Eco-friendly Sustainable Forestry Management
Wildfire Prevention and Forest Stewardship by Harvesting Dead Wood
Mar 24, 2009
During the 20th Century, the environmental policy for protecting forests leaned heavily on allowing forests to develop devoid of any human touch. Campers and hikers know the emphasis placed on “leaving no mark” from their presence.
Forest Stewardship
Keeping human tampering of forests to a minimum is a primary method for prevention of destruction to forests. A middle-ground conservation technique, which includes careful, human stewardship of forests, appears to be a developing trend.
Environmentalists are realizing the need for “human stewardship” of our forest resources in the same tradition as the Native Americans in generations past, who used various techniques in managing forests and wildlife. “Forestry is a complex business, and our understanding of the forest system is constantly evolving,” states Northern Woodlands, a Forestry Conservation Magazine.
The tools of forestry stewardship must include professional, selective harvesting by foresters to promote long-term forest growth, which will be beneficial to all. Instead of clear cutting, where all the trees in an area would be cut down for manufacturing. The selective harvesting needs to be led by the appropriate professionals to maintain the health of the forest.
Forest Fire Prevention Includes Using Fire
Also, needed is the careful use of controlled fires, such as used by Native Americans in the past, to manage forest undergrowth and to prevent dead wood or woody biomass overload, which has created a “tinderbox” effect in many National Forests and is the likely cause of much of the extensive, super-wildfires that have swept the West Coast in the last decade.
According to the Washington Forest Protection Association or WFPA, “more small dead and dying trees form ‘fuel ladders’ to the highly combustible crowns or tops of large trees. Subsequently, the risk of catastrophic fire is the most serious threat to the health and sustainability of our national forests today.”
Managment of the forest floor woody biomass, by controlled fires and harvesting, will help to protect forests by keeping fireprone deadwood at lower levels to allow firefighters to fight more maintainable wildfires.
Dead Wood: A Natural Renewable Resource
Another, less-discussed method for environmentally-friendly forest management is the harvesting of an appropriate percentage of this deadwood, or coarse woody material, on the forest floor and lower branches. The Forest Stewardship Council’s, a non-profit organization promoting sustainable forestry worldwide, recommends that harvesting leave enough dead woody material to “provide nutrient capital and habitat.”
Harvesting of coarse woody material, at a rate of 50% appears to be an appropriate sustainable practice in many forested areas, to both protect the forest soil from depletion of nutrients and maintain wildlife habitat, as well as, to protect the forest from the tinderbox effect causing the super-wildfires that burn up through the canopy or to the tops of trees.
Woody biomass is an under-utilized by-product of forest management that could be used as a renewable resource for fuel and manufacturing, if harvested with eco-friendly methods that protect the forest and its wildlife. Use of this under-valued wood resource has been overlooked by the wood business for the last century.
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