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New life for old forestAs joggers and environmentalists battle over North America's ancient forests, a

new philosophy is emerging. Canadian scientists are rewriting the ecological rules, withfar-reaching consequences for the forestry of the future

Leigh Dayton

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7/ HE NORTHERN spotted owl is small as owls go.Weighing little more than 600 grams and standing lessthan half a metre tall, the physical size of the bird is

,. ershadowed by its imposing political stature. For themotcled brown owl has become a symbol, a cause célèbre andhe star of a drama set in the majestic coniferous forests of

America's Pacific northwest.The spotted owl gained its exalted status in July this year,

when the US government declared it a "threatened" species.The designation was made after wildlife biologistsdemonstrated conclusively that the bird can survive only in theold growth forests of northern California, Oregon, Washingtonand southern British Columbia. And biologists working for theUS Forest Service found that one pair of owls needs as muchas 900 hectares of ancient forest to thrive and raise theiryoung. Under the 1973 US Endangered Species Act, a plantor animal that has been officially "listed" must be givenstringent protection. A comprehensive strategy to preserve theowl is soon to go before Congress for approval. There is nodoubt that the plan will reduce drastically the amount oflogging allowed on federal lands.

Clearly, the northern spotted owl has ruffled the feathers ofthe powerful forest industry. Jim Geisinger, president of theNorthwest Forestry Association, predicts dire economic

consequences, including the loss of 100 000 jobs over thenext 10 years, if the industry is barred from logging the owl'shabitat. The loggers believe it is they, not the northern spottedowl, who are endangered.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, are claiming the des-ignation as a victory in their battle to save North America'svirgin forests from the logger's chainsaw. The owl is an indi-cator species: it reflects the health of the forest. By savinghabitat for the bird, irreplaceable forests and their inhabitantsare preserved for all time; says Andy Stahl, a resource analystwith the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Seattle.

The battle lines are sharply drawn: greens versus loggers.But between these two a new group is emerging. Members ofthis group are scientists who are quietly rewriting the ecologi-cal rules of the forest. Over the past decade they have devel-oped a fuller understanding of what an old growth forest is,what makes it tick, and its complex role in the environment.These scientists believe their work can help to determine howmuch old growth remains in North America and the best wayto manage it. They hope that a scientific approach to theproblem will lead to new ways of thinking about forestsgenerally. Because the war rages across the continent, althoughthe battle is thickest in spotted owl country. At stake are thelast stands of ancient forest in North America.

i\r ‘ILJ Sci.,•N-S 4' 13 oc,1156e,- " I 128 No 1738

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26 New Scientist 13 October 1990

Wise and exalted:the northern

spotted owl (left)may have ruffled a

few feathers amongNorthwest

American loggers,but the battle for

primeval forest(centre) extends

across thecontinent

When Europeans first stepped ashore on the east coast ofNorth America they gazed upon a seemingly endless blanketof primeval forest. Hardwood and white pines stretched southfrom what is now Canada to the liveoaks, cypress and pinesof the American southeast. In the far north, the pine forestsgave way to the taiga of the subarctic which reached acrossthe continent to meet the Douglas firs, hemlocks, spruce andredwoods that swept down the Pacific coast. High in theRocky Mountains were vast stands of spruce, lodgepole pineand alpine pine. Settlers kept few records and researchers areonly beginning to reconstruct a picture of those virgin forests.So it is difficult to estimate how much native woodland hasbeen lost, says Ken Lertzman, an ecologist at Simon FraserUniversity in Vancouver. His "best guess" is that two-thirdsof Canada's original forests are gone. Across the border in theUS, the Wilderness Society calculates that 95 per cent ofAmerica's original forest has been logged.

It is almost as hard to assess the extent of today's old growthforests. Part of the difficulty is that outside agricultural areas,the area under forest has not decreased much: "What we'vedone is convert old growth into younger stands, more managedforests," says Chad Oliver, a silviculturist at the University ofWashington in Seattle.

Statistics compiled for a Canadian government document,Canada's Forest Inventory 1986, indicate that Canada hasmore than 100 million hectares of unlogged old forest. Butthe data come mainly from forestry sources, which take intoaccount only "productive", or loggable, forests. The forestryindustry's definition of old growth reflects the logginglife of a forest rather than its biological life.

