In a recent congressional hearing, a professor of forestry at Texas A&M advocated a view of forest management quite similar to the way the forest is being managed in the Pine Barrens. Addressing how to protect communities from what he calls monster forest fires, the professor said that the forest service should use loggers to help recreate the kind of forest that was found before the european settlers arrived in America. One thing he said I thought was particularly interesting was that contrary to a common belief that pre-european forests in America were an unbroken chain of trees, these early forests were a patchwork of clumps of trees and open areas, such as savannahs, and that different areas of the forests were in different stages of ecological succession. This was caused by natural fires, which nobody stopped, and other factors. The professor's idea is to manage the forest to mimick nature to restore the forest to its historical ecological condition, which he believes works best. He has been studying American forests for more than 30 years.
Isn't this the reasoning for harvesting trees, followed by a controlled burn in the Pine Barrens? Not only do the openings create fire breaks; they restores the habitat for species which require these openings which have become endangered because the openings have ceased to exist.
The electronic transcript is quite long, but I think worth the reading. After all, there has been a lull in posting.
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/107cong/forests/2002jul11/bonnicksen.htm
Isn't this the reasoning for harvesting trees, followed by a controlled burn in the Pine Barrens? Not only do the openings create fire breaks; they restores the habitat for species which require these openings which have become endangered because the openings have ceased to exist.
The electronic transcript is quite long, but I think worth the reading. After all, there has been a lull in posting.
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/107cong/forests/2002jul11/bonnicksen.htm
