16 ms·

US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

164 points by geox 2y ago

lukasb 2y ago
The rationale that a certain amount of logging to thin forests is beneficial is correct. I don't know the details, or how they'll administer it to avoid excesdive logging, but at least in California we have almost 3x as many trees per acre compared to pre-white settlement: https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire
- Firerouge 2y ago
  Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    "basal area" is the term you need and now i'm curious what is the typical basal area for an old growth stand?
    - capitainenemo 2y ago
      http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a_op.pdf http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a... I found this, where they do note the number of trees has gone up markedly. They note the critical role of low intensity fire. I doubt selective logging can replace regular burns, but unfortunately there's a great deal of opposition to doing that. Mostly by people living in those fire-prone areas.
      - greenie_beans 2y ago
        lots of the public are very ignorant about ecologically sound forest management, unfortunately. "save the trees" is an effective emotional argument. i was once one of those people, but then i learned
        neom 2y ago
        I spent a couple of years consulting to earthforce.io (they make forest management software)- before I started I thought I understood forestry, boy how wrong I was, how little I knew! For those interested in learning the basics, this is a pretty good playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWVKWZZOf9ahavp https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWV...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        where is the Board of Directors, owners and investors of Earthforce.io declared in public?
        zie 2y ago
        Unless it's a public company/non-profit they don't have to make any of this information public in most(all?) US states. Usually all you have to do is make public the name of the company and the registered agent(typically the lawyer you hire to receive legal notices for the company). They appear to be a private company: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technologies https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technolo...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        ah right crumchbase - founder with a "crunchbase rank" in the two hundred thousands range, stanford-stanford-harvard. there is something about stealth combined with valuations.. can't put my finger on it..
  - seadan83 2y ago
    I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I think comes from the timber industry, that growing trees are a bigger carbon sink than existing trees. They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Particularly skeptical because the trees in tree farms are so unhealthy, the total amount of green vegetative surface on them is confined to a small canopy and has no vertical depth. In comparison, old growth vs tree farm is night and day for ecology. Tree farms are very dense, rodents thrive in them but not necessarily much else. Old growth OTOH is generally a pleasure to walk through. > I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest There's indeed a mixture of ages unless we are talking a tree farm. A tree farm is a mono-culture with trees approximately the same age all growing like Q-tips together. Old growth trees are fire resistant. The younger ones trees get overshaded and don't grow, or they burn down before they get tall enough. The young trees that do survive, they go on to become the next generation of old growth trees. (My experience on the subject: extensive time camping & bikepacking in Northwest forests, I've traveled through a several thousand miles of northwest forests in the last 10 years)
    - parineum 2y ago
      > They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think. Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.
      - pineaux 2y ago
        I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as they get older. It actually accelerates. This article corroborates that: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down. In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition. The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment. They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting) within a few decades. Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality old growth wood. This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options without weighing the properly), it is generally based in science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...
  - adolph 2y ago
    The statistical trees per acre reminds me of: If the utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the (commercial) trees, if its view of its forests was abstract and partial, it was hardly unique in this respect. Some level of abstraction is necessary for virtually all forms of analysis, and it is not at all surprising that the abstractions of state officials should have reflected the paramount fiscal interests of their employer. The entry under "forest" in Diderot's Encyclopédie is almost exclusively concerned with the utilité publique of forest products and the taxes, revenues, and profits that they can be made to yield. The forest as a habitat disappears and is replaced by the forest as an economic resource to be managed efficiently and profitably. Here, fiscal and commercial logics coincide; they are both resolutely fixed on the bottom line. “Seeing Like a State” Jaces C. Scott https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > substantially better forest Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?
    - pineaux 2y ago
      Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older. Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange. There is an optimal size/m² of course. Tree farms have ROIs and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and a payday at some point. Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  The thing is that, yes, development in wildland areas has produced scraggly areas that are not good ecologies but are serious fire dangers. But logging isn't the answer in the sense that logging companies have no interest in just taking small trees - they have no economic value. I live in one of these areas, btw (Nevada City). There are lots of stick-like trees, lots of scotch broom, lots of flameable underbrush. Removing that by logging is extremely expensive unless you do something like clear cutting, which uses a titanic lawn-mower thing. Cutting a single tall but thin tree requires a professional. Really, there's no solution for a situation of houses spread through the urban-wildland borders. The logging companies claim the fuel build up is the from logging restrictions but they will always claim that - actually, logging is no longer profitable in California because most large trees are gone, home owners won't let people clear cut and even clear cutting isn't economical given foreign competition and society's decreased use of paper.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Old Growth forests are already thin. The tree density is large because they are all thin and likely to burn.