For similar reasons, goodnationwide data are not read-ily available in the US. How-ever, John Butruille, of theUS Forest Service, believesthat the figures compiled bythe Forest Service are soundfor the 19 national forests hemanages for the Forest Serv-ice in Oregon and Washing-ton. These heavily loggedstates have approximately 10million hectares of forest, ofwhich about a quarter is oldgrowth forest, says Butruille.

Deanne Kloepfer of theWilderness Society in Seattleargues that the ForestService's "timber-orienteddefinition" gives figures thatare far too low. "Our totalestimate for both states[Oregon and Washington] is950 000 hectares," she said."Of the total amount of oldgrowth, 39 per cent [374 000 hectares] is protected." Kloepferbelieves these figures show that overlogging of old growthforests is more serious than the Forest Service admits.

Regardless of how much is left, virtually all unprotected oldgrowth in Canada and the US will be logged to extinction

Some foresters agree that the future of old growth forest looks bleak without changes in the use of public land

New Scientist 13 October 1990 27

c.)Old growth forests

`) are teeming withlife, from

co, ) inconspicuous76 fungi to deer and-9) bears (right)

unless both countries changetheir policies on the use ofpublic land, says DavidHandley, a forester and themanager of resource analysisfor the Canadian timber com-pany MacMillan Bloedel.According to Handley, thereare three reasons for this: atpresent, the biggest, mostcommercially valuable treesare in old growth forests,most old growth forests areon publicly owned landwhere cutting is permitted orencouraged, and the forestindustry needs time tomake an "orderly transition"from logging virgin forest toharvesting secondary standsfirst cut many years ago.

The rate at which trees are0 cut is measured on several

scales: cubic metres per year,"board feet" per year, and

hectares per year. Most accessible, though, is the "how longbefore it is gone" scale. On that measure, optimists estimatethat the old growth in the west coast forest will last another60 years; pessimists foresee the demise of unprotected standsin as little as 15 years.

Disputes arise over old growth statistics because what ismeasured depends on who is doing the measuring and why.Broadly speaking, environmentalists measure patches ofbeautiful old trees, whereas governments and loggers work onthe basis of saleable timber. Many scientists and foresters,however, are now convinced that both approaches are wrongand are based on out-of-date notions of the ecology andbiology of old growth forests.

In recent years there has been a profound shift in the princi-ples of forest ecology. Ecologists believed that the forest wasa closed, stable ecosystem. "We used to think that a forest wasbasically a group of species that had evolved together or beentogether for a very long time," Chad Oliver said. "Now whatwe find is that a forest community is a group of species thatmay have recently migrated together and then, in the future,might migrate in separate directions." The far-reaching impli-

cation is that all forests are dynamic, interactive structures thatrespond to natural disturbances such as drought, disease or achange in climate. According to the new school of thought, itis wrong to assume that, over hundreds of years, a forest growsto a mature, climax, stage where it remains in perfect balanceforever. Chaos is the norm and change is the consequence.

Old growth forest is born of catastrophe. A wind storm,wildfire or other natural disaster begins the process by clear-ing a patch of forest, says Jerry Franklin, an ecologist with theForest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and theUniversity of Washington. Soon local plants resprout, andothers grow from seeds blown in from farther afield. Within20 or 30 years, young trees are beginning to grow up; theircanopies merge and shade the plants below. For another30 years or so, the only breaks in this dense layer of youngtrees are the gaps created when trees killed by the originalcataclysm fall through the new canopy.

Mature trees drop outAfter 100 or 150 years, depending on the species, the youth

of the forest is over. During this mature stage, growth slowsand the ancient trees gradually die. In the Pacific northwest,old Douglas firs soaring to 150 metres drop out and arereplaced by much shorter hemlocks, cedars and silver firs. Thisphase may continue for several centuries, sometimes even fora millennium. Usually, though, another dramatic disturbancesweeps through the forest long before the old giants reach theend of their biological lifespan.

Following the new logic, an old growth forest has charac-teristic attributes: significant numbers of huge, long-livedtrees; many large, standing dead trees, called "snags"; numer-ous logs lying about the forest floor; and multiple layers ofcanopy created by the crowns of trees of various ages andspecies. "Old growth forests are structurally complex and richsystems," says Franklin. From top to bottom, they are teem-ing with life. In the Pacific northwest alone, biologists haveidentified more than a hundred species of mammals, birds,amphibians, reptiles and fish: bear and elk, flying squirrels, arare seabird called the marbled murrelet, frogs and toads, andsalamanders, and fish such as the steelhead and coho salmon—and the northern spotted owl.

