Jackson Forest Forum

November 25, 2009.  A primary mission for the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) is to recommend how the landscape of Jackson Forest should be managed to meet the goals of research and demonstration, restoration, watershed and ecological health, timber management, and recreation.

The Landscape Committee has designated areas to be managed for restoration to older forest and old growth forest. Still, management objectives and methods have not yet have specified for more than half of the forest. The Landscape Committee has recommended that, in the absence of research and demonstration projects, the remainder of the forest be managed using natural or restoration forestry methods — single-tree selection aimed at increasing the size and volume per acre of trees, while striving to maintain a natural, undisturbed feeling.

Various concerns have been raised about this recommendation by JAG members. In particular, those concerned about research and demonstration want to be sure that the forest has sufficient diversity of conditions to support a broad research program. Others are concerned natural forestry might not generate sufficient revenue to fund forest operations, or that trees will be grown to a size that the public will not allow to be cut.

Based on recommendations made by the Research Committee members, but not fully approved by the committee, a clear pathway toward moving forward seems at hand. I have created a "Landscape Reconciliation Roadmap" that lays out the areas of agreement, questions and issues, and ways to resolve the questions and issues.

Those who want a detailed view of the status of JAG’s efforts to reach agreement on Jackson Forest management, may wish to study the roadmap.

Comments are welcome.

Vince Taylor
The above views represent those of the author personally and not as a member of the JAG

August, 2009. The saga of the attempt to sell timber in the North Fork Spur area demonstrates vividly the urgent need to reform timber sale practices in Jackson Forest. This sale was offered twice. Both times there was only a single bidder.

The rejection of the sole bid in the first sale created a political uproar from the Mendocino timber community, causing Jackson Forest to open the sale again. In the first sale, no minimum price was set for redwood, and the bidder, Schmidbauer Lumber of Eureka, offered an absurdly low price of $50 per thousand board feet — less than 10% of the normal price.

In the second sale, Cal Fire set a minimum bid of $205 per thousand board feet for redwood. Schmidbauer was again the sole bidder, bidding just the minimums, and the bid was accepted.

At first glance, the rebid appears to have been good for Jackson Forest. It will receive about $350,000, compared to the $110,000 offered on the first sale. But, in responding to the political pressures, Cal Fire apparently bent over more than a little to ensure that the timber would be sold. The minimum bid of $205 per thousand board feet is well  below even current depressed redwood prices.

When I learned about the terms of the resale, I investigated the current market for redwood in Mendocino County and found that a more appropriate market price would have been about $300 per thousand. This would have added $150,000 to the amount received by Jackson Forest for the 4.5 million board feet of timber it sold.

I wrote my finding to Russ Henly, Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director for Resource Protection. In his reply, he attempted to justify the bid, but he did so by assuming logging costs well above those already specified by Schmidbauer in its initial bid and then tacking on a "profit and risk factor" of 12%. The current depressed market price of timber more than provides an adequate risk and profit factor.

The present practice is for managers of the forest to create a timber harvest plan (THP) that specifies the amounts of timber to be cut and the logging methods. The THP is then put out for bids and sold to the highest bidder. The winning bidder then hires a logging company to do the harvesting and hauling.

The core defect in the present system is that it was designed for a time when the timber industry in Mendocino County was very much larger and multiple mills in nearby Fort Bragg were competing for logs. Now there are no mills in Fort Bragg and only a few mills in the county.

Rather than a competitive bidding situation, we now have a few mills that all exchange information and logs; so there is not the opportunity for open, honest bidding. Equally important, Jackson Forest sales are very large and require large payments up front. These factors discourage bidders and depress the price that Jackson is likely to receive.

The solution to this is for Jackson Forest to harvest and deck logs on its own. It can then sort the logs by types and offer lots of these for sale or bid in quantities that will have the best demand. Micro mills in the area would be able to purchase logs from Jackson, something not currently possible. Not only would this improve the price received, but it would allow Jackson Forest to hire and oversee the logging contractors, ensuring that they met the high standards appropriate for Jackson forest.

The Jackson Advisory Group is expected to recommend making this change. It deserves widespread support.

Recently, at its June 2009 meeting, the Jackson Advisory Committee (JAG) considered a proposal by the JAG Landscape Committee to make Natural Forestry the “default” for management in Jackson Forest. The introduction of their proposal, still very much in draft form and not agreed to by all members of the JAG, describes the committee’s vision:

Rockefeller Grove, Redwood National Park, Humboldt County, California

The Landscape Committee recommends that Natural Forestry be a primary approach to management in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Simply put, Natural Forestry has the goal of simultaneously producing timber and fostering the forest’s development towards its natural age and structural state.

Under Natural Forestry, some portion of trees will be allowed to grow old and die as they would in an unmanaged forest. Another portion of old, large trees will continue to be cut into the indefinite future. One of the purposes of Natural Forestry is to grow many old trees so that some can be harvested without impairing the forest’s ability to provide the special habitats and character of old redwood forests.

Natural Forestry is a conceptual approach to forest management. It recognizes that we are dealing with recovering forests, and makes clear that timber production is an inherent part of the management. It does not prescribe management techniques, but does constrain management techniques to those that are compatible with the goal of fostering the return of forests to their natural age and structural state.

We envision that a wide range of silvicultural approaches will be used in Natural Forestry. Indeed, because Natural Forestry is new and knowledge of the long-term dynamics of recovering redwood forests is limited, it will be essential to apply a variety of silvicultural approaches and to do rigorous monitoring and evaluation of the results.

Natural Forestry will contribute to making Jackson Forest into a world-class research forest. People around the world want to see redwood forests restored. The combination of restoration and timber production will provide a wide scope for research and demonstration that will be of worldwide interest.

Our principles for Natural Forestry for Jackson Forest include meeting revenue and timber production requirements to ensure that Natural Forestry appropriately balances the interests of the clients of the forest and accommodates the legal mandates for the forest. 
The Landscape Committee proposes that Natural Forestry be the basic management approach in all areas of the forest not specifically designated for different management, such as special concern areas, reserves, late-seral development areas, and areas designated for other silvicultural treatment in support of the research and demonstration program. 

I am a member of the Landscape Committee and have participated in developing the proposal for Natural Forestry. I am excited by this approach to managing forests that need to produce revenue, either because they were purchased on borrowed funds, as are a number of  non-profits forest holdings in Mendocino County, or because they need to produce revenue to cover the costs of operating them and repairing past damage, as is the case with Jackson Forest. In Natural Forestry, revenue is generated in the context of restoring the forest to its natural age and state. Timber operations are harmonized with restoration.

Some of  the members of  JAG still have concerns about Natural Forestry as the basic management approach at Jackson. In the coming month the Landscape Committee will be address these concerns and, hopefully, find responses that satisfy these concerns. I will keep you up to date on developments.

I would very much like to hear your thoughts, reactions, concerns about Natural Forestry.  Please post a comment.

Vince Taylor Notes on JAG Landscape Meeting of March 13, 2009 Related to Overall Landscape Allocations

The following are not comprehensive notes on the meeting but focus on the (major) part of the meeting that was related to developing principles for silvicultural allocations across the landscape. Much of the content consists of reasonably literal transcription from a recording of the meeting.

This was a very good meeting that considered in depth development of principles for managing Jackson State Forest based on emulating natural forest processes. The notes are quite long, but if you are interested in this subject, you will find much of interest herein.

An Addendum contains maps that were displayed at the meeting, including one showing preliminary allocations to late seral and older forest and one showing ownership of surrounding lands.

Here is a link to the audio recording of the discussion summarized here [click link once to open a simple player or to download; click again to close]. Be aware, the file is 32 MB in size and several hours long. There is much detail in the discussion that is of value that is not fully captured here. You may wish to listen to selected portions of the recording, which can best be done by clicking the download link. This will either open the browser default player or allow you to download it to listen to in a more advance player.