- goda90 2y ago
  Better than logging would be to pull trees down and leave them in place on the ground: https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Where I live, the state government agency in charge of forest management will prioritize specific trees. Oak wilt, emerald ash borer and other diseases and pests mean that removing some trees is healthier than letting nature take its course. Additionally, they'll open up larger sites to thin out overgrown young growth, though they'll pre-mark what they want taken down in both cases.
- m463 2y ago
  that's quite misleading. In the california bay area, the beautiful 2000 year old redwoods were almost completely exterminated to rebuild after the 1906 san francisco earthquake. The regrowth pattern was usually a group of maybe 7 redwoods sprouting around the stump of a former giant. They compete with each other are not and will not replace the tree that was cut down. It is sad to hike around the hills, see this pattern and wonder what the big one was like. There are still some amazing old-growth giants, say in Henry Cowell state park. Just walk around there for an hour and your viewpoint on old-growth will probably change dramatically. The really big ones in Big Basin State Park burned in the fires, and although they are huge, they are very black and much has been lost.
- whoiscroberts 2y ago
  The planet was covered with forests before humans got involved in forest management. Why is it a bad idea to just leave the forests alone, declare them wilderness, and let the wildlife and ecosystem return to how it was?
  - exabrial 2y ago
    This is a great question and proposal and it's how we got here. It's step 0, but it's not the end-all-be-all; as itself will create problems. You can let the forests grow, but you then _also_ have to let the other natural processes take place: disease and fire. Finally, you have to deal with something nature isn't good at: invasive species. So now we're onto steps 1 and 2: how do we protect these forests that we're rebuilding? We don't really want them to burn the ground (excessive fuel build up), we don't want them to be out competed by invasive species, nor succumb to disease. We have to emulate natural processes then to protect old-growth... which is the core of this proposal. Does that make sense? I too was pretty anti-interference until I attended university in the plains. For fun, I joined an outdoor club and assisted with nature research which studied many things, including fire, and realized that fire is very much a natural process that many species and ecosystems are dependent on.
    - whoiscroberts 2y ago
      Makes sense, but I also get the feeling that most of those points are only concerns because the forests that are left are so small, small enough that it is possible to entirely burn to the ground or be completely over run be invasive species. If there were 100, 1000, 10000 x the forest coverage we have now, would the concerns and land management strategy be the same?
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
The Federal government made a deal with forrest communities. We will have national forests that you won't get any property tax revenues from, but you will get revenue from the forestry, mining, and other economic activity on that land. Then the federal government shutdown most economic activity, and local communities had to shutdown their schools and other government functions (while at the same time losing their lumber mills). Of course no one that mattered cared because it only impacted 'flyover people' and coastal people don't care if they break their commitments (in the form of the federal government that represents them). I'd love to see sometime in my lifetime the feds get held accountable to keep the promises they made in the past that they just stop keeping, while the feds use the full force of the law to ensure THEIR side of the deals are kept up.
- seadan83 2y ago
  Which 'deal' specifically, could you provide a link so we can read more?
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 2y ago
    Anytime a post references the “feds” in such an ambiguous way, it seems like a flag for potential misunderstanding.
    - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
      Why? Because I'm a software person that uses shortcuts and acronyms and instead of typing out 'federal government' used a easily recognized abbreviation?
  - bpodgursky 2y ago
    You could look up the original Bureau of Land Management charter by congress, which does in fact mandate that the BLM's charter[1] is to manage federal lands with the goals of sustained resource yield: > The Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States that goals and objectives be established by law as guidelines for public land use planning, and that management be on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield unless otherwise specified by law.[4] They are managed to balance interests to ensure long-term needs, not cannot simply declare that timber, minerals, etc are off-limits: > The government must consider "a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values." The deal was very explicitly that federal land was to be managed to avoid a tragedy of the commons with regards to resource extraction. Resource extraction was one of the primary goals mandated by congress and no, they cannot simply decide they don't want to. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Land_Policy_and_Management_Act_of_1976 https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Land_Policy_and_Management_A...
486sx33 2y ago
Old growth trees are the best, tightest grain, toughest wood, they’ve stood the test of time. These are most desirable and we should take advantage of them, but for useful purposes , not firewood or chipwood or other crappy “products”. We need a real sustainability plan which reuses that land for trees again, but not garage fast growing genetically similar trees. We need to promote genetic diversity
wavefunction 2y ago
The logging ban also has the effect of preventing road construction and other ancillary development that always seems to follow. I think there is value to the logging ban beyond just the direct effect on trees.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- TheChaplain 2y ago
  Road construction is afaik used to make traffic/transportation more effective, so not doing so seems like a gigantic waste of resources in a growing society.
  - poorman 2y ago
    There are vast amounts of land in this country that only have roads and infrastructure because of logging and mining. Anyone who spends any mount of time outdoors at any longitude west of Denver, is sure to drive down these forest and mining roads when camping. Not to mention, these roads often open up access to lands for new towns and communities. And, as we are approaching the season, these roads are used for emergency services and additionally the maintenance of forests through controlled burns and the prevention of further spreading wildfires.
