Dear Editor,
Forest ecologists estimate that if you let a New England farm field go fallow, it takes natural succession about 120 years to re-establish a healthy soil biome, but even that will be but a pale shadow of the mature complex food web that once existed under the bowers of the ancient giants. The diverse deciduous and evergreen forests that blanketed the hills and basins of our region were a species of super-organism and the keystone species that bound all this biodiversity together were the mychorryzal fungi. These trees could live 400-500 years and were enormous — with red oaks and hard maples at 150 feet and white pines reaching 200 feet or more. Hardwoods could have boles 9 feet in diameter.
But all this biomass above ground was dwarfed by the more than 60% of the total — the food web underground. For all the tons of carbon held in the trunks and branches, the real long term stable carbon was built up over centuries in a substrata of deep humus. That is the carbon bank our farmers are still drawing on.
In fact, 50% of the carbon stored in a forest is held by the top 1% of the biggest trees (but the value for the United States is lower 30% in the largest 1% of trees due to widespread historical logging of large trees, according to a 2012 study “Ecological importance of large-diameter trees in a temperate mixed-conifer forest,” by Lutz, J. A., Larson, A. J., Swanson, M. E., and Freund, J. A.) New findings show that, although it is not as rapid as in young trees, sequestration is greatest from the growth period of 50-150 years of age and is continuous after that. There are innumerable benefits accruing to old forests in terms of healthy landscape function and biodiversity — not to mention the aesthetics. You simply can’t put a dollar value on the recreational benefits of an area like Telephone Gap (area in the Green Mountain National Forest slated for clear cut and shelter wood cuts in the Forest Service plan). These are places that can begin to heal your soul if you let them.
Over the course of the 20th century, as farmland was abandoned, our forest cover returned to 80% of the land base. However, in the last 10 years the tide has turned again and we are now losing an estimated 11,000 acres of forest every year, mainly to development. Clear-cutting and fragmentation also increasingly threaten habitat for a wide swathe of our wildlife dependent on deep forest and corridors to thrive.
At the same time, there is growing recognition that our forests are one of our greatest assets to mitigate and even reverse the worst effects of abrupt climate change. There is a promising new approach to management taking hold in our state called Ecological Forestry Management. This comprises practices that aim for the complexity of canopy and varied tree age range found in old forests. It includes identifying legacy trees, establishing gaps, freeing mast trees, leaving snags and standing dead, and more. Although managing for old growth characteristics while still harvesting timber reduces yield on average to 60% of what it would be from a typical selective commercial cutting, the real world benefits of carbon sequestration, infiltration and retention of water, and restoration of biodiversity, far outweigh the loss.
In total, 70% of our forest is in family ownership. We need to understand the forest as a system and grant incentives to woodland owners who manage for long term health and adaptability. This doesn’t have to entail the “not-in-my-backyard” syndrome. We can sustain a local harvest while managing for enhanced complexity. In fact, promotion of ecological forestry could help jump start a “localvore” movement in the timber and wood products industries. After all, do we really want new decks and home renovations to be built from old growth lumber imported from British Columbia? If we really care about our own forests we need to reduce waste and over-consumption.
The current prevalent practices of shelter wood and clear cuts may have made sense in our region in the 20th century but with the advent of climate change, with flash droughts, extreme precipitation events, wind shears, invasive pathogens and pests, we have no guarantee that regeneration will occur on such sites as it once could reasonably be expected to do.
We can protect and restore our public lands through pro-forestation. We can unite with President Biden’s “30×30” initiative and call for the establishment of 30% “forever wild” designation of forest lands in the state by 2030.
We should also ask our legislators to place a moratorium on new biomass projects for heat and energy. Weatherization of homes and subsidies for thermal heat pumps could bring us better gains without further environmental destruction. Let’s ensure that Ecological Forestry Management becomes a required practice of Current Use and permanently protect all the public land within the boundaries of state and national forests.
We are accustomed to think of forest managers in terms of the output of their operations — number of board feet harvested. But to squarely address abrupt climate change, we need to match expectations for production with management aimed at restoration of the carbon cycle. Restoration of the carbon cycle leads to restoration of hydrologic cycles, which is critical to landscape function and climate change mitigation.
For more info on the proforestation movement visit standingtreesvermont.org.
For more info on Ecological Forestry Management check out the educational videos posted on YouTube by Chittenden County forester, Ethan Tapper.
Stephen Leslie is a co-owner of Cedar Mountain Farm and Cobb Hill Cheese located at Cobb Hill co-housing in Hartland. Leslie is an author with Chelsea Green Publishing.
