The New National Geographic

Two Thousand Days with Grizzly Bears

Phil Timpany (photo by Fritz Mueller)

by Phil Timpany

"Specatcular," said the Belgian, looking through his camera as we sat near a stream in northwestern Canada. Twice the grizzly bear had lunged into the water to catch a chum salmon and brought it to shore to eat in peace. I looked at the bear, the Belgian, then again at the bear. The animal was indeed spectacular. It consumed the fish and started walking toward us.

"Is it close enough?" he asked. I whispered, "Yes." A bolt-action rifle -- a weapon with a short bolt designed to prevent jamming -- replaced the camera. He placed the crosshairs on the bear and began to shake. I said, "Take your time." He readjusted the rifle and took aim. The shaking started again. At 150 feet, the bear turned broadside to study a group of spawning chum. "Breathe," I whispered, "and put the bullet low, just behind the front shoulder." The rifle roared. Water erupted at the bear's front feet. The animal spun around and bellowed, waving a nearly severed and bloody front paw. "Shoot again," I urged. The Belgian tried putting another round in the chamber. It didn't work. His rifle had jammed.

The grizzly began running across the slough to get away. I picked up my rifle and shot. The bullet entered the bear and exited in a large spray of blood and lung tissue. It was a quick death. For me, this was anything but spectacular. The Belgian, however, was happy. He had paid $8,000 to slay the bear.

Thirty-seven years later, I sit by the Fishing Branch River a few miles south of the Arctic Circle with a small group of tourists. We are watching a 500-pound male grizzly chase salmon. My task for the morning has been successful. I have safely placed people and a grizzly together in a natural setting. My 12-guage shotgun is leaning against my pack, loaded and ready for use. The bear-viewing business I share with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation of Old Crow requires that I carry it. In the 21 years I have been working here, I have never fired it. Morris, the 15-year-old male, walks ten feet from us, undisturbed by the shutters of the cameras. Guests have been watching him fish on this river since 2006. He has starred in natural history documentaries and his photos have been published globally in many magazines.

As a young man, I dreamed of a career with wildlife. I thought I could fulfill my naturalist ambitions by working as a guide for "sportsmen" who came from around the world to kill iconic wildlife, especially grizzlies. It pains me to confess that I am responsible for the deaths of many grizzlies. My appreciation for these magnificent mammals, and an increasing repulsion for what I came to see as senseless killing, ended my guiding career. With the bloody adventure behind me and my desire for wilderness still intact, I was lucky to find a vocation that allowed me to begin a long relationship with a population of grizzly bears. In the mid-1970s, I began doing fieldwork for a scientific study of Chinook salmon in a remote area of British Columbia frequented by grizzlies. To date, I've spent more than 2,000 days with grizzly bears. It has been a privilege, a life lesson, and a humbling experience. I am deeply touched by their intelligence, physical power, forgiving nature, and honesty. The familiarity I have developed with these bears now allows me to share my experience with tourists and photographers in wilderness areas in northern British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. When we enter the bear's domain, we engage in a peaceful coexistence based on respect.

Grizzlies are captivating animals and most people believe they are worthy of protection. Opposing views, however, exist as to how to go about it. The institutions supporting the recreational killing of grizzly bears justify the activity on economic terms. They profess their followers have great love for the animal and the killing gives the bear a value, which encourages its protection. The moral issues surrounding the slaughter never enter the equation. Others, like me, believe in the full protection of grizzly bears. We feel that maintaining viable populations of this apex predator and preserving a strong genetic pool will secure the vitality of the entire ecosystem. The morality of killing grizzly bears is an integral part of this thinking. The time I have spent in the presence of grizzly bears has molded my philosophy, making me a staunch advocate for their protection. I see no justifiable reason or need to kill them.

The animal's harmonious and spiritual relationship with indigenous peoples has been replaced by one in which the great bear is now a target for those who wish to kill it, study it, manage it, photograph it, or simply retain a memory of it. Where I live and work in the Yukon and British Columbia, "wildlife management" philosophies are, for the most part, archaic artifacts of early colonial enterprise. They are 100 years old in their framework of legislation and, in regard to grizzly bear management, at least 50 years behind public opinion. As the rest of the world increasingly recognizes the value of apex predators, my government continues to squander this wildlife resource by refusing to create a responsible vision that fulfills its economic and ecological potential. The politics surrounding grizzly bears involves making money, providing job security, and giving those with a passion for killing these animals the legal and moral means to do so.

