PRESERVING "FOREST HEALTH" CAN KILL THE PATIENT
by ARTHUR D. PARTRIDGE
(Arthur D. Partridge, lives near Moscow, Idaho, is a former logger,
Forest Service employee, and professor at the University of Idaho, where he
specialized in the disease and insect problems of forests for 37 years.
He can be reached via email through author@environet.org)
The Clinton administration's recent proposal to protect roadless areas
in our national forests is already under attack in Congress. One
often-repeated objection is that roads are needed for logging, logging
is necessary for a healthy forest, and our forests are suffering a health
crisis. As prescriptions go, this one verges on quackery.
The term "forest health" is so poorly understood and defined nowadays
that it's virtually useless. When first coined, in 1932, it referred
solely
to insects and tree diseases. Now people use it to encompass fire, storms,
or virtually anything. But all of the data, both from the Forest Service
and studies by many forestry researchers including me, indicate there's been
no change in the real condition of our forests, other than through excess
and ill-advised logging.
In terms of disease and insects there has been no difference in true
forest health for at least 50 years. In fact, a report from the U.S.
Forest
Service indicated that between 1952 and 1992 the amount of damage from
disease, insects and all other major causes--including fire--was less
than 1 percent of the standing commercial timber throughout the U.S. And
the
numbers stayed at those levels the entire time, with no ups and downs.
The same thing is true of both public and private lands. Naturally there
were some localized fluctuations in certain diseases and certain insects, but
overall there were no major changes.
Unfortunately, this basic reality often gets distorted in order to
accomplish some kind of cutting plan. In the Pacific Northwest, for
instance, we hear that in many regions the Douglas fir is threatened by
bark beetles. But when we go to those areas and investigate, we find that
a
significant problem just doesn't exist. There are some beetles, all
right, but the overall beetle population is in decline and the amount of damage
is extremely low. Of course if you only look for trees with beetles,
you'll find them. But in the whole forest the mortality rates hover around
the
historical rates of 1 to 2 percent. And this is true of root diseases
and other pests, of different species of trees, and in different areas of
the country.
Claiming harm to forest health is merely an excuse to log, but logging
in the roadless areas is plain foolishness. The reason they weren't logged
long ago is that early loggers knew there was little worthwhile timber
in these areas. Moreover, Forest Service land provides only 5 percent of
the national timber harvest in the U.S. to begin with, and the amount
available from roadless areas in national forests is a tiny fraction of that.
Through heavy-handed logging, however, we've already fragmented our
forests so badly that we've caused immeasurable damage to fish and wildlife.
Widespread clearcutting has also brought changes in the water cycles,
creating rapid runoff and melting during the spring, leaving little
available water during the summer, when it's needed most. Even the
local weather has been affected: If you change the structure of the forest,
you change wind patterns and rainfall as well.
In spite of this, I'm more optimistic than I was 15 years ago. Back
then nobody would listen to such concerns. All they could think about was
the product and not the results of producing that product. Now even the
industry is more sensitive to what they're doing, and they're changing
some logging practices.
We need to continue to improve the way we maintain our forests. If we
cut timber we have to do it more gently than in the past. And we have to
stop using wrong-headed excuses like "forest health" to log in the few
and
fragmented remaining roadless areas that America still treasures. If we
destroy such areas through needless incursion we will leave our
descendents far poorer than justified by the small immediate profits, and they
will
wonder what sort of physicians made such poor judgments about health.
# # #
John A. Keslick, Jr., Tree Biologist, Tree Biological Laboratory,
Allegheny Defense Project, Keslick and Son Modern Arboriculture,
West Chester, PA.
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