Return to Natural, Edenic Paradise? Not So Fast, even in "protected" areas

[Phil P]

Wanted to revive this a bit in regards to forest fires.

The mantra that's often told today is this:

1. Prior to industrial human intervention, there was many frequent low intensity burns that were naturally started
2. These burns were much smaller in scale to the fires we have today, as these fires prevented forests from accumulating a large amount of burnable material
3. Due to human intervention and forest fire prevention, we are getting high intensity burns now that scorch many more acres and are much more harmful than what was the pre Columbian case

I call BS. Look at the Khabarovsk Krai region of Russia, that is a great counterexample of what a rather undisturbed version of forest activity looks like.

Takeaways:

1. Large scale (hundreds of thousands of acres) very high intensity burns are happening all over the place. This means forest material is indeed NOT naturally self thinning with low intensity burns
2. 87% of fires are human caused, not naturally sparked source
3. The density of high intensity burns is greater than what the western US has. Just go look at Google Earth, it's the part of Russia right across from Sakhalin Island
4. There are fires that are orders of magnitude bigger than anything we have ever experienced in the "post smokey" era of the US, like the 18 million acre Black Dragon Fire on the China / Siberia border


Not saying we shouldn't do things to prevent forest fires, we absolutely should. But instead of harkening back to some fabricated / imagined past, we should look at solutions that work today (like prevent arson and thin and create fire breaks). In the absence of actual data, people fabricate this edenic version of the past that never actually existed.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Phil P

Wanted to revive this a bit in regards to forest fires.
************
Not saying we shouldn't do things to prevent forest fires, we absolutely should. But instead of harkening back to some fabricated / imagined past, we should look at solutions that work today (like prevent arson and thin and create fire breaks). In the absence of actual data, people fabricate this edenic version of the past that never actually existed.

I agree that there was no Edenic past, indeed that is the point of the OP. I didn't really deal much with fires. I do believe that the "Smokey the Bear" campaigns may have done some damage. I also believe that without fires, forests would get too old. There are few organisms that are truly immortal.

I do agree that arson has no place in either forests or urban settings.

[Diana Holbrook]

The increase in forest fires is because the existing forests were replanted as future resource timber. They were planted and have grown to maturity much closer together, and in a much more uniform composition, than the natural forest ever was. If left on their own now, they will not grow into old growth that is healthy and naturally resilient to fire, they will be too dense. THAT is why they burn out of control now.

If you want to restore natural forest, you shouldn't try to do that from managed timber planting. Those trees need to be cut, or at the very least, substantially thinned first. THEN a more varied and naturally spaced forest potentially could be restored if areas are to be preserved.

What I think is too bad, is that politically, naturalists and logging interests can't work better together. If one didn't villainize the other, we could have healthy forests and managed logging that would in many ways serve the same renewal and diversity benefits of natural fires, without the waste and air quality negatives. Perhaps in time we'll learn that both goals are worthy goals who deserve to be valued.

[Phil P]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

I agree that there was no Edenic past, indeed that is the point of the OP. I didn't really deal much with fires. I do believe that the "Smokey the Bear" campaigns may have done some damage. I also believe that without fires, forests would get too old. There are few organisms that are truly immortal.

I do agree that arson has no place in either forests or urban settings.

The interesting thing here though is look at that same area of Russia, but go further south down to Primorsky Krai, also basically untouched but not nearly as many burn scars. Warmer and wetter and somehow fires drop out of the regimen of the forest. It's not a given that they have or don't have to exist. Fungus will do the work of thinning and pruning if fire doesn't do it.

Originally Posted by Diana Holbrook

The increase in forest fires is because the existing forests were replanted as future resource timber. They were planted and have grown to maturity much closer together, and in a much more uniform composition, than the natural forest ever was. If left on their own now, they will not grow into old growth that is healthy and naturally resilient to fire, they will be too dense. THAT is why they burn out of control now.

If you want to restore natural forest, you shouldn't try to do that from managed timber planting. Those trees need to be cut, or at the very least, substantially thinned first. THEN a more varied and naturally spaced forest potentially could be restored if areas are to be preserved.

What I think is too bad, is that politically, naturalists and logging interests can't work better together. If one didn't villainize the other, we could have healthy forests and managed logging that would in many ways serve the same renewal and diversity benefits of natural fires, without the waste and air quality negatives. Perhaps in time we'll learn that both goals are worthy goals who deserve to be valued.

I'm not sure how it is in Washington, but here in the Rockies, trees naturally way overproduce and grow too thick till they get choked out, as you can see in the pic below, none of those were planted.

So, the question is what do we do with areas like that picture. If we go down the what would have happened in the past route, well that means leave it till lightning hits. Not the best option. The better perspective is how do we deal with the fuel load with the tools now. And that bleeds through to a lot of environmental discussion. We really can't go back to how it was in the past, trying to resurrect that in todays framework is just as artificial as using modern methods.