forestry

It isn’t often that an endangered species successfully recovers, which is why the story of the red-cockaded woodpecker is so inspiring.

Once found throughout 90 million acres of longleaf pine forests in the southeast, the red-cockaded woodpecker’s population on National Forest System lands today number approximately 3,150 active clusters of typically one to five birds each. This is a 60 percent increase from the low of 1,981 active clusters in 1990.

Have you ever wondered why your favorite National Park is surrounded by a National Forest? Well, it didn’t happen by accident or guesswork. The fact is, it was all started over 100 years ago by two men I like to refer to as the founding fathers of America’s public lands.

Back at the turn of the 20^th Century Gifford Pinchot and John Muir had radically contrasting views of how to manage America’s wild lands and they worked tirelessly lobbying Congress and convincing Presidents to agree with them to start protecting open space.

Muir promoted preservation and Pinchot advocated for conservation.

Today, March 22, is World Water Day, and the U.S. Forest Service joins the international community in celebrating water and inspiring good stewardship of this vital resource. Forests are essential to our survival and well-being due in large part to the ecosystem services they provide, including our fresh water.

Surface water that originates on our national forests has many important purposes, one of which is providing drinking water for millions of people in the United States. Surface water is water in rivers, streams, creeks, lakes and reservoirs. Surrounding trees and forests play a major role in keeping these waterways clean and healthy.

In a changing climate, it takes elaborate and energetic collaboration to preserve forests around the world, and there is no better celebration of trees than water conservation.  The United Nation’s International Day of Forests, this March 21, is a time for heightening awareness of these partnerships, their ambitions, and the values and services forests provide.

Events that disturb the forest on a landscape scale often dramatically alter all of the resources that characterize a healthy ecosystem. This is something the U.S. Forest Service is all too familiar with as every year more fires burn earlier in the fire season and many have grown in scale.

Oregon’s McKenzie River has a lot to boast about. One of the cleanest and coldest rivers in the country, it’s the most important tributary for wild spring Chinook salmon and Bull trout production in the entire Willamette River Basin. It’s part of more than 100 miles of streams that the Willamette National Forest and many partners have restored over the last 10 years.

“What happens around these headwaters has important implications downstream,” said Kate Meyer, a fisheries biologist on the Willamette National Forest. “Land managed by the Forest Service makes up 66 percent of the McKenzie River Sub-basin and 24 percent of the Willamette River Basin, and it’s the source of 74 percent and 31 percent of the water feeding each river respectively.”

Is it possible to simultaneously promote natural resources conservation and the growth of businesses that impact the environment?  Yes.  One way to do so is through “compensatory mitigation.” Compensatory mitigation is the preservation, restoration and/or establishment of a resource to offset unavoidable adverse impacts to the resource elsewhere.

For example, a compensatory mitigation agreement created in 2013 helped advance conservation in Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests in South Carolina and business growth in the surrounding area.  Here’s how:  Under the agreement, three local businesses supported restoration projects that improved aquatic resources located inside the Forests in order to mitigate projects that had unavoidable impacts on wetlands located outside the Forests, typically within the same ecosystem.  The three participating businesses were: Duke Energy, Boeing, and The City of Charleston.  Unavoidable impacts to streams, wetlands and salt marsh were mitigated under the novel agreement.

Research has shown that positive social benefits, including health and wellness, can come from a simple daily dose of nature. Children with nearby access and views of nature often show fewer symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and increased mental concentration and focus.

In many ways, urban forests are unsung heroes of strong, vital and healthy communities, enriching the lives of the more than 80 percent of Americans who live in cities among the nation’s 136 million acres of urban forest land. The U.S. Forest Service, together with the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, helps these forests grow and thrive.

The annual tradition of providing a Christmas tree for the U.S. Capitol got an early start last month at the McCall, Idaho, Winter Carnival. The Payette National Forest is providing the 2016 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, historically and fondly known as “The People’s Tree,” which will adorn the West Lawn of Capitol Hill in December.

It seemed fitting to stage the kick-off event in McCall because the forest surrounds the city. The public event, which swells the town of 3,000 to as many as 60,000 people, has many activities including building larger-than-life snow sculptures. This year employees and friends of the Payette National Forest built an ice sculpture to celebrate their People’s Tree’s eventual arrival in Washington, D.C.

When thinking about how to reduce run-off from potato fields in New Brunswick, Canada, researcher Josée Owen of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada turned to a tool created by Mike Dosskey, a U.S. Forest Service researcher at the USDA National Agroforestry Center.

With others at the University of Kentucky and the Forest Service, Dosskey created AgBufferBuilder, a GIS-based computer program used for designing vegetation buffers around agricultural fields. Soil can erode, and fertilizer and pesticides off of fields while suspended in water. Buffers with trees, shrubs and other plants help to filter this water by trapping sediment and nutrients.

“A mature Giant Sequoia can use 500-800 gallons of water every day during the summer,” said Anthony Ambrose, a tree biologist at U.C. Berkeley. “That’s a lot of water necessary for just one tree.”

For the first time in at least 125 years, Giant Sequoias in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California are showing significant amounts of “dieback” in their foliage due to several years of drought.