Forest restoration and thinning operations

Forest restoration initiatives reduce wildfire risk and produces responsible timber

by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFS, RFA, EcoFor

Forests that are overcrowded with small diameter trees are more susceptible to devastating wildfires, as smaller trees act as kindling to fuel the blaze and as veritable ladders that allow flames to reach the forest canopy. In addition to that the misguided practice of leaving tree crowns and branches as “habitat piles” (for the wildlife, as the greenies keep crying) creates even more fire ladders and thus danger of such fires. Furthermore those “habitat piles” also are a source of tree diseases.

Since 2010, high-intensity fires have burned more than 5 million acres of forest lands across the western and central United States. But prevention of forest fires spreading is only one issue that is being dealt with by thinning and other proper forest and woodland management measures. The other is to allow light in and also stop trees damaging each other.

What is forest thinning?

Thinning of woods and forests has nothing to do with clear-cutting, as some people think, and it is also not harmful to the woods and forests. The opposite rather. But often it is very difficult to get misguided greenies to understand and comprehend this because they have read and read books and such that claim that cutting down any tree of any size and age is bad for the environment.

Nobody wants to clear-cut the forests, as that would be rather counterproductive. But there is a way to thin the forest that is healthy for the habitat, healthy for the forest and protects the forest from catastrophic fires and also to create valuable habitat for wildlife.

A woodland or forest whose canopy is too dense does not allow enough light to penetrate for other things to grow and the same goes for too much undergrowth. Both are not beneficial for the woods nor the flora and fauna. But this is something that people often do not understand in the same way as they do not understand that paper is not bad either.

So, what good does thinning do?

To put it simply, when a fire moves through an overcrowded forest, in which trees are spaced very close together, small diameter trees act as kindling to fuel the blaze and as veritable ladders that allow the flames to move up into the forest canopy, causing widespread devastation that can decimate thousands of acres at a time.

On another level thinning improves the environment of the woods and forests and thinning out the small trees allows the bigger trees to grow stronger, better and healthier.

The woodcutters of the future are not clearing the forest, they are creating it. They are really the artists of the future forest. Every decision they make about what tree to cut and what to leave is something we'll be living with for the next 50 years.

But this has always been the case in proper woodland and forest management in Europe, including and especially in Britain.

Britain was once an island of forests – despite the fact that some wish to claim that the woodland cover of the British Isles was but a small percentage by the beginning of the year 1000 only – and the foresters and woodsmen have always had the best interest of the forest and the woodland in mind. After all it was also what made them money, but never by clear-cutting.

Reusing all that wood

In America in the '80s and '90s, forests were managed for timber and woodcutters went in, took out all the big trees and what was left was burned. What was once piled up and burned needs to be made into wood products.

There has also been a similar management, as regards to thinning in recent decades in Europe, in that most of the thinned timber was simply burned on site. Not so much, I hasten to add, where coppice workers were doing the work of thinning as to them any wood is being looked at as a source of income and this is the way it should be. Nothing, as far as possible, should be wasted.

Through partnerships with local businesses, small diameter trees like those being thinned must be reused for loads of useful applications, including furniture and housewares, fencing, cabinetry, pallets and even prefabricated homes and bridges. And where all else fails there is always firewood and charcoal.

In the USA thinned trees are also used to create oriented strand board (OSB), a popular building material that is also used for furniture and other applications. Wood pieces that are too damaged to reuse for these purposes are made into mulch, sawdust and pellets for wood-burning stoves.

We all have a stake in the future of our forests and our woodlands, but not everybody recognizes it. So, we help people understand the importance of that, but it's not enough just to create a sense of urgency. We want people to feel an understanding of what needs to be done, and provide them with an opportunity to learn.

Personally I have encountered misguided greenies who do not understand nor wish, it would seem, to understand that woods and forests need to be managed to thrive and this is a shame and with some of them even the best intention of enlightening them are, unfortunately, unsuccessful. But, we must continue this effort in the same way as we must manage our forests and woodlands in the proper manner for the benefit of everything and everyone.

© 2013

Con-Lib government selling off Britain's forests

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The British coalition government between Tories and Whigs is putting forward the framework for legislation to sell off much of the government-owned forests and despite much protests seems to be going ahead with it. Truth is they have to raise money somehow to bring the country back from bankruptcy.

While everyone in the green sector seems to be up in arms about this suggestion I wonder whether it may not actually be a good idea.

Claims and comments such as this one “The government is getting ready for a huge sell-off of our national forests to private firms. This could mean ancient woodlands are chopped down and destroyed. Walkers and endangered animals, like red squirrels and owls, would have to make way for Center Parcs-style holiday villages, golf courses, and logging companies” by 38 Degrees ( http://www.38degrees.org.uk) are not helpful as they more than likely are very misleading.

“We need to stop these plans”, 38 Degrees say, and continue “ancient forests like the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest are national treasures - once they’re gone, they are lost forever.”

I am well aware that to many my suggestion is tantamount to treason and betrayal of green principles but allow me to play the Devil's advocate, for a while at least.

The claim of “ancient forests” which always, in the minds of the public conjures up forests never touched by the hand of man and never managed for forest products, etc. are entirely wrong. There are no “ancient” or “untouched” forests and woodlands in Britain or elsewhere in Europe bar one or two in the East of the continent that were so inaccessible that timber extraction was not possible. All other forests and woodlands have been used and managed.

