Restoration Forestry
Restoration forestry is the concept of restoring modern forests to health using history as a guide. Restoration forestry provides a blueprint to return our public forests, especially national forests, to a more natural, healthy, and fire resistant condition.
The following content explains restoration forestry and the vision of Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D., one of the nation's foremost forestry experts and originator of the concept of "restoration forestry."
Dr. Bonnicksen is author of America's Ancient Forests: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), Professor Emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University, and a Visiting Scholar with The Forest Foundation.
NEED FOR RESTORATION FORESTRY
We are losing our historic forests. The first European explorers saw forests of amazing diversity and awe-inspiring vastness. They felt especially drawn to the immense trees that grew throughout America and no longer existed in Europe.
Most of the biggest trees are gone, some forest types have nearly disappeared, and much of what is left is overcrowded and unhealthy. Many public forests have seven to 20 times more trees than is natural and sustainable. Centuries of fire suppression and neglect have been primary factors leading to these conditions.
Today's unnatural and overly dense public forests reduce wildlife habitat, deplete ground water, and dry up streams. Such overcrowded forests also are vulnerable to huge insect and disease epidemics, and fuel monster fires that will become more lethal if the climate continues to warm.
These monster fires are decimating wildlife and sterilizing soil, turning it into hardened clay that can't absorb rainwater. Watersheds are being stripped bare causing massive erosion that clogs streams with silt and destroys fisheries. Monster fires also convert forests to brush fields that may never become forests again. Finally, these wildfires are taking a terrible toll in burned homes and human lives lost from the flames and the walls of mud that flow down denuded mountainsides.
Groups who are trying to convert most public forests into old growth are making the problem worse. Old growth forests didn't blanket the historic landscape, as some people think, and old growth cannot be preserved like museum exhibits. Trees follow the same life cycle as other living things. That means all ages of trees, not just old trees must be present or a forest will not survive. If we want to keep old trees, we must produce a continuous supply of sunny openings where young trees can grow to renew the forest.
In the past, Native American and lightning fires, and to a lesser extent wind, insects, and disease, created enough openings to sustain historic forests. The mostly gentle fires that burned in historic forests also prevented catastrophic wildfires from destroying whole forests by thinning understory trees and reducing woody debris on the forest floor.
Over a century ago, we removed Native Americans from the land, which eliminated the principal source of gentle fires that had shaped forests for thousands of years. Then, we put out lightning fires as well. We made matters worse by stopping most management, including harvesting, in federal forests. So, forests have grown thicker and fires have gotten bigger and more destructive. Today's average fire is nearly double the size it was before 1980. It may double again.
The vast majority of this environmental degradation takes place on unmanaged public forests - forests a vocal minority has led many to believe should be off-limits to harvesting and management. But, by using history as a guide and deploying advanced science and technology, we can conserve our nation's forests, and restore degraded, dangerous forests to their historic grandeur.
It is not too late. We can use restoration forestry to begin the process of recovery, and do so thoughtfully and cost-effectively. That means we must work in partnership with the private sector - after all, somebody has to pay to safely remove excess trees and replant native species.
The forests that explorers found were beautiful, diverse, filled with wildlife, and resistant to monster fires. Restoration forestry can bring back magnificent forests like these. Restoration forestry also will hasten the recovery of endangered species and reduce wildfire threats to watersheds, communities, and people.
Federal and state governments must act now by using restoration forestry to restore forests before a vital part of the nation's natural heritage disappears forever. Restoring and sustaining historic forests is a worthy goal for America.
HISTORY OF RESTORATION FORESTRY
Restoration forestry is a specialization within the forestry profession. Its roots go back to three scientists who had the foresight to see that people can play a constructive role in restoring and sustaining historic forests.
It began with Aldo Leopold who advocated constructing samples of historic forests in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. In his dedication speech for the Arboretum on June 17, 1934, Aldo Leopold said, "The time has come for science to busy itself with the earth itself. The first step is to reconstruct a sample of what we had to start with."