For now, the best argument for conserving grizzly bears continues to be economic -- although my hope is that people will adopt economy-based values that do not include killing them. Over the long term the survival of grizzly bears will only be guaranteed if they are granted some form of citizenship within our society complete with their habitat requirements. Their continued existence will have to be as important as our own. Some of us will have to learn to coexist with them, suffer with them, and on rare occasions die by them. There is still time for governments and citizens to reframe their attitudes and relationships with these great bears. Without a new culture of appreciation and tolerance, the grizzly bear will vanish.

Nothing good will ever come from killing a grizzly bear. Much good can come from respecting its right to continue to roam the land.


NOTES: This essay was originally published in National Geographic's "Bear: Spirit of the Wild," by Paul Nicklen. It is republished here with permission from Phil Timpany and National Geographic.

Phil Timpany is a long time wildlife enthusiast who currently operates grizzly bear viewing operations with Bear Cave Mountain Eco-Adventures in the northern Yukon and also guides people salmon fishing and grizzly viewing with Nakina Adventures in northern British Columbia.  Phil advocates for peaceful co-existence between grizzlies and humans and habitat protection as the two ingredients most important for grizzly bear conservation. “If we are serious about grizzly bear conservation we will have to, sooner or later, grant them some form of citizenship and learn to co-exist with them on some level," he says. "This paradigm needs to spring from the notions of biodiversity conservation and ecological intelligence, none of which seem to be very popular or in great supply where I live and work.  I am however confident it will come with the generation coming up behind us.”

Never Mind Nevermore (An Ode to the Raven)

Photo by Dave Stalling -- a photo that inspired this essay

Never mind Poe’s Nevermore. Ravens aren’t the dark, sinister omens of death and despair most European cultures historically made them out to be.  Swedes thought ravens were the ghosts of murdered people; Germans saw them as souls of the damned; The Danish considered them “terrible animals” that could lead people astray. Groups, or flocks, are referred to as an “unkindness” of ravens, or a “conspiracy.”  My experiences with them greatly differ; they seem more conscientious, considerate, sensible and sane than most humans I’ve known. I prefer to think of them as ebony angels (mischievous ones), like miniature black Labradors with wings, only smarter.

Linguists say ravens are one of only four known animals – in addition to humans, ants and bees – that demonstrate “displacement,” or, “the capacity to communicate about objects or events that are distant in space or time from the communication.” Young “teenage” ravens were once observed – after discovering a carcass guarded by adult ravens – returning to their roost at night and “reporting” their find. The next day, they led a flock (or conspiracy, if you will) of other young ravens to the carcass, fought off the adults, and shared their stolen feast.  Some scientists argue that the advent of “linguistic displacement” was “the most important event in the evolution of human language,” and ravens are the only other vertebrate to share this with us humans.

They make for a loud and vocal conspiracy. In addition to tapping and gently rapping, rapping at chamber doors, researchers have identified up to 30 categories of vocalizations by ravens, including alarm calls, chase calls, and flight calls. They also mimic sounds, including human speech. (Conceivably they could, indeed -- like an echo -- murmur back the word, `Lenore!') They mate for life, and if one loses its mate they’ve been known to imitate the calls of its lost partner to encourage its return. They’ve been known to imitate wolves to attract them to intact carcasses that are difficult for them to break open with their beaks. When the wolves are done, the ravens move in for the leftovers. Ravens also use rather sophisticated non-vocal signals, sometimes pointing their beaks to indicate an object to another bird like we do with our fingers. They also hold up objects to get another bird’s attention.

Ravens have been observed pushing rocks on people to keep them from climbing to their nests; steeling fish by pulling anglers lines out of the water; playing dead near carcasses to selfishly scare other ravens away from their food.  Ravens often bury excess food in caches for future meals. Sometimes they’ll watch other ravens bury their food, remember the locations, then steal it. As a result, some ravens will fly extra distances from a food source to find better hiding places.  If a raven knows another is watching, it might pretend to put food in one place while really hiding it in another.

From what I’ve seen, they have a playful sense of humor. I’ve watched ravens taunt my Labradors, apparently for their own (and mine, but not so much the dogs) amusement. They’ve been observed playing “keep-away” with other animals such as wolves and otters. They’ve been known to use snow-covered roofs as slides and sled down snowy hills. They sometimes make toys with sticks, pine cones and rocks to play with each other or by themselves.

They form teenage gangs. When ravens reach adolescence, they leave home to eat and roost together until they mature and find a mate.  These days of teenage angst are apparently as tough for them as they can be for us humans; scientists have found higher levels of stress hormones in teenage raven droppings than in the droppings of mated adults.

But it gets better. Their friends will support them through tough times. Unlike some humans I have met, ravens are capable of feeling empathy. Although they can be suspicious and sometimes fight with ravens they don’t know, when they lose battles others console them. They also remember birds they like and will respond in friendly ways even years after last seeing them.

