[Cedars]

Originally Posted by Taildragerdriver

One more thing I want to add is related to my points about the Enviornmental Community. I have been kind of presenting this like it is a one organization.

In fact it is not. I work often with people from the Nature Conservency. These folks are very mangement oriented and are helping to work towards the concepts I have been talking about.

The primary concerns for me are what people call Radical Envornmental groups who mostly are just obstructionist. In other words their only program is to stop progress. We need to somehow limit or engage these kind of groupes.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

And here we will disagree totally. There is no difference between the extremes of obstructionist tree huggers, and the extreme of chop and run timber corps. Both sides (well all three including the forestry dept) have to deal with the courts to resolve the issues and I will not sacrifice any of these parties freedom to pursue their objective to make one parties life easier. You cannot show me that every effort of these extreme tree huggers is ill-founded. Inconvenient for the forestry dept? Too bad. Thats the price you pay when working for we the people.

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedars:

First let me state I'm not the Forest Service or any land mangment agency. I speak for myself and speak about what I know we are doing and trying to do and what I believe. I have spent and still spend my life on the land and got into this work because I love the land and am committed to leaving the wildlands of this country better for each future generation unfortunately I can't accomplish my goal but I'm not going to quit trying. I work on many forests across the west each year and what I see makes me very sad.

I tell you this as a basic concept so you understand it. I don't have a specific agenda except the concept above. I do look at our forests and I didn't like what was going on in the 60s and 70s and was very supportive of the Environmental Movment at the time. I see what is going on now and the consequences are much worse. We are loosing old growth as you state, millions of acres of it each year to fire. The amounts we are loosing may be 10 times what we were loosing to logging in the intensive mangement days. We are loosing habitat for endangered species faster today then we ever have in recoreded history. So as far as I'm concerned something has to change and if we don't change all the information I have indicates we are on a road to much worse conditions than we ever had in the past even before the Land Mangement Agencies came into existance. Obviously we don't have the inventories to prove these numbers but these are what I see as I go from place to place. I somethime think these numbers may be conservative. Most of us don't fly low elevation over our wildlands but I do a lot and I can't go very far anymore with out flying over burned over lands.

I can't speak to what forests are doing across the country but as far as I know the forests I work with in the Intermountian West do not clear cut it is not an option we consider.

So let me talk abit about your reference to the Biscuit Fire. I fought fire on the majority of that land in the 1980's on a fire that burned 1.2 million acres called the Silver Fire. I can't remember the exact year. I have flown this landscape before and after the Biscuit Fire and much of it was comming back with naturally regenrated trees. But due to the the long process required to be able to harvest trees on the Silver Fire very little of the dead wood was removed and vertually all of the Silver Fire reburned in the Biscuit Fire killing the vast majority of that regneration. Many scientists can be refrenced for many issues and many concepts can be supported that relate to a specific case. The issue is what are the real consequences on the land. So we kill a few seedings reducing the fuel loading so we have a chance of not haveing another reburrn, that could be a good choice.

So what are the consequences of a reburn. It has not been long enough on the Biscut Fire yet to be able to judge.

But lets take another example. To the North East of this fire there is another area near a mountain lake called Waldo Lake. There was a fire north of that lake that burned in the middle 1960s that was apporoximately 40 thousand acres. This land was not logged because it was many miles from access roads and could not be reached in time. This land regenerated with healthy trees and in the early 1990's the majority of this fire reburned. Now I have flown and looked at the reburn area, the results are much worse to me than any logging or treatment ever done. I have walked over about 10,000 acres of the reburn. There is less than 1 tree per acre of any kind on these acres and what is worse there is probably less than 1% of the ground on which a plant of any kind is growing. It unfortunately is a vast black area of little vegetation of any kind. The soil is erroding and is effectively dead. The agencies learned lessons about reburns from examples like this, that we need to do something because the public and the congress doesn't want this happening and I don't want it either. What is our recourse on this land now. Hopefully as the snags fall and decay they will provide nutrients for the soil and we will slowly get the forest back in the future 100 to 150 years. In geologic time nature will repair this landscape and as far as nature is concerned erosion and these other losses are repairable. So what I'm portraying here is there is a pretty big falicy in the sudo-science commons that fire is not a problem and we should let burned over areas alone. We have to evaluate that in real terms in each case not in generaliities.

