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CLOUDY Temp: 56 °F Wind: NNW at 5 mph Saturday, June 21, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend May 25, 2003 Romain Cooper of the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, left, and Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist with the World Wildlife Fund, look at a log burned in last summer�s Biscuit fire. They say standing dead trees anchor so Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Environmentalists: Let nature take its course By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune SELMA — Most visitors venturing among the fire-blackened trees see only death and destruction. Charred logs lie stretched out on the forest floor baked by last summer’s nearly half-million-acre Biscuit Fire. Overhead, scorched conifer skeletons tower like massive tombstones marking the path of the nation’s largest fire in 2002. But Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist and director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Klamath-Siskiyou Regional Program in Ashland, observes that life is already emerging from the ashes in the site half a dozen miles west of Selma in the Siskiyou National Forest. He points to the lime green madrone leaves sprouting at the base of a burned tree. Forest green live oak poke up out of the soil shaded by the dead trees. Advertisement Delicate lone strands of green grass wave timidly in the breeze. "There is no ecological benefit to salvaging this timber," DellaSala said. "What you are doing when you come in to salvage, you are just setting these forests up for the next fire. "You are removing what’s holding these soils in place," he added. "Without soils, you get a brush field. And planting with nursery stock sets up a plantation forest which has a tendency to burn with high intensity." He sees salvaging in areas away from communities as a "vicious cycle" in which humans disrupt natural processes. "Instead of allowing for nature to work its magic in the back country, resulting in a restored forest over time, we keep setting areas up for uncharacteristic fire," he said. "People fail to realize there is a link between life and death in the fire-forest cycle." But he largely supports a hands-on approach in the urban interface that would include prescribed burns and thinning of small trees. The standing dead trees provide shade for the young trees growing underneath, said Romain Cooper, a longtime environmental activist in the Illinois Valley-based Siskiyou Regional Education Project. "You are already seeing this happening here with canyon live oak and tan oak coming up," Cooper said. "This will be a much hotter, drier, harsher site if these fire-killed trees are removed." Cooper and DellaSala urge that no federal forestland salvage logging occur in roadless areas, riparian sites and in mature forests. Being opposed to a "fire sale" of fire-killed trees on federal land doesn’t mean they are against all salvage logging or those whose way of life is derived from the forests, Cooper stressed. "Conservationists don’t want a no-action alternative," he said. "We want a proactive strategy where the agencies manage the land. "But we feel that management should be in the community interface zone where we can get the most bang for our buck in terms of safety and keeping revenues in our area." Like DellaSala, Cooper believes funds available for fire hazard reduction projects should be used to thin the rural interface. "At the same time, salvage logging will require a large federal subsidy," he said. "We’re not going to make any money on this. Taxpayers are going to lose money." Congress needs to subsidize thinning programs that are aimed at small trees near communities, he said. They stress that the Biscuit fire, like all wildfires, burned in a mosaic pattern. It blackened some areas but barely singed the forest floor elsewhere while leaving islands of green. "With the exception of hazardous trees along a road, these (fire-killed) trees out here ought to be left alone," DellaSala said. "Let’s let nature restore these areas. It has been doing it for thousands of years." There is no evidence that salvage logging can stop the spread of bug infestation, he said. It may actually contribute to spread by removing the habitat for insect-eating bats, woodpeckers and parasitic wasps that prey on destructive insects, he believes. What’s more, humans are unrealistic if they think they can stop wildfire activity in remote areas where topography and weather dominate fire behavior, he added. "Even though the Biscuit fire started in the back country, it wasn’t the result of overly stocked trees and brush fields," DellaSala said. "The fire was driven by weather and terrain, not fuels." Salvaging timber in those areas is merely an excuse to log, he maintains. "We cannot stop (wild)fires just as we cannot stop hurricanes or floods — they are an inevitable ecological process that has been in play for centuries driving the unique ecology of the Siskiyous," DellaSala said. To DellaSala and Cooper, the standing dead trees are biological legacies. They anchor soil, provide vital shade and act as sponges by absorbing and slowly releasing moisture. When those dead trees fall, they provide nourishment for the next forest and help to create vital topsoil, DellaSala said. DellaSala and Cooper do not support planting a monoculture of trees from nursery stock in the aftermath of a fire. That creates a fire-prone tree plantation, they say. "You also lose the diversity of trees that comes with different resilient properties when it comes to fire as well as insect and disease infestations," DellaSala said. That resiliency will return if Mother Nature is given time to work her miracles, he said. "It’s time for us to step back and let these ecosystems heal," he said. Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. 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