12/28/99

President Clinton's decision to ask the U.S. Forest Service to devise a plan to prevent logging in about 40 million acres of federally owned land by permanently designating it roadless and undeveloped has spawned a lively debate among scientists. At issue is whether it will improve or diminish diversity of plant and animal life to completely stop cutting trees in the specified areas. Environmental groups praise Clinton's initiative. They are justifiably reacting to years of forest management that focused too heavily on timber harvests without adequate regard for the effect on plants and animals whose habitat was disturbed or destroyed or on streams impacted by siltation.

But earlier this month, state wildlife directors from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia met with the Forest Service's southern regional forester, Elizabeth Estill, to express concern that setting aside more area that must remain undisturbed will further harm some declining species that need newly cut, young forest habitat.

A group of university scientists responded to that meeting by writing an open letter to the public and the Forest Service arguing in favor of preserving the remaining 750,000 acres of roadless areas in the Southern Appalachian national forests. They contend that while there's no evidence that too little logging is causing decline of any species, there's abundant evidence that too much logging in national forests is harming many wildlife species.

In a lengthy response to the scientists' letter, Chuck Hunter, Southeast Region Nongame Migratory Bird Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, agrees that their points are worth strong consideration in some areas, but don't necessarily apply to the largely forested Southern Blue Ridge. There, he says, he agrees wholeheartedly with the state wildlife directors.

Hunter argues that the massive clear cutting earlier in this century has left too much even-aged forest. That creates a problem for many species of birds because in a mature old-growth forest, the forest canopy - the tops of the trees - would be uneven with open spaces created by wildfires, the death of large old trees that sometimes opened up as much as a quarter of an acre, and other natural occurrences. Many warblers and other forest birds depend on those open spaces, where undergrowth occurs, for food. Even-aged forests have simple, closed canopies with no understory.

"Obviously, these forest conditions are not very good forest bird habitats for canopy and understory associated species," Hunter says. He believes they may in part explain the decline of species like the Appalachian Bewick's Wren, which is all but extinct, the Appalachian yellow bellied sapsucker and the Golden wing warbler.

Hunter argues that it will take decades, even centuries, for old-growth conditions to occur naturally and without some management in the meantime, species dependent on an understory will continue to decline. He also points out that in the Nantahala forests of 1775, before the advent of disturbance by European settlers, there were extensive grassy open areas. We know this from "The Travels of William Bartram," by the renowned botanist, whom Hunter quotes: "I descended the pinnacles, and again falling into the trading path, continued gently descending through a grassy plain, scatteringly planted with large trees...."

It would be ironic indeed if our efforts to preserve the remaining diversity of our great forests were to result in diminishing that diversity. The fact is that we have massively disturbed the majestic woodlands that existed before European settlement. We can't even be exactly sure what those forests were like. But as scientists continue to learn more about how plant and animal species interact, depend on and relate to one another, they must be free to implement the best known management practices for a diverse and healthy forest. If that includes some culling of trees to preserve habitat for species dependent on an understory while we wait for the forest to reach old-growth maturity, so be it.

The Clinton administration is right to try to protect these areas from development, but regulations should not prevent forest management practices, including timbering, if that's what is needed to preserve declining species.