Scientists say that 10 years of study completed in December convinced them that the U.S. Forest Service should proceed with aggressive forest thinning projects in the Sierra Nevada. The problem, say observers and even representatives of forest management agencies, is that they don’t have the funding needed to do the necessary work.
The benefits of thinning forests include increased yields of water for farms, cities and rivers and reduced chances that catastrophic wildfires will destroy forests, homes and habitat, according to the study. And as the size and intensity of wildfires gradually increases, the danger posed by failing to act is increasing, according to a report issued by the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project.
“The next one to three decades are a critical period. After this time it may be very difficult to influence the character of Sierra Nevada forests, especially old-forest characteristics,” the scientists wrote in their report. The massive study involved scientists from the U.S. Forest Service, the University of California and other state and federal entities.
John Buckley, the executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, was personally present at many of the science group meetings during the decade-long study. He acknowledged that although some disputes over habitat preservation and logging remain, that is not why forest officials have failed to adequately thin forests. “The primary reason that the Forest Service has not drastically ramped up its pace and scale of forest thinning treatments and prescribed fire treatments is because Congress repeatedly fails to provide the Forest Service with enough dollars,” Buckley said.
The Forest Service response to the report makes an indirect acknowledgement of that, saying “We continue to struggle with how we can protect resources over both long-term and short-term horizons in the context of historic decisions and likely future conditions.” The report said that it was difficult to even get consistent funding for the experimental forest thinning projects done in several locations for the studies.
From the Calaveras Enterprise: https://www.calaverasenterprise.com/news/article_9b99239e-b8be-11e5-948d-af6a874619a6.html?utm_source=WIT011516&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=WeekInTrees