![]()
Chapter 1
Introduction
Successive, widely publicized wildfires have swept through forests of western North America, beginning in 1987 in California and Oregon and 1988 in Yellowstone National Park and the Northern Rockies. During most fire seasons since, hundreds of forest homes and cabins have gone up in flames, from the mountain suburbs of Los Angeles to Kelowna, British Columbia. By now anyone interested in western forests is aware that our management and protection policies have failed to account for the historical role of fire, leaving a legacy of dense forests with sickly trees and hazardous fuels.
Since about 1990, newspapers, magazines, television news, and Congressional hearings have warned of ecological deterioration and increasing wildfire hazard in western forests. The now familiar story is that suppression of fires for nearly a century and logging of fire-resistant old growth trees spawned an overcrowded growth of smaller trees vulnerable to intense blazes and epidemics of insects and disease. Todayâs dense forests also lack diverse and productive grass and shrub communities needed by wildlife. Each year we channel more money, personnel, and technology into fire suppression, but uncontrollable wildfires continue to threaten forests and the homes and recreation areas within them. Despite recognizing the impending peril facing broad expanses of western forests, we remain polarized and indecisive about what to do.
After decades of studying western forests, the authors recognized that the magnificent old-growth trees that survived and depended on periodic fires disappear when deprived of this essential disturbance process. When forests of these venerable trees are managed using traditional timber harvesting methods, the features that made them famous ultimately disappear. When these forests are protected in ânatural areasâ that fail to restore the historical role of fireâas in the majority of parks, wilderness, and primitive areasâthe big old fire-resistant trees gradually die and are replaced by thickets of small trees. Our experience revealed that long-lived trees and other important features of fire-prone forests can be restored through management that mimics the effects of historical fires. Although research studies and practical examples indicate how to restore forests and reduce potential damage from wildfires, insects, and disease, they get little play in the media. However, it is these topicsâscientific findings and real-world management examplesâthat we bring together in this book.
This book advocates changing direction in the management of western forests and adopting an approach we call ârestoration forestryâ that is based on historical natural processes. Restoration forestry does not have a well-established definition. We use it to designate the practice of reinstituting an approximation of historical structure and ecological processes to tree communities that were in the past shaped by distinctive patterns of fire. The intent is not to re-create a single, distinct âhistorical conditionâ but rather a range of conditions representative of historical ecosystems (Fiedler 2000a). This is a narrower, more immediate, and more attainable goal than restoration of the entire forest ecosystem, known as âecological restoration,â and defined as âthe process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyedâ (Society for Ecological Restoration International: www.ser.org).
Restoration of the forest tree community (the goal of restoration forestry) triggers desired changes in the vigor and composition of undergrowth plants, large and small mammal populations, avian communities, and microfauna as well as soil, hydrologic, and biochemical processes. Thus, restoration of tree communities is the key process that initiates and facilitates the broader goal of ecological restoration. Few forest types have been studied thoroughly enough to attempt ecological restoration. One exception is the southwestern ponderosa pine forest (Friederici 2003a).
How much restoration forestry is needed? When people learn that more than one hundred million acres of fire-prone western forests harbor deteriorating conditions outside the historical range of variability, they are struck by the staggering extent of this problem. Given the difficulties of applying restoration, some may judge the situation hopeless. However, our experience suggests that any strategically located restoration treatments can produce noticeable benefits in reducing wildfire hazard to homes and communities and return important features of historical forests. In some areas, restoration forestry relies on returning natural fires. In others it requires cutting treatments to produce a more natural forest structure before using prescribed fire. In heavily populated areas it may rely on strategic removal of certain trees and forest fuels. In natural areas initial cultural treatments may eventually be replaced by fire. This book explains the options and considerations involved in planning restoration forestry across a range of geographical settings and ownerships. For students and others interested in more detailed information, the book cites publications that elaborate on specific topics.
How the Book Is Organized
In Part I, chapters 2â5, we examine the ânuts and boltsâ underlying restoration forestry as applied to fire-dependent forests: why it is needed, how it developed, and how it is applied.
