Redwood Reader

10. Glomalin and Habitat
http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2137776,00.html
Commentary: Murrelet report sparks debate over bird's future
The battle over habitat was on the front page again today, this time in regard to marbled murrlet protections. Local environmentalists are alarmed over possible extirpation of the species in California, Oregon and Washington within the next forty years, as reported in a new study by 16 biologists working under contract from three Oregon timber companies. The report says murrelets and their old growth habitats deserve protection. They want every possible old growth tree protected. Timber industry analysts are wondering why a species abundant in other parts of its range should be protected at all. Fish and Wildlife Deputy Director John Engbring statement that “there is little more that can be done on private land” but that private property protection, the Northwest Forest Plan and the large number of birds elsewhere provide opportunities for recovery.
This is a good example of what is wrong with today’s regimen-there is no quantifiable hope for the future and is again an example of how managing for carbon storage can incidentally solve some of our current problems. Northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets and salmon all benefit from a management scheme in which large trees are necessary for forest to function as carbon pumps for the fungi in the ground. As rising CO2 becomes more of a concern globally it becomes more apparent rent should be paid for people to leave large blocks of trees working for extended periods. Corvid threat indicates these areas should be closed canopy with minimal openings, including roads, and can be a management goal in newly refreshed habitats. Long term contracts with opt-in clauses for industry and agencies and conservation easements for privately held lands would ensure return of large tracts of lands to late seral characteristics in one or two generations. Habitat must be available to fill or there can be no increase in numbers. King Range NCA should be watched for the return of nesting marbled murrelets as it is recovering habitat and can be a useful indicator of improving conditions.
A similar region wide effort well under way is the culvert replacement program. This gem is reopening many miles of habitat for coho and steelhead. Unfortunately, much of this habitat is also impacted with sediment from various land use patterns. In order to successfully take advantage of the improved situation, it would be worthwhile to implement a program of stream channel recovery, with methodical pool and riffle construction where needed. One visit per creek, initially, with the size of job depending on many factors. Opening of this much habitat could be reason enough to use hatcheries with wild fish (many of which die in streams that dry up annually) to ensure successful re-habitation as well as genetic variability.
In many ways Humboldt County is still recovering from past land use patterns. One area is the diminished capacity of our watersheds to dole out their moisture over the whole dry season. I have shown how this is directly tied to glomalin formation, and that glomalin production increases with tree age, rising CO2 and temperature increases. This means the tools for recovery are at hand, but we are still calling them unsolvable problems. Taken together with ignorance of CO2 emissions from glomalin destroyed by ground disturbance, the picture of global warming becomes encouraging for natural resource managers.Global emission problems are our tool for healing the landscape. Timber companies will always have reason to work the woods but it could switch from fiber to carbon very easily if profitable. Long term rotation or storage contracts, say 100 years, would provide the stable economic background for recovery. Rewritten Forest Practice Rules reflecting canopy and floor protection c could usher in a new era of sustainable forestry in its broadest sense. The main source of logs would become commercial thinning as part of glomalin management or industry’s opt out holdings. This matches up well with the focus on second growth. Second growth must be allowed, in recovery areas, enough time to restore the water holding capacity of the soil, especially in steep areas. High production zones in relatively flat and stable areas could opt out for shorter rotations. Advances in fungi research will assure continued improvement in the industrial sector as well as in the natural landscape.
Possible management schemes include glomalin forest reserves, mostly already in public hands; glomalin production zones, where recovering forest is set aside primarily for carbon storage; glomalin repair areas where high glomalin production plants are introduced in order to restore growing conditions (pioneer species), and other glomalin producing zones such as grasslands, wetlands and desert.
Environmentalists and resource dependant industries must widen their view of the future. Managed lands will become the norm. This means jobs. Jobs take money but it is possible to tap into corporate money and take some pressure off public money, and keep those lands on the taxrolls. Management must be put on a sustainable, scientific basis or our tools for recovery becomes bones of contention, denial and perceived economic injury.
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