Natural Landscape Emulation Silviculture

Prior to the meeting Mike Jani and Linwood Gill developed a proposal (a “straw man”) for managing the portion of Jackson Forest “devoted primarily to commercial timber production,” the portions on the JDSF Management Plan Map Figure 5 (see Addendum) other than those designated as preserves, late-seral, older forest, or special concern areas. This probably amounts to about 2/3 of the area of the forest. The discussion recognized that the JAG might recommend that this portion might be different than in the management plan.

The basic idea of the proposal was to use silvicultural methods in a given area of the forest that would emulate the natural processes in that area.

On the West Side of the forest, where redwoods dominate, use single-tree selection generally or small cluster selection (1/5 acre). On

On some portion of the West Side, on north-facing slopes, which would have naturally a higher proportion of fir, use openings up to ½ acre to encourage regeneration of Douglas Fir.

John Helms commented that the openings should relate to tree height, rather than being fixed. There was agreement that this seemed preferable.

The question was raised about whether the silvicultural method should relate to current composition mix or the historical, pre-European mix. It was agreed that pre-European was appropriate.

Marc Jameson said that the West Side was historically dominated by redwoods, even on north facing slopes. The redwood component is currently suppressed by the Douglas Fir that grew up following clearcuts.

On the East Side, where it is heavy to Douglas Fir and hardwoods, with scattered redwoods, employ ½ to 2-1/2 acre group selection as the dominant prescription (some thinning in the matrix), with structural retention in the clearcuts. No more that 25% of the canopy would be retained in the openings, and this would generally be clustered.

[No more that 20% of acreage can be in group openings with less than minimum stocking (what is level?). It generally takes between 10 and 20 years for restocking to occur. The regrowth time would be a constraint on reentry times.]

South and southwestern exposure would have historically had more crown fires. The incidence of fire in such exposures argues for applying (Max)10-acre clearcuts with variable retention (later stated by Linwood as minimum 25% retention, but Mike did not recall a specific number).

Dan Porter doesn’t think there is data to support any particular opening size. We should be cautious in framing recommendations. It is “obviously a mix of emulation forestry and silviculture,” and we should communicate it that way. Actual data shows some instances of much smaller openings and greater overstory retention.

Linwood: On south facing slopes could have higher retention and still get regeneration.

Porter: Western Side proposal is reasonably underpinned by data. On the East Side, much less certain, especially about higher end of fire intensity. Could frame the recommendation in terms of research on different burn prescriptions and wildlife responses.

Brad Valentine said he liked tying the silvicultural recommendations to biological reasoning about the conditions we are trying to emulate.

Mike emphasized that their proposal was tying back into the natural dynamic processes in redwood forests. “When Linwood and I have been expressing our support for Natural Forestry, this is what we have had in mind.”

John Helms:

This would differentiate in my view practices in Jackson and the Redwood Region that differ from what we used to do in the past. In the bad old days, silviculture dogma was that there were these 4 or 5 methods of silviculture … and foresters expected we would try one of those things. In fact, these are just theoretical models. You’ve got this continuum. I would say that the tendency in forestry was to apply one of these standard methodologies. The innovation in the future is to start at the other end. What is the structure you are trying to create… You back away from that and end up with the opening of this size. .. This is the way I would like to see the choice of silviculture expressed. .. In the past, silviculture was process based, rather than outcome based.

I commented that Mike and Linwood’s proposal was far away from the concept of Natural Forestry, which uses as it basic tenant emulating natural forest processes. The reentry rates associated with managing the forest for commercial production would create large openings much more frequently than occurred historically.

Forest commented that we were talking about the areas that were designated for production.

I responded that my idea has been that we would aim to integrate production with emulation of natural forest processes; so that there would not be a conflict between production, ecology, and restoration. “I feel like we are falling back into dividing the forest into two sections — one for ecological values and one for production values. I’d like to see a much hazier distinction between these two categories.” I don’t see clearcuts occurring on the scale and rate proposed.

Mike Jani responded that I was jumping to conclusions. It depends upon the rate of reentry and the scale of the clearcuts. We need to inform this discussion by doing analysis to look at what would production look like if we did the entries at the ends of the possibilities of entry intensity.

“I am agreed that we need to produce enough revenue on a sustainable basis to support the legislative and board mandate to support the state forest system.” I don’t have a problem with this. This is a big forest. We can definitely do this once economic conditions are normal. But, I don’t want to lose sight of the biological underpinnings of strategy and moving too far over to commercial considerations.

Linwood asks for other’s thoughts.

Dan Porter says it is premature to reach judgment at this time, because it really is a time interval thing, and we don’t know what the end revenue stream looks like under differing assumption. Proposal of Mike and Linwood is just preliminary, and we need to do more exploration before adopting anything. Could explore different opening sizes. Keep aspects open.

Mike agrees that need to model it and grow it forward using Cryptos.

Marc says that models the currently exist can’t project growth within openings by opening size. Would need to model using clearcuts and selection harvests and average results. Would be approximate. Cryptos not designed for group openings.

Vince points out that the East Side of the forest is a small part of the forest and we shouldn’t get caught up to much in an ideological battle over something small. Marc says it is about a third of the forest.

Mike: Would use appropriate approach depending upon micro-climate and terrain, not just east or west.

John Helms would like it that in the future when someone comes into the forest, he or she wouldn’t know what silviculture was being applied. “What we really want to do is enhance the growth of the biggest and best trees,” and move it into a different kind of a silviculture where you are trying to upgrade the quality and the redwood growth potential.

Vince: What John stated as a goal, using silvicultural methods that enhance the best trees … [interruption, but I wanted tow support the goal of enhancing the biggest and best trees.]

Mike says that what he is proposing all it does is give the forest manager a spectrum to manage within. The only downside is that it makes life very difficult for modelers and predicting outputs using models, because you are managing at a micro-site level. Over time, averaging will occur over larger area and will become predictable.

John: This is the innovation we are looking for, impact on a larger scale.

Mike: If you think about it, this lends itself much better to the existing inventory. John: Need more plots. Marc: Wanted 2 to 4 times more plots, but reduced due to budget considerations

Vince: It seems like what you (Linwood) in your general approach is what John is talking about, except that you set limits on size. You always go into stands with the idea of improving what is left.

Mike: At some point, you always figure on regeneration. How do you do it?

Linwood: Very small openings. We take the trees on the south side of the clump and maybe the nearby firs. If it is fir, we make opening of less than 1/5 acre, leaving a couple of trees. Mostly on the West Side.

Craig Blencoe used the same approach on a site pretty far to the east. Had

Mike: Sidebar note that on East Side, hardwoods would be treated (not necessarily with herbicides).

Brad: Would like to see some retention of hardwoods, including hardwoods in stands that are primarily conifers. This represents a natural seral stage.

[Interesting discussion on regeneration. Linwood happy to have repressed regeneration for 15-20 years, and will release it at a future time. Linwood says he has had “surprising” release of firs that are older.]

Vince: We are thinking about the long term. It is good we have a different time scale than commercial foresters who need a high rate of return. A public forest doesn’t need such a high rate of return. The forest is going to be here in hundred of years. We can afford to wait for 30 years for a return.

Mike: Agrees intuitively, but not prepared to make judgments until do modeling and analysis.

Kathy: Needs a clear description. When say, 10 acres, historically the maximum is what happens. Need a very clear description to ensure that smaller acreage is used when appropriate. Also, what will happen to the retained trees in opening?

Mike: Sometime retain and sometimes not at MRC.

Dan: If we adopt thematic approach, along with allocation recommendations, also JAG suggest as part of implementation, there be appropriate staffing allocations to communicate to the local and broader community the underlying rationale. All operations are part of research. Not a 100 year plan, not even a 50 year plan, but ongoing research and monitoring. Also believes strongly in the value of outside vetting.

Mike: If applying “thematic” approach on many acres, Marc, what tools do you have to compare alternative scenarios?

Marc: Option A had many yield runs. Can draw on those. Run every silvicultural system on every veg polygon.

