2006
19 January 2006. Lumber
firm bankruptcy may imperil redwoods. FATE
OF 200,000 ACRES IN HUMBOLDT IN DOUBT. By
Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News and NPR
story (audio available): . Pacific
Lumber Co. Faces Financial Crisis. by
Jason Margolis
Fall 2006. Ancient
Forest and Fire. Today's fires are the crucible
for tomorrow's old-growth forests. By
James Johnston. Forest Magazine. Excerpt:
...The real fascination of a centuries-old
forest ... is found in the subtle intricacy
of life and relationships between living things.
Chris Maser, writing in Forest Primeval: The
Natural History of an Ancient Forest, examines
one thread of the millions that make up this
rich tapestry:
"Flying squirrels are associated with large amounts of
rotting woodÉbecause that is where their food, the belowground
truffles, fruits most abundantly. Most of the truffles in one
way or another are dependent on the rotting wood in the soil,
and flying squirrels, whose main food is truffles, are the
staple prey for the spotted owls. These owls are therefore
indirectly dependent on the rotting wood."
Each nook and cranny of an ancient forest's
extravagant foliage is a home or hunting ground
for a different species of bird, rodent, cat,
bruin, deer or bat. All these species are
predators of, prey to, or even a home for
thousands of other life forms, all interacting
ceaselessly with each other, with the vegetation
and with the soil in astonishing ways that
are, for the most part, unknown to us.
..."In 1902 we had a lot of fire in the
Pacific Northwest," says Jerry Franklin,
a professor at the University of Washington's
College of Forest Resources. "There wasn't
anyone around to salvage-log it. As the forest
grew up, instead of being a collection of
uniform small trees, it had this legacy of
large snags. Some of that forest became habitat
for northern spotted owl by the time it was
sixty or eighty years of age." Without
large snags, he says, it would have taken
the forest 150 years or longer to develop
the biologic diversity necessary to support
spotted owls. ...the Forest Service today
is looking to the burned landscapes of the
West to meet timber quotas. Mills desperate
for logs are scrambling to get their hands
on burned timber, and they're funding an aggressive
public relations blitz to brand burned forests
as public enemy number one. According to their
spin, dead trees are devoid of wildlife, pollute
drinking water supplies, set the stage for
more-severe fires and, if left unlogged, obstruct
forest regeneration. And, of course, the spin
contends that burned trees that could be turned
into timber products go to waste, their value
lost as the wood is infested with insects,
rots, and falls to the ground. But the value
of dead wood, according to Franklin and others,
can't be calculated just with dollar signs.
Nutrient-rich soil is created by dead wood
decomposing over time, and the only dead wood
that will be returned to the soil of a young
forest is from the last big fire-it can be
hundreds of years before the forest begins
developing large dead wood supplies of its
own. In addition to their role in energy and
nutrient cycling, the dead snags left after
a fire create habitat for more than two-thirds
of ancient forest species. The fallen wood
holds in soil that might otherwise wash into
streams, choking salmon spawning grounds.
And healthy aquatic systems depend on the
pools and riffles created by the same large
logs as they are slowly deposited into the
stream decades after a fire. ...
Fall 2006. The
Owl, Spotted. By Alison Hawthorne Deming.
NRDC - OnEarth. Excerpt:
When scientists and poets spend time in each
other's company, the result is a deeper look
into the world's hidden beauty. ...The northern
spotted owl is perhaps the most studied bird
in the world, inspiring unprecedented collaboration
among scientists, federal and state agencies,
universities, and landowners. ...The data gathered
led in 1994 to the comprehensive Northwest Forest
Plan, which decreased the rate of logging and
altered how it is done, giving the owls and
their entire ecosystem a better chance at survival.
But data cannot compare to the experience of
that deep well of attention, quiet, and presence
that is the owl. She has a spotted breast; a
long, barred tail; and tawny facial disks with
brown semicircles fringing her face and back-to-back
white parentheses framing her eyes. These markings
give the impression that her eyes are the size
of her head. The blackness of her pupils is
so pure they look like portals into the universe....
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