Jackson Forest Forum

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
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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

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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
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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