That’s just a smitten of what we know about Ravens – likely less than they know about us. No doubt there exists many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore about these remarkable birds, lost among a plethora of natural knowledge once gained from intimate and intricate connections to the planet that sustains us – this ailing planet we selfishly and greedily forget we share with neighbors we no longer know.

Once, while hunting elk on a bitterly cold, snowy November day in the Bitterroot Mountains near my home in Montana, a raven circled close above my head then off and away in a direction I was not headed. Soon he returned, circled, and headed in the same direction yet again. And then again. Hell, why not? I thought. I changed course, and went the raven's way.  Soon after, I found and killed a bull elk waiting out the storm bedded under a large spruce. While boning out the meat, I frequently shared scraps with my new friend, and some of his friends who soon gathered around. Coincidence? Or an ancient mutualistic, symbiotic relationship we've mostly disconnected from?  Another time, deep in the remote, arid canyons of southern Utah, I had gone several brutally hot days without water and was getting pretty concerned when I looked up and saw a raven on a ledge above me, water dripping from its beak. I climbed up to find a large, deep puddle of rain water in a natural bowl carved into the slickrock. I gratefully shared my last energy bar with that great, big, beautiful bird.
 
Here's my advice: Get out and meet a raven -- or their smaller cousins, the crows, if you’re out of raven range. Forget forevermore! Say “hello.” It’s a good start. You might be pleasantly surprised to find they’re not the wicked black devils they’re often made out to be.  (Even Edgar’s “Prophet! . . . thing of evil! . . . bird or devil!” was merely a projection of the narrator’s own darkness.) Spend enough time around these birds, really get to know them, and these shadows quickly turn to light. Most Native Americans had a more informed view of these remarkable birds. Some worshiped ravens as Gods. Their myths and legends often described them as “sly tricksters” involved in the creation of the world. It makes as much sense as, if not more than, any other deity I've heard of. Make prayers to the Raven!

As for me: These ebony birds often beguile all my sad soul into smiling. I consider them friends. Good friends. For evermore.  

The Man Shop!

On a whim I got my haircut today at a place called The Man Shop. "Kick Ass Cuts!" they claim. "This Is Not Your Father's Barbershop!"

No wimps allowed.

You can shoot a game of pool for free while waiting, or play Foosball, or shoot some hoops, or play one of the arcade games, or watch sports on one of the huge-screen TVs. I opted to kick back in one of the comfy lounge chairs while browsing through an issue of Outdoor Life full of ads for men who apparently need ATVs and military-style semi-automatic rifles to assault deer armed with large racks.

And speaking of large racks, there are a few posters of scantily-clad women with big, um . . .hooters? Jugs? Melons?

There are also assorted T-shirts for sale, most adorned with cartoon depictions of women who all looked like Daisy Mae from Lil' Abner, accompanied with words such as, "No matter how hot she is, some guy, somewhere, is sick of putting up with her shit." Another T-shirt proclaimed, "I work my ass off to feed a million people on welfare." (I assume it was referring to the small amount of taxes used to help people in need, and not the huge amount that goes towards corporate welfare for companies whose CEOs make $40 million a year but can't pay their workers enough to keep them off food stamps. But that would be a lot to put on a T-shirt, and sounds more like something a damn libtard would say, not a man! I work my ass off to feed millionaires?)

If Donald Trump's hair is real, and if Donald Trump ever gets his hair cut, and if Donald Trump ever decided to get his hair cut in Missoula, Montana, this is where he would go. The Man Shop!

There is also a display on the wall showing the past, present and future of women. The past shows a seductive photograph of Marylin Monroe; the present shows a big-breasted woman in a Superwoman costume; the future shows an very attractive woman with a nice smile who looks . . . well, just naturally beautiful. Apparently, the future bodes well for straight men.  

The young, beautiful woman who cut my hair asked me right away if I liked football. "I loved playing it," I say, "but I don't get too into watching it." When she stopped and looked at me funny and said, "What? You don't like the Broncos?" I thought, just for a second, I was going to get banned from the Man Shop. So I attempted a quick recovery and replied, "I have a lot of respect for Peyton Manning . . . he and Tom Brady are pretty amazing." To which she replied, "Tom Brady only got where he is by cheating." I changed the subject to my hair. She asked if I wanted the gray colored out. "Hell no!" I said. "I've been coloring it for years but it's time to be a man and face reality!" She liked that. "Embrace the Gray!" she said. "Be a man! Embrace the Gray!" I replied, holding my clenched fist in the air. We got along damn good after that.

