Okanogan Conservation District

Transcription

Introductory voice: Western forests have undergone extensive alterations over the past century due to fire exclusion, past timber harvests and livestock grazing. A concerted effort is needed to restore the health of our forests. Voice of Forest Service Research Landscape Ecologist Paul Hessburg: If we were to go back to say 1800, and let’s say we were able to fly over the Okanogan-Wenatchee forest at 30,000 feet, and if you were able to take a video camera and fly over at that same elevation year after year after year, you’d see that the topography, the mountains topography, and the patterns of previously burned and recovering vegetation limited the spread of wildfire. That 1800-era landscape didn’t have much in the way of a transportation system, either roads or railroads and probably the first big way the landscape became fragmented was by transportation network. Fire used to burn through grass and shrub fuels, for example, pretty quickly across the landscape and when we had roads and rails across the landscape that interrupted the flow of fire. Then after that a couple of other things started becoming important. 1930s and 40s we start getting good at putting fires out and one final thing, selective logging was really important, primarily that favored taking the larger diameter trees. These are the fire tolerant species as well; they had the thick bark and resisted fire really well. So we started to reduce the fire tolerance of the landscape by pulling those out. Voice of Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Supervisor Becki Heath: The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s national forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. Voice of Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Deputy Fire Staff Officer Richy Harrod: The problem of needing to do restoration in forests is large, and we are focused here in the eastern Cascades, but if you look across the west the problem is huge. Plants and animals have different strategies for how they respond to fire. For example, a ponderosa pine tree is a good one to use; it has a thick bark that protects the growing material underneath. They have these various morphological strategies, and then some have other sorts of life history strategies. For example, some plants have seeds that store in the soil for a long time and then they only germinate once a fire comes by. Voice of Paul Hessburg: There are literally dozens of native forest pathogens that cause disease in the forest and insects that cause mostly mortality effects, either by chewing up foliage or by directly attacking stems and killing them by girdling them. Voice of Richy Harrod: Many of these forests that have been modified by fire exclusion or an insect and disease don’t provide some recreational opportunities. Voice of Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Wildlife Ecologist Bill Gaines: There have been significant changes to habitat for wildlife. A couple of the different groups of wildlife species that we think about are those that are associated with the old ponderosa pine forest. Those open forests have decreased significantly over what was available historically. Conversely, as a result of fire exclusion, some habitats have increased over time. Probably another component of the issue surrounding wildlife and fish species is that we inherited a road network that has been in place for many, many years. That road network can cause damage to resources like streams, including the addition of sediment into streams, so that’s another concern or another issue surrounding management of these forests. Voice of Paul Hessburg: There’s a fair amount of uncertainty about the climate, but there are a few things that we know and that should empower us to act in our management. The climate is changing. It’s getting warmer and it may be getting dryer. And I would say, as a result of those sorts of things things, what we want to do is give the forest and its resources, and the people who appreciate them, options for a changing climate. Voice of Becki Heath: So, our restoration treatments are all about ensuring that those forested ecosystems are resilient over time. It’s critical that we have an integrated approach to how we accomplish restoration on the land. So, the way we get a lot of our planning done is through the use of an interdisciplinary planning team. And that team of specialists comes together with a goal in mind of restoration, but with each of them having their area of specialty. So people who use the forests are generally incredibly well educated about how to use the forest in a way to ensure that it’s sustainable. So people love living in the woods. As private land gets developed closer and closer to the national forest, that intersection, that boundary, we call that the wildland urban interface. Voice of Ross Frank, private timber land owner: People who are invested in family forests are preserving open space. They are preserving habitat, and they are preserving the values that the American public, over time, have identified as very important. Voice of Becki Heath: And it’s an area that we put a high priority on for treating fuels and for doing our best to ensure that we can control fires at that boundary. We often don’t have that opportunity. Voice of Ross Frank: In our particular case, we started as a grassroots neighborhood group working to educate ourselves and our neighbors as to the dry forest ecology and fire ecology. And then we’ve worked with the Forest Service as an immediate neighbor in creating sustainable landscape. Voice of Becki Heath: So some of the changes that I think are incredibly productive are the way that we work with partners, and not only public and NGO (non-government organization) kinds of partners, but agencies in collaboration where we gain a common vision of what national forest needs to look like. Voice of Molly Ingraham, The Nature Conservancy: The Tapash Collaborative is a group of federal, state and nonprofit organizations. And the Forest Service, the Yakama Nation, the Nature Conservancy and the Washington Department of Natural Resources and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have come together to think about how do you manage across boundaries. And there’s really three core concepts to Tapash and that is, how do we use the best science to guide our restoration activities, how do we protect the most critical and at risk lands, and then also how do we build and support infrastructure in the area in order to ensure that there can be a restoration-based economy that functions. Voice of Becki Heath: So, the restoration strategy focuses on ensuring that our treatments will lead to resiliency in those natural systems. And resiliency is going to look different in different places. Voice of Bill Gaines: I think a resilient landscape can provide healthy forest to recreate in; healthy streams and watersheds that provide high quality water and a quantity of water, healthy wildlife habitats that are more in tune with the natural disturbance processes instead of what we see now. Voice of Paul Hessburg: So getting the patterns of the forest reconnected in a good way with the processes is an overarching vision that I would ascribe to. So a forest that’s healthy, and it looks well, and its functioning well is deeply important to the American people. Voice of Bill Gaines: So one way of providing or mitigating the impact of climate change is to make sure those habitats are connected well enough to where those species can move around and adjust their life to a change in climate. Voice of Richy Harrod: As we implement these restoration treatments it’s really important for us to monitor our activities. There are a number of things that we don’t know about how these systems will respond to our treatments. And so it’s important for us to go out there and actually measure the results of those activities for the long term. [voice: No one hour fuels.] It’s important that we treat as many acres as we possibly can. Voice of Becki Heath: We have some of the finest scientists in the nation when it comes to natural resource management and they are all up to it. They are at the top of their game; they know what it means to respond to new science and are excited about applying that on the ground and seeing the effects of it.