Vince: Based on various discussions I’ve been having with people via emails, I’ve found strong support for the kind of “thinning from below” that Linwood does. From my point of view, growing it back to old growth while doing this is, in some sense, just a variation of this approach. If you are going to grow it all the way back, or just grow it to some point and then harvest it, it starts out the same way. I wonder if there is some reason not to adopt this as the basic silvicultural model for the forest, other than for research?

Dan: I think it really depends. You need to weigh the effects on forest structure of a certain minimum revenue need; then in parallel the effects on structure of the replacement rates in ancient presettlement forests. At the end of that analysis, with all the caveats, you might conclude that the answer to Vince’s question is, “No.”

Vince: Where might there be a problem?

Dan: If the economic revenue requirements is such that with the interval included that the openings foreclose opportunities to achieve the long-term forest structure.

Marc: It is already the predominant method used on Jackson. What has been proposed by Mike and Linwood is similar.

There are probably lots of reasons not to accept it as the default, but particularly, it might not pattern anything natural. It doesn’t demonstrate much to the region, other than a single form of silviculture. Everybody doesn’t want to do that.

Mike: I’ve been party to these emails. I think what is being proposed is exactly what we are going to propose for more than one-third of the forest, which is a big allocation for a demonstration forest.

Brad: What I think it is emulating is a forest with frequent understory burns, harvesting from below. What it is not providing compared to a natural situation is that the trees retained are not the trees that would naturally be retained. Usually, in this approach, take out the ugly trees, and these are often the ones that provide the best habitat. I’ve seen some of the stands managed as in the emails, and they are not very good for wildlife habitat.

Mike: How do you get structural complexity introduced?

Vince: My thought is that thinning from below is a starting point. What we did for late seral was, in my mind, a variation on that approach, but providing more complexity. The kind of silviculture that we had for late seral could by a starting point and vary from that to provide both the needed revenue stream and the historical patterning that we want.

Dan: I still think the entry interval is the key. Perhaps even with the maximum implementation, you don’t foreclose any opportunities to achieve the structural goals you want on a time scale that is generous.

Put more directly, if we run the thematic models with different entry intervals and select the most aggressive internals, and look at the effects on the structure across the landscape, you may find that you haven’t taken away enough of the structure in fifty years to foreclose the long-term development that you want. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it might be. But, if what we can put forward is an approach that moves the forest in that direction without taking away any opportunities for the next set of managers to take on that challenge with more information, I would support that.

Vince: So would I be.

Dan: In my mind, the client base is very important, too. If management reflects one silvicultural system, it won’t be appropriate to many clients.

[Lunch Break]

Mike: “Does anyone in the room have a major objection to the thematic theme we outlined here, keeping in mind that the temporal element will drive whether you manage to a very old forest or back to a commercial forest? Opening sizes change depending upon where you are in the forest.

Marc: I abstain.

Brad: I agree with what you are trying to do.

Vince: I agree with trying to tie silviculture to some biological, historical rationale.

[General assent.]

John: I would like to see variability in the temporal element as well as a spatial variability. We need to be looking at R & D with a variety of temporal approaches, always with a ? rationale.

Kathy: Vince has one outcome he brings up regularly, the forest with older and older trees.

John: A diversity of stand structures – early, mid, late seral. Kathy – still so broad as to get a direction from. John: It would be distinct from an approach of moving singularly toward older trees. I would like variability. Different tree sizes. Variability in the largest tree being planned for.

Mike: How does what you are suggesting differ from another way to look at it -– variability in the carrying capacity over time. So, one scheme would be to start with this inventory on this block and you aim to maintain that inventory. Another, start with it and aim to build inventory at this rate, i.e,, double in 50 years. Another, double in 100 years. Do the same thing you are talking about, but don’t think the public will tolerate reducing inventory and then maintain it.

John: I wouldn’t warm to the last either. But, could have same volume on a few large trees or more smaller trees. Think what should be prominent is moving toward larger older trees. How large and how old can be discussed. There could be other levels backed off from that. Would need help in terms of size classes.

Vince: Old timers up in Humboldt used to talk about 500K bf/acre on site 2.

John: I would like to see, where we are headed, managing for bigger, older trees and probably more volume. But because R&D forest, not aiming for a single optimum, but managing for R&D, which implies variability.

Mike: Vince, in analyzing model, does tree diameter go up as volume grows.

Vince: Yes, in the very simple model.

Mike: Marc, what is your experience? If you set volume per acre targets, would high targets drive large tree sizes?

Marc: Yes, but would address productivity.

Mike: One way to do allocation would be to set up “terminal” volume per acre targets. Just throwing this out.

John: Alternative would be to set terminal size classes.

Mike: Volume per acre has advantage of regional growth curves. Lindquist and Palley, for example. Whatever we propose needs to be within the realm of reality. A goal of 300K bf/acre needs to tie back to data. Would have different goals depending on site class. Plays into “bands” across the forest. From standpoint of demonstration, landowners would relate to those targets, because they think in those terms. There are tradeoffs. Higher goals, lower annual volumes. So if landowners could look at these alternatives, it would be true demonstration.

John: This involves the time dimension. The more volume the target, the longer time it will take to get there.

Mike: The forest manager can look at the stand he is looking at, when he is looking at an older stand, then from a demonstration point, he can move that out to an higher-volume stand sooner.

John: If you give me a given target, I can reach that faster by not cutting anything. It is going to force management to no cutting.

Marc: What landowners want to do on the private side is to reach a high level of productivity, which is going to be a marriage between the rate at which things grow and the amount you carry. I stands are even age and it is probably going to take some time to get that point. You want, not culminating mean annual increment, but culminating periodic annual increment. [1]

John: You give me a size you want to get to, I can get their quicker by releasing the trees.

John: Unentered plots ALWAYS have the higher volume. I repeat that, ALWAYS.

Is it true over long periods?

John: It depends on mortality and whether you capture mortality. That is the idea behind forest management, that you can capture the mortality. The biomass productivity is always higher in an uncut stand, if you include the mortality.

Dan: Cutting trials show a great elasticity of response; so total volume, including harvests, are very close over time, unless you go to very heavy removal rates.

John: Nervous about goals based on volumes.

Vince: We need to keep in mind that we are making recommendations that have a perhaps 20-year lifetime; but not much difference will show up for fifty years. So, what we need to do is set things on the right path and not foreclose options in the future. Kathy & Dan: Need to characterize things for a long time frame while recognizing the practical things. Vince: We are here to set out a long-term landscape plan and to provide the underpinning the most we can, but in our silvicultural recommendations, unless we do something really bad, we will probably set it on a time path that is consistent with a lot of different futures. I’d like to collect a lot information over the next 20 years, in the hope we can extend it to fifty years; so that our collection of information tells us can we be moving up the scale of productivity and older forest simultaneously. We haven’t been doing this objective for long enough to have reached a steady state in terms of these people who have in mind a 100-year rotation, and can we do better than that?

Dan: Going back – John offered a mix of seral stages as a goal; then had volume and size goals offered as alternatives. Think it is a good idea to put side bars on the ideas that have been offered.

Mike: When I proposed terminal volume targets, could set up 3 to 5 goal levels. This is what we would want to manage toward, based on what was biologically possible. Then, it avoids drawing any hard lines on the map, but causes the forest manager to say, “I’m in this site class potential, and this is where I demonstrating this facet of the possibilities.” This has huge ramifications, because if in this management unit has a goal of high volumes per acre, it will drive entries and marking. Again, John’s idea of tree size might work, too.

John: When I’m looking at tree size, I’m looking at value. I don’t want to be forced into managing for a dense forest with lower value. Can be constraining for wildlife values. Volume might work, but I’d like to have a better understanding.

Kathy: What about height?

John: Within normal ranges of stocking, the density is not related much to height. Site is the determining factor.