I'll tell you what, I ain't lyin' . . . I did get a freaking kick ass haircut at a helluva damn good price!

There's a sign on the front door with a drawing of a handgun that reads, "Lawful Concealed Carry Welcomed on These Premises! We Support the Second Amendment, Therefore We Support and Encourage the Carrying of Concealed Weapons."

You can also get your eyebrows waxed for $10.00.

Are Polar Bear Populations Thriving?

There's a new lie being spread by conservatives and those who continue to deny climate change stating that polar bear populations are on the rise. Some claim populations are "thriving" and "booming."  One meme (it's a meme, it must be true!) claims that "when Al Gore was born," there were only "7,000" polar bears left, and that today there are "30,000." (Deniers love to pick on Al Gore, as if he fabricated global warming and climate change -- and as if there didn't exist an overwhelming consensus among scientists all over the world, as well as harsh on-the-ground evidence happening around the globe.) 

I wish polar bears were thriving; unfortunately, they're not.

Complicated issues are difficult -- if not impossible -- to convey in a meme. It make take a bit of time and effort, but for those interested in facts here you go:

When Al Gore was born in 1948 there were no legitimate estimates of how many polar bears existed – guesses varied widely because they were based on stories from explorers and hunters rather than scientific surveys. Before the polar bear treaty was signed in 1973, and before polar bears were listed as endangered, several populations of bears were decimated by hunting which began around 1600 and continued unchecked for 350 years. Early scientific estimates from the 1980s, after polar bears were protected for a decade or so, are in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 40,000 polar bears. Most researchers assume that the number of polar bears did increase due to the controls and quotas instituted by the 1973 treaty.

Today, researchers estimate that there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in 19 relatively distinct sub-populations. Of those 19 sub-populations, eight are declining; three are stable; one is increasing and, for the remaining seven, there is insufficient data to determine. For comparison: In 2005, five populations were declining; two were stable and two were increasing. (There is insufficient data for the others.) 

Currently, most of the populations are losing sea ice habitat which has negative impacts on their hunting, as a result most populations are experiencing declines in weight and health of bears, along with low reproductive and cub survival rates.

Since satellite records began in the late 1970s, about 50% of the ice area has within polar bear habitat has been lost, and the ice that remains has lost about 50% of its thickness. In 2012, the area of sea ice loss was greater than the entire area of the United States. That is a significant degradation of critical habitat for polar bears. 

Because polar bears feed almost exclusively on seals they hunt on ice. Changes in the sea ice that affect access to prey has and will continue to have negative effects on the bears. In particular, if more snow falls, polar bears are less successful at breaking into the birth lairs of ringed seals. If too little snow falls, ringed seal pups are born on the sea ice without a lair and this makes them very vulnerable to predation by polar bears and arctic fox -- which can lead to a decline in seals. With less food, polar bears will fail to reproduce more often and give birth to smaller young that have higher mortality rates.

Unfortunately, polar bears are not "thriving" and their future doesn't look so bright.

Same Old Bull

Forests and Wildfire (Logging for Healthy Habitat?)

August , 2015:

Wildfires are Back!

More than fifty homes have been burned by a wildfire near Kamiah, Idaho. More than 100 structures have been destroyed by four fires burning near Chelan, Washington. The Cabin fire in the Angeles National Forest in California has been called a “tinderbox,” destroying homes and resulting in at least one human death. Much of the state is burning up.

And once again smoke fills our valleys here in Missoula, Montana; Wildfires surround us.

I say “once again” because this has been happening periodically during summer months for, well . . . for pretty much forever. Yet people still seem surprised. Some seem upset. I recently met a tourist who had tears in her eyes as she said, “I’ve always wanted to see Glacier, and now it’s being destroyed by fire.”  (Glacier is, indeed, being degraded, but not by fire – it is being altered by thousands of gas-guzzling tourists and a fossil-fuel-driven tourist industry pumping C02 and other greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere which is warming our planet and resulting in overall less snow, earlier snow melt, melting glaciers, more drought and, ironically, drier conditions that contribute to larger and more frequent fires in places like Glacier National Park.) 

When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, there were debates among early foresters on what to do about wildfires – let them burn, as  nature intended, or fight them?  Then the “Great Fires of 1910” came along, also known as the “Big Blowup,” “The Big Burn” and “The Devil’s Broom Fire.” More than 3 million acres – an area roughly the size of Connecticut – burned throughout northern Idaho and western Montana, killing 87 people and completely overrunning and destroying seven towns and severely damaging several others. From then on, the Forest Service took a militaristic approach to stopping all fires. Fire became the enemy.

