We are opposed to the commercial harvest of ancient trees. We are privileged in the Umpqua to be in the company of 200 to l000 year old giants, but there are not many left, as we have already harvested over 90% of them. The giant trees support an entire ecosystem harboring an uncountable number of species of wildlife - insects, flora, fauna, shrubs, slugs, mushrooms, and on and on. This is an interdependent system, and when we take the trees, we take out the engines that drive that ecosystem. The spotted owl is only an indicator species of the old-growth ecosystem - it tells us how healthy all the rest of the old-growth dependent species are.
Why don't we want to lose this ecosystem? We don't know all the answers, because we don't know all the components. But we know enough to realize its value to humans. Take for instance the Pacific Yew tree, a small tree that loves to live under the crowns of the giants. Science found out only a few years ago that the bark of the Yew tree can help cure certain types of cancer. What other untold riches live in the forests of the Umpqua river basin?
Besides benefits to humans, we must also consider the benefits to other non-human species. Should we not allow parts of the earth to live for its own sake, not just for our sake. Shouldn't we share with the other species in the web of life upon which we all depend?.
The industry slogan is: Oregon will never grow out of trees. But how many trees we have is not the point. Our concern should be - we must never grow out of our ancient forest ecosystems. Once an old-growth forest is harvested, it will continue to be cut every 80 years on a rotational basis. Once we put an old-growth forest into the timber base, the ecosystem with it's web of life is gone forever. Old Growth is a non-renewable resource.
How many ancient trees should we save, for ourselves, and for the web life they support? We should save at least the bare minimum for the species that need old-growth to survive. We should save at least the last remaining 10%.
Perhaps now is the time for Douglas County to learn to live only off of our second growth, younger forests. 50 years of intensive logging have produced plenty of those, and we will have to live off them anyway sooner or later. Let's make it sooner so we have some old-growth left to pass on to the generations to come. The profits may not be as great for the timber bosses, but jobs for the workers could be plentiful.
Why We Want It and What It Is
Umpqua's forests have changed dramatically over the last two centuries, with significant amounts of the forest landscape now fragmented and simplified. These changes have created problems in wood supply for the forest industry, but the effects do not end there. The Umpqua is also facing the possibility of a profound loss of biological diversity - diversity that is the underpinning of our economy and quality of life.
A forest is more than trees. It is a complex association of herbaceous and woody plants, mammals, birds, insects, bacteria, fungi, soil micro-organisms, and many other living organisms. None of these life forms exists in isolation; they are part of an intricate web where each element supports and is nurtured by other elements.
For example, many fungi are critically important for trees, extending filaments from tree roots through the forest soil and assisting in the uptake of nutrients. The presence of many fungi can be identified by mushrooms, their above-ground fruiting bodies. Probably under 5% of the world's fungi has yet been identified and this fungal diversity is thought to be concentrated in temperate forests like those in Oregon. Careless forest management practices can damage or destroy these little-understood living soil elements.
These relationships are at risk as Umpqua experiences a rate of change toward younger, more divided and less varied forests.
Habitats at risk
Relatively old, undisturbed forests offer critical habitat for plants and animals that young forests are unable to provide. They will often have a range of canopy layers that provide varying microclimates of temperature, air movement and moisture. Trees in different stages of decay (dying trees, standing snags and rotting logs) are rich sources of nutrients and shelter.
Recent studies in Sweden and Germany indicate that old-growth forests develop extremely complex, mutually beneficial relationships with fungi and lichen. [Karsom, M. Habitats and rare species in virgin forests of northernmeost Sweden. !SSN 0039-646X.] Undisturbed European forests support literally hundreds of different species of fungi, while younger forests contain only 25 to 50 species. [Spencer, L. Europe's fungi going stalks up. Oct. 7, 1995. Toronto Star]. This evidence suggests that the loss of Umpqua's old-growth forests could irreparably harm the critical, but little-understood relationships between trees and soil micro-organisms.
The effects of overcutting commercially valuable tree species can echo throughout the forest ecosystem. Decimation of the Umpqua's old trees represents the loss of the Umpqua Cutthroat Trout and the Coho Salmon, as well as terrestrial species as represented by the Spotted Owl. The decline of mature conifer forests in the Umpqua threatens the preferred habitat of many mammals and birds. Some of these species are critical to the forest ecosystem; their loss would have a cascading impact on other inhabitants and processes essential for a healthy forest.
Islands of diversity in oceans of disturbance
Forest fragmentation is a growing concern throughout the North West as networks of roads, urban developments, logging operations and other human disturbances carve many natural forests into smaller and more isolated pieces. The resulting islands of wilderness are often too small to maintain healthy gene pools or vigorous populations of plants and animals over the long term.
Disturbed areas as narrow as a roadway or power line corridor can fragment forest ecosystems, interfering with normal forest functioning to such an extent that "a band of about 400 metres on either side of the route is effectively lost". [The Status of Wildlife Habitat in Canada: realities and visions. july 1991. Wildlife Habitat Canada.] They can discourage large mammals and pose a formidable barrier to multitudes of small, slow-moving life forms that live at or below the forest floor.
Logging roads are a particular problem. These road networks are rapidly expanding into remote wilderness areas in order to reach a declining timber supply. Once built, they continue to provide avenues for hunters, anglers and others into previously unreachable wilderness-increasing the strain on formerly well-protected plant and animal communities.
Populations in crisis
The rapid rate of large-scale human change to the forest landscape endangers the survival of some species, while promoting a destabilizing population explosion in others.
In response to the declining availability of certain forest habitats, many plant and animal species are undergoing similarly profound changes in their populations. However, work has barely begun on identifying and monitoring many of the organisms affected.
The continuation, indeed, acceleration, of widespread clearcut logging and the ongoing loss of habitat throughout Umpqua's productive forest landscape points to a crisis of mounting proportions.
Risking Umpqua's biodiversity capital
Science still does not understand the complexities of how forest ecosystems work. We can not "manage" the forest with certainty because we do not know exactly how the pieces fit together. But, despite this lack of understanding, Umpqua's forests are being drastically changed in ways that alter the balance of once-stable systems and threaten the survival of many species whose roles in the forest we do not yet-and may never-comprehend.
As Douglas County residents, our economic well-being depends on the forests for far more than timber. Healthy forest ecosystems purify our air and water. In addition, they provide medicines (Yew for example) and food, jobs for the fishing industry, animals for meat and fur, natural areas both for the tourism and recreation industries and for our own quality of life.
Biodiversity is the fundamental capital that sustains our economy and our quality of life in Douglas County. A key element in restoring and maintaining this diversity is to promote jobs in restoration, and allowing portions of the varied communities of plants and animals to continue their natural functioning free from the major disturbances of logging, mining, fire suppression and hydroelectric development.
Our future depends on safeguarding the diversity of our forests. Biodiversity is the real wealth, of the forest that we-and our children-can not AFFORD to lose.
Thanks to 'The State of Ontario's Forests'
Biodiversity At The Crossroads for most of this article.
Deforestation/Reforestation
Is Not Successful:We are opposed to large clear-cuts as the most common method used in harvesting forests. These types of harvests are the most profitable for the timber industry now, but they are the most costly types of harvest in terms of growing healthy forests for the future.
The timber industry has always claimed that clear-cutting mimics a natural fire, and that they are just taking for themselves what a fire would have taken and wasted. This reasoning is a corporate excuse to minimize expenses and increase profits. A clear-cut in no way resembles a fire. Fire ecology is a vast science, and fire has greatly influenced our forests, so it is difficult to explain in one page. (Perhaps in the future we will have more about fire on this web page.)
Clear-cuts leave straight lines. In contrast, fires leave a mosaic pattern throughout the woods, with green tree patches remaining amongst the dead. Clear-cuts leave openings that are in general much larger than any solid opening left by a fire. Clear-cuts take all the wood out of an area. Fire leaves many standing snags used by wildlife, and many downed trees decomposing and adding humus to the soil. Clearcuts minimize these important 'legacy' components.
Clear-cuts use heavy machinery to create roads and landings, leaving large areas of compacted soil, and taking them out of forest production forever. Clear-cuts must be replanted with trees from off site seed stock. Fires leave areas that are able to regenerate themselves at a spectacular rate, with the local gene pool best adapted to the area.
Clear-cuts let in so much sunlight, that the brush species often overtake the unit. This has led to the common practice of spraying the units (especially on non-federal land) with huge amounts of herbicides, chemical poisons, many of whose ingredients are proven carcinogens and hormone interrupters for humans, not to mention their negative impacts to local fish and wildlife. These herbicides are entering our ground water at ever increasing rates. Seedlings sprouting after a natural fire can nestle themselves in the root collars and shade of standing snags, and be nourished by them as they decay.
Clear-cuts are often burned afterwards to remove slash so it can be replanted. The fires often burn much hotter than a natural ground fire, volitilizing the nutrients in the soil and releasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases which hasten global warming.
Clear-cuts kill fish. It is destroying the Oregon fishing industry. You can read the numerous scientific reports posted on this web that point to clear-cutting being the main cause for the extinction of the Umpqua Cutthroat trout and Coho Salmon. Clear cutting destroys salmon habitat by introducing fine silt into spawning beds, releasing nitrogen into water, and raising pH and water temperatures to a lethal level. Fish hatcheries are not solving the problem. The National Academy of Sciences said: "hatcheries unintentionally have contributed to... ecological changes in the salmon environment and reduction of overall genetic diversity." The National Marine Fisheries Service said that in the use of hatcheries "not enough attention has been paid to the unique biological traits that allow the wild fish to swim to sea and then return to their home stream, sometimes 1,000 miles from the ocean." The study, titled "Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest, "warned that salmon are in such trouble -- now extinct across 40 percent of their historic breeding range in Oregon". Hatchery fish have also been known to introduce disease into the native populations, such as "whirling" disease.
Clear-cuts on public lands might be good for industry profits, but it is bad for our tax dollars, because of replanting, road costs and stream rehabilitation costs. Many units have been planted again and again, only to have the seedlings die from drought, sun scald, and poor soil nutrients. The micro organisms in the soils have sometimes been so disrupted by the harsh treatment of clear-cuts, that they have died, and nothing will grow there but grasses and brush (often nitrogen fixing brush like Alder, nature's way of healing).
Time and time again we have seen the devastation of ancient ecosystems by clear-cuts on all types of forest stands. True forestry would tailor the method of tree harvesting to individual types of forest stands, and in many cases improve forest health. Private land forestry should be more sustainable. Public land resource extraction should be eliminated.
Along side of industry profits, we must exam what sustainable forestry is. Profits for our generation pale in importance if we consider the condition of the natural resources we pass on to the children of Douglas County.
Excerpts from RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #468
November 16, 1995
Environmental Research Foundation,
P.O. Box 5036,
Annapolis, MD 21403,
Fax (410) 263-8944;
Internet: erf@rachel.clark.net
The destruction of virgin forests is occurring on a massive scale around the world. In the U.S., 95% of virgin forests are gone, with only 5% remaining. Forests are home to most of the world's species and most of the world's indigenous peoples. Forests provide important free ecological services --holding water on a grand scale, producing huge quantities of oxygen, and providing major cooling. (When the forests of southern Honduras were cut, the average (median) outdoor temperature rose 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit (7.5 degrees Celsius).[2] In addition, forests serve human needs directly, producing game, medicines, fruits, gums, nuts, resins, fiber, and firewood.
Industrial logging in forests is a major cause of ecological destruction and the loss of biodiversity. For example, in the U.S., some 350,000 miles of logging roads have been cut through forests --more than 7 times the total length of the U.S. interstate highway system. Only 10 percent of the inhabited Earth remains in roadless condition. The other 90 percent is chopped up by roads into segments of less than 8000 acres. This is startling considering we haven't approached the 100-year anniversary of the automobile. Logging is a major cause of this disturbance....
There are two major paths that wood products follow when they leave the forest. One passes through sawmills, plywood mills, veneer, or other wood panel mills, and then into the network of building construction, shipping, manufacturing, and furniture industries. The other path passes through pulp mills into the larger system of paper, paperboard, and fiberboard production. Together, the two paths --generally building materials and paper --account for more than 80 percent of industrial wood use in the U.S. (the other 20 percent includes fuel wood, wood chips, and raw logs for export).
Thus a campaign to reduce wood consumption will focus on getting wood out of buildings, and getting wood out of paper. Getting wood out of buildings requires 2 basic steps:
(1) Reduce wood in building construction, substituting modern materials (NOT steel or concrete, which create problems of their own) and efficient construction techniques. Nearly 90 percent of all housing in the U.S. is constructed of wood and the average new home in the U.S. uses 1600 cubic feet of wood products. Modern materials and construction techniques can reduce the needed wood substantially.[3]
(2) Building codes must be changed to allow construction using recycled wood (from old barns, for example) and earth materials (rocks, sand, silt, clay, and even straw bales [discussed below]). The Uniform Building Code was adopted at a time when wood supply was considered limitless. The code must be changed.
Two very promising -- and time-tested -- building materials are adobe (in dry climates), and rammed earth (in any climate); 15% of the population of France today lives in adobe or rammed earth buildings. A relatively new construction material is baled straw, which can be used in any climate. Initially developed at the University of Arizona (Tucson), straw-bale buildings have now been built in many states and in Canada. Again, a major obstacle is the building code. Straw-bale homes are structurally strong, very energy-efficient, and fire-resistant. Manuel A. Fernandez, the State Architect of New Mexico recently wrote, "ASTM [American Society of Testing Materials, in Philadelphia] tests for fire resistance have proven that a straw bale infill wall assembly is a far greater fire resistive assembly than a wood frame wall assembly using the same finishes." It turns out that straw bales contain enough air to provide excellent thermal insulation, but not enough air to support a fast fire. (I have been in a straw-bale house at Genesis Farm in Blairstown, N.J.; inside, it has the snug feel of a well-made adobe house. From the outside, it has sharp, modern lines and an eye-pleasing tan stucco finish. If you didn't know the walls were baled straw, you wouldn't guess it.--P.M.)[4]
Getting the wood out of paper is, if anything, easier than getting the wood out of building construction. Today, quality paper is made from rice and barley straw in China, from sugar cane waste ("bagasse") in Mexico and India, and from the kenaf plant in Australia. There are 300 mills around the world making paper without wood.
The most promising wood substitutes for making paper are the kenaf plant, and straw --the leftover stalks from cereal grain production. Paper recycling can only carry us so far because the paper fibers break and become shorter when paper is recycled. To give recycled paper good qualities, new fibers need to be mixed in. Those new fibers need not come from wood --leftover stalks from farmer's fields will work nicely, and so will kenaf. Thus the city, as supplier of recycled fiber, can coordinate with rural producers of non-wood fibers, creating jobs and income for both. (The hemp plant will produce high-quality paper as well. Kimberly-Clark, a U.S. Fortune 500 company, operates a paper mill in France producing hemp paper for Bibles and cigarettes. But in the U.S. growing hemp is a serious federal crime--even hemp with its narcotic characteristics bred out. This stymies development of a hemp industry. Walt Disney sells clothing made from hemp, but not from fiber grown in the U.S.)
Marvelously efficient is the use of agricultural residues to make paper; it requires no new land brought into production. A small-scale mill in British Columbia is making paper profitably from agricultural waste today, and 3 more mills are planned. The small scale is an advantage because it keeps capital needs low, making such mills suitable for community-scale economic development.
In sum, reducing wood use by 75% in 10 years seems doable, and it puts the environmental community into a new posture: cooperating across issues, and combining economic development with environmental protection.
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