Dan: The problem in melding the volume and tree-size standard is that there is a huge variation in tree sizes. I think that site productivity standard has the most merit. I think site quality, if you want to create a biological basis for end points, site class productivity has a lot of merit, but it is constrained by forest quality and what it looks like in the interim while reaching the target. The site classes describe the what, the goal, and the emulation practices describe the how. Describing the what, that is what we are focused. What is the future condition? Can describe it purely biologically or a mix of biology plus an aesthetic that reflects the operational realities and goals inherent in managing a forest, but seems more a communication issue than an operational issue.

Vince: When you say that stands that grow back naturally may have low value, are you talking about economic or wildlife values. Trees near the Woodlands have high volume per acre even though they are small.

John: There isn’t that much of a difference between diameter and price. It is for redwood more sapwood versus heartwood.

Dan: Define good productivity at the level of the individual tree rather than stand. If main difference for goal is between tree size or volume, throw both away. Focus instead on the individual tree, rather than the broad stand scale. Adopt a metric for individual tree: It looks good if …

Mike: That would be taking a giant step, looking at something no one has wanted to look at in second growth redwood stands: What is the optimum increment to grow a valuable redwood tree?

Kathy: Red parts of trees are still worth more. Marc: Time to produce it needs to be taken into account. Slow growth probably encourages growth of more red. Mike: Be debate raging within his organization. Marc: Had same debate. Releasing trees makes both red and white to grow faster. Kathy: Maybe this is one of the variabilities that we want to include. Marc: Don’t set too strict constraints.

Mike: We are already going to take old structure, late seral, and old growth stands and manage them to be very old and very big; so that riddle is going to be answered by that allocation we are near completing. So, what questions are you going to answer on the remainder of the forest?

Marc: How to attain a high level of growth, high level of value, create various habitats simultaneously, effects on watershed health? That is one of the reasons that management plan has fewer constraints. It is a matter of trusting the managers to do right.

Mike: That is our charge, to set a bracket of constraints with which the public will trust. Unfortunately, leaving it to Cal Fire to set those brackets has been the raging debate. I’m not in favor of bracketing you down, especially in light of the allocations we are making. I don’t think the Board will go along with too tight brackets.

Linwood: How does this discussion move us forward on the allocation topic?

Mike: To take the acres we overlaid with a management scheme and see if there was any further stratification that we could overlay on that.

Linwood: As I listen to this, there is so much it seems to complicate the issue and we shouldn’t go there.

Mike: We might have consensus minus one. Doesn’t meet Vince’s goals.

John goes to the flip chart and draws the following:

The time scale (top figure) is 500 years. Zero is where we are now. The dashed line is the gross growth curve. The solid line is net. The difference between the two is mortality. What we’ve done in the redwood region is come in, say at 150 years, and remove a large part or all (clearcut). Would come back on a line roughly parallel to the gross curve, perhaps becoming asymptotic to the net curve at some time. We’ve made varying decisions. What we want to do on Jackson is advancing this thing, perhaps even out to 500 years. From and R&D perspective, what we’d like to know is how it advances if we have different volume goals. An alternative way of looking at it (lower graph) is have number of trees as a function of size. We had something like this for Brandon Gulch and much lower numbers for old growth stands. So we could aim to lower the numbers over time up to 500 years. But we might want to have diameters only up to a certain size, or to a different size. To me this give me structure, where I can demonstrate different approaches to the management of the forest, where I’ve got diversity of structure. The allocation issue is what proportion of the forest do we want to have different diameters. When I look at the matrix area (outside of old and reserves), I would be looking for managing the forest for diversity in these distributions.

Mike: Even though you know full well, in the allocations we’ve gone through, we have the right-side allocations already in the late seral? John: Probably not. Brad: But if in short supply in our stratification. Not saying it is there. Dan: Already there in the matrix in the riparian zones.

Mike: What I hear you advocating for is how Linwood manages, with diameter targets.

John: But, I would want to have a wide variation in the diameter targets.

Mike: In the matrix, you might say we would have some proportion targeted for 30”, 50”, 70”, for example. This would inform the managers of what to do.

John: But this doesn’t illuminate the issue of volume. I want differing densities, which means I’m going to get my big trees farther in the future. I don’t want to give a goal that would lead to lower stocking levels.

Mike: The swath we are talking about today is where the managers would have latitude to try a wide variety of things.

Vince goes to board and draws the diagram below:

The line labeled “Potential” is the ceiling or upper limit of volume for the stand. Volume first grows at an increasing rate; then slows, and eventually approaches the ceiling asymptotically- a sigmoidal curve. How far out do we go before reaching the point of cumulating mean annual increment? John: Lindquist and Palley will tell you. It is relatively early.

Marc: L&P are only for even age. There are very few sites where CMAI has been observed. One is the Wonder Plot. At about 60 years. We have another on Jackson where it may have been obtained. These are for very high site class. On class 2, it will be further out, perhaps 120-130 years.

Vince: Krumland and Wensel never found CMAI out to the limits of their data, 120 years or so.

Marc: in board feet, L&P don’t cumulate out to 100 years, except for the highest site classes.

Vince: For Brandon Gulch, the point of cumulating maximum annual increment might be at 150 years with volume of 150 K bf/acre [based on Lindquist and Palley tables, the volume would probably be significantly higher at 150 years, closer to 200K]. What might be the ceiling? [Pretty much silence. No one has experience.]

Mike: What has never been done, in uneven age stands, how much does the culmination point get pushed out? In my mind, it might never cumulate if we keep thinning.

The lower red lines were meant to approximate the effects of periodic harvesting. Only the lowest red line is accurate in its general shape: a vertical drop at harvest time, with regrowth between harvest times.

Vince: My question is, where do we reach the maximum production? How far out is that?

Mike: Need to consider both harvest volume and volume added in the stand.

Vince: We might want to weight the two differently. From a public standpoint, standing trees have value.

Mike: You could use this as a stratification technique.

Marc: Vince has gone back into late seral.

Vince: No, because I’m talking about continuing harvest. The assumption for late seral has been that we’d make a couple of entries and then leave it alone.

Mike: There is some point where you would — but you’d always want to be taking mortality.

Kathy: From a habitat standpoint, you wouldn’t want to remove mortality before occurs?

Brad: It depends upon whether you are managing for habitat or some other economic purpose.

Mike: If you think of stem exclusion, you’ll get to a point of excess stems.

Kathy: Though, only early.

Mike: Yes, you will eventually reach a point of equilibrium. Then you will leave it pretty much alone.

Dan: Plant ecologists speak to productivity issue, broadly defined. Site productivity (biomass) increases with species diversity.

Dan: All the numbers in the chart are affected by selection. We have no idea how.

Vince: One of the people in the email says that all that you cut grows back in 15 to 20 years.

John: You’ll never get back up to the line.

The slope gets reduced.

The fastest way is to live it alone.

Vince: Now we need a lot more reserves! [Laughter]

Mike: Landowners want to know what jagged line to follow.

John: I want to have lots of jagged lines as demonstrations for land owners. We want to take advantage of the biological uniqueness of redwood.

Brad: Jackson is too small to have too many alternatives.

Vince: One way to think about this is how far you go below the unmanaged line. The difference between the unmanaged line and the managed line is a measure of how much we’ve deviated from the “natural forest.”

John: We can affect the line by the proportion of cut and the interval between entries.

Marc: Ask John to write up his high medium and low tree size and combine with legal, biological, or historic needs of the forest. Then you will have moved somewhere.

Vince: I’m trying to find a metric for different approaches we take. The difference between the two lines measures the effect of management as compared to the natural forest recovery path.

[Various cases are described and discussed. Could be different stocking goals to which you go toward. Different horizontal lines at different distances from the potential line.]

John: We’ve already go the potential line set for a third of the forest. [Some back and forth about how much of the forest is going to be allocated to late seral.]

