et se. 1993~. Where overstocking
threatens forest health, some careful logging may be appropriate even
within reserves. FEMAT (1993), for example, proposed thinning in
overstocked young stands within reserves to reduce fire hazard.
Thinning understor,v trees within old-growth ponderosa pine forests has
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791
been proposed to reduce the risk of crown fire and insect infestation
(e.g., Mutch et al. 1993), although many biologists and environmentalists
are skeptical that benefits outweigh the environmental risks associated
with logging.
Togging to improve forest health is a complex issue that etudes simple
generalizations. Thinning overly dense stands undoubtedly improves
individual tree vigor, which In turn improves tree resistance to bark
beetles, especially among the pines. Thinning may or may not reduce
fire hazard, depending on which trees are dinned and how logging
slash is treated. Thinning that lowers average stand diameter may well
increase susceptibility to crown fires (Perry 1995a), and opening the
stand too much could dry fuels and increase flammability. Experience
from northern California shows partially logged stands in which
logging slash is left untreated are more susceptible to crown fires than
uniogged stands (Weatherspoon and Skinner 1995~. On the other hand,
underthinning removes fire ladders that propagate flames into the
crown of overstory trees, and hence reduces the chance of a ground fire
becoming a crown fire. To successfully achieve the objective of reducing
fire hazard, ah these factors must be taken into account and protocols
developed for deciding which stands should be thinned and how much.
Potential negative affects of logging should also be considered. Given
the well-documented environmental problems associated with roads
(Trombulak and Frissell 2000), logging to improve forest health would
not seem justified if it required building roads into roadless areas. Issues
of habitat must be considered. Some animals, notably goshawks and
ungulates, require closed canopy forests in at least a part of their range
and could be negatively impacted by widespread heavy thinning.
In sum, judicious logging may be a good too! to improve the health
of some forests, but each situation should be evaluated on its own merit,
and operations planned carefully to ensure the cure is not worse than
the disease.
Management for Complexity and Diversity
Much of human management is focused on ecosystem "simplification"
or techniques to focus productivity into those elements of particular
human interest. However, much research in ecology and forest
management has shown that biological diversity and structural
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complexity of ecosystems are critical to such ecosystem processes as
primary production and nutrient cycling. Complexity and diversity also
impart resistance to and resilience from disturbance and provide the
genetic resources necessary to adapt to long-term change.
Three management strategies are key to the conservation of biological
diversity. First, management practices for any one species must
recognize that suitable habitat encompasses ah of the other species and
system processes upon which that species depends. Second, area of
habitat required to sustain viable species populations must be suffi-
ciently large to buffer inevitable variations in population size through
time. Third, as discussed above, a landscape and regional approach to
the distribution of reserves and connections among them is critical.
Variability and Change
Forest ecosystems are constantly changing. Natural disturbances such
as fire, windstorms, insect and pathogen epidemics, and floods are
ubiquitous and, in many cases, critical to the maintenance of key
ecosystem processes. Management determined to "freeze" ecosystems
in a particular state is futile and unsustainable.
Nowhere is the importance of var~ab~ty and change better demon-
stratecl than with natural disturbances and the processes of ecological
succession that derive from them. As discussed in Chapter 4, that issue
is critical in the dry forest types of the Eastside (Mutch et al. 1993;
USFS/BEM 1994; Hessburg et al. 1993; Sampson and Adams 1994~. Fire
hazard is high, outbreaks of defoliating insects and, in some places, bark
beetles have been more severe than at any time within the recorded past
(e.g. Anderson et al. 1987; Wickman et al. 1992; USFS/BLM 1994), and
the stage is set for severe pathogen problems (Hessburg et al. 1994~.
There is consensus that the current poor state of those forests can be
traced in part to decades of fire exclusion, high grade logging of
ponderosa pine and western larch, and overgrazing (Anderson et se.
1987; Mutch et al. 1993; Covington et al. 1994; see Chapter 4~.
Fire exclusion in many Eastside areas has resulted in large-scale
conversion from a landscape dominated by old-growth, largely
ponderosa pine, to forests that are younger, much denser, and domi-
nated by tree species susceptible to western spruce budworm,
~ . . ... ~ .
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Douglas-fir tussock moth, and several root rots. Reduced habitat (e.g.,
large dead wood and old-growth forests) for the natural enemies of
defoliating insects may have exacerbated outbreaks (Torgersen et al.
1990; BuD and Holthausen 1993~. The combination of densely stocked
young trees and (in many stands) large amounts of dead fuels resulting
from insect outbreaks has significantly increased the probability that
what in the past would have been a gentle ground fire will now become
a severe crown fire.