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      > Not to mention, these roads often open up access to lands for new towns and communities. That would be the "other ancillary development that always seems to follow" that the GP comment says there's value in preventing. There a line of thinking that says that humans are evil and there should be less of them and those that remain should be confined to a more limited area.
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        > humans are evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
doubloon 2y ago
Imagine if there was 'old growth internet' and the federal government forced big tech companies to preserve big chunks of it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  I don't understand your point. Internet and forests are different systems. They both have different uses and different types of management. It doesn't make sense to me to compare. Could you expand more?
  - soultrees 2y ago
    I think the OP is making a point that we should resources as The Internet Archive as services that are in the best interest of the public.
    - ohmyiv 2y ago
      Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, theyre right about that. Thanks!
- paulmd 2y ago
  I mean we do have “old growth standards” that are legally mandated in the tech industry… EU mandates for USB micro-B and usb-C are an example, as are PCI standards and similar security standards around banking endpoint security etc.
poorman 2y ago
People often forget the original purpose of these state forests was to harvest the timber and pay the teacher salaries as part of the Oregon Common School Fund... As the great great grandson of Francis Elliott (Oregon's first state forester), I have been reminded of this by my family many times over the years. I'm unsure of it's purpose today, but I suspect the teachers wouldn't mind the extra pay.
- tallowen 2y ago
  I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago which impacts the hydrology of the basin in a negative way for the purpose collecting drinking water. I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often leads to indecision which is certainly it's own drawback but I think these choices are not without tradeoffs that should be acknowledged.
  - poorman 2y ago
    I'll admit I'm not up to speed on the affect of the aggressive logging of Seattle on the hydrological cycle. From the little time I've spent there, I managed to gleam one small fact, that by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system was dumping up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget sound (per day). I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation and precipitation of that alone would have an impact on the nearby watersheds used for drinking water.
    - Arainach 2y ago
      You'd be mostly wrong. The Sound is salt water and not a source of drinking water. Other bodies of drinkable water flow into the sound, not out of. Pollutants don't evaporate with water. They're left behind. Acid rain was from pollutants in the air mixing with water droplets.
    - loeg 2y ago
floodedburner 2y ago
Needs a map showing National Forests and old growths. I mean old old growths, not the tree that was too cragy to turn into boards. Otherwise I am guessing there are not huge swaths that overlap.
gamepsys 2y ago
> Old-growth forest protections proposed Friday will apply to trees on public lands managed by the Forest Service, but not to the Bureau of Land Management Wow, this just confirmed my lack of knowledge around how national forests are administered. As someone in the PNW, are there any national agencies that govern the use of forests besides National Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  I also found this tidbit following interesting: > Similar to the Forest Service’s proposed amendment, BLM’s rule was met with mixed emotions, with some conservationists saying it lacks teeth and some timber industry representatives saying it’s too restrictive. Not even knowing how all of this works I can immediately tell BLM is walking the line on this well, because they are coming up with compromises that everyone grumbles about.
  - oivey 2y ago
    The strategy for those sorts of groups is to ALWAYS grumble that way no matter what happens it at worst appears like a compromise.
debacle 2y ago
The likely outcome of the looming SCOTUS case regarding quasi legislation might make this meaningless.
Myrmornis 2y ago
It's unclear whether the mention of climate change here is pure editorializing but, if not, then here is another example of where the modern obsession with climate change is negatively impacting conservation of valuable habitats for wildlife. (It shouldn't need pointing out, but conservation of valuable habitat for wildlife is a human obligation and essentially synonymous with looking after the other organisms with which we share Earth, and is partially correlated but not synonymous with countering anthropogenic climate change). Or put another way, if a human is fearful for their safety due to their proximity to old-growth trees, then they should not live there. Same reasoning as for bears or tigers or sharks: the answer isn't "kill them". > Officials told the Associated Press that a sweeping ban on logging old-growth would make it harder to thin forests to protect communities against wildfires that have grown more severe as the planet warms. > “To ensure the longevity of old-growth forests, we’re going to have to take proactive management to protect against wildfire and insects and disease,” Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French said.
exabrial 2y ago
Forest management is full of counter-intuitive reasoning. I'm glad we're finally getting around to the of long term studies to see how different forest management plans have worked and we can quote some science. > Oregon Wild forest program manager Lauren Anderson called the proposal a good first step. Perfection is the enemy of progress. I too applaud the plan. > For some forests, logging small-diameter trees ahead of prescribed burns is necessary, a consensus reached by many tribes and scientists. > “Letting those forests continue to age and get older and more decadent,” Brown said. “That’s what the wildlife need them to do.” #2 doesn't seem possible without #1 in most forests and species it would seem. You can either artificially thin and avoid fires, protecting old-growth, or you can let wildfires regularly take place and keep firewood thin. What we want to avoid is logging damage to old growth, or not taking care of the forests allowing massive fires to destroy everything. How much is likely something we can do with computer simulations, and verify them with experiments. We need to thin the forests to avoid fire, but occasionally allow young trees to make it past the young generation. If any giant company with super computing resources wants to use that "AI" for something that would actually benefit the world, this would be a worthy use of time and energy. On the issue of BLM lands: If we have strategically important, or exceptionally rare forests on BLM land, it's probably time to declare some new national forests and get them under management. I don't really see BLM being equipped to handle forest management. Maybe a temporary 12 year protection of old growth trees in BLM land would be a good compromise, giving time for study and congress time to act.