The great forests mentioned by the 38 Degrees group were, once upon a time and that not all that long ago, privately owned or owned by the crown and administered by Agisters and other forest officers and the usage rites were “owned” by the so-called “foresters”, much like “commoners” that had rites to the common of a village.

Originally British forests were the hunting reserves of the crown and thus had special protection. Other forests and woods were owned by the landowners, the Lords and the Lords of the Manor and the Lairds in Scotland. The state has not been the owner of our forests for long.

The Centre Parcs-style holiday villages – oh mt G-D what eyesores – are not necessarily on the horizon and that simply because there is no money for building those and there are no customers either. So let's stop with silly claims and scaremongering.

The management of our forests – the state-owned ones – via the Forestry Commission (most of the British woods and forests are in fact privately owned though most people tend to forget that) – leaves much to be desired, as does that of the majority of our privately owned woodlands and especially of those owned by local authorities and local governments.

The Forestry Commission was not, in fact, established to protect our forests. It was a commercial government operation to ensure that enough wood was available for the use by the military and especially “vital” industry such as props for the coal mines. That was its primary task. The rest just sort of developed later when amenity had greater value than the pit props. You don't need pit props when you haven't got any pits left.

Afforestation was the main reason for the creation of the commission in 1919. Britain had then only 5% of its original forest cover left and the government at that time wanted to create a strategic resource of timber. Since then forest area has more than doubled and the remit of the commission is now much more focused on sustainable forest management and on maximizing public benefits. Establishment of new forests and woodlands has gone out of the window, unfortunately.

The Forestry Commission claims also to be the government body responsible for the regulation of private forestry and claims that felling is generally illegal without first obtaining a license from the Commission. Having worked in forestry, private forestry, for many years this is something rather new to me.

Apparently the Commission claims also to be responsible encouraging new planting and while it is true that the Commission used to provide grants in support of private forests and woodlands, new planting is something that any forestry estate and forest owner who manages his or her forests and woodlands properly would do without the interference of the FC. In the current climate I am sure we shall see this support of grants fall drastically. Not that, to all intents and purposes, it should ever be needed.

So, let's not loose too many tears and sleepless nights over the FC losing a couple of its forests.

As long as the woods are not just clear felled by the buyers for a quick buck – and legislation could prevent that from happening – and are properly managed for future timber and other forest products, which everyone on his or her right mind buying such assets would do, then privatizing many of those forests and woodlands might just be a good idea.

People could band together and buy their own local forests and then manage them and thus much better use could, maybe, made of them than are currently be made by the FC and local authorities.

Thus many proper community woodlands and forests could be created and the forests products could be marketed primarily for local use, which could encourage local industry regeneration.

Personally, I wonder whether the FC itself, which is not a ministerial department but, to all intents and purposes is a Quango, should not be gotten rid off itself.

While, and I am the first to admit that, its research arm is a most valuable one as far as tree diseases and such go the rest of the operations may not be as useful as claimed.

I told you I was going to play the Devil's advocate here...

What we really must get down to is to get the management of our local authority owned woodlands and forests to be put under proper commercial management – somehow managed by the councils – to (1) clean them up and (2) bring in some revenue from the forests products that could be created and (3) by the same way also encouraging the creation of local industries making use of those products. It can be done and must be done, if only to keep the woods and forests in good shape.

Britain's forests and woodlands are in a mess and we need to, urgently, revitalize their uses. In the West Country there are coppice woodlands that, due to pressure from misguided greenies, have not been managed for decades now because those greenies made claims that those woods were ancient woods and must return to their original state.

Unfortunately none of them has a clue about forestry operations and those coppice woodlands are in danger of breaking apart, literally, with the thousand or more years old coppice stools simply falling over and that is the end of it. No more woods at all. Shame there are so many in the green movement who do not want to understand that.

You want woodlands and forests? Make sure you own them and not the state even. If the community and people feel strongly enough there should be ways and means that could make real community woodlands and forests possible. But they then also need to be managed properly.

© 2010

Habitat Piles – A Health Hazard in the Woods

by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFA, EcoFor

I know that habitat piles, themselves, sound like a disease but it is not, though they can be a pain in the posterior of the professional forester and the aboriculturalist concerned with healthy trees.

The idea of the habitat piles, leaving forest debris in the woods, came from misguided environmentalists and the practice was forced upon woodland managers, foresters and those responsible for woodlands in parks by said misguided people. They claimed and still claim that such piles are good for the environment and wildlife. The fact, however, is that neither is the case.

Habitat piles are not only not all that beneficial to the environment and wildlife, they are in fact a threat to the woods and to the global climate.

In the first instance, the threat to the woods, they are, as said, a hazard to tree health, as they harbor all kinds of dangerous pathogens and also dangerous fungi that attack standing living trees.

In the second case the fact that the wood in those so-called habitat piles decays and by doing so releases two greenhouse gases of which one if CO2 and the other methane. The latter is reckoned to be many times more dangerous to the climate than is even CO2 and this is where the piles again are not beneficial at all.

Therefore the habit of habitat piles – pardon the slight pun – should be ceased forthwith, the the Forestry Commission also appears to agree with this and appears to, in fact, call for the very cessation of this practice. This cannot come soon enough and a great majority of the not too old piles should be removed as well before they do any more damage.

© 2009
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