KILLING IN THE FOREST
Rex Burress
After wide spread fire-destruction in western forests in the summer of 2018, the debate started about thinning the woods to help prevent rampant wildfires.
Those who find aesthetic satisfaction with tree habitats, differ from those who seek to build a business from “hunting them down” and “selling their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones,” as said John Muir, although preservationist Muir admitted that some trees were needed for building houses and such things.
Cutting excess trees and brush borne out of the fear of fire-danger can easily accelerate into the tragedy of clear-cutting valuable wildlife habitat. Whether it's a firestorm, thinning of the forest, drought, over-harvesting flora and fauna, or even fauna flattened on the road, it all bespeaks of killing organisms. It's a marvel that wildlife can survive at all! “Wise-use of natural resources” has been a kingpin for conservation, and remains so. [“Those who know the true meaning of conservation, prune their own fruit trees.”]
One helpful idea was expressed by Jayne Locus of Paradise, who suggested “Wildlife Islands” of natural vegetation staggered in thinned woodlands to give protection for brush birds, reptiles, and the like, by leaving patches of natural growth to complete its cycle of birth to decay that feeds and shelters a multitude of animals. We all like to see and encourage crowned sparrows, mockingbirds, towhees, wrentits, and all the 'little brown jobs' of 'Peter Cottontail's blackberry patch' to have a happy day!
In May, 2018, Governor Jerry Brown signed an order to reduce trees and brush on 500,000 acres of federal land to reduce fuel to help subdue forest fires. ['Not going to happen” as long as climate change dries things out], and again in August 2018, after the big fires, he proposes logging-rule changes to thin forests, and legislation is pending in form of SB 901 that provides $1 billion over 5 years to ease fire danger. Nature has the last word with weather.
We have seen other occasions of forest demolition besides drought-fires. We have seen an 'overuse' attitude during the colonization of America when the entire eastern half was covered with a hardwood forest—a continuous forest that was chopped in half to clear the land for agriculture in less than a hundred years. That unorganized destruction reached to Missouri where I lived as a boy and prowled the landscape, exploring what timbers and woodlots remained between crop fields.
We have seen other examples of forests being ravaged all over planet Earth. Europe took a great hit, as have various other timbered continents in an over-zealous utilization of wood for construction and fuel. No better example exists than in the Oakland, California hills, where a magnificent strip of giant coastal redwoods was cut in the 1860 era, mostly to build Bay Area buildings. When they were finished cutting in a ten year span, only one scrawny sempervirens was left on a canyon side. The grove had thrived in a lush fog-endowed five mile landscape where giants up to 32-feet in diameter had existed for thousands of years. Some of the colossal stumps that remain indicate an age of 2,000 years, and fossil redwoods existed millions of years ago.
Fortunately, trees are persistent through stump sprouts and can grow back in time with sufficient protection and rain, but it takes hundreds of years to recover to their former grandeur. One of the tragedies of fire is the loss of soil with the loss of tree roots and leafy mulch holding it together. Selective cutting is desirable to help retain animal life habitat. Shrubs woven through a woodland provide food and shelter for birds, but 'brush' is often seen as wildfire fuel. God bless the striving shrubs!
“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike. --Paulo Coelho
“Going to the woods is going home.” --John Muir