164 points by geox 2y ago

The rationale that a certain amount of logging to thin forests is beneficial is correct. I don't know the details, or how they'll administer it to avoid excesdive logging, but at least in California we have almost 3x as many trees per acre compared to pre-white settlement: https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire

Firerouge 2y ago
Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  "basal area" is the term you need and now i'm curious what is the typical basal area for an old growth stand?
  - capitainenemo 2y ago
    http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a_op.pdf http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a... I found this, where they do note the number of trees has gone up markedly. They note the critical role of low intensity fire. I doubt selective logging can replace regular burns, but unfortunately there's a great deal of opposition to doing that. Mostly by people living in those fire-prone areas.
    - greenie_beans 2y ago
      lots of the public are very ignorant about ecologically sound forest management, unfortunately. "save the trees" is an effective emotional argument. i was once one of those people, but then i learned
      - neom 2y ago
        I spent a couple of years consulting to earthforce.io (they make forest management software)- before I started I thought I understood forestry, boy how wrong I was, how little I knew! For those interested in learning the basics, this is a pretty good playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWVKWZZOf9ahavp https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWV...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        where is the Board of Directors, owners and investors of Earthforce.io declared in public?
        zie 2y ago
        Unless it's a public company/non-profit they don't have to make any of this information public in most(all?) US states. Usually all you have to do is make public the name of the company and the registered agent(typically the lawyer you hire to receive legal notices for the company). They appear to be a private company: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technologies https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technolo...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        ah right crumchbase - founder with a "crunchbase rank" in the two hundred thousands range, stanford-stanford-harvard. there is something about stealth combined with valuations.. can't put my finger on it..
- seadan83 2y ago
  I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I think comes from the timber industry, that growing trees are a bigger carbon sink than existing trees. They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Particularly skeptical because the trees in tree farms are so unhealthy, the total amount of green vegetative surface on them is confined to a small canopy and has no vertical depth. In comparison, old growth vs tree farm is night and day for ecology. Tree farms are very dense, rodents thrive in them but not necessarily much else. Old growth OTOH is generally a pleasure to walk through. > I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest There's indeed a mixture of ages unless we are talking a tree farm. A tree farm is a mono-culture with trees approximately the same age all growing like Q-tips together. Old growth trees are fire resistant. The younger ones trees get overshaded and don't grow, or they burn down before they get tall enough. The young trees that do survive, they go on to become the next generation of old growth trees. (My experience on the subject: extensive time camping & bikepacking in Northwest forests, I've traveled through a several thousand miles of northwest forests in the last 10 years)
  - parineum 2y ago
    > They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think. Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.
    - pineaux 2y ago
      I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as they get older. It actually accelerates. This article corroborates that: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down. In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition. The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment. They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting) within a few decades. Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality old growth wood. This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options without weighing the properly), it is generally based in science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...
- adolph 2y ago