[John agrees to articulate his vision of 3 seral stages combined with the east-west thematic ideas. Brad: How these scenarios would lay out on the landscape would be a topic for a future meeting. Mike: I’m more in favor of a broader idea, and then leave it to managers to lay it out. Vince: I think we should at least some example and show. Take a watershed and show how it would play out, as for example what we did for Brandon Gulch. Mike: What that looks like, if John ends up with three seral classes, it creates nine in a matrix, laying them over our east-west continuum. Linwood: Gets even more complicated, many more possibilities. Vince: Varying entry intervals is key. [No conclusion.]

Discussion leaves silvicultural and broad allocation discussion. Kathy Bailey makes a presentation on area in Jackson Forest that abuts Jughandle staircase trail and proposes making a reserve area.

Addendum: Maps of Interest

Preliminary Late Seral and Older Forest Allocations

Ownership of Lands Surrounding JDSF

[1] I later asked Marc for a definition of “culminating periodic annual increment.” Here is his reply:

It’s not a commonly used forestry term, possibly my own invention.  What I mean by this is maximizing the growth over a specified period of time, normally between harvest entries (e.g. every 10, 20, or 30 years).  It would seem that this is an admirable goal, trying to maximize what can be sustainably grown and harvested.

Since it can be so variable, depending upon stand management, there really is no reference in nature, such as was available for most even-aged yield tables.  In fact, there may be many ways to achieve it, varying by how the stand is managed and the time between successive harvests.  Value (monetary and product) vs volume would also be a consideration.

[The following article was written for inclusion in the Spring Issue of Forest and River, a publication of the Trees Foundation]

I last reported on Jackson Forest developments in the middle of 2008. I skipped the year-end update because it seemed that a holding pattern had developed, and there was not significant new news. There are now developments worth reporting.

Readers may recall the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest  brought lawsuits, lobbied, and mobilized public support to change the mission of our 50,000-acre publicly owned redwood forest from industrial logging to restoration, research, education, and recreation. We began in 2000 and were able to bring a halt to logging in 2001 (still not restarted) and to obtain a vastly improved management plan that was approved in January 2008. As part of the agreement, an independent advisory committee, the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) was established and charged with recommending a long-term landscape plan and supporting changes in the management plan. The JAG has until January 2011 to complete its recommendations.

Trees in the Dunlap North proposed THP
in Jackson Forest. The biggest trees
will be retained.

Things got going slowly. The members of JAG represent a wide spectrum of interests, and it has taken time for people to get to know each other sufficiently to develop trust in one another and to be willing to frankly express their views and desires.

Progress is now occurring, and occurring in the most important area – the development of the long-term landscape plan. At issue in this plan are the potential conflicts between timber production and restoration, habitat, ecological health, and recreation.

The questions the Landscape Committee of the JAG has been addressing are: 1) How much of Jackson State will be devoted to different purposes or uses, ranging from preserves with no active management at one extreme to clearcuts at the other? 2) What types of harvesting practices (silvicultural methods) should be used to achieve the chosen desired future conditions for the various parts of the forest?

The existing management plan proposed to manage the forest for a wide range of purposes and with a wide range of harvest techniques, with the latter very much representative of the practices common in industrial and smaller commercial forests. Only a small portion of the forest was to be restored to old forest conditions.

The Landscape Committee appears now to be moving toward agreement (but definitely not yet there) on a very different approach to determining how to manage the forest. Rather than thinking about the forest in terms of timber potential, the committee is proposing to manage the forest in ways that would reflect and emulate the natural processes that would take place in the forest in the absence of man.

“Natural Forestry” is an idea that may go far toward removing the conflict between restoration and timber production. The term was initially coined and defined by Mike Jani, the chief operating officer of Mendocino and Humboldt Redwood Companies, and a member of the JAG. “Natural Forestry is managing the forest to emulate natural forest processes.”

A key aspect of the natural processes of redwood forests is that the trees grow to 500 years and upwards. Once this is accepted as a goal of forest management, it requires that current operations occur within the context of moving the forest to old growth.

Key elements of Natural Forestry, as I envision it, are that harvest operations would be designed to continually grow stands to higher volumes and larger tree diameters, would allow some portion of trees to grow indefinitely larger, and timber harvesting would continue throughout the time. As the stands grew over hundreds of years, they would more and more resemble natural old growth stands.

Investigation of the economic and practical feasibility of Natural Forestry is just beginning, so it is premature to make any judgments. But, the concept is instantly appealing to almost everyone who hears it. We get our old growth, healthy forests and timber too. What could be better?

What has happened already is marvelous. Just raising the idea of Natural Forestry and putting it out into the broader forest community has ignited a wonderful conversation among forestry experts throughout the redwood region. Instead of decades, we are now thinking in terms of millennia – as we should when thinking about redwood forests.

I will be continually posting conversations and information on Natural Forestry, including this article, at Jackson Forum, where you can read them easily and post your own ideas and comments. You can read all of the email communications, including attachments, as soon as they are distributed at the online archive of JAG communications.

There is enormous interest and energy in the forestry community to contribute to planning the future of Jackson Forest. The involvement of the larger forestry community will help assure that decisions made by the Jackson Advisory Group reflect the best available knowledge and thought. This is good news.

For current information on Jackson Forest, visit www.jacksonforest.org
___________
Vince Taylor is a member of the Jackson Advisory Group, but all views expressed herein are solely his own.

You have only until April 3, 2009 to submit an application to become a member of the newly established “Recreation User Task Force” for Jackson State Forest. If you have a serious interest in enhanced recreation in Jackson Forest, I urge you to submit an application.

The Recreation Task Force is a milestone in the evolution of Jackson Forest  toward serving a broad range of public values. Its formation creates an opportunity for those in the community interested in expanded outdoor recreation to play a vital role in shaping a long-term recreation plan for our local 50,000-acre redwood forest. This is a rare opportunity where the state is reaching out and empowering the community to be a major participant in designing enhanced recreation in our forest.

I emphasize that this is a real, rare, and important opportunity. The new management plan mandates that Jackson Forest develop a recreation plan with user help. The independent Jackson Advisory Group considers enhanced recreation a priority for the forest, and the JAG will be participating with the Task Force to assist in ensuring that all are working together constructively.

Further, when the economy recovers and the long-range plan for management of the forest in place, Jackson Forest will have a much larger budget than in the past, and a significant portion of the budget will fund recreation activities. Devoting yourself to the Task Force will not be an exercise in futility, but to the contrary, will result in seeing the fruits of your labor take place throughout the forest.

The Task Force is recruiting recreation users of all kinds. It especially will need representation of what some might consider minor uses, such as mushrooming, bird watching, and nature photographing. There will certainly be applicants from the equestrian and bicycle groups, because there are many in these groups who regularly use and love Jackson Forest. But, a wide variety of interests are sought, as shown by this quote from the formal invitation to apply:

Members may include, but not be limited to JDSF neighbors, cyclists, equestrians, target shooters, teachers, hunters, hikers, campers, bird watchers, mushroomers, nature photographers, trail guide writers, and event organizers.  Applicants should expect to be interviewed.

If you have any of these interests, or others not specified, and the time and energy to make a commitment to the Task Force, pleases submit an application. Remember, the deadline is April 3, 2009. Full details.

The future of recreation in Jackson Forest is in your hands.

[A slightly different version of this was published in the Fort Bragg Advocate/Mendocino Beacon, March 12, 2008.]

Notes on a Meeting of the Landscape Committee of the Jackson Advisory Group, February 4, 2009

Introduction

This is the second in a related series of documents on applying the concept of “Natural Forestry” at Jackson State Forest. The concept is introduced and defined in Part 1. The key idea behind Natural Forestry is simultaneously managing redwood forests for restoration toward old growth and continued timber harvesting.

The term Natural Forestry refers to emulating natural forest processes in  management methods. Two aspects of natural processes in redwood forests are 1) trees grow to be many hundreds, even thousands of years old, and 2) over time, the number of trees in an area decline while the sizes of the remaining trees increase. Thus, Natural Forestry would selectively harvest smaller trees (”thin from below”) repeatedly, leading over time to increasingly older and larger trees, eventually to old growth conditions.