More than 100 years of fire suppression contributed to altered conditions that now result in wildfires, in some places, that are more frequent and more intense than what naturally and historically occurred. But not in all places. Various forest types evolved with and adapted to various fire regimes -- varying in the frequency and intensity of fires. In some forest types, such as high-elevation lodgepole pine forests, large, less frequent, intense wildfires were and are the natural norm. There are known, predictable risks to building homes in such places, just as there are known, predictable risks to building homes in floodplains.  

It doesn’t help that the media often describes these fires as “devastating” and “catastrophic” while rarely, if ever, helping inform people about forest ecology. I doesn't help that many politicians often simplify the issue and call for more logging as a solution -- the very type of logging that contributed to more frequent and intense wild fires. Continuing the the same policies that contributed to the problem will not solve the problem no matter how much big timber interests and their lackeys will try and persuade you otherwise with half-truths, distortions and lies.   

A lot of environmentalists I know blame climate change for the fires. A lot of conservatives I know blame forest management (or what they perceive as lack of management).  Although past logging and climate change has exasperated the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many places, our western forests evolved with and are adapted to wildfire. Wildfire is as essential to these forests as air, water and soil.  Native Americans who lived close enough to the land to understand the land knew this well. Many tribes started their own fires to alter and improve habitat conditions for the deer, elk and bison that sustained them. It was when European settlers started building permanent homes and cities that fire became a huge issue. It was around 1910 perhaps a well-intentioned but misguided war on forest fires began. It's an attitude still dangerously and unfortunately entrenched in our culture. 

So what can be done? The first step should be for people to learn about the ecology and history of the forests they live in and near; support policies and management that, in some places, allows for natural and essential processes or, in other places, mimics natural processes and restores and enhances the health of these forests, and oppose misguided policies that contribute to the problem. 

More than 50 years ago, a forester, professor and writer named Aldo Leopold put it this way: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

A version of the my following article was first published 20 years ago;  it is still pertinent today:

Steve Arno

July, 1996:
Forests and Wildfires: Logging for Healthy Habitat?

Cutting trees is a sensitive, complex issue, a difficult act to defend. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. But what is good logging? Is it logging that makes a profit? Logging that creates forage for elk? Logging that looks nice to people when it's done?

To Steve Arno, good logging means working within the bounds of natural systems, emulating natural processes, maintaining all components of a healthy forest, from elk to the grasses and forbs that sustain them. And given the forestry practices of the past 100 years or more, a little good logging now may actually be necessary to restore and maintain healthy forests. This is especially so in places that evolved with frequent fires, like the ponderosa pine forest around Steve Arno's home.

Arno, a retired researcher with the Forest Service's Intermountain Fire sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, has studied the ecology of forests and fires for more than 40 years. During that time, he's helped hone methods to restore and maintain healthy forests using logging and fire. His own land -- 60 acres in the foothills of Montana's Bitterroot Mountains -- provides a showcase for these ideas.

An open stand of ponderosa pines now towers over a forest floor covered with grass and scattered clumps of willow and Douglas fir. But Arno's land wasn't always that way. When he bought the place in 1971, it looked like some adjacent lands still do -- a thick tangle of firs and scrawny pines, with little or no grasses or shrubs poking through a dense blanket of needles and dead branches.

"This is a preservationist's Shangri-La," Arno says of the neighboring forest. "It's remained the same for years, nothing's growing. It's preserved, for a while, but in the context of thousands of years of constant change, it's pretty bizarre."

Rotting stumps of ancient ponderosas stand testament to what this forest once was a grassy savanna of giant pines, where early settlers reported riding two abreast on horseback, and where elk grazed on bunchgrasses and scattered willows. Today, it's difficult to penetrate the thicket, and tough for deer and elk to find food. Why the change? The clues lie in the stumps themselves. Turn-of-the-century high-grading -- the practice of cutting only the best, most valuable timber -- left these great skeletons to slowly decay back into the earth.

About the same time the huge pines were heading for the mills, the government began aggressively fighting wildfires. Meanwhile, settler's cattle and sheep grazed down grasses and forbs that once fueled frequent fires, ignited by lightning and Native Americans. For millennia, these fires licked through the forest in a predictable pattern still documented by thin, black scars which appear along annual growth rings in the old stumps at intervals of five to 20 years.

Like predators thinning elk herds, these fires once kept trees in check -- killing some, sparing others, recycling nutrients, rejuvenating grasses, shrubs and trees. Without fire, the trees grew dense, overcrowded, more prone to drought, insects and disease. As competition for water and nutrients increased, so did mortality. The forest grew feeble. Now few healthy pines remain. Douglas firs grow shoulder to shoulder, many dead or dying from mistletoe, bark beetles, root rot and other maladies. Forty-year-old ponderosas that should be 25 to 45 feet tall stand no higher than a person, deformed and crippled by comandra blister rust, a parasitic canker sapping life from the pines.