  The statistical trees per acre reminds me of: If the utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the (commercial) trees, if its view of its forests was abstract and partial, it was hardly unique in this respect. Some level of abstraction is necessary for virtually all forms of analysis, and it is not at all surprising that the abstractions of state officials should have reflected the paramount fiscal interests of their employer. The entry under "forest" in Diderot's Encyclopédie is almost exclusively concerned with the utilité publique of forest products and the taxes, revenues, and profits that they can be made to yield. The forest as a habitat disappears and is replaced by the forest as an economic resource to be managed efficiently and profitably. Here, fiscal and commercial logics coincide; they are both resolutely fixed on the bottom line. “Seeing Like a State” Jaces C. Scott https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
- akira2501 2y ago
  > substantially better forest Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older. Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange. There is an optimal size/m² of course. Tree farms have ROIs and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and a payday at some point. Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.
joe_the_user 2y ago
The thing is that, yes, development in wildland areas has produced scraggly areas that are not good ecologies but are serious fire dangers. But logging isn't the answer in the sense that logging companies have no interest in just taking small trees - they have no economic value. I live in one of these areas, btw (Nevada City). There are lots of stick-like trees, lots of scotch broom, lots of flameable underbrush. Removing that by logging is extremely expensive unless you do something like clear cutting, which uses a titanic lawn-mower thing. Cutting a single tall but thin tree requires a professional. Really, there's no solution for a situation of houses spread through the urban-wildland borders. The logging companies claim the fuel build up is the from logging restrictions but they will always claim that - actually, logging is no longer profitable in California because most large trees are gone, home owners won't let people clear cut and even clear cutting isn't economical given foreign competition and society's decreased use of paper.
sitkack 2y ago
Old Growth forests are already thin. The tree density is large because they are all thin and likely to burn.
goda90 2y ago
Better than logging would be to pull trees down and leave them in place on the ground: https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE
zdragnar 2y ago
Where I live, the state government agency in charge of forest management will prioritize specific trees. Oak wilt, emerald ash borer and other diseases and pests mean that removing some trees is healthier than letting nature take its course. Additionally, they'll open up larger sites to thin out overgrown young growth, though they'll pre-mark what they want taken down in both cases.
m463 2y ago
that's quite misleading. In the california bay area, the beautiful 2000 year old redwoods were almost completely exterminated to rebuild after the 1906 san francisco earthquake. The regrowth pattern was usually a group of maybe 7 redwoods sprouting around the stump of a former giant. They compete with each other are not and will not replace the tree that was cut down. It is sad to hike around the hills, see this pattern and wonder what the big one was like. There are still some amazing old-growth giants, say in Henry Cowell state park. Just walk around there for an hour and your viewpoint on old-growth will probably change dramatically. The really big ones in Big Basin State Park burned in the fires, and although they are huge, they are very black and much has been lost.
whoiscroberts 2y ago
The planet was covered with forests before humans got involved in forest management. Why is it a bad idea to just leave the forests alone, declare them wilderness, and let the wildlife and ecosystem return to how it was?
- exabrial 2y ago
  This is a great question and proposal and it's how we got here. It's step 0, but it's not the end-all-be-all; as itself will create problems. You can let the forests grow, but you then _also_ have to let the other natural processes take place: disease and fire. Finally, you have to deal with something nature isn't good at: invasive species. So now we're onto steps 1 and 2: how do we protect these forests that we're rebuilding? We don't really want them to burn the ground (excessive fuel build up), we don't want them to be out competed by invasive species, nor succumb to disease. We have to emulate natural processes then to protect old-growth... which is the core of this proposal. Does that make sense? I too was pretty anti-interference until I attended university in the plains. For fun, I joined an outdoor club and assisted with nature research which studied many things, including fire, and realized that fire is very much a natural process that many species and ecosystems are dependent on.
  - whoiscroberts 2y ago
    Makes sense, but I also get the feeling that most of those points are only concerns because the forests that are left are so small, small enough that it is possible to entirely burn to the ground or be completely over run be invasive species. If there were 100, 1000, 10000 x the forest coverage we have now, would the concerns and land management strategy be the same?

