Lang Hornthal - EcoForesters Co-Director
The USFS recently released the Final version of the forest management plan for the Pisgah and Nantahala National forests.
After almost 10 years of adapting to the new 2012 Planning Rule, which mandates public participation and stakeholder collaboration throughout the planning process, the fruits of their labor have finally been released. And everyone is grumbling. Well, not everyone, but many are saying the USFS didn’t do enough to protect the special places in the forest from overzealous active management. My take is a little different in that if everyone is grumbling a little, that usually means compromise. But let me explain where I am coming from, and you may agree we have a grand opportunity to do things differently than before.
The aforementioned 2012 Planning Rule mandates that any management planning involve the public and use the best scientific information available to maintain the ecological integrity of the forest for wildlife, while recreational opportunities for over five million people that visit each year. This includes the use of timber harvesting as a prescription for restoration or in support of local communities and counties that have a smaller tax base due to federal forestland. In a nutshell, the Forest Service cannot hole themselves up in a cave and write the plan without listening to partners and the public. Instead, they must be transparent and listen in a way that will better inform their management decisions. This doesn’t mean it’s a popularity contest and whoever screams the loudest or writes the most letters get the final say. It does mean the Forest Service has to listen to the people and communities that benefit from the National Forest and enjoy its use as it was intended.
For those of you that don’t know how National Forests are mandated to be managed, I direct you to the Multiple Use/Sustainable Yield Act. You can guess what it means by its name. Any management must be sustainable, whether recreation (think recent Max Patch abuses) or timber harvesting. And the forest must be managed in a way that gives access and protection to those areas of the forest that are coveted by diverse groups for different reasons. The trouble is too often these areas overlap and there is conflict.
One of the biggest rubs of the current final plan is that it gives too much discretion to district foresters and opens the door for conflict. Past conflict, and boy has there been some, has created a lack of trust between conservation groups and the Forest Service. Groups feel slighted by having past appeals for the protection of biodiversity and old forests ignored and they are slow to trust this government agency to change. And I can understand why. This distrust is why groups asked the Forest Service to place special areas and all old growth forests in management areas not suitable for timber production. On the surface that is reasonable, but it also ties the hands of foresters that would like to use modern forestry prescriptions in more places. Now, that doesn’t mean that the areas will definitely be managed in a way that could harm special places, but that they could. And at the end of the day, the FS reserves the right as the responsible agency for this incredible resource to manage it and adapt to changes as they see needed in the future.
From a forester’s perspective, you don’t know what is going to happen in the forest in five years, much less 15-20 years. Having a diverse toolbox is important when you discover changes to the forest due to the hand of man. I am not defending past timber harvesting, as there was a time that we honestly believed that our forests (and oceans) could never be depleted. We now see how generations of taking the best and leaving the rest has severely degraded our forests, introduced invasive species, and allowed for the faster growing trees to outcompete our mast producing trees (oaks and hickory) causing wildlife and biodiversity to suffer. But don’t be too hard on the forest products sector, as they have been community leaders for generations and are supportive of reinvesting in our forests through restoration and certified sustainable forestry. Our current generation has the hand that we were dealt and now we have to play it.
If we knew when the next wildfire, hurricane, or invasive insect invasion was coming and where it would be, then we would plan for it. Unfortunately, the only thing that we know with almost certainty is that one, if not all, of those disasters will occur, on multiple occasions over the lifetime of this plan. In preparation, I would like to have a toolbox the size of the kind you see in the back of a contractor’s truck, rather than one that looks like my tackle box. The hand of man is firmly imprinted on nature, and we owe it to this diverse place to be active stewards in its conservation, restoration, and future resiliency.
The USFS has an excellent opportunity to complete the use of the 2012 Planning Rule with collaborative project planning and implementation. They have said repeatedly that they cannot effectively manage the Pisgah and Nantahala with their current budgets and staffing levels. No one is holding their breath for increased government spending, so we must rely on outside partners to get the needed work done. Luckily, those partners are ready to help. But they want to be heard and to see where the USFS can make project level decisions collaboratively to achieve more and reduce conflict. I for one believe they will, and this planning process will be an example for future planning processes. To learn more about the decade long involvement and how collaboration is being accomplished, go to npforestpartnership.org to see the different organizations, recreation groups, and businesses that are committed to the process and to sustainably managed National Forests.
Lang Hornthal is the Co-Director of and speaking on behalf of EcoForesters, a non-profit professional forestry group that helps landowners manage their forest. He is also on the Leadership Team for the Nantahala Pisