Almost every forester I’ve ever met, even ones who work for environmental groups, believes that forests “need” to be thinned. Not just some forests; virtually all forests. Take a forester and show him or her a natural forest, or even one that has been thinned but not in the last ten or so years, and they will invariably say, “This forest needs thinning.”
Is this forest “diseased and in poor health”?
At one time, these foresters argued that thinnings boosted the economic value of the trees. The trees that would be left behind would grow faster. Because you can cut more lumber out of a bigger tree, a few bigger trees are more valuable than many small trees.
The problem with this argument is that it is easily disproven, at least in the case of most forests, by simple economic analyses — simple, that is, if you understand discount rates. You spend money thinning today to get a higher return 20 or more years from now. Discounted back to the present at a reasonable discount rate — say, 7 percent, which is the rate of return you can get from investing that money in some other activity — and that higher return isn’t worth much in today’s dollars. On many forests, it isn’t worth the cost of thinning, which means thinning is a bad investment.
On many federal forests, the Forest Service loses money on timber sales, which means the future value of bigger trees would be small to negative. If the future value is small, the present value is even smaller. If the future value is negative, then there is no way thinning can make sense.
Now the Forest Service uses another argument to justify thinnings: to preserve forest health and protect the forests from wildfire. This argument is just as bogus as the economic one (which is to say, it is valid in some forests but not in most), but it has proven persuasive to many people.
Burning the debris left after thinning a forest.
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Case in point: The Oregonian newspaper, which writes, “for the past two decades,” the federal government has “done very little management on the ground, leaving these forests diseased and in poor health. That’s led to a rise in catastrophic wildfires that devastate habitat, property and local communities, while emitting tons of dangerous pollutants into the atmosphere.”
There are so many errors in that statement that it is hard to catalog them all. The most offensive claim is that forests need to be managed or they will be “diseased and in poor health.” Just how did the forests get along without us in the thousands of years before we got here?
The truth is that forest “health” is a political term used by the timber industry for the same reasons environmentalists use the word “sustainability.” These words are practically devoid of any measurable content, yet they are used to bludgeon political opponents who dare to question the subsidies that each side wants for their activities.
Nor is there any factual basis behind the claim that minimal management in the past two decades has “led to a rise in catastrophic wildfires.” Ecological research shows that drought, not diseased forests or excess fuels, is responsible for recent fires. And those fires are no more extensive and no more catastrophic than fires during droughts in the 1930s (which were as bad or worse than today), 1950s, and other periods in history.
It is true that some forests become more susceptible to catastrophic fire if fires are suppressed and the forests are otherwise left alone. Some (but not all) pine forests, for example, are ecologically adapted to frequent, light fires, and suppression of those fires will lead to fuel build ups that can result in catastrophic fires (meaning fires that kill most of the trees in the forest).
Most forests in the deep South fall into this category, but most forests in the West do not. Even many pine forests in the West are not in this category. Even those that are in this category require more than 20 years to produce enough ecological changes to cause catastrophic fires. Yet we see the same examples of such forests trotted out again and again to justify thinnings of all forests. (For more details, see my previous papers here and here.)
The research paper linked above specifically finds that the apparent growth in the number of acres of forests burned in the West is in other categories of forests — forests where “land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks.” The authors conclude that climate, not mismanagement, is what is causing the fires we see today.
The other claim is that thinnings can make it easier to control fires, thus helping to protect homes and other buildings on or near public lands. Unthinned forests can allow fire to climb a “fire ladder” and burn in the crowns of trees. The problem with this argument is that crown fires are not necessarily the cause of houses burning down. Fires around Lake Tahoe last year burned in areas that had been thinned. But when the “controllable” ground fires reached people’s homes, they burned the homes to the ground anyway.
Despite the research, the thinnings argument carries weight because the Forest Service benefits from dollars spent on thinning, members of Congress get praise for “saving the forests,” and some private companies get to make money from doing the thinnings. So the story of public land management is one of a continuous series of “ironwood triangles” of bureaucrats, elected officials, and special interest groups conspiring to manipulate the lands, the press, and taxpayer funds for their own private gains.
Interesting, thanks.
I’m in and out lately and in the coming week, making discussion problematic, but often we are at odds wrt many things Randal. This particular issue is not one of them. Both of us have issues with public lands management – although our assessement and prescriptions may differ, we both want the same ends.
Let me simply point out that IIRC, this Science article reinforces many of my previous arguments (not at home to link to them), esp. wrt FRI. In addition, much recent research points to the changing hydro regime in the West – meaning, there was much growth in the Intermountain West in the early-mid 20th Century.
We can see now, in Colo, in many ecosystems overstory canopy species that are less than a century old are struggling. E.g. on the Front Range, many younger pondo are being thinned climatically because the hydro regime is becoming more variable. Of course, in these same ecosystems, we also find European grasses and forbs from grazing which have changed the nutrient cycling regime; this makes assessment and resultant policy much more problematic. Wildfire effects in our area are also exacerbated by Mountain Pine Beetle, which will eliminate most of the lodgepole in Colo and Wyo in the next decade*.
Couple invasive species, man-made climate change, second homes in the WUI, beetle kill in most western states and the screwed-up finance structure of the FS (getting better, but still) of course we are going to have problems for decades – these problems weren’t created overnight nor will they be addressed overnight.
Lastly, historically most FS timber sales lose money because of roadbuilding. If our plantations were better managed (more species diversity and richness and better age structure), we could have some resilience in our plantations. As it is, we have to build little-used roads on steep hillsides to log.
DS
* Now, if we can just create/find a decent market for blue-stained wood: when this same thing happened in Canada, the United States resisted adding Canada’s beetle-killed trees to the market for protectionist reasons.
I’d say I too, that I, another anti-AntiPlanner, agrees in most part on your article here today Randal.
p.s. damn the pine beetle, last time I went through the interior in canada, there was some awful devastation wrought by the pine beetle. Pristine mountainsides in Banff National park and Kootenay national park spotted by swaths of dead trees. Not to mention some other really bad areas farther northwest.
Many of these same arguments about thinning of forests for health also do the rounds in Australia. Having spent 14 years with an emergency service agency responsbile for bushfire mitigation, management and response I would make a couple of comments about houses burning down because:
1. The house is adjacent/touching a fuel source which can be anything from open grass land to native forest to managed plantation and catches fire due to direct flame conact. This is either due to poor house siting or lack of property management over time.
2. The house is too close (less than 1.5 times canopy height) to a potential high fuel load (say dense eucalypt forest)and in a big fire ignites due to radiant heat.
3. The house is poorly maintained (or designed)and embers ignite in uncleaned gutters, nooks and crannies in the roof or under the house. Embers can tavael kilometres from the fire front.
None of these things are in reduced by thinning. As you point out, in forest & vegeation types that occupy an ecological niche involving frequent fire (most of Australia), regular managed fires in a mosaic leads to better control of wild fires and in the recently burnt areas lower fuel levels. It is also known that fuel build up in unmanaged forests is not infinite. All forests tend to have a maximum build up of ground level and low level fuels, at which level, a dynamic stability is reached (build up is matched by decay or limited by resources). It is quite possible that thinning by opening up new sun into the forest actually creates opportunities for undergrowth that increase an otherwise stable fuel load.
I am also very interested to read your argument that even on economic grounds thinning is a weak argument.
“man-made climate change,”
hey, if we’re listing causes don’t forget to list “mother nature caused climate change”.
if we’re listing causes don’t forget to list “mother nature caused climate change
Sure, but the others I listed – invasive species, man-made climate change, second homes in the WUI, and the screwed-up finance structure of the FS – swamp natural climate fluctuations.
DS
Man-made climate change out weighs natural climate change? really?
A private treee farm owner and loggers have told me that thinning trees so that they are about thirteen feet apart is more profitable than letting all the trees originally planted keep growing. They said that selling the cut trees would be profitable and the value of the remaining trees would be increased.
So what is different that makes it unprofitable to thin federal forests but profitable to thin private tree farms?
So what is different that makes it unprofitable to thin federal forests but profitable to thin private tree farms?
First, generally it is roadbuilding that has the most cost, and logging contractors don’t like to build roads; so generally the contractors give their (gross or net) board-foot fraction to the FS and that fraction often doesn’t cover the roadbuilding cost of the contract.
DS
But importantly, private forests (the small guys, not Plum Creek & Wayerhauser) are generally not clear-cut, as these are the small guys’ livelihoods and they aren’t going to foul their nest for short-term gain. Select cuts have higher initial costs but lower long-term costs as a sustained yield on an acre is maintained, lowering overall costs and increasing flexibility (and increases NPV [as opposed to some formulaic future value]). In Western WA I used to mushroom on a private forest parcel and everyone that used to go with me had to endure the brief intro lecture on how nicely the forest was logged and maintained.
Speaking of sh*tty Wayerhauser practices:
DS