Part 1 reported on initial conversations among three experts who generally gave enthusiastic support to exploring the concept of Natural Forestry.

The present document contains notes compiled by Vince Taylor  on a meeting of the Landscape Committee of the Jackson Advisory Group. This meeting followed the initial conversations reported in Part 1. The term Natural Forestry originated in this meeting,  as participants discussed the applying the principles of Natural Forestry to a large majority of Jackson Forest.  The notes were not intended as a comprehensive record of the meeting, but aimed to capture the various viewpoints espoused by the participants.

Landscape Committee Meeting, February 4, 2009

Participants: Brad Valentine (Co-chair), Mike Jani (Co-chair), Kathy Bailey, Linda Perkins, Forest Tilley, Vince Taylor, Marc Jameson (JDSF Manager)

The following are my recollection of the points made at the meeting about the proposal, initially from Mike Jani at this meeting, but generally following the thrust of the points made in email correspondence circulated by Vince Taylor [contained in Part 1]. The correspondents were Steve Sillett, Mike Fay, and Ken Fisher. The major theme of the letters was that using “light touch” or “thin from below” silviculture could be continued to be used over hundreds of years, and that this was a preferred management strategy for multiple objectives, including timber production, habitat, and restoration of redwood forests to the old growth condition that is the natural state of redwood forests.

Mike Jani termed the application of this strategic approach to management, “Managing the forest to emulate natural forest processes,” or “Natural Forestry” for short.

The key elements of Natural Forestry are that silvicultural applications would be designed to continually grow stands to higher volumes and larger tree diameters, would allow some portion of trees to grow indefinitely larger, and timber harvesting would continue without stopping.

Linda had earlier reiterated the concept in the book “Ecoforestry,” of managing forests so that forests over time would attain their natural age. This concept is inherent in the strategy of Natural Forestry.

I suggested that the idea of “recovery” should be incorporated in the definition, because we are dealing with forests that are all very far from their “natural”, pre-logging state.

I offer the following possible definition:

Natural Forestry is the management of forests to produce timber while simultaneously fostering the forests’ return to their natural age and structural state.

Mike offered that the principles contained in Natural Forestry were principles of the Guild. Linwood nodded assent.

Mike would like to know the extent of natural variations in redwoods – how  much and how geographically distributed of different seral stages. He offered the opinion that “We all know how much young forest existed in the untouched redwood stands. Very little.”

Kathy expressed that the forests were now far from their natural state, but that there is a “natural recovery process” going on. We need to be careful not to interfere with that process in an undesirable way.

Linwood brought up the issue of the allocations of different seral classes in Table 4 of the Management Plan.

Mike replied that he had looked at this table, and taking the maximum latitude within the table, one could apply Natural Forestry to 80% of the land and still fit within the table. After this, 80% became a kind of “base case” for discussion.

Kathy noted that all of the preserves and areas highly restricted for management (e.g., Class I stream zones) would be in the 80%.

John Helms said he found the concept of Natural Forestry very appealing, but was uncertain how much of the forest should be managed this way.

Vince said that his idea was that Natural Forestry should be the “default” landscape designation. Then, uses that were inconsistent with NF would be identified and justified, and sufficient geography to provide for these would be removed from the NF designation. Uses that Vince identified were:

• ·Reserves in which no management would take place
• ·Areas devoted to demonstration and research on management methods that were not compatible with NF, e.g., even-age management

As people expressed various concerns, there emerged a clear consensus that we need to do some modeling and explorations of the implications of natural forestry for:

1. Volume of timber production over time. Can it continue at a constant to increasing rate perpetually, or is volume bound to fall off?

2. How will the economics (costs) of timber production be affected relative to standard management practices?

[Related to the second item, after the meeting Linwood raised the issue of trees getting so large that getting them out of the forest with modern techniques and equipment could become impractical. Further, current mills could not handle logs of the size that would become “normal” harvest in a hundred or so years.

Linwood’s questions raised the question of whether their should be some limit on tree size in actively managed portions of the forest, so all trees reaching this limit would be cut. Vince wasn’t happy with this idea, because it would negate the concept of actively managing forest stands all the way back to natural old growth. Exploring these issues and questions would appropriately occur under Question 2, above.]

There was a good discussion of public and private rates of return and their influence on “economical” timber management, but it is too complex to summarize. Vince argued that if you could show that Jackson Forest could provide a constant to growing volume of timber production over time, that would satisfy the economic requirements for a publicly owned forest.

Vince suggested a second principle, which after discussion, evolved into two additional principles to accompany Natural Forestry:

1. The volume of timber harvested from Natural-Forestry managed areas should be non-declining over time, measured for the forest as a whole.

2. The inventory volume of Natural-Forestry managed areas should be non-declining over time, within each watershed so managed.

Sentiment was expressed for another management principle, not related to landscape allocation, but generally agreed to be valuable:

• There should be an even annual flow of logs, subject to variation because of market conditions.

The group began a discussion of principles to apply in establishing allocations that would subtract or be outside of Natural Forestry areas. This discussion was interrupted before the group could come to any general agreement, but the following thoughts were put out:

• Demonstrations inconsistent with Natural Forestry would be within designated R&D areas, such as those specified in the Management Plan, but perhaps with boundaries adjusted.
• Research could occur anywhere on the forest, but when inconsistent with Natural Forestry would be done on the smallest scale consistent with scientific validity.
• Dan Porter’s Hexagon methodology could help in identifying areas for preserves.
• Principles are needed for specifying location and amounts of preserves.
• Allocation of areas for younger trees would be determined by needs of the to TBD demonstration and research program.

What these linear notes don’t capture was the sense some of us felt that using Natural Forestry (even though still a somewhat amorphous concept) as a default management strategy on most of the forest was a breakthrough. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered and concerns addressed, but Natural Forestry seems like a strategy that could be defined in such a way that it could bring the JAG to consensus on its most difficult charge.

If we do reach consensus on a management approach that will put the forest on a steady path toward old growth while continuing harvests at levels generally considered acceptable, Jackson Forest will become a beacon of hope for forestry around the world. It will truly become a world class forest.

Recently the concept of “Natural Forestry” as a management strategy for Jackson State Forest has gained prominence in discussions of the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG), the independent advisory group charged with developing recommendations for long-term management of the forest.

Mike Jani, co-chair of the Landscape Committee of the JAG coined the term and gave a definition for Natural Forestry.  “Natural Forestry is managing the forest to emulate natural forest processes.” A key aspect of the natural processes of redwood forests is that the trees grow to 500 years and upwards.

The key elements of Natural Forestry are that harvest operations would be designed to continually grow stands to higher volumes and larger tree diameters, would allow some portion of trees to grow indefinitely larger, and timber harvesting would continue without end. As the stands grew over hundreds of years, they would more and more resemble natural old growth stands.

Natural Forestry, if it could be demonstrated to be economically and practically feasible, would remove the necessity to choose between managing the public forest to maximize its ecological value or managing it to provide revenues and desired timber jobs. Natural Forestry would be the preferred management strategy for multiple objectives, including timber production, habitat, and restoration of redwood forests to the old growth condition that is the natural state of redwood forests.

Ecologically, Natural Forestry management is a strong contender for the best strategy. As Ken Fisher has commented, it “… does maximize cubic volume of wood over time, carbon sequestration, tree size, non-model conforming tree qualities like large irregular upper branching, reiteration, and old bark qualities.” These are powerful pluses.

Major questions need to be answered about the economics and mechanics of harvesting trees in stands that continually grow older. The JAG will be addressing these in the coming months.

There is also a legitimate fear of those interested in timber production that at the point in time where the majority of trees in the stands are hundreds of years old and five and more feet across, the public will cry out against cutting any of the trees and harvesting will come to a halt.

Natural Forestry needs much more thought, discourse, and investigation, but the concept is exciting.

See related posts at Jackson Forum under the heading “Natural Forestry.”