"These trees didn't evolve to defend themselves from this," Arno says. "Historically, fires did not allow large areas of stagnated saplings to develop. Fires thinned the saplings and did not offer a major breeding ground for the disease."

Without fire to keep stands open and reduce competition from firs, opening the forest canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the ground and replenish nutrients, pines don't have a chance.  Trees need healthy habitat. Fire is as essential as sun and rain.

"Forests are processes, not just trees and plants," Arno says. "And these forests can't survive and remain healthy without processes such as fire."

He explains it this way: "Imagine having an old grandfather clock with a glass front exposing the internal gears. You don't like the looks of one of the gears, so you remove it. Of course, you can't remove the gear and expect the clock to work, yet people expect nature to work without fire."

It hasn't. Throughout the West, fire exclusion, logging and grazing have converted open ponderosa pine forests to fir thickets. As more and more people build homes in these forests, they see the immense stumps of ponderosas that once grew there and shake their heads in wistful disbelief. But most of them intuitively reject the idea that burning and logging could actually help bring back those great pines.

When Arno looked at the monolithic old stumps on his place, he saw more than relics of a bygone era. He saw a compelling history -- and a guide to the future. Listening to the stumps, Arno began by cutting Douglas firs and sickly pines, leaving the larger, healthier pines, simulating as best he could fire's predation. In the process, he made some income, selling firewood, and pulp and saw logs to local mills. This logging and burning slash in hand-built piles reduced fuels that had accumulated during nearly a century of fire exclusion, fuels that could feed fires far larger and more intense than the frequent surface fires that once occurred, the kind of conflagrations that can damage soils, vegetation and wildlife. Then he brought back fire, torching low clumps of dead willows and stagnant aspen.  Arno's land is now green with pinegrass, bunchgrass, willows, snowbrush and aspen suckers. And elk and deer frequent his land once more.

This is the kind of logging Arno would like to see done throughout the lower-elevation pine forests on private and public lands. "Restoration logging," he calls it.

"Forests are constantly changing, dependent on periodic disturbances," Arno says. "We can mimic those disturbances with carefully designed harvesting and prescribed fire -- not recreating the original forests, but learning from nature, using nature as a guide, maintaining components and processes which these forests evolved with and depend on."

When many people think of logging, they envision denuded mountainsides webbed with roads. And they know some logging operations are still managed for short-term profit, not as part of a long-term process to restore and maintain the health and sustainability of the land. Bad logging inflames cynicism and mistrust. Many people now protest cutting trees, anywhere, anytime, no matter the reason. Passion and lack of understanding often fuel these debates. Not all logging is bad.

Good forestry and wildlife management rest on this fundamental premise: A surplus can be sustainably used by people. And we Americans do use wood products. Lots of them. The typical U.S. citizen consumes wood and paper products equivalent to what can be produced from one 100-foot tree every year. This figure includes 663 pounds of paper per person each year, as well as wood fiber in forms as diverse as insulation, rayon, oils, paints and fuels. Small trees are mulched and glued into particle board, wafer board, laminated lumber . . . the list goes on.

"We are still hunter-gatherers, we still need to make a living from the land," Arno says. "We can do so and still maintain wildlife and aesthetics."

Arno believes that the United States should rely on homegrown trees to meet its needs rather than importing timber. While U.S. timber companies export 3.3 billion board feet of timber each year, the U.S. imported 17 billion board feet of processed lumber and raw logs last year. Nearly half of all wood products consumed in the United States today come from other countries -- mostly Canada -- and such places don't necessarily practice enlightened forestry. Amo's vision of "light-on-the-land" logging -- restoring and maintaining healthy forests, employing local people -- contrasts sharply with this condition.

"We don't need to rob from other societies to support our consumption," he says, "We can, and need to, manage our own forests to improve forest health and reduce the risk of severe wildfires."

Logging for healthy forests strikes many people as an oxymoron. Others cautiously embrace it. But some loggers, foresters and timber companies have jumped aboard a "forest health" bandwagon, claiming logging can reduce fire danger and improve forests just about everywhere and anywhere, distorting science to boost unsustainable greed-based profit.

