Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

Here is the little forest next to my property last winter

This small forest is almost exclusively spruce.  Springs from higher up feed the area, making it swampy in many places.   The springs are on public land; the forest you see in the photo is on the private lands of several homeowners.  It is a small island of conifers surrounded on both sides by meadow.  The springs run through and feed into Elk Creek, a wetland drainage with willows harboring moose most of the year.

I walked the forest everyday last year.  Many of the spruce were either downed, standing dead, infested or going to be infested.  It wasn’t easy to walk through the forest with so much deadfall.  Yet these spruce were old growth, up to 200 years or more.  The forest harbored at least three kinds of owls, moose, bear, deer, coyotes, turkeys, and lots of birds.  Wolves traveled through on occasion.  Hawks fed on smaller birds and squirrels.  I’d seen weasel tracks.  The forest was alive all the time, and changing.

The State of Wyoming acquired some funds to clear beetle infested areas around structures as part of their fire prevention program.  Homeowners were offered so many dollars to clear around their structures up to several acres.  The homeowners who owned these woods pooled the dollars offered by the State, and with the State Forester’s help, hired a local logging contractor to clear the woods.  It was recommended that all deadfall, standing dead, infested, and larger trees (even if not infested on the premise that they’d soon be infested) be removed.  Aspens were to remain.  Young spruce would remain.  The money was there, now, this year only, so the homeowners decided to do the complete logging job in one fell swoop.   Here is what it looks like today, from the same viewpoint.

In the photo below, the area thick with trees on the right is National Forest property.  The left side is the private lands.  One thing to note is that on the National Forest side, although there are some spruce, its steeper (not visible in photo), therefore drier, and has predominately Douglas firs, not yet infested.

You can see the fence divide between National forest & Private cuts

OK, personally, here is how I would have done it.  First, I’d assume a seven year plan.  I’d use the money available the first year and do the logging by hand, therefore preventing all the compaction and destruction caused by the large machinery.

Around any structures I would have cleared all infested and dead trees, leaving a fire break near the structure.

Next I would have selected ‘red trees’, that is, dead standing trees with their needles still attached.  These trees can be torches and should be removed.

Then I would clear the forest floor by doing burns in place where possible.  The giant brush piles in the photo above will burn so hot that it will take a lot of time for the grass to return.

That would be my priority for the first year.  I would put the forest on a seven to ten year plan of slowly clearing, opening up areas selectively for the regeneration of Aspen and Willows.  The forest certainly needed attention as there probably hasn’t been fires here in over 100 years.  By slowly clearing, animal homes and cover would be saved and new habitat created naturally.   Many animals used this forest as a corridor to travel yet stay hidden, especially moose.  The moose used the shade in hot afternoons after browsing on the willows in the marsh areas below.

In addition, now I can see my neighbors.  This could have been prevented.  Being that none of this forest is on my property, I really had no clout, only an opinion that I voiced.  But the fear of rampant fire seemed to cloud and dominant, as well as the available funding and the recommendations of the State agencies funding the project.

It will take years to regenerate even a little bit of cover.  Eventually, though not in my lifetime, Aspens will take over this area and that is a good thing.  The Willows will come first, but even before that I predict a giant infestation of Canadian thistle that will need to be hand controlled.  By clearing slowly, methodically, with sensitivity, the forest could regenerate at a more natural pace.

Tonight I caught a program on NPR about deforestation in Indonesia.  The Indonesian government has been giving private logging firms the right to log ancient community forests.  The local indigenous peoples are starving without their food source–the forest and its inhabitants.  I listened to a government agent say “This forest is declining and should be cut”.  Then I heard an indigenous leader say “This forest contains small streams that give us water, animals like tigers, orangutans and birds, and other animals we hunt for food, and plants we need for medicine.”  I ask you:  Whom of these two parties knows more about forest management?

Filed under: Fires, Pines | Tagged: Fire, Forest health, Pine beetles, Shoshone National Forest, Spruce beetle infestation |