Aldo Leopold's son, the late Dr. A. Starker Leopold, a University of California-Berkeley professor, expanded the concept of restoration by recognizing that Native Americans played an important role in creating and maintaining historic forests.
As chair of the Committee on Wildlife Management in the National Parks (the Leopold Committee), he also used restoration to clarify the goal of national parks. In 1963, the committee recommended that, "the goal of managing the national parks and monuments should be to preserve, or where necessary to recreate, the ecologic [sic] scene as viewed by the first European visitors." A National Academy of Sciences Advisory Committee supported this goal.
In 1965, the late Dr. Edward C. Stone, also a University of California-Berkeley professor, published a paper in Science that advocated training restoration professionals to carry out the recommendations of the Leopold Committee. About that time, the late Dr. Harold H. Biswell, a close colleague of Dr. Leopold and Dr. Stone at Berkeley, led the movement to restore fire to its historic role in historic forests.
Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen studied under Drs. Leopold, Stone, and Biswell, and later worked with them on the history and restoration of historic forests. Bonnicksen named the field "restoration forestry" and helped found the International Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) in 1989.
DEFINITIONS AND GOALS
Restoration forestry is a vision for the future rooted in respect for the past. Thus, restoration forestry uses the historic forest as a model for the future forest. No scientist, forester, or environmental activist could conceive of more beautiful or diverse and sustainable forests, with more wildlife, than those found by the first European explorers.
Restoration forestry aims to recover our nation's forest heritage while also restoring the productive and harmonious relationship between people and forests that existed in historic forests.
Restoration forestry is defined as restoring ecologically and economically sustainable forests that are representative of landscapes significant in America's history and culture. These forests also should serve society's contemporary need for wood products and other forest values.
The goal of restoration forestry is to restore and sustain, to the extent practical, a forest to a condition that resembles, but does not attempt to duplicate, the structure and function of a reference historic forest. The term ''reference historic forest'' means the way a whole forest appeared spreading over a landscape, with all of its diversity, at or about the time it was first seen by European explorers.
The forests explorers found provide the most scientifically sound reference historic forest for the United States. These reference historic forests were inherently sustainable and diverse, represented thousands of years of development and human uses, existed during a period with a similar climate, and are more easily documented than forests from an earlier time.
A reference historic forest does not represent a particular point in time. It represents a period and the variations in forest structure that characterized that period. The historic period for a reference forest varies by region because the age of exploration lasted several centuries, ending in the late eighteenth century.
RESTORING FOREST LANDSCAPES
Restoration forestry focuses on the history and integrity of whole landscapes rather than individual stands of trees. It replicates historic landscapes by maintaining the historic range of variation in patches of older and younger trees, as well as shrubs and meadows, within the forest mosaic. This means removing patches of older trees in about the same number and frequency as would have been removed historically by fire, wind, insects, disease, and other disturbances so that younger trees can grow in their place.
Historically, the size of patches differed by forest type. For example, Pacific Douglas fir forests had large patches and mixed-conifer and ponderosa pine forests existed in small patches. Patches also tended to be oblong shaped with an uphill orientation. Restoration forestry strives to simulate the size, shape, and orientation of patches on the landscape that historical disturbances created.
In historic forests, fires and other disturbances usually killed all the trees in a small patch but they rarely did so in a large patch. When large patches burned, surviving trees became an important part of regenerating the landscape. Restoration forestry aims to mimic this by leaving stringers and individual trees scattered over the landscape in patterns similar to those created by historic fires.
Similarly, some dead trees remained standing after a historic fire passed and others lay on the ground. These dead trees helped to replenish soil nutrients and provide homes for wildlife. Therefore, restoration forestry involves leaving adequate numbers of standing and fallen dead trees to become part of the restored forest just as they were part of the historic forest.
In all cases, restoration forestry uses history as a guide to restore an overcrowded forest, or a forest devastated by wildfire or insects, to the proper mix of old and young trees so that it can be maintained in a healthy, fire resistant, and scenic condition.
In short, restored forests look and behave in much the same way as historic forests.