In the name of a "forest health emergency," the U.S. Congress enacted legislation in 1996 that expedited timber salvage on federal lands by exempting salvage sales from administrative appeals, limiting the time available for judicial review, and easing environmental planning procedures. The legislation was attached as an amendment to a rescission bill and became known as the “Salvage Rider.” Despite broad public criticism, several national forests invoked the salvage bill to build new roads and cut dead trees -- and live trees, too, if foresters deemed them “unhealthy.” Even trees blown down by strong winds were quickly salvaged. But dead and decaying trees are as much a part of healthy forests as fire, wind and rain. Simply removing them ignores the complexities of forest health and further alienates people, provoking controversy instead of consensus. Efforts to get people into the woods and show them sites that demonstrate good forestry are far more likely to regain public trust.

Forest health problems do, indeed, exist, with serious implications. From the Cascade Mountains of Oregon to the Front Range of Colorado, land from British Columbia to Arizona, fire exclusion, logging, grazing and human development have transformed millions of acres of ponderosa pine savannas. In fact, Wallace Covington, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, calls ponderosa pine savannas the most endangered forests in the West.

Covington studies ponderosa pine forests in Arizona, comparing current conditions to pre-settlement times. On the Coconino National Forest, where pine and bunchgrass coexisted with fire for two to five million years, there were once about two dozen trees per acre -- a wide open pine stand with a grassy understory. Today, roughly 850 trees choke each acre. Where 1,000 pounds of grasses and forbs once flourished in each acre of land-sustaining great herds of deer and elk, only about 350 pounds per acre now grow. As the profusion of trees compete for moisture, nutrients, sun and space, they become increasingly stressed. Burning won't solve the problems, Covington says. In the absence of fire, a thick, sterile carpet of duff has crept up the bases of trees. A fire now would not be like the periodic, low-intensity ground fires that once thinned forests. It would be a large, intense fire, reaching high into the crowns and deep into the soils, killing mature pines along with the crowded understory.

That's precisely what happened in a former pine savanna much farther north. On August 19, 1992, a dozen lightning strikes in the foothills east of Boise, Idaho, sparked a blaze that burned 257,000 acres of forests and rangelands, including large pines. The fire scorched one stream to bedrock, wiping out a population of increasingly rare bull trout. Efforts to protect homes cost more than $24 million. One area, however, didn't burn. When it reached Tiger Creek, the blaze lay low and merely burned off the underbrush in a 2,500-acre stand of ponderosa pines -- the only survivors within miles. The Tiger stand had previously been logged to remove the understory of fir and reduce fuels, and prescribed fire had been used to restore and rejuvenate grasses.

Like the pine savannas, great stands of aspens grew in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. But in the past century, more than half the aspen forests that existed in pre-settlement times have disappeared. Now, efforts to log tangles of pinon, juniper and fir -- combined with prescribed fire -- are helping restore the aspens that are synonymous with elk country in the Southwest. And in the moist Sitka spruce and hemlock forests along the West Coast, when conditions were just right every few hundred years, intense fires created expansive openings of grasses and forbs, providing forage for deer and elk. Here, too, logging and fire may be essential to maintain healthy elk habitat.

But few logging operations occur without heated debate these days. If nothing else, forest health issues may serve as a catalyst to bring people together.

"There hasn't been much effort in the past to explain forestry practices," said Seth Diamond (a friend of mine who was a wildlife program director for the Intermountain Forest Industry Association before his tragic death in a plane crash in 1996.) "The public has evolved from not being involved, to reacting and criticizing, to where they are now getting out in the woods, learning about forestry and sharing their ideas and concerns. Unfortunately, logging has polarized and alienated a lot of people--but we need those people to help us find solutions to complicated problems. People need to be aware of the consequences and tradeoffs of different options. Yes, there were large fires historically, but is that acceptable today in all places? And if not, what do we want to do? These ecosystems evolved with disturbances like fire, and logging can create similar circumstances."

While logging can reduce fuels and allow managers to safely restore fire, Arno is quick to point out that logging alone cannot replicate fire. Tom Atzet, a Forest Service ecologist for southwestern Oregon forests, agrees.

"Some people say logging is a wholesale substitute for fire," Atzet says. "It isn't. We don't yet understand all of the physical and chemical properties of fire, or the effects fire has on organisms within the environment. Logging can help in some places, by reducing fuels, but as far as nutrient cycling, fire certainly does things that logging doesn't."

Biologists have demonstrated over and over the critical link between fire and countless species of birds, mammals and insects. Even some lichens, which cling to trees and rocks and take their sustenance from air and rain -- coincidentally serving as key indicators of air quality -- may require fire to survive. Atzet says recent research suggests lichens may inhale nutrients from wildfire smoke. In the big picture, we still know very little about the millions of intricate relationships between fire and forest organisms, but we do understand this much: fire is essential to healthy forests.

