A Ray of Hope?

by Angie Many

   I recently attended a County Partnership Restoration (CPR) Program in Montrose, Colorado. This program brings together federal land-management agencies, county officials, and local ‘stakeholders’ to find acceptable ways to improve the health and safety of forests, woodlands, and rangelands. About 100 people listened to ‘restoration’ scientists and federal, state, and county officials speak of the need for action on the West’s endangered lands. In most forests, that means removing a lot of material, and much of that will be small trees and brush.

   CPR is gaining momentum on three pilot Forests: the Apache-Sitgreaves in Arizona, the Lincoln in New Mexico, and the Grand Mesa/Uncompahgre/Gunnison (GMUG)  in Colorado. A few projects have already been performed, and the combination of county officials, local environmentalists, and other local residents designing the projects has thus far reduced opposition. (So has the fact that local environists are realizing that it is difficult to publicly oppose fire-prevention projects now. In fact, one former Earth First!er, now a county commissioner from Telluride, is supporting CPR because his county is full of potentially-explosive forests.) Unfortunately, funding is scarce at this point. Organizers, however, hope to have a local group propose projects on the GMUG so that they’ll be ready if and when money is appropriated.

   Program literature recognizes that over two-thirds of Western forests, woodlands, and rangelands are severely degraded and at high risk of catastrophic fire, that wildlife habitat is degraded in many places and no longer supports ‘biodiversity’, that vegetation is too dense, and that the ongoing drought has exacerbated problems with insects and disease. Professor Bill Romme, Fire Ecology, Colorado State University, told attendees that “I’m still reeling from the magnitude of the mortality we’re seeing.”

   In Colorado and much of the West, noted speakers, the piñon pine is dying from drought and insects, piñon/juniper woodlands present a fire risk and lack of diversity, sagebrush is decadent, there are fewer grasses and warm-season grasses are beginning to dominate over cool-season grasses, there are not enough forbs, and ponderosa is overcrowded and dying. Romme emphasized that management is different from restoration, and that responsible management projects (such as reducing fuel around homes, conducting commercial logging to keep a local mill going, and improving habitat) can and should be justified in their own right but not disguised as ‘restoration’.

   He noted that good restoration processes will emulate natural disturbances, that natural systems can tolerate human disturbances similar to the natural disturbances that they are used to, and the timber harvest scale of disturbance is not even close to the scope of natural disturbance (all of which we’ve known for years, and federal land managers used to know!). We are on the verge of “The Perfect Storm,” Romme added. The 20th century had ideal growing conditions which thickened forests, and fewer fires to thin them. Now, he stated, we are on the edge of a rare ecological event: massive die-outs and severe and extensive outbreaks of disease and insects.

   Fires may burn across a landscape but they generally leave many trees alive, he noted, but at the Hayman fire, near Denver, because of the tree density a crown fire replaced the normal mixed-severity fire, leaving hardly a live tree in many areas. Even persistent old growth, which had survived fire for 500-600 years, is now gone, as is the seed source. It will take 100 years to reseed naturally and another five centuries to replace the old trees. The cost of fire suppression and rehabilitation will run up to $2500 per acre; so far, the Denver Water Board alone has spent $4 million rehabilitating its watershed. Current piñon/juniper forests are also ecologically unstable, and when they burn, they’ll also be set back six centuries and watersheds damaged, he said.

There is no longer enough milling capacity

to process substantial amounts of materials.

    CPR recognizes that a  forest products industry able to process materials removed by restoration projects is necessary to reduce project costs. It also recognizes that there is no longer enough capacity to process substantial amounts of materials. As Nancy Fischering, consultant for Intermountain Resources, LLC, of Montrose told the crowd, Intermountain is the only large mill left in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The forest products industry in the West has been virtually destroyed, and if projects don’t start soon, she said, there will be no industry left to perform projects or process materials.

   CPR envisions an initial public funding commitment, with grants for biomass plants and other facilities that can locally utilize small wood of various types. Even with grants, however, people and banks investing in such facilities will still need long-term assurances of wood supplies, something that is difficult in the political climate of federal lands management.

   My husband, Bruce, is currently implementing a fuel-reduction/rehabilitation project in New Mexico, and we have learned firsthand how difficult it is to even give logs away nowadays. There simply aren’t enough mills left to process them. And with the problems that the timber industry has faced in the last two decades, anyone thinking about re-tooling, gearing up, or buying the special equipment that some restoration projects will require must think long and hard. There is public interest right now in removing excess materials from the forest, but if we have a couple of rainy years, how long will that interest last? People forget quickly, and the funding for projects can disappear much faster that it appeared.

   The Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) provides opportunities to fund restoration projects, and it should provide some protection from endless appeals and lawsuits. Another problem, however, is the projected payment for restoration projects. Most loggers can’t afford to keep losing money or to operate on a break-even basis anymore while we wait for ‘things to get better.’ If the public really wants to protect forests and homes, and to have ‘restoration’ projects instead of logging projects where sufficient merchantable product is removed, then the public must realize that it will have to pay professional salaries if it wants a professional job. So far, that kind of money is rarely materializing.

   I hope that CPR and HFRA combined will improve our forests and rejuvenate a timber industry shamefully decimated by mis-information and mis-use of science, but after 20 years, I’ve become a skeptic. I hope I’ll be proven wrong!