Forest Service Releases Report On Restoration Strategy

The Forest Service released a new report yesterday titled, “Increasing the Pace of Restoration and Job Creation on our National Forests," which outlines how the agency will pursue initiatives and policies that promote landscape-scale restoration. It was released in conjunction with a list of new projects selected for funding under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act.

Increasing the speed and amount of restoration is definitely needed on our national forests as evidenced by so many streams with reduced water quality, as well as degraded fisheries and wildlife habitats.  With an overburdened road system consisting of 375,000 miles – enough to circle the earth 15 times – reclaiming just 20 percent of these will help restore our forests and maintain or create much needed jobs. In fact the report states that for every million dollars spent on activities like stream restoration or road decommissioning, 12 to 28 jobs are generated.

The report also explains that its continued collaborative and restoration emphasis is meant to, “…move beyond the conflicts which have characterized forest policy in the past and toward a shared vision that allows environmentalists, forest industry, local communities, and other stakeholders to work collaboratively toward healthier forests and watersheds, safer communities and more vibrant local economies.”  

These are laudable goals and can certainly help address a backlog of restoration needs across the National Forest System. Stream restoration and road reclamation activities are central to achieve the report’s goals of implementing the Watershed Condition Framework and Integrated Resource Restoration budgeting.

However, when reading the report it becomes clear very quickly that a chainsaw will be the main tool to achieve broad, landscape-scale restoration. It explains that in order to reduce the threat of “catastrophic wildfire” and bark-beetle caused tree mortality, the agency plans to increase the amount of timber produced from 2.4 billion board feet (bbf) generated in 2011 to 3 bbf, a 20 percent increase. In fact, media coverage of the report’s release came with the title, U.S. Forest Service plans to boost timber production, forest health work.

While mechanical vegetative treatments can be used to help restore forest stand structures, diversity and processes, knowing exactly when and how is an ongoing experiment. When the restoration benefits are unclear and the primary purpose is to produce wood products, it is better to call a project a traditional timber sale rather than pretend it achieves an unquantifiable restoration goal.  

Perhaps most troubling is that the report continues a trend of focusing so much forest restoration activities on vegetative manipulation, and less emphasis on providing clean water, improving fish and wildlife habitats, and recovering imperiled species; even when these are central Forest Service restoration goals.