For many, though, fire conjures images of charred homes and Bambi fleeing a wall of flames. Some people aren't willing to accept the risk of prescribed fire, or simply don't want to choke on smoke lingering in valleys. Just as many don't want logging occurring near their homes. But there is risk in doing nothing as well.

"It's like holding your hand over a dripping hose," Atzet says. "For a while, you can keep the water from coming out. But the pressure builds and builds. Eventually, the water bursts out with far more power and intensity than if you just let it, drip. We've held it back for awhile, but now fuel loads are high, and forests are ready to explode."

Unfortunately, land managers tend to meet the most resistance to logging and burning where people are building homes. This also happens to be where ponderosa pine forests are most in need of thinning and burning, where elk and deer spend harsh winters and require grasses and forbs that can only be restored and sustained by burning and logging, and where elk and deer have already lost millions of tons of forage to human sprawl. Only by working together will people solve such dilemmas.

Atzet has a disabled son, who has been in and out of hospitals for years. At times, Atzet grows frustrated with doctors who leave him to fidget in waiting rooms, uninformed.

"They have my son's best interest at heart, but treat me like an outsider," he says. "Yet I have more interest in my son than anyone else in the world. It can be that way with forestry. People have a deep interest in forests, and land managers can be like doctors."

On one occasion when Atzet took his son in for a spinal tap, doctors parted the heavy curtain of professional medicine and allowed him to join them in the operating room to watch and help.

"We were working together toward the same goal," he says. "It can work the same in forest management, by letting people who care join in the process, to watch and help.

"It's not the science. We're not lacking the science to do a good job in managing ecosystems. It's the human element--getting people to work together toward common goals."

July, 1996:
What's Good For The Goose May Kill The Gander

 

The great pitfall of "forest health" lies in people's tendency to overgeneralize. What works in one forest may prove disastrous elsewhere. For example, high-elevation forests like lodgepole pine evolved with less frequent, more intense wildfires. These burns created a patch of grass here, a small stand of young lodgepole there, and some dense old-growth nearby to form a classic mosaic, supporting everything from elk and deer to pine martens and owls. But years of fire exclusion and logging have allowed lodgepoles to grow into larger, more uniform stands with little diversity. Pine beetle epidemics and large wildfires are on the rise.

But thinning and burning the understory would be absurd here. Scattered clearcuts and more intense prescribed burns would more closely follow historic natural patterns of fire. In the high country of Idaho's Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, for instance, large hot fires occasionally burn dry, south-facing slopes creating huge brushfields, while sparing the spruce and fir on moist north slopes. Viewed from above, the patchwork of trees and openings is difficult to distinguish from clearcuts in adjacent logged areasexcept for the roads.

Foresters prescribe distinct treatments to different forests. Clearcutting ponderosas can be like amputating the leg of a heart attack victim. So can thinning lodgepole. But when economic and social pressures transcend genuine forest health considerations, land managers may prescribe the wrong treatment in the wrong place. That's why clearcuts have a bad name, and why folks think selective cuts are always best. Clearcuts assault people's senses, while a selectively thinned forest seldom draws attention. But aesthetics don't always equate to good forestry. Selective logging has become synonymous with good forestry, yet if only large, valuable trees are selectively cut, it's nothing more than high-grading.

Of course, logging plans must account for social and economic factors. Modern technology allows for logging that's lighter on the land than past practices, but not without tradeoffs. Helicopter logging can eliminate the need for roads in some areas, but to make a profit, loggers may have to cut bigger, more valuable trees, like mature ponderosa pines and larches -- often the very fire-adapted, fire-dependant species foresters are trying to restore. More traditional equipment like grapple skidders and feller bunchers costs less, but requires roads and skid trails.

Some state-of-the-art machinery, like harvesters and forwarders (that together form a "cut-to-length system" that cuts, limbs and loads trees on the spot) can range far from roads, reducing the number of roads required. Equipped with wide, rubber tires, the machines cause less erosion and soil compression than traditional equipment, and they can process small-diameter fir thickets that may be impractical to log otherwise. But together they cost about $700,000.

Every technique has benefits, each has faults. Much depends on the types of trees to be cut, when they are cut, the nature of the terrain where they grow, the going price of lumber and pulp, and whether the trees are on public or private land. Logging on private lands tends to have a more singular focus. Expensive, time-consuming thinnings and prescribed burns don't boost the bottom line of timber company ledgers. And timber companies are in business to make money. If they don't, a lot of their forests could be (and have been) sold and used for other profit-making ventures -- like subdivisions and resorts.

In contrast, agencies charged with stewardship of public lands may view logging to restore and maintain healthy forests as essential, even if they have to do it without making a profit. Like prescribed fire, logging can be an important way to restore natural vigor to a forest.