Scientists suspect that as many as 40 of these species maysurvive only in the protective cocoon of an old growth forest.But the most numerous residents, by far, are "inconspicuous,non- charismatic" species, says Gordon Orians of the Univer-sity of Washington. He is concerned that too many public

On VancouverIsland, loggers and

environmentalistsbattle over old

growth forest

28

debates focus on "a few charismatic species that may, or maynot, be vital in the functioning of the forest". Hundreds ofspecies of arthropods, from insects and spiders to centipedesand beetles, are overlooked, he says. And at the bottom of theheap are the forest's fungi and microorganisms. Yet theseunderrated forms of life are vital to the health of the forest.

All the forest's creatures depend on its unique qualities for"room and board", Orians says. In the Pacific forests, openspaces between trees shelter deer and bears. Snags are hometo spotted owls, several species of bats and flying squirrels.Large rotting logs protect the redbacked vole, a small rodentthat eats, and helps to disperse, the fruiting bodies ofmycorrhizal fungi that are so important in the nutrition oftrees. Ants, termites and beetles also live in the logs. As theycarve out their nests, they break the wood down into usablenutrients and create living spaces for voles and other smallanimals. The logs also store enormous amounts of water thatprotect animals during fire and provide water in times ofdrought. Every component of the forest, from the crowns oftowering trees to roots buried deep in the soil, supports, andis supported by, a great web of organisms.

Biologists have learnt much about the ecology of the oldgrowth forest, but they are only just beginning to untangle themany threads that link it to the wider world. All the indicationsare that these venerable forests are vital to the continuingwell-being of both humans and nature.

Locally, forests are the key to controlling flooding and pre-venting landslides. According to Franklin, the snags, downedwood and organic litter of the forest protect hillsides fromerosion. Logs that fall into streams and rivers and jam themmake the water "sticky"; that is, they capture debris that wouldotherwise be "exported" to communities downstream. Theyalso help to filter the water for valuable fish stocks and otheraquatic creatures by trapping sediment and woody debris.Likewise, they create deep, quiet pools in which many specieslive and spawn. The forest also modifies the weather. It helpsto moderate extremes of heat and cold, and researchers work-ing for the Forest Service have found that the needles of theforest's conifers capture moisture from fog and clouds. Insome areas of the Pacific northwest, this accounts for up to aquarter of the local rainfall. And while some scientists, such-as Oliver, consider it a "red herring", others are convinced thatold growth forests play a role in the global climate, throughthe storage and release of carbon.

Whatever its value as an ecological and climatic stabiliser,Oliver and others believe that the ultimate value of an oldgrowth forest is biological and aesthetic: it provides alife-saving habitat for dwindling species of plants and animalsand irreplaceable beauty for people. According to Oliver,maintenance of species' diversity and wilderness are the "realissues" in today's old growth debate.

What scientists have learnt about the turbulent, complex life

New Scientist 13 October 1990

Hot spots in the old growth war

AT 90 metres high, the CarmanahGiant is the tallest tree in Canada. The

mighty hemlock is also the symbol of thebattle between environmentalists and theforest industry on Vancouver Island. LastApril the provincial government set asidethe lower half of the Carmanah Valley asprovincial park, but ruled that the loggingcompany MacMillan Bloedel could harvestthe upper half if studies showed that log-ging would not harm the watershed below.

Environmentalists are not satisfied withthis plan. They claim that the valley con-tains one of the last continuous tracts ofold growth rainforest in the country andshould be preserved in its entirety.

Other disputed areas on VancouverIsland include the watersheds of BrooksPeninsula and Clayoquot Sound. Datacollected for the American organisation,Conservation International, show that ofthe 27 main watersheds on the island, onlyone is unlogged, and none is protected.

In eastern Canada, the TemagamiWilderness Society is working to preserve3500 square kilometres of old growthforest. The Temagami Forest contains thelargest known stand of virgin white pine inNorth America. All legal efforts to haltlogging have failed so far. Last summer,however, the province established a Stew-ardship Council to oversee activities in theforest. The Society is not represented, buton the council are sympathetic members ofthe Teme-Augama Indian band, whosenative lands claim includes the area.

