Redwood Reader

103. Restoration is Not Sustainable
Looking at the Times-Standard op-ed piece of January 31 and Sen Chesbro's response, we see the historical context of the restoration issue is not even discussed. Restoration began as local landowners trying to restore fisheries and their own private non-industrial timberland, much impacted by bulldozers in the Douglas fir boom.
Douglas fir was pretty much useless until balloon framing and the extraordinary needs rising from WWII. Balloon framing called for plywood and strong timber that wasn't necessarily weather resistant. Douglas firs ability to pee, its inherent strength and the vast amounts available made it a new resource to be exploited. Building suburbs and redeveloping inner cities guarenteed a steady market. The flood of 1955 was a awrning we were not amintaining a stable landscape. The boom effectively ended with the flood of 1964. By then a huge percentage of the county had lost its functioning forests. The county then allowed subdivisions in some rural areas bringing more people ontothe land and making a hodgepodge of ownerships. The back to the land movement brought new blood but the area had less amenities for them than many regions where the infrastructure called for new blood to operate already productive lands. Changes in tax law and Forest Practice rules have slowed the rate of new damage.but were based on observation tempered by the political clout of industrial demand.
By 1980 it was becoming clear fish were not going to return to blown out habitats anytime soon and the need for positive action became clear. Maps were brokenout and surveys conducted leading to documents such as Elements of Recovery published by Mattole Restoration Council in 1989. This group had split off from the earlier Mattole Salmon Group when it became obvious there was a need to stabilize the hillsides before anything meaningful could occur in the stream channels. At the same time, the PL buyout had tripled the cut on their private lands, and sediment was choking off the last two good coho streams in the Eureka area, Freshwater and Elk River. The campaign for the Headwaters began because the People agreed the grove should remain in public trust. Efforts to buy additional acreage were repulsed and replaced with the federal Habitat Conservation Plan and Sustained Yield Plan at the state level. The People entered into the Agreement with restricitons in place that stay with the Deed, not the ownership. This is the heart of the conservation easement approach. Regardless, the prescriptions outlined in the Agreement were meant to protect the Headwaters surrounding lands, and PL was paid handsomely for it. It was not meant to put them out of business but to protect public trust values while allowing economic activity. At some point the private land holders have to be compensateds for not producing.
The public outcry from continuing landscape damage and declining salmon runs together with a national emergence of local land trusts together with conservation easemennts led to a large scale resource recovery movement. Bond issues were passed funding non-budget programs for fisheries restoration. Public and private groups began buying contested timberlands, ranches and habitats, paying very well to protect the land into the future. Landscape fracturing had been a wildlife problem for some time. The combination of purchases, private stewardship and public management of non-timber forests began the process of knitting the landscape back into larger segments such as the Redwoods to the Sea Wildlife Corridor, connecting Humboldt Redwoods State Park through Gilham Butte through private lands to the King Range National Conservation Area and Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.
This is a great project because we have protected a stretch of the Mattole headwall to headwall, several entire tributary watersheds in a high rainfall area. and connected habitat totaling a large amount of acreage. Most of the land will be groomed for late seral stand characteristics with fuel risk reduction projects planned. The bad news is that the agreements they are held under prevent commercial forest activity, which means the results of stand improvements are not to be exploited eceonomically. Much of the land has had its natural drainage disrupted and the process still in progress. In these matters earth moving machinery is all that can restore the drainage and stable slopes, but the amount of work to be done is so vast there is no hope of fixing it all. We have to count on natural processes and some will take thousands of years to resolve.
This is incredibly expensive and restoration groups found themselves looking for grants for machine work. Money from agencies was available for those who could put a package together, and timber companies were best poised to take advantage of this. Timber contractors also were most of the available private contractors available to small landholders. Larger owners often have their own equipment. Payments for owner provided resources like boulders, rock armor and logs were well paid for for stream restoraion projects.At the same time folks began looking at the wider picture, resulting in the culvert replacement project and subdivision roadwork projects. Public awareness rose in the Clinton years as the Northwest Forest Agreement restricted logging on federal land, more money was available and salmon were everyones main objective. the expense of THP's and the peer pressure from neighbors shrunk the number of private non-industrial owners willing to log. Those who did often select cut lowering the number of logs per job. Laid off workers were retrained for restoration jobs and often worked for contractors on timber land. Small landowners are swept aside in the vastness of the problem.Restoration began to look like a timber subsidy.
In the coming years restoration will continue simply as a reult of land use and haphazard natural processes augmented by cost effective projects mostly involving heavy machinery and vegetation management. If we view the process as a glomalin management excercise we can divide current land use activities into two broad camps, glomalin producers and glomalin destroyers. Glomalin production accumulates soil moisture, aboveground biomass and topsoil and glomalin destroyers yield runoff and nonaggregated soil particles- sediment and dust. For the accumulators we will focus growth into open stands but after an area has been jump started. Minimal or no ground disturbance, no drainage disruption. We can use the vegetation matter from the original TSI work and have some supply of thinned trees as the stands mature. So we would have some fraction of glomalin still protected, growing and working. For destruction we see logging as a major problem but nearly as intractable as paving and roofin, which create runoff without recourse. Better care of the forest floor will have a major possitive influence and we will end up where the old PL owners left off. Time is a critical element in regrowing the water storage characteristics in our altered landscape. Rotation legnth has far more impact on watershed health than currently guessed and is the underpinning of the effects ofcumulative impacts. We have had a boom for a few years and have learned enough to understand what happened, why, and how to restore it. In a competetive society we must find ways to pay for not using resources.
For this reason carbon storage schemes should be brought into use, paying per ton or per acre per year to manage wildlands for maximum storage time by reducing fire risk. This puts the value of a product in their pockets and gets a management style that benefits people and fish. All of these programs will still be thinned or select cut with care eventually. Investors receive a dividend as well as capital growth, and we are tackling greenhouse gas problems. In this sense restoration then becomes simply the land preparation for an agricultural crop and is capitalized in the cost of doing business.
So we would pay for some percent of intact canopy, say 80%, and unbroken ground 3 ton acre 30 a ton, 90 a year per acre. the price would be set by contract. Glomalin destruction is a time fine-35 years of non payment for destruction of canopy and floor allowing sunlight and rain to hit the surface unimpeded. These are merely suggestions for a way tomove into sustainability for our natural resource industries while preserving small landowner rights and economic opportunity. Salmon thus move from the focus of our work to something that takes advantage of a byproduct of our work- water.
There is a vast amount of research that needs to be done in many fields. The scope of glomalins importance to our entire forest and land use, as well as global issues is so clear it is hard to imagine it being very far off. Perhaps by then we will be restoring the atmosphere.