Please comment below on the concept. 
__________________

Published as one of a series of columns in the Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate News under the heading “Jackson Forest Wanderings”, February 19, 2009.

Introduction

The Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) was appointed by the Director of Cal Fire and the Board of Forestry and given as its primary task the development of a long-term management plan for Jackson State Forest.

The JAG began meeting in mid-2008. Ever since it has been grappling with the question of how much of the forest ought to be managed for restoration to old growth and how much ought to be devoted to commercial timber production. As one can imagine, different interests have different ideas of how to answer this question. 

A possible solution to this apparently divisive question has now arisen in the  form of another question: Might it be possible to simultaneously manage for restoration to old growth and ongoing timber production? If the answer is “Yes,” the conflict disappears.

The term that arose later and has been adopted to describe this management method is “Natural Forestry.” The term was initially coined and defined by Mike Jani, as “managing the forest to emulate natural forest processes.” A key aspect of the natural processes of redwood forests is that the trees grow to 500 years and upwards.

The key elements of Natural Forestry are that harvest operations would be designed to continually grow stands to higher volumes and larger tree diameters, would allow some portion of trees to grow indefinitely larger, and timber harvesting would continue without end. As the stands grew over hundreds of years, they would more and more resemble natural old growth stands.

A lively discussion has arisen about the potentials and obstacles to applying Natural Forestry as a dominant management technique at Jackson Forest and possibly other public lands and possibly even on some private lands.

The Origins of the Conversation on Natural Forestry

The concept of what has come to be called Natural Forestry originated in discussions within the JAG on landscape allocations to various long-term goals, e.g. old growth (late sera) restoration.

One key contributor to the concept was the work the JAG did last year to develop recommendation on how a timber harvest could be designed to promote “late seral” (the technical term for “old-growth” development. Its recommendations were adopted for application in two legacy THPs, Brandon Gulch and Camp Three.

Upon looking at the proposed prescription, I thought that it didn’t look all that much different than the approach that would be used to grow stands to “older forest”, one of the major categories of land use proposed in the Jackson Forest management plan. “Older forest” designation differed from “late seral” designation in that all trees reaching a certain age, perhaps 120 years, would be harvested; thus old growth conditions would never be achieved.

When I asked the professional foresters at a meeting whether there would be much difference between the harvest prescriptions for restoration to old growth or to old forest, the unanimous opinion was, “Not much difference.” Good. This means we could start now to manage both categories (late seral and old forest) on a path to restoration for old growth. Sometime in the future decisionmakers could decide whether to continue restoration or begin harvesting the old trees.

The next contributor to the concept was an article by Alan Wittbecker in Ecoforestry (New Society Publishers, 1997) in which he argued that a key element of forest management attuned to ecosystem health was managing for tree lifetimes natural for the type of forest being managed:

Ecoforestry should optimize cutting instead of maximizing it, harvest a percentage of the natural interest instead of the ecological capital, on the very long turn-around of 250-750 years instead of 10 to 100-year rotations, and allow self-ordered renewal of the forest …

For redwood forests, this concept implies growing trees in the forest to 500 and more years of age. At a JAG meeting, I raised the idea of growing and harvesting the forest with the goal of continuing on indefinitely into the future; so that all of the forest, unless set aside for other purposes, would return to old growth. Of course, this is a radically different approach than currently practiced with redwoods, and no one at the meeting could quite imagine this as a possibility.

Such a strategy, if it could be shown to be feasible, would offer a dominant solution for the overarching management of Jackson State Forest. It would offer the best of worlds for all interests: The forest returning toward original, natural conditions; continued, stable and perhaps growing timber harvests; and increasing amounts of scarce old-growth habitat and ecology.

First Conversations

Because Natural Forestry, if feasible, would be such a marvelous solution to the tension between restoration and timber production, I starting looking around for help on developing some simple modeling that would create for people more of a sense of reality about long-duration redwood management.

On January 28, 2009 I wrote to Steve Sillett, professor at Humboldt State, soliciting his help in building and making projections for long periods of time (hundreds of years). Professor  Sillett holds the Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University. He is recognized as a foremost expert on redwood trees, most popularly known for exploring the ecology of the high canopy of redwood trees.

The request to Dr. Sillett evoked an extremely provocative and encouraging response from two colleagues who Dr. Sillett copied on his reply to me:

· Ken Fisher is an investment manager with a long background in redwoods spanning academic study, forest management, and lumbering history and is considered one of the leading experts in the history of redwood lumbering south of San Francisco. He is a friend of Dr. Sillett’s and endowed the chair Dr. Sillett occupies at Humboldt State University from which Ken graduated. Among other things Ken has built the world’s largest non-institutionally owned forest history library with particular specialty in redwood.

· Mike Fay, Ph.D., has recently completed a walking tour of the entire redwood region, visiting forests and talking to forest practitioners who have been successfully using a “thin from below” strategy that could serve as a model for developing a working old-growth forest. He did so for a project entitled The Redwood Transect, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, which will be published in Nation Geographic Magazine in October 2009, the first major National Geographic article on the redwood region since the 1960s.

As you will see reading these responses, Mr. Fisher and Dr.. Fay both believe that it is not only feasible but highly desirable to manage simultaneously for timber production and return to old growth forest ecology.

Below I’ve reproduced the emails in the chain, edited and with added emphases in few instances. These emails are only the beginning of a conversation that has spread more widely and grown in interest and information. I will publish the later correspondence in future posts under the same general heading, “Natural Forestry at Jackson Forest — Part …”

Correspondence

Vince Taylor, January 28, 2009 to Steve Sillett prof.sillett@gmail.com

Subject: Long Duration Redwood Growth

Dear Steve,
I am working with the Jackson Advisory Group and would like to create some sense of reality around the concept of growing Jackson Forest stands to 200-500+ years of age, while continuing some timber harvesting. I’d like to be able to demonstrate that such a concept would allow the bulk of Jackson Forest to return to old growth ecology, while meeting revenue needs for management of the forest.
Can you suggest a name of someone who could help to create a simple, parameterized model that could create reasonable projections of stand growth, volume, and characteristics for hundreds of years?
I am thinking of a very simplified model. At the least, though, we would need to have some idea of board-foot volume growth for a redwood stand over hundreds of years. Do you know of any source of data for this, or how one could make some plausible assumptions?
I recall your saying, I think to Dan Porter, that redwood trees don’t become senile but keep growing. Of course percentage growth rates decline over time, but is it plausible that absolute volume growth continues to increase or remains at a high level for hundreds of years?
Any names or references that you give me will be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Vince
_____________________________________

Steve Sillett, January 28, 2009 to Vince Taylor, copies to Mike Fay <mfay@ngs.org> and Ken Fisher <ken@fi.com>
Re: Long Duration Redwood Growth

Vince,
Yes.
I have such information and am willing to help.  Another person who can help is Mike Fay.  Have you contacted him?  If not, he’s cc’ed to this message.  Another person who knows a lot about this issue is Ken Fisher (also cc’ed), who advises management of some magnificent second-growth near San Mateo, which includes some timber harvest.
The best data on redwood growth come from Humboldt Redwoods, so there will be some scaling issues to get reasonable growth rates for Jackson Forest.  This effort would be greatly facilitated by data on tree growth from Jackson Forest.  Are there any long-term data or dendrochronological records from there?
We should talk further in the near future, as, like you, I see great potential to restore large trees to forested landscapes via active management.
Steve

__________________________________________

Ken Fisher, January 29, 2009 to Vince Taylor, with copies to Steve Sillett and Mike Fay
Re: Long Duration Redwood Growth

Vince,

If I can help you on this in some way let me know.  The silviculture issues associated with accelerating ancient redwood forest qualities are pretty straightforward.  The cultural issues aren’t.  The silviculture, which derives as a variation from the traditional concept of , “cutting from below” isn’t impossible to model and can, in fact, be demonstrated for efficacy in even a very small stand over a very short time period like three years.  It’s just a matter of demonstrating that your actions consistently maximize cubic wood volume per plot based on tree height and ring width which isn’t hard to do via increment boring based metrics before and after.