For a decade the Southeast AlaskaConservation Council has launched sixlaw suits and has extensively lobbied theUS Congress. The target is the 1980Timber Reform Act which guarantees thatthe Ketchikan Pulp Company and the

Japanese-owned Alaska Pulp Corporationcan log in the Tongass National Forest forthe next 40 years, paying only nominalfees for the right. The old stands of Sitkaspruce and Western hemlock in theTongass are home to the world's densestpopulation of eagles and grizzly bears.Bills to revise the law are now before bothhouses of the US Congress. "Meanwhile,the pulp companies are goingfull-tilt," says Barth Koehler, executive di-rector of the Council.

The red-cockaded woodpecker makes itshome in the oldgrowth pine forestsof 12 southeasternstates. The bird ex-cavates a nest holein a 75 to 100-year-old pine.Resin seeping fromthe cavity protectsthe woodpeckerfrom the rat snake,its worst predator.It may well takeyears to complete acavity, but once thejob is finished,generations ofwoodpeckers mayuse the nest. TheSierra Club LegalDefense Fund hasbegun legal actionto stop the destruc-tion and the frag-mentation of thebird's habitat.

In California'sSierra Nevadamountains, the

2000-year-old sequoias are among the old-est inhabitants on Earth. Last July,conservation groups, timber firms andpeople with grazing interests, along withthe State and the US Forest Service, agreedto a new management plan for the SequoiaNational Forest. "In one stroke we rescuedmore than 40 000 hectares of primarily old-growth forest . and completelyreversed the Forest Service position onlogging in Giant Sequoia groves," saidJulie McDonald, a lawyer who representeda coalition of environmental groups. ^

UUU

I3

MOM HERETime is an essential ingredient in the creation of

Glengoyne Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky. Just

growing the oak for the barrels in which Glengoyne

slumbers to maturity takes 100 years. After which time,

the best of the timber is selected and left to dry another

year before the finished casks can be crafted. Later, the

seasoned oak and the unique southern highland air

work their magic for a further ten summers and

winters as they mellow the infant Glengoyne to

perfection. Which all helps to explain Glengoyne's

glorious light, golden colour and distinctive soft,

mellow taste. Ten years old? Don't believe a word of it.

THE PAGE

111 YEARS.

FOOT OF

TO THE

GLIENGOYNE

TAKES

SLOWLY DOES IT.

The new forestry aims to mimic nature's disaster-style "logging.Despite the risks, some foresters are prepared to try it

of an old growth forest has convinced the University ofWashington's Oliver, Orians and Franklin and Ken Lertzmanof Simon Fraser University that "business as usual" is nolonger possible in North America's forests. Although forest-ers such as David Handley of MacMillan Bloedel areconfident that conventional practices are evolving to meetthe challenges of "multi-use" forests—places shared byloggers, hitch-hikers, campers and scientists—the researchersare sceptical. Further, they say the answer does not lie inill-conceived compromises such as a recent case in BritishColumbia: there, the government divided a forest in two,half for industry and half for conservation.

"We must manage for biodiversity," argues Lertzman. "Wemust manage across a landscape so we maintain all of thestructures that seemed to have occurred naturally over anarea," adds Oliver. The way to achieve this is to set aside large,contiguous patches of old growth which can serve as refugesfor plants and animals, Orians says. Next, says Franklin,scientists and foresters must work together to apply the eco-logical lessons learnt in the forest to the management of thevast areas of unprotected land that will inevitably be logged.

To this end, Franklin has pioneered what he calls the "newforestry". In the "old" forestry, large, fragmented tracts offorest are stripped bare by clear cutting, usually followed bycontrolled burning to remove stumps, branches and snags. Thenew forestry tries to mimic nature's disaster-style "logging".techniques. "New forestry translates into maintaining snags,downed logs, woody debris, and even large green trees aspart of managed systems," says Franklin. "You cut a largerpercentage of the landscape [at one time], but then youget out and leave it alone."

The new forestry is controversial, risky and unproven. Butits potential benefits to forest conservation are so greatthat already foresters in the National Forests of Siskiyou andWillamette are applying the concepts on a trial basis. TheWashington State Department of Natural Resources hasrecommended creating an Experimental State Forest onpublic lands on the Olympic Peninsula in order to try thetechniques on a wide scale.

Franklin passionately hopes that the new forestry will proveitself, catch on, and safeguard the matchless forests of hischildhood. "Certainly if all the old growth forests were gonetoday, the planet would not cease to turn. It would still goon," he reflected. "But it has to do, not with whether life ispossible, but whether life is worthwhile. For life to be worth-while for me, we need that richness, that diversity and thatopportunity that the old growth forests provide." ^

New Scientist 13 October 1990 29

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