Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 13.1 Continued
class distribution, tree density, noxious weeds and the
endemic Pawnee montane skipper butterfl y ( Hesperia
leonardus montana ), which has increased since project
implementation. Measurements show that a signifi cant
reduction in crown fi re risk and large scale high inten-
sity fi res has already been achieved (Johnston 2005).
Restoration of forests in the Upper South Platte
Watershed are representative of other efforts in dry
forests of the Intermountain West. These projects
show great promise as ways to restore forest condi-
tions similar to those that existed prior to Euro-
American settlement, with composition and structure
that are thought to be much more sustainable than
current, overly dense forest conditions.
One concern is how these forests will be maintained
once extractive timber removal is completed. Manag-
ers will need to conduct periodic burns, scout for and
remove invasive species, prevent damage from re-
creational use and otherwise keep a close watch on
the Upper South Platte and many other public forests
across the West. This will cost money, and it is not yet
clear whether there will be political support for long-
term restorative management of this type over such a
vast area.
First, because such a great amount of western North
American forests are owned and managed by federal
and provincial governments, restoration has been and
will continue to be driven largely by government poli-
cies and funding. Up until the mid-1990s, the focus of
these public land policies was on extracting resources
such as timber, grazing for livestock, water, fossil fuels
and minerals, while also attempting to mitigate envi-
ronmental impacts of these industries insofar as pos-
sible. This focus on extraction was driven by two key
factors: politics and agency culture. Elected representa-
tives in this part of the world gain political advantages
by facilitating the exploitive use of resources on public
lands and subsequent job creation. Or to put it another
way: more jobs equal more votes. Countervailing politi-
cal pressure and strengthened environmental laws
eventually overcame this factor, particularly in the
United States. The second important factor was the
internal culture of the agencies in charge of public
lands. Forest management agencies in the United
States and Canada were, until recently, largely led by
resource professionals who personally favoured an
extractive approach to public forest management, a
tradition dating all the way back to Gifford Pinchot (see
section 13.3). But over time, in response to public pres-
sure and the emergence of a new generation of land
managers, the culture of resource agencies has
changed. The new managers are better schooled in
ecology, and tend to have a more holistic view of their
responsibilities than did the generation before them.
Since the mid-1990s, public land management deci-
sions have given increasingly more weight to noncom-
mercial, non - extractive ecosystem services and
increased community engagement in land manage-
ment planning. The emphasis has largely, though not
completely, shifted from resource extraction to sustain-
ing ecosystems. This has led to a steady increase in
interest in using ecological restoration as both a
land objective and a set of management tools. We can
see this shift playing out over vast areas of western
North America. Much more is now being spent, par-
ticularly in the United States, on removing forest roads
than is spent on building new ones. Large-scale clear-
cut logging on public forests is by and large a thing of
the past. Restoration, while not yet the dominant para-
digm, has taken its place as a serious alternative that
is increasingly employed by forest managers. It has
become a new tool in the manager's toolbox.
But as if land managers needed more challenges,
climate change has now added a new level of uncer-
tainty that brings into question the effi cacy of restora-
tion activities in temperate forests of western North
America. In many cases reference ecosystems are
based or constructed on the best available information
concerning historical ecosystem structure and func-
tion. However, as will be discussed in Part 4 of this
topic, there is often uncertainty in the relevance of
using historical conditions to guide restoration efforts,
given for example the growing infl uence of climate
change. Additionally, there are few tools to guide the
selection of strategies that will restore the ecosystem
resiliency needed to adapt to climate change. As one
example, opportunities for proactive forest restoration
that account for anticipated climate change may be
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