In Part II (chapters 6â15) we look âunder the hoodâ to understand restoration projects in different forest types representing each historic fire regime and under contrasting management goals. We study notable restoration projects from Arizona to Alberta and California to Colorado. Some projects are designed to protect homes and developments. Others return natural processes to wilderness areas, enhance habitat in privately owned conservation reserves, or promote sustainability in timber-producing forests. These examples of restoration forestry represent a spectrum of vegetation types, from aspen and pinyon-juniper through the heart of the conifer forest to high-elevation whitebark pine communities.
Our examples demonstrate how diverse landowners and forest stewards designed and carried out treatments to return features and processes of historically sustainable forests, despite limited funding, smoke regulations, and many other constraints. We evaluate how well these projects have achieved restoration goals and interpret how they might be improved. The majority of these projects focus on stand-level restoration, but in chapter 14 we examine strategic restoration efforts in a large timber-producing forest, and in chapter 15 we profile a project aimed at restoring a vast wilderness landscape.
Part III concludes the book (chapter 16) by placing restoration forestry in a broad perspective and specifying factors critical for its success. We summarize how restoration forestry uses knowledge of historical natural processes as the basis for managing for different landowner goals. Restoration forestry provides for ecological sustainability of the forest and the resources and amenity values important to humans. It also allows highly developed countries to sustainably manage natural forests rather than exploiting them or those of less developed countries.
![]()
Part I
Fundamentals
Part I (chapter 2) begins by looking at some fundamentals: why traditional forestry tried to exclude fire from forests, why this attempt failed, and why foresters and ecologists now recognize the need for management based on how natural ecosystems operate. Information on fireâs historic role (chapter 3) provides a foundation for designing restoration strategies. Some forests experienced an âunderstory fire regime,â in which frequent low-intensity fires burned along the ground, consuming surface fuels, keeping the understory open, and favoring long-lived fire-resistant trees. In contrast, the âstand replacement fire regimeâ had infrequent high-intensity fires that killed nearly all trees but gave rise to luxuriant communities of herbs, shrubs, and tree seedlings that require fire or other major disturbance. In between was the âmixed fire regime,â in which fires of varying intensities occurred at fluctuating intervals and burned in complex patterns, creating diverse tree and undergrowth plant communities and variable amounts of surviving old trees. We further examine how forest conditions have been altered in these three different fire regimes.
In chapter 4 we answer the fundamental questions posed by those challenging the premise of restoration forestry: Canât we just let nature do the restoration? If we leave the forest alone, wonât it eventually return to its historical condition? Have forest environments and burning patterns changed so irrevocably that this wonât work? Chapter 5 describes how management goals influence the strategies used in restoration forestry. We look at different techniques and outline the elements of a restoration management plan. Economic considerations are an integral part of any plan; consequently, we evaluate short-term and long-term costs and benefits. Lands managed with restoration forestry often donât turn a profit, but they do yield long-term benefits in aesthetics, wildlife habitat, forest protection, and where desired, timber production. We will see how the cost of restoration forestry can sometimes be offset by the value of trees removed in treatment, but that recovering this value is not the motivation for treatment.
![]()
Chapter 2
Ecologyâs Role in Forest Management
In 1857 Lt. Edward Beale journeyed across the high northern plateaus of what would later become the Arizona Territory with a band of camels that he dreamed would revolutionize transportation in the Southwest. He described the vast ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa ) forest in glowing terms: âWe came to a glorious forest of lofty pines, through which we traveled ten miles. [The ground was] covered with the finest grass.... The forest was perfectly open and unencumbered with brushwoodâ (Cooper 1960, p. 130). Similarly, pioneer journals from the 1850s described the Oregon Trail in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon as climbing through open groves of magnificent ponderosa pines. Pioneers extolled the lush grass beneath the trees, and almost every late summer they witnessed fires burning through the country with little effect on the trees (Evans 1990). Today dense forests and thickets of small trees blanket these landscapes, grass is sparse, and big trees are few.
Why Traditional Forestry Failed
Why didnât the methods used in traditional forestry prevent deterioration of western forests? Forestry, which predated the science of ecology, failed from the beginning to recognize the ecological importance of fire. Concepts of forestry were developed in moist regions of Europe for the purpose of reestablishing trees on land deforested centuries earlier (Arno and Allison-Bunnell 2002). Early European foresters considered fire entirely a destructive force introduced by humans. We now know that most North American forests as well as ancient forests in Europe were shaped over thousands of years by distinctive patterns of fire (Pyne 1997).
