"Jerry" wrote in message om...
The ONLY reason why old growth has survived for hundreds of years is
that they had substantial drought resistance and lesser numbers. There
was the perfect balance of trees to water. Now, with overstocked
stands of trees, there isn't enough water to go around.

Well, you would know more about that than me but by having more trees over
more territory, it seems like if there wasn't enough water to grow these
trees, they wouldn't have germinated in the first place or died out shortly
after they did. What the real problem here is not cutting trees, it's fire
suppression. Let the forests burn and replenish themselves and everything
will be okay. Of course, thinning next to residential areas is no problem.
But leave the deep forests alone!


In California's Sierra Nevada, EVERY watershed and river system is
significant. We cannot allow them to burn at high intensity. Once
again, there is too much fuels, live and dead, in a great many areas.
The true issues are fire resistance and drought resistance. You solve
those two and everything else works out great. How do you burn a
thicket of 12 inch dbh firs without killing off the bigger trees you
want to live?

How do we
reduce massive fuels, both live and dead? We thin. You can't burn
trees that are in the 9-18" range and all of them can't grow to be old
growth. Whaddya do with them? You cut them and use them, tying up the
CO2 in a product made of wood. Forest soils will not be depleted
because a burning program will return plenty of micro and
macro-nitrients back to the soil, increasing bio-diversity, improving
wildlife habitat and, best of all, you have a drought resistant and
healthy forest.

You leave them burn to start the forest cycle over again! Simple as that.

So, that's your whole stratagy? A "let-burn" program? I don't see
anyone else in favor of that. Especially the scientists and
politicians.


You propose to restore the balance by letting forests burn at high
intensity and starting over. Talk about throwing out the baby with the
bath water. The hole in your plan is that you fail to see that the
frequency of high intensity burns is way higher than was in the past.
Maybe by an order of magnitude! That is unacceptable to me. We have to
intervene, correct it and then craft a sensible burning plan to manage
the fuels after the initial project.

They said the same about Yellowstone. Many cried that that forest was
"lost" and the damage was so severe it would take a century to recover. Now
only after 14 years, the "scientists" see how wrong they were. The park is
well on the road to recovery and a healthier, more natural Yellowstone is
the result. Did the animals leave, die or cease to exist? Nope, they're
still running around and eating better than they ever have.

Yellowstone is a totally different issue. Especially in a National
Park. Lodgepole forests are perfect for your example, being
well-adapted to surviving catastrophic fire. On the other hand, the P.
pine forests survive low to moderate burns fairly well but, most of
today's fires have a much larger component of high intensity burns
than the more natural burns before the white man came and started
putting fires out. I wonder what the acreages are on lost spotted owl
areas, due to catastrophic fire. Same with fisher and goshawk
territories. Same with archeological sites. We HAVE to protect what we
have left and that has to be done through intervention and careful and
gentle management.



And that's a very very long road under your plans. In areas of high
burn intensity, (a significant amount of acres far beyond the
"natural" rate), forests will take 500 years or more to return to what
you think they should be.


Again, look at Yellowstone. For cryin out loud, even take a look at Mt. St.
Helens! That was about as catastrophic as you could get, yet the area is
recovering. You can say that Mt. St. Helens is very slowly recovering but
when you consider that the area was covered with FEET of volcanic ash, it's
recovering faster than anticipated. Mother Nature is able to go on because
she has seen it all in the past and has evolved around the fires, etc. and
has an answer for every, single situation you can shove in her
face----except for an unnatural "thinning" by man that upsets the balance of
tree production, etc.


Droughts and fires happen on a much different scale than volcanoes.
Most forests USED to survive fires and droughts. Not anymore. Fires
and droughts are more devastating than they have ever been.

Areas of moderate burns, (again,
significantly higher than is natural) trees make take years to die
from scorched cambium. Bark beetles come in and find great habitat,
killing a significant amout of trees which survived the fire. High
intensity fires also "cook" forest soils and cause unacceptable
erosion. Areas of moderate burn also often add erosion during storm
events. Culverts plug, roads fail, sediment flows, it's all bad stuff.
And you want to let it happen and say it's "natural"??

All NATURAL and nature has an answer for every, single situation! Leave the
forest alone.


"X" Million acres of high intensity burn in one year is NOT natural!
Uncontrollable forest fires are NOT desirable, no matter how quickly
the forests recover.

Larry eco-forestry rules!