The following steps will be critical to dealing with this situation:
thinning to reduce tree density; reintroduction of frequent ground fires;
restricting any harvest in remnant old-growth stands to Winning
understory trees; protection of any mature or old-growth ponderosa
pine trees; maintenance of coarse woody debris as habitat for natural
enemies; and longer rotations to restore the landscape to a high
proportion of large, fire-resistant early successional tree species
(primarily ponderosa pine) (Perry 1988a, Mutch et al.1993, Hessburg et
al. 1993, Torgersen 1993, Arno et al 1993, Bull and Partridge 1986,
Covington and Moore 1994, Henjum et al.1994, O'haughlin 1994, Oliver
et al.1994, USFS/BT~M 1994~. However, the areas affected are quite
large, and the remedial prescriptions are in some cases very expensive.
Human development and building on fire-prone landscapes has
increased the financial liability and risk to human life associated with
catastrophic events that might occur as a consequence of extensive fuel
accumulations. At the same time, such development severely constrains
the variety of management interventions that may be used to remedy
the situation. Prescribed fire in heavy fuel areas close to homes or other
structures is itself risky and expensive and must be applied on a limited
scale Furthermore, the use of prescribed fire is limited in some places
owing to the effects of smoke on air quality near already polluted urban
centers.
Uncertainty and Surprise
Three kinds of uncertainty are inherent in the management of forest
ecosystems (Hilborn and Mange} 1997, Christensen et al. 1996~. First,
uncertainty derives from unknowable responses that result from the
complex and ever changing character of ecosystems. Examples of such
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Pacific Northwest Forests
uncertainty include ecosystem responses to climate change, rare events
such as volcanic eruptions, or the cumulative effects of multiple
environmental changes (e.g., the multiplicity of factors influencing
populations of migratory fishes in forested landscapes). The fact that
our forest ecosystems are being stressed in ways that may be unique
with respect to their evolutionary history increases this kind of
uncertainty. Uncertainties of this kind are difficult to eliminate or
reduce, but Weir magnitude and relative importance can be estimated.
Second, uncertainty arises because of limitations in our knowledge
base or models of ecological and social systems. Uncertainties of this
sort are being reduced by increased research, although extension of such
information across scales of time and space represents a significant
challenge (Levin 1992~.
Poor data quality, sampling bias and analytical errors generate the
Bird category of uncertainty. Managers and decision makers must
work with scientists and data managers to determine an acceptable level
of decision error.
Public understanding and education on this matter is critical. Just as
managers cannot claim perfect knowledge, the public should not expect
it. Public understanding of the nature of uncertainty in our science and
management, as well as the potential risks from surprises is a necessary
prerequisite to informed involvement in decisions affecting the
management of natural resources. Institutional barriers to learning can
limit our capacity to reduce uncertainty (I ee 1993~. For example,
management agencies often lack systematic plans for learning, which
should include prioritized listings of identified uncertainties, methods
for reducing important and tractable uncertainties, procedures for
evaluating existing actions, and mechanisms for retaining new krlowI-
edge in the memory of the institution (Hilborn and Mangel 1997,
Christensen et al. 1996~. Dealing with these barriers is critical to the
accountability and adaptability of management.
Humans as Ecosystem Components
Humans present some of the most significant challenges to
sustainability, but they are also integral ecosystem components and
must be considered as such in any effort to achieve sustainable-
management goals. Given the growth in human populations, sustain-
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able provision of ecosystem goods and services becomes an even more
compelling goal. Humans as ecosystem components should be
consiclered in at least three ways: I) their use of all resources in the
ecosystem, 2) their use of the land, and 3) their effects as a result of
nonindustrial private forests owners' decisions and goals.
The principles outlined earlier in this chapter must form the founda-
tion for forest management if the goals and challenges posed in this
chapter are to be met over the long term.
Making Management Adaptable
Forest-management practices have long been adapted in response to
changes ~ markets, social values, uncertainty and risk, and available
information about the effects of management practices. Perhaps because
change in these conditions in the Pacific Northwest is occurring at a
more rapid pace than previously, or perhaps because the concepts of
spatial and temporal scale of management are expanding, the term
"adaptive management" is now being used in the region to describe a
management scheme that pays particular attention to uncertainty and
the general paucity of information about the effects of management on
the sustainability of forests.
Of necessity, natural resource managers set goals and implement
practices with an incomplete knowledge base. Given the complexity
and variability inherent in the natural world, this will always be the
case. Thus, many treatments of ecosystem management have empha-
sized that management should be viewed as experimental and that good
management should include the means to learn from our experiments
and adjust goals and practices accordingly. This concept of "manage-
ment as experiment" is the basis for adaptive management. Waiters
(1986) proposed the following elements for adaptive management:
· Management practices should be framed by clearly stated objec-
tives and bounded by an honest appraisal of the practical constraints on
action.
· Existing understanding of managed systems should tee represented
in terms of explicit models of dynamic behavior that spell out assump-
tions and predictions clearly enough so that errors can be detected and
used as a basis for further learning.
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Pacific Northwest Forests
· Uncertainty and its propagation through time in relation to
management actions should be understood using statistical measures
and imaginative identification of alternative hypotheses (models) that
are consistent with experience but might point toward opportunities for
improved management success.
· Policies should be balanced to provide for continuing resource
production while simultaneously probing for better understanding and
untested opportunity.
Thus, adaptive management explicitly provides a basis for {earning
as forest management proceeds to meet human-defined goals. it is
based on a learning process that distinguishes among what is known,
what is suspected, and what is not known. Adaptive management can
be viewed as a series of actions that are tentative, that are watched
closely, and that are changed as their results become apparent. It should
be viewed as complementing, rather than replacing, reliance on formal
research results.
Monitoring the results of forest-management actions is needed to
identify successful practices and to recognize when changes are
necessary. Given the limitations in understanding of the behavior of, for
example, managed forest ecosystems, managing without monitoring
elements critical to meeting management goals is akin to trying to
navigate without a compass (Lee 1993~. This is as true for monitoring
social and economic factors as it is for monitoring ecosystem attributes.
The scale and intensity of monitoring programs must be consistent
with the scales of the processes that are to be monitored (Kevin 1992~.
The Forest Service monitors some attributes of forest conditions at fairly
gross geographic and temporal scales in the Forest Inventory and
Analysis program (FlA) of its research branch. Although that level of
monitoring provides some useful information on changes in forest
conditions over periods of decades and at a multicounty spatial scale, it
has not been designed to monitor changes in forest conditions at the
level of a forest stand or in response to particular management actions.
The scale at which attributes of a managed forest should be monitored
needs to be addressed (Levin 1992~. Sampling design, technical aspects
(e.g., logistics, costs, and equipment), and institutional and policy issues
involving responsibility and coordination all need to be considered In
monitoring to support effective adaptive management. Because forest
ecosystems can buffer environmental changes that can be deleterious
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over time, monitoring to detect early changes present a special chal-
lenge. For example, trees and forests can look healthy even after
irreversible damage from insects or pathogens. A clear understanding
of the processes that underlie forest vitality is critical to the detection of
early and often subtle indicators. That is one aspect of monitoring for
adaptive management that needs further attention.
Resolving Conflicts
Processes for resolving conflicts in the management of Pacific Northwest
forests clearly have not worked wed. Conflicts are caused by differences
in value systems (e.g., the marketplace versus the political system),
requirements of the present versus those of future generations, spatial
issues (e.g., issues that cut across ownerships or political boundaries),
and the time required for societal institutions (e.g., the legal structure,
markets, and agencies) to respond and change.
Yaffee (1994) suggests the need for four improvements in institutions
to avoid or manage problems of the type exemplified in the disputes
over the northern spotted owl: (~) new mechanisms to bridge the
agency-nonagency boundary to build understanding and political
concurrence; (2) altered approaches to organizational management,
including updated notions of leadership; (3) improved means of
gathering and analyzing information about resource problems,
organizational possibilities, and political and social context; and (4)
ways to promote a culture of creativity and risk-taking to generate more
effective options for the future (Yaffee 1994~. It is evident from this
listing that no single approach or new policy institution will solve the
problems faced in managing the forests of the Pacific Northwest.
In the spirit of adaptive management, various efforts in the region are
being made to find ways to resolve some of the conflicts over forest
management. Some of these are led by stakeholders such as the states,
large landowners, or local groups of citizens. For example, under a
process fostered by the Washington Forest Practices Board and enforced
by the Washington Department of Natural Resources, landowners are
cooperating in a program of watershed analyses to resolve issues
involving timber, fish, and wildlife at the individual watershed level.
Cooperative projects, some of which have been identified for "adaptive
management units" under the Northwest Forest Plan, have been
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Pacific Northwest Forests
initiated by groups of citizens and governmental agencies in several
parts of the region. Many articles and reports discuss such cooperative
projects, including Wondolleck (1988) and Endicott (1993~.
The FEMAT process for federal lands is another approach, one that
has been driven by the need to accommodate forest management of
federal lands to the requirements of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Various "habitat conservation plans" (HCPs) have also been developed
by owners of private forests in response to the requirement of the ESA
that habitat for endangered species cannot be reduced if it will endanger
protected wildlife. The specific objective of most of these HCPs is to
avoid the "incidental take" provisions of the ESA regulations and
thereby to reduce some of the uncertainty in dealing with these
regulations. Other approaches include one proposed by Gordon (1994)
that an effort be launched to extract a national public vision to underpin
and guide forest policy and management.
No single approach is best or, by itself, sufficient. The obvious need
is to keep experimenting with ways to resolve conflicts in forest
management, especially at the locale level, in full recognition of the
existing limitations of the overall institutional structure for doing so.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
sustainable forest