The key is to remain ever focused on what is necessary to maximize the approach toward ancient qualities of tree–remembering and accepting as faith, which few do, that all other qualities of an ancient forest derive from the trees as a substrate for the ecosystem. That is very central but very hard for almost everyone today to accept.

In the process of taking actions to accelerate ancient tree qualities a byproduct is logs that must be cut and as cull-based byproduct can be and logically should be sold, generating revenue.  To not sell would be wasteful. The process does not maximize revenue, not even closely, but does generate revenue and confuses the public and many interested parties because they assume log extraction is based on seeking revenue. 

The process does maximize cubic volume of wood over time, carbon sequestration, tree size, non-model conforming tree qualities like large irregular upper branching, reiteration, and old bark qualities.  But everything has trade-offs.  Every entry has short-term negative effect on some ecological factors. For example, each entry involved will in the short-term impede the ability of population communities to maximize which in today’s environment generates a vocal opposition constituency. It is critical to accept that long term population communities will benefit from a better, older, more ancient forest.  Few do.

There are many with myriad varied objections including those who don’t understand or accept many of the things that recent science has demonstrated about large and old redwoods—both as trees and forests, much of which derive directly from Steve Sillett’s research.  Again, the issues of accelerating ancient qualities aren’t about silviculture which is agnostic to the desired goals of the forest owner by definition.  The issues are cultural.  In my mind doing this is very hard to implement on public land where the social dogma is for benign neglect of forests everywhere.   

I’m personally opposed to the benign neglect regime and would welcome any public land commitment to accelerating ancient forest qualities so if I can help, and you have a real desire to so do, let me know. 

Ken Fisher
________________________________ 

Mike Fay, January 30, 2009 to Steve Sillett, Ken Fisher, Vince Taylor
Re: Long Duration Redwood Growth

Hi,

I like what Ken has written here and agree with the fundamentals.  I am very happy to see that Ken also believes that  “The process does maximize cubic volume of wood over time, carbon sequestration, tree size, non-model conforming tree qualities like large irregular upper branching, reiteration, and old bark qualities.”  

I believe that, like Ken put very well, the trees (as well as soils) are the substrate for the ecosystem.  Climate can be influenced by the forest, and visa versa, another important component.  What Steve has discovered is that the notion of CMAI [Cumulating Mean Annual Increment, the point at which lifetime average volume of growth is maximized] is applicable to old growth redwoods and from my understanding in Bull Creek Flat it has not been reached yet.  This flies in the face of traditional beliefs amongst professionals. 

What we experienced along the transect was a continuum of people who believed that not a single tree should ever be cut, harmed or violated by humans, including through global warming, to those who would put the entire redwood range on a 38 year clear cut rotation with no regulation and no protections for watersheds or other values.  But we did find a significant number of very dedicated foresters who have been practicing a variation of the silviculture that Ken speaks about in virtually every county of the redwood range.  They have practiced and quantified it for a number of decades now and in my opinion can do exactly what Ken says.  The result is that the substrate is enhanced and thus the ecosystem is enhanced.  Of course there are a large number of discussions through the range on the nuances of this silviculture, but when I walk through Redtree Properties in Santa Cruz, compared to clearcuts, there is a world of difference there.  For me what is exciting is therein is a possibility for industrial scale use of these practices, for instance in the case of MRC-HRC.  Obviously their practices are on an industrial scale, but their approach is toward building inventory, bigger trees, more heartwood, and to have higher productivity.  I would say that they could be helped in this mission.

This is a long discussion.   First, I would love to see a group of professionals get together sometime in the summer where we could really address the long-standing issue of “show-me” with the data.  I believe that there is enough accumulated data that we could convincingly show that this thinning from below is a viable method, not just for improving the trajectory of old growth characteristics in protected areas, but as a viable and important contribution to forest management on private lands that provides an increasing annual production stream from the forest for a very long time.  Some would say that if you go back to the basic tenets of the forest practices act this is required in California.

Jackson has a varied history.  Today it is a State Forest and these State Forests do have the obligation take into account values other than timber production.  What is real interesting to me is that it might just be that Jackson could not only protect every other value, but also do it producing a lot of wood.  Certainly in Jackson we saw some forests that sorely need thinning where redwoods were way overplanted.  I believe that the State Forests in the redwoods (both Jackson and Soquel) should continue the tradition of being places that demonstrate real innovation. From what I saw in Soquel the THP in development there could really be done in a way that gets at the question you are posing Vince.

So why don’t we try to get the forestry community together in the summer and get to the bottom of if we have the data to be able to model this out.  The bottom line for me is that this isn’t just about making old growth faster in parks, it is about the basics of how forest is managed by humans.  I strongly believe that forest practices worldwide need to dramatically shift in the next two decades from a long history of liquidation to one of building forest inventory.  I believe that there are folks like Steve Staub who, if he were Sec. of Ag., would make that kind of change happen that comes from a good understanding of forest ecology and the need for wood production.   We can convince park people to do it and we may even be able to convince more large industrials in the redwood range to give it a try. 

I look forward to continued discussion.

Mike

On January 5, 2009, members of the Jackson Advisory Group visited Brandon Gulch to review a “trial mark.” The trial mark is an initial marking of trees to reflect the guidelines for a harvest intended to create late seral (old growth) characteristics in the Brandon Gulch stands. T

he late seral harvest plan differs greatly from the harvest plan previously marked for Brandon Gulch. The former plan was intended to be a high-volume commercial harvest that favored larger trees and included small clearcuts throughout much of the harvest area in order to encourage the growth of a new generation of trees. The new plan keeps all of the larger trees and aims to keep the natural diversity of conditions found in the 90 year-old undisturbed stands of redwood and Douglas Fir in Brandon Gulch.

On the visit, Marc Jameson, Manager of Jackson Demonstration State Forest, explained the way in which the new mark was made. [The blue lines on trees are from the prior mark. These marked trees were scheduled for harvest. In the new harvest, only the trees with yellow dots will be harvested.] The heavy breathing of the camera person (me) is because I had to hurry up the slope to catch up after lagging behind to take photos on the way up.

You will notice that not many yellow dots are visible in the video. As we walked through the plan area, Mike Anderson of Anderson Logging, Fort Bragg, asked Marc how the volume of timber to be cut in the new mark compared to the original cut. Marc said that the prior volume would have been 40-50% of the stand. The goal for the new mark is no more than 30% of volume (actually “basal area”, which is reasonably related to volume). Thus, the relative volume in the new mark would be 60-75% of the prior volume.

As we continued our walk and looked at the currently marked trees compared to the prior ones, Mike Anderson offered that it looked like the cut would be down by at least 50%, if not more. Marc then said that they were marking conservatively, aiming at 25% in order to allow for trees that weren’t marked but that would be cut as part of the logging operation in order to remove the trees (primarily for cable corridors).

My own impression of the new mark was very favorable. When I saw the aftermath of a brief but intense logging that occurred in 2004 (in 5 days between court ordered prohibitions on logging in Jackson Forest), I was horrified. This time I was very happy to be able to feel that this was a harvest that would not destroy the forest values that have accumulated during 100 years of undisturbed growth.

The largest trees will all be left. Most of the harvest will remove only a minority of the redwoods growing in rings around the stumps of the original old growth trees. Trees in between the clumps will be left unless they compete seriously for light with adjacent large redwoods. The hardwoods (primarily tan oak) will be left. Although some canopy will be removed, the projections are that it will close up within 10 years, shading out new trees and brush that sprouts in the temporary openings. Within 20 years, the stands should have returned to much the same state as before the harvest, while allowing the larger trees more space to grow into still bigger trees.

I am hopeful that the approach taken at Brandon Gulch will be able to serve as a model for management of all of the old undisturbed second-growth stands that are not set aside as unmanaged preserves. This will be one of the central issues to be considered by the JAG in developing a long-term landscape plan.