So is the Biscut fire going to be like that. I don't know but I'm pretty sure some of it will, I will keep watching, there are places I know that are looking like they will be like that. So do we want to leave the dead wood on the landscape to reburn a third time and make it worse. Not me but we may not have a choice. If the slow process in the courts keeps work from being done. This is where I feel the process is a problem the result is "if you stall in the courts long enough even if the apelants loose they win" that is why even many democrats voted for the emergency releef bill that allows for a quicker relistic process after fire and other occurances that require salvage.

Next we can disagree on the Native Americans fire methods. Mt Rainier is west side forest and it is well known these tribes didn't use burning in the same way the interior tribes did.

Also the concepts I propose of reducing biomass can easily be done is a way that both maintains and improves the fertility of the forest sites and provides for much lower fire intenity on the landscape. So if there is a fire the majority of the nutriants are not burned off.

A little clerifacation of the Willamette calculations the forest got $200/thousand board feet. That is after prurchaser costs for logging and hauling were removed the prices were somewhere between $300-700/thousand bid. My Math was in error but the forests did contribute a considerable amount of money to the Treasury. But as I say that isn't the point. The point is the current process of fighting things out in court is not even really my issue. It is as I state above we can continue to work this way the unfortunate outcome is the conditions of our wildlands is deteriorating for all of us.

Within 10 air miles of where I live this last year 40 thousand acres burned, some of it was old growth, far more old growth was killed in these fires than all the old growth havested in the area. In the last 10 years about 10 thousand acres a year has burned and the rate is increasing every year. That is true thoughout much of the west. I understand it is a natural process many of these are started by lightning.

A little removed from the point by point discussions but at least this post is more of a statement of what I beleive and what I see. We can talk anicdotes for a long time and not get to the point. I just want to state more specifically what I see happening and what I beleive. It is more to the point. I am very unhappy to see this happening. You may not be but that is your choice. I hope we as a nation will come to our senses we are not caring for our wildlands, we are letting our cities expand removing large areas of habitat and the results are not at all what we though the envromental movement of the time would produce.

The one great concilation to me is that over great amounts of time nature is very resiliant in a general sense. All the lands will recover, many species will be lost but others will take their place. The question for me is does it have to be that way. We are letting lots of people get their fingers into the process. It seemed like a good idea at the time but maybe it really isn't. That is not for me to say but over time we as a nation will have to judge.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[Taildragerdriver]

OK So Now "What is the rest of the story"

I wanted to take a minute to close the discussion out if we want to. It is a lot of work keeping this going and I have another main focus.

As you can see from my last post I have a set of beliefs about what is happening on the land on a large scale. We can talk examples for ever. There are many cases which demonstrate almost any case. In the many millions of acres of wildlands in this country a lot of things happening good and bad if humans are involved or not.

So the real work I do is to try to work with people to get the big answers. In fact the actual number of acres in any condition is never well know. So the big question is are thing getting better or worse depending on what we judge to be defined as better or worse. For example the area I described in the last post that was reburned seems bad to me but to some species it might be good. Those species might find a great habitat and some rare species could do better than ever there. The same could be true for failed clear cuts we talked about earlier. The fact is we just don't know. But as long as there is a lot of diversity it may well be OK

So the question is how much of the land is covered with any specific habitat or condition and are important conditions missing or in very short supply. For example we know most of us think there is not enough old growth. But how do we know.

The project I run that works across the land management agencies first works to develop detailed or fine scale vegetation maps and attempts to quantify just how accurate they are. This is done by expanding the sampling data that we collect into detailed landscape data we can use to answer these kinds of questions. This is a very difficult process because we can't just go out and sample each place on the landscape with all the acres these agencies have responsibility to manage.

I'm lucky to get to work with real smart people from places like Los Alamos National Lab, MIT, Texas A&M and many others in management and research to develop the methods that will help us develop and easily maintain these fine scale vegetation maps. We can then look at what is on the landscape and define my view of say old growth and test to see how much there is under that definition. Then someone else can do the same and we can then find out how much there is under that definition. This is done with a method of spreading these sample around using big statistical programs with a relationship to landsat images.

There are landsat images that are as much as 40 years old I believe. So when we have this method well tested and defined we could run the same kind of questions against conditions 40 years ago and see how much it has changed.

You can read more about this at our website

Informs Software

So the exciting thing about this is if I can't change what is going on out there on the landscape. We can and will disagree on what it good or bad or what example is the proof of our point.