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

The Federal government made a deal with forrest communities. We will have national forests that you won't get any property tax revenues from, but you will get revenue from the forestry, mining, and other economic activity on that land. Then the federal government shutdown most economic activity, and local communities had to shutdown their schools and other government functions (while at the same time losing their lumber mills). Of course no one that mattered cared because it only impacted 'flyover people' and coastal people don't care if they break their commitments (in the form of the federal government that represents them). I'd love to see sometime in my lifetime the feds get held accountable to keep the promises they made in the past that they just stop keeping, while the feds use the full force of the law to ensure THEIR side of the deals are kept up.

seadan83 2y ago
Which 'deal' specifically, could you provide a link so we can read more?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 2y ago
  Anytime a post references the “feds” in such an ambiguous way, it seems like a flag for potential misunderstanding.
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Why? Because I'm a software person that uses shortcuts and acronyms and instead of typing out 'federal government' used a easily recognized abbreviation?
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  You could look up the original Bureau of Land Management charter by congress, which does in fact mandate that the BLM's charter[1] is to manage federal lands with the goals of sustained resource yield: > The Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States that goals and objectives be established by law as guidelines for public land use planning, and that management be on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield unless otherwise specified by law.[4] They are managed to balance interests to ensure long-term needs, not cannot simply declare that timber, minerals, etc are off-limits: > The government must consider "a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values." The deal was very explicitly that federal land was to be managed to avoid a tragedy of the commons with regards to resource extraction. Resource extraction was one of the primary goals mandated by congress and no, they cannot simply decide they don't want to. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Land_Policy_and_Management_Act_of_1976 https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Land_Policy_and_Management_A...

486sx33 2y ago

Old growth trees are the best, tightest grain, toughest wood, they’ve stood the test of time. These are most desirable and we should take advantage of them, but for useful purposes , not firewood or chipwood or other crappy “products”. We need a real sustainability plan which reuses that land for trees again, but not garage fast growing genetically similar trees. We need to promote genetic diversity

wavefunction 2y ago

The logging ban also has the effect of preventing road construction and other ancillary development that always seems to follow. I think there is value to the logging ban beyond just the direct effect on trees.

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TheChaplain 2y ago
Road construction is afaik used to make traffic/transportation more effective, so not doing so seems like a gigantic waste of resources in a growing society.
- poorman 2y ago
  There are vast amounts of land in this country that only have roads and infrastructure because of logging and mining. Anyone who spends any mount of time outdoors at any longitude west of Denver, is sure to drive down these forest and mining roads when camping. Not to mention, these roads often open up access to lands for new towns and communities. And, as we are approaching the season, these roads are used for emergency services and additionally the maintenance of forests through controlled burns and the prevention of further spreading wildfires.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > Not to mention, these roads often open up access to lands for new towns and communities. That would be the "other ancillary development that always seems to follow" that the GP comment says there's value in preventing. There a line of thinking that says that humans are evil and there should be less of them and those that remain should be confined to a more limited area.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      > humans are evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

doubloon 2y ago

Imagine if there was 'old growth internet' and the federal government forced big tech companies to preserve big chunks of it.

deleted 2y ago
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ohmyiv 2y ago
I don't understand your point. Internet and forests are different systems. They both have different uses and different types of management. It doesn't make sense to me to compare. Could you expand more?
- soultrees 2y ago
  I think the OP is making a point that we should resources as The Internet Archive as services that are in the best interest of the public.
  - ohmyiv 2y ago
    Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, theyre right about that. Thanks!
paulmd 2y ago
I mean we do have “old growth standards” that are legally mandated in the tech industry… EU mandates for USB micro-B and usb-C are an example, as are PCI standards and similar security standards around banking endpoint security etc.