When European-American settlements were expanding across North America in the 19th century, countless fires threatened everything from mining camps to major communities (Pyne 1982). Many fires were started accidentally by railroads, campfires, or settlers clearing land. Although a few visionaries recommended controlled burning of forests during a relatively safe season to reduce fire threats, forestry leaders, conservationists, and many landowners thought that fire should be suppressed and largely eliminated. In 1908 the U.S. Forâest Service developed a primary mission funded by Congress to suppress forest fires; it also tried to prevent any use of fire as a tool to maintain forests. Over the next several decades the Forest Service led a multiagency, paramilitary-type program to eliminate forest fires.
Beginning in the 1950s clear-cut harvesting, which removes all trees from a sizeable area, was commonly applied to forests historically dominated by the mixed and stand replacement fire regimes (Clary 1986). Following harvest, the ground was usually prepared for regeneration of a new forest by scraping with bulldozers or prescribed burning. Dozer scraping displaces the productive upper soil layer, leaving a surface highly susceptible to invasion by introduced weeds. Burned clear-cuts bear some resemblance to forests in the stand replacement fire regime, except that the latter have an abundance of standing dead trees (snags). Snags cast beneficial shade and provide habitat for a variety of birds and small mammals that nest in cavities made by woodpeckers.
By the 1960s, rapidly expanding knowledge in the young science of ecology revealed that fire plays an essential role in natural forests. During the 1970s natural resource agencies changed course in response to this new knowledge and to escalating costs of fire suppression and recognized that fire should be used in forest management (Nelson 1979). However, by this time a variety of barriers had developed. An influential âfire suppression industryâ had built up to serve the lucrative firefighting effort by providing personnel and equipment of all sorts, and it depended on continuation of the fire exclusion policy (Arno and Allison-Bunnell 2002).
Over the decades, money and other incentives were geared to putting fires out, not to using and managing fire. The public, nurtured on Smokey Bear messages, had also been convinced that all fire in the forest was bad. A host of new laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Protection Act, had many beneficial effects, but they also spawned regulations that hindered returning a natural disturbance process like fire. New homes and developments worth billions of dollars sprang up in dense high-hazard forests, increasing the political outcry when foresters wanted to use fire. In addition, the potential liability managers face when prescribed or natural fires go awry far outweighs any rewards they might receive for using fire successfully. Governments are accustomed to spending vast amounts to suppress firesâan effort well received by the publicâbut resist spending smaller amounts to reduce forest fuels and subsequent fire damage. The ability to suppress unwanted fires and to control prescribed fires remains an essential tool for managing forests. Our mistake was trying to eliminate fire in western forests.
Examples from different fire regimes (presented in Part II) illustrate important differences between conventional timber management and restoration treatments that include tree removal. In forests historically subject to the understory and mixed fire regimes, traditional logging removed the large fire-resistant trees and allowed saplings to proliferate and develop into thickets. Restoration treatments leave many of the large fire-resistant trees, remove more small trees and sometimes medium and large shade-tolerant trees, and often use prescribed fire to kill some of the seedlings and saplings, mimicking effects of historical fires (Fiedler 2000a). Valuable timber remains, and on some ownerships can increase and help pay for tending the stand again in the future. In place of clear-cutting in the stand replacement fire regime, restoration forestry may prescribe âvariable retention harvesting,â in which patches of live trees and snags are left within irregularly shaped units (Franklin and others 1999). These areas may later be prescribe burned, with treatment effects more comparable ecologically to a natural burn.
Roots of Restoration Forestry
Perhaps the earliest example of restoration forestry in America came in the 1890s when Gifford Pinchot and a German forester named Carl Schenck were hired to restore native hardwoods on the deforested Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina. However, the concept of restoring and maintaining more natural conditions in fire-prone western forests developed slowly, in tandem with the emerging disciplines of forest ecology and fire ecology. Pioneering ecologist Frederic Clements (1910) characterized the fire ecology of high-elevation lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) forests and advocated using controlled fire in their management. In the 1920s research showed that when fire was withheld from longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests in the Southeast, brown-spot disease fatally attacked young pines. ...
