Divining Healthy Forests 

By Mary Stuever

Vol. 23 Number 4,  2002

This article was first publsihed in 2002 in The Forester's Log, a monthly newspaper column by the author syndicated in the southwest.  Reprinted here with permission.

When I was a freshman forestry undergraduate, a wizened old professor tried to explain to us eager, know-it-all eighteen and nineteen-year-olds that forestry was both an art and a science.  Blah, blah, blah.  It was the seventies, and we knew we were going to change the world.  We were products of the “Earth Day” generation and our lives would be devoted to caring for the forests.  Give us four years of accumulated semester hours, unleash us to the woods, and everyone would live happily ever after in wonderland.  The professor droned on about the value of experience, the complexity of ecosystems, and the importance of recognizing what you do not know.  Blah, blah, blah.  We wanted it laid out in black and white.  We wanted him to get past the introduction and tell us in crisp, clear, concise lessons just what we needed to know to go be keepers of the forest.  Yet he insisted on withholding such a simplistic outlook.  He insisted we become artists inspired by science and scientists inspired by art.  He made us look beneath the surface and divine what we wanted when we asked to manage for healthy forests.  By the end of the semester, we no longer craved the black and white but had found fascination in the multitudes of gray.

Twenty-five years later, and the forests are no wonderland.  We are far from living happily ever after as we face unprecedented forest health conditions.  In recent dry summers we have watched our dreams literally go up in smoke.  We have spent decades applying our craft to address increasingly dense forest conditions in the face of an almost hostile political climate opposed to any “forest management.” Then the weather changed.  Dry years: 1996, 2000, and 2002, each year escalating the severity of the conditions in the forest.  There is no joy in saying “we told you so”; what minor elation in finally getting our message across is dulled by the pain of witnessing abnormally catastrophic fires ripping through the countryside.

In the wake of public opinion turning towards taking action in the woods, I am concerned about a different type of fire ripping through the countryside.  It is this simplistic, one-size-fits-all dogma that the solution is simply to remove more trees.  I am reminded of the professor of freshmen forestry students who refused to let us see the world in black and white.  We are selling our forest communities short when we do not recognize the various hues of gray.  We are forgetting that forest management is both an art and a science that demands every bit of experience, every minor observation, and every thoughtful insight to decide on each action we take on the ground.

We need to act quickly and decisively to address the dense, fuel-laden forests, but it is much more complicated than racing to the woods with our chainsaws.  We need to work with ecosystems, applying our knowledge, understanding the nuances of each situation.  For example, much of the research on fuels treatment has been done in the vicinity of Flagstaff, Arizona in close proximity to a research station and a university.  The dominant plant association there is Ponderosa Pine/Arizona Fescue.  This is a forest community that grows trees and grass.  It is possible to remove many trees and create grassy fuelbreaks in this type.  If we take the cookbook approach pioneered there and apply it to a different forest, say a Ponderosa Pine/Gambel Oak plant association in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the result could be disastrous.  Instead of creating a safety zone, we would create the kind of shrub brushfield that was responsible for fourteen deaths in 1994 on Storm King Mountain in Colorado.  There are at least thirty different plant associations in the Southwest that support ponderosa pine forests, and understanding the implications of working in these plant associations is only a small part of the knowledge we need to apply as we take to the woods to create healthy forests.

Perhaps we had to “dumb down” the message to a simple mantra of “remove trees” in order to get the support of politicians and media moguls in search of sound bites.  Let’s hope though that as we go to the woods with chainsaws, we are going well informed, with a well-designed plan of action that will truly help us restore health to the forests of the Southwest.  Whether we are homeowners or foresters, contractors or government employees, let’s make sure we are applying art and science to our actions.