poorman 2y ago

People often forget the original purpose of these state forests was to harvest the timber and pay the teacher salaries as part of the Oregon Common School Fund... As the great great grandson of Francis Elliott (Oregon's first state forester), I have been reminded of this by my family many times over the years. I'm unsure of it's purpose today, but I suspect the teachers wouldn't mind the extra pay.

tallowen 2y ago
I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago which impacts the hydrology of the basin in a negative way for the purpose collecting drinking water. I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often leads to indecision which is certainly it's own drawback but I think these choices are not without tradeoffs that should be acknowledged.
- poorman 2y ago
  I'll admit I'm not up to speed on the affect of the aggressive logging of Seattle on the hydrological cycle. From the little time I've spent there, I managed to gleam one small fact, that by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system was dumping up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget sound (per day). I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation and precipitation of that alone would have an impact on the nearby watersheds used for drinking water.
  - Arainach 2y ago
    You'd be mostly wrong. The Sound is salt water and not a source of drinking water. Other bodies of drinkable water flow into the sound, not out of. Pollutants don't evaporate with water. They're left behind. Acid rain was from pollutants in the air mixing with water droplets.
  - loeg 2y ago

floodedburner 2y ago

Needs a map showing National Forests and old growths. I mean old old growths, not the tree that was too cragy to turn into boards. Otherwise I am guessing there are not huge swaths that overlap.

gamepsys 2y ago

> Old-growth forest protections proposed Friday will apply to trees on public lands managed by the Forest Service, but not to the Bureau of Land Management Wow, this just confirmed my lack of knowledge around how national forests are administered. As someone in the PNW, are there any national agencies that govern the use of forests besides National Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management?

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
I also found this tidbit following interesting: > Similar to the Forest Service’s proposed amendment, BLM’s rule was met with mixed emotions, with some conservationists saying it lacks teeth and some timber industry representatives saying it’s too restrictive. Not even knowing how all of this works I can immediately tell BLM is walking the line on this well, because they are coming up with compromises that everyone grumbles about.
- oivey 2y ago
  The strategy for those sorts of groups is to ALWAYS grumble that way no matter what happens it at worst appears like a compromise.

debacle 2y ago

The likely outcome of the looming SCOTUS case regarding quasi legislation might make this meaningless.

Myrmornis 2y ago

It's unclear whether the mention of climate change here is pure editorializing but, if not, then here is another example of where the modern obsession with climate change is negatively impacting conservation of valuable habitats for wildlife. (It shouldn't need pointing out, but conservation of valuable habitat for wildlife is a human obligation and essentially synonymous with looking after the other organisms with which we share Earth, and is partially correlated but not synonymous with countering anthropogenic climate change). Or put another way, if a human is fearful for their safety due to their proximity to old-growth trees, then they should not live there. Same reasoning as for bears or tigers or sharks: the answer isn't "kill them". > Officials told the Associated Press that a sweeping ban on logging old-growth would make it harder to thin forests to protect communities against wildfires that have grown more severe as the planet warms. > “To ensure the longevity of old-growth forests, we’re going to have to take proactive management to protect against wildfire and insects and disease,” Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French said.

exabrial 2y ago

Forest management is full of counter-intuitive reasoning. I'm glad we're finally getting around to the of long term studies to see how different forest management plans have worked and we can quote some science. > Oregon Wild forest program manager Lauren Anderson called the proposal a good first step. Perfection is the enemy of progress. I too applaud the plan. > For some forests, logging small-diameter trees ahead of prescribed burns is necessary, a consensus reached by many tribes and scientists. > “Letting those forests continue to age and get older and more decadent,” Brown said. “That’s what the wildlife need them to do.” #2 doesn't seem possible without #1 in most forests and species it would seem. You can either artificially thin and avoid fires, protecting old-growth, or you can let wildfires regularly take place and keep firewood thin. What we want to avoid is logging damage to old growth, or not taking care of the forests allowing massive fires to destroy everything. How much is likely something we can do with computer simulations, and verify them with experiments. We need to thin the forests to avoid fire, but occasionally allow young trees to make it past the young generation. If any giant company with super computing resources wants to use that "AI" for something that would actually benefit the world, this would be a worthy use of time and energy. On the issue of BLM lands: If we have strategically important, or exceptionally rare forests on BLM land, it's probably time to declare some new national forests and get them under management. I don't really see BLM being equipped to handle forest management. Maybe a temporary 12 year protection of old growth trees in BLM land would be a good compromise, giving time for study and congress time to act.