But if we can all start from a common basic example of what is really there on the land. We have a chance to at least have our discussions from a point of real information. If I can't affect the land directly as I used to, at least I can possibly leave a legacy of knowing what is on the land.

We have a lot of work to do to get this right but we are lots smarter than we were a few years ago. With continued work and in a few years we hope to be able to keep up to date maps of all the lands managed by federal land mangers and make it available to anybody who wants to know.

Thanks for the discussion it has been fun.

Taildragerdriver

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Taildragerdriver

Thanks for the discussion it has been fun.

Thank you.

[Cedars]

Taildragerdriver:
I can understand and respect your needing to devote your online time to other aspects of this forum that hold interest to you, and this is a very complicated issue with numerous factors. I have no doubt you believe firmly in the statements you have made, however, doing a bit of googling, I run into counter information.

If there wasnt variables in the data we wouldnt have much to discuss.

In this forum, it is (dare I say) encouraged to bring opposing thoughts to the table and both parties may be required to back up statements with sources. It may be fustrating to you (time/interest constraints) and you do try to be fair in your posting.

The thing I keep in mind when posting is it seems for every one party posting, 10 havent an opinion and are looking for more info before deciding which idea they can support. Its an opportunity to further information to alot of people who only have newsbites as their sources. And forum posting has improved my arguing/research skills greatly since discovering them on the www. That said...

I found this exchange between the two of us to have alot of information for others and enjoyed playing the part of 'other viewpoint' with you. Your contributions are appreciated and anytime you want to pick it back up, let me know. I will leave the posts basically unanswered (and I had a bunch to say) until your ready to continue (unless someone else wants to take up the gauntlet).

Enjoy the forums!

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedar:

I would also like to continue our discussion. I will probably slow down the response time a bit though so I can concentrate on the "terra preta" forum a bit more.

I appreciate that we can do this in a good open honest presentation of our beliefs and ideas. I think many people have great concerns for our public lands and I am glad that is true. So I can see how this discussion is valuable.

I respect all points of view on this issue and it seems like you do as well.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[Jay-qu]

I was in a national park down here a few years back - wilson's promentory - and the rangers there where doing some controlled burns to minimise the excess build up. On the 2nd day I was there I found a seagull with an injured wing, so after a little effort I managed to capture and calm the thing down. I took it to a ranger and asked if he would help it, he replied "no sorry, we like to let nature take its course and not interfere" go figure! for some reason he didnt think doing controlled burning was 'interfering' with natures way of doing things...

[Cedars]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

I was in a national park down here a few years back - wilson's promentory - and the rangers there where doing some controlled burns to minimise the excess build up. On the 2nd day I was there I found a seagull with an injured wing, so after a little effort I managed to capture and calm the thing down. I took it to a ranger and asked if he would help it, he replied "no sorry, we like to let nature take its course and not interfere" go figure! for some reason he didnt think doing controlled burning was 'interfering' with natures way of doing things...

Interesting comment Jay-qu. It used to be like that here (and maybe still) when finding an injured animal on a park. For Minnesota, I am not aware of any park related wildlife rehabilitation efforts. They are all other aspects of wildlife rehab (usually tied to the U of MN). I think if I were to find a wounded animal and attempted to remove it from the park to take it to help, I would be violating a state law (law regarding removal of plants/animals from park boundries). That is not to say I wouldnt do it anyways. As far as National parks, I would imagine the law is similar (thinking back on Yellowstone rules). Now if I were to find a wounded eagle, I am sure the effort by the park personal would be positive and every effort would be made to save that bird. Priorities. Plus the blow back from negative press, if they ignored the eagle it would be a public relations nightmare.

But heres a links page with info on wildlife rehabs around the world, should you encounter something like this again. You might have been able to get permission to remove the bird for rehab elsewhere.

World Wildlife Rehab contacts


I have brought a few injured animals in for rehab after finding them wounded (car accidents mostly, others unknown). All of them had to be euthanized because their injuries were so dramatic. The one that made me the most sad was the male Great horned owl. He ended up blind from the encounter and I was told this is a common side effect of car/bird collisions. But I will continue to bring them in as I find them. I felt better for trying and I also know the animal didnt suffer any longer than it had too.

[InfiniteNow]

Off topic, but well done, Cedars. A person's approach to animals speaks volumes about their character. [/humbled]

[Jay-qu]

Update.. over 500,000 hectares and still going, 20 homes lost. The weather is not helping but at least we are not choking on smoke down here anymore..