RESTORATION METHODS
The decision to remove or leave an individual tree, regardless of size, or to plant trees depends on what is necessary to restore and maintain an ecologically and economically sustainable historic forest. Restoration forestry techniques are site-specific and require the most cost-effective restoration treatments available.
In 1763, Hans Dietrich von Zanthier established the Master School of Forestry in Ilsenberg, Germany, which formalized scientific observations of the way natural forests behave so that this knowledge could be used to develop a wide range of methods for managing forests. These methods include a variety of timber harvesting techniques, reintroduction or control of plant and animal species, planting, thinning, grazing, prescribed burning, control or suppression of fire, or, where appropriate and effective, temporary or permanent protection.
No single method works best in a particular region or forest type. Therefore, foresters must have a complete toolkit to provide the full range of options needed to restore and maintain a historic forest.
For example, in the 1960s, the National Park Service cut medium-size trees before using prescribed fire to restore giant sequoia forests. They knew that prescribed fire is a crude tool that can cause more collateral damage to an overcrowded forest than good. On the other hand, a chainsaw in the hands of an expert is surgically precise. As the late Dr. A. Starker Leopold said, "A chain-saw would do wonders."
Regardless of the method, restoration forestry protects water and soil, and it reduces visible signs of management to the minimum level practical.
RESTORATION COSTS
The cost to restore America's forests to their historic beauty, diversity, and fire resistance would be prohibitive if paid entirely from public funds.
In national forests alone, about 132 million acres are in critical need of restoration. According to Dr. Bonnicksen, that could cost 161 billion in taxpayer funds to achieve over the next 15 years. It would cost an additional 80.5 billion each 15 years thereafter to maintain restored forests. The federal government and taxpayers cannot afford these enormous costs.
Partnerships with the private sector are essential because we cannot restore our forests without their help. Forestry professionals who make their living from forests have the expertise and desire to participate, and just as importantly, they have the equipment and processing facilities. Public-private partnerships would make restoration affordable, technically feasible, provide jobs in rural communities, and produce some of the wood products Americans need.
RESTORATION PROCEDURE
Restoration forestry follows a simple five-step procedure.
Step 1: Document the historic forest. Select an appropriate historic period as the guideline for restoration. Then document the historic forest using existing literature and local knowledge. Historical journals and photographs, as well as numerous scientific and technical methods, can provide additional information when needed.
Step 2: Form a partnership with the private sector. A partnership between government and forestry professionals in the private sector is essential to make restoration technically and economically feasible.
Step 3: Identify a reference historic forest. Restoration forestry requires deciding how closely a modern forest should resemble a historic forest. The decision requires the help of forestry professionals and depends on what is feasible and desirable in a particular location. The goal is to develop a restored forest that approximates the original historic forest.
Step 4: Use the reference historic forest as a model for restoring the current forest. Use the most cost-effective restoration treatments available to restore the forest with the help of forestry professionals. The initial restoration requires a long-term commitment. It will take one or more decades to restore most historic forests.
Step 5: Maintain the restored forest. Once restored, a forest requires continued maintenance using modern technology, prescribed fire, and the continuing help of forestry professionals. The best way to do this is to mimic the effects of historical disturbances that are missing from the restored forest such as lightning fires that are too dangerous to leave uncontrolled.
AMERICA'S MOST ENDANGERED FORESTS
Examples of historic forests that are being lost or seriously degraded include Pacific Douglas fir, mixed-conifer, giant sequoia, northern oak woodlands, aspen, ponderosa pine, western white pine, lodgepole pine, red and eastern white pine, oak hickory woodlands and savannas, oak chestnut, eastern white pine, and longleaf-slash pine.
These forests are some of the most endangered yet they provide excellent opportunities for restoration. They are all fire-adapted forests, forests sustained historically mainly by Native American fires and lightning fires. They are all worthy of restoration. What remains to be seen is whether the American public will take the initiative and embrace restoration forestry. Time is short. We must restore America's forests before it is too late.
(Detailed descriptions of these historic forests are in America's Ancient Forests: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Copyright 2000.)