Research news
Plan
for sustainability on federal forests, says panel of scientists
Sustainability--in all its aspects--should be the "overarching objective" in planning for management of national forests and grasslands. That's the opinion of a 13-member panel of scientists headed by Forest Resources professor K. Norman Johnson.
The committee, which also included Forest Engineering professor Bob Beschta, was convened in December of 1997 to provide scientific and technical advice to the Forest Service on managing its forests and grasslands. The panel's report, "Sustaining the people's lands: Recommendations for stewardship of the National Forests and grasslands into the next century," was presented to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman in May.
Its findings will be used by Forest Service planners as they draft rules for carrying out the provisions of National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the two laws that govern management on national forests.
The rules are used by forest managers to develop plans for the nation's 150 national forests. Most of the national-forest management plans are up for revision in the next couple of years. The committee's recommendations will guide decisions about where and how managers design a timber sale, carry out a grazing lease program, or site a campground.
The committee's mission, says Johnson, was not to write the rules, but to offer a generation-long framework of concepts to guide rulemaking and planning.
The panel made 12 major recommendations. The first was that the Forest Service should recognize ecological, economic, and social sustainability as being the "overarching objective" of National Forest stewardship. "The concept of sustainability is old," wrote Norm Johnson in his summary of the report, published in the May issue of the Journal of Forestry. "[I]ts interpretation and redefinition in this report should be viewed as a continuation of the attempt by Gifford Pinchot and others to articulate the meaning of 'conservation' . . . "
Another recommendation said the agency should recognize that many towns rely on National Forest resources for their "economic, social, and cultural sustenance," and urged planners to "take generous account of compelling local circumstances." The committee also urged more flexibility for local managers, coupled with independent evaluation of the effectiveness of their management. The report called for a collaborative planning approach, recommended that scientists be involved, urged that plans be understandable by the public, and advised that "budget realities" be integrated into planning. One suggestion was to charge more for recreation, noting that "Finding stable funding sources to support stewardship remains among the agency's greatest challenges."
Three women disappear from Yosemite National Park, and their bodies are later found in an adjacent national forest. Two Oregon park rangers are shot, and one killed, at Oswald West State Park. A woman park employee cleaning bathrooms is abducted, raped, and released three days later.
These tragic incidents all happened in the past few years, and people remember the frightening headlines. Do such reports scare people away from wildland recreation areas? That's what Joanne Tynon, assistant professor in the Forest Resources department, wants to know.
An expert in wildland recreation management and nature-based tourism, Tynon has teamed up with Deborah Chavez, a research social scientist at the Pacific Southwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service, to find out how prevalent such incidents are, how park managers are dealing with them, and whether they make a difference in people's recreational choices.
In a series of visits and interviews, Tynon and Chavez found that recreation managers believe urban-style crime is a growing problem in wildland recreational areas. The managers cited incidents ranging from arson, vandalism, and illegal dumping to domestic violence, satanic-cult and extremist-group activity, theft, suicide, and murder.
Tynon and Chavez have pulled together a six-member team to conduct a more rigorous survey of criminal activity at parks and recreational sites across the country. After that's done, Tynon says, the team will survey people who visit wildland recreational sites to determine how crime in the woods affects their vacation plans.
Planted forests essential for world sustainability, says new book
In Senegal, they provide fuelwood and forage for cattle. In Nepal, they're cultivated to protect watersheds. In Scotland and Denmark, they restore trees to a landscape that has been treeless for hundreds of years.
Planted forests--grown from tree seedlings planted on once-forested or unforested landscapes--actively contribute to the world's biological, economic, and social sustainability. That is the message of a forthcoming book describing the role of planted forests worldwide.
Planted Forests: Contributions to the Quest for Sustainable Societies, new from Kluwer Academic Publishers, is a comprehensive look at the biology and management of afforested and reforested landscapes.
Planted forests often don't get the respect they deserve, says co-editor Jim Boyle, Forest Resources professor and an expert in forest soils. "Sometimes you hear quibbling over whether a given area of planted trees is really a 'forest.' However you resolve the semantics, planted forests are a significant and necessary presence on the landscape worldwide, both as a source of wood fiber and as a land conservation strategy."
As the demand for wood increases with developing economies and expanding populations, Boyle writes in the book's introduction, "we simply cannot meet the world's demands for solid wood, wood pulp, fuelwood, and other forest values from naturally growing native forests alone. We're dependent on planted forests."
These forests, says co-editor Katy Kavanagh, range widely in complexity, from monocultures to diverse ecosystems. "We acknowledge that they will never replace native forests," writes Kavanagh, until recently a professor at the College (she's just joined the University of Idaho faculty). But their potential to complement natural woodlands "lends optimism for future forest management."
Planted Forests had its beginnings in a 1995 international meeting held in Portland, Ore. Its 31 chapters deal with planted forests in temperate and tropical regions and developed and developing nations. The book, which costs $225, may be ordered from the OSU bookstore, 541-737-1505, or from Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 358 Accord Station, Hingham, MA 02018; tel. 781-871-6600.