A new study by Oregon State University researchers, which was reported last week, suggests that forests recover on their own following fires better than those that are salvaged-logged and replanted.
The study took place in areas where the Biscuit Fire razed some half a million acres in 2002 in the southwestern corner of the state. It was reported on the Science Express Web site and was published in the Jan. 6 issue of Science magazine.
In a nutshell, the researchers found that burned areas, even on steep slopes, tended to regenerate more quickly when left alone, as compared to areas where burned trees had been logged and new seedlings planted. In short, the study’s findings raise the question of whether burned areas do better with or without human “help.”
The study, both its authors and logging representatives emphasize, was only based on a year’s worth of data from a relatively small area. Already, experts are debating what it means, and whether further research supports these initial findings remains to be seen. The authors took pains, in news reports, to avoid saying whether salvage is good or bad.
What this will dredge up is old arguments over whether logging should be allowed in areas where fires have left usable timber.
The view held by many environmentalists, of course, is that our forests should simply be let alone, to develop naturally, and that logging in wilderness areas should be prohibited, as it largely is today. They say the only reason to salvage burned timber is economic and that this study supports that.
The other common view is that forests should be harvested and replanted — managed — to produce timber needed by the United States for its domestic market and, possibly, some foreign markets. They believe that careful management can cause a forest to regenerate faster than it could in the natural course of things.
If the United States were the vast, unpopulated expanse it once was, the environmental view might hold more weight. Certainly, we appreciate greatly the purple mountains’ majesty and the miles of green forests cloaking the foothills. That’s one of the reasons many of us, or our forebears, came to Oregon.
But the fact is, we are here. People now live in and around these forests. People need lumber and fire is a danger to human populations. That’s why we fight fires in the wilderness that, in the days before the current populations arrived, probably burned frequently and with less intensity than they do now.
The Biscuit Fire was a giant reminder of how harsh the wilderness can be. When fires are not allowed to burn naturally and the forest is allowed to continue to grow without the consequential natural thinning, as it has down in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, disasters like the Biscuit Fire will occur.
This type of disaster is what occurred a few years ago in Southern California — not an area known for its timber.
Years of drought and the resulting ravaging effects of bark beetles left the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains covered with dead conifers, a ready target for lighting or arson. And when those causes did trigger blazes there, disaster resulted – and continues to result in the form of mudslides and other damage.
It’s inevitable that the presence of humans will impact our forests. We need wood and we can’t have massive fires burning through the areas in which we live. The forest will be different with us than it was without us.
This OSU study is important because it will help everyone understand how to more effectively manage the forests. We may find that it works better if loggers simply clean up the slash after they’ve salvaged an area, and let the new growth develop on its own.
But when half a million acres of timber burn, that timber should be salvaged as much as possible.
The “environmentalist” stance on preserving vast forests in their natural state is an understandable result of abuses of the past, when logging companies had little understanding of the need to restore and preserve the health of those forests. Concerned people looked at that mess, the waste in the name of profit, and reacted.
But the current state of things is overkill, furthered by judges who’ve laid down the rulings that now prohibit much of the cutting of trees in many of our forestlands within the state of Oregon.
Instead of instituting reasonable rules that would allow the harvest of sustainable quantities of timber on government lands and would require effective steps to regenerate logged areas, they’ve locked loggers out of vast timberlands and ruined local economies, such as Sweet Home’s.
If the results of this study lead to more overreactions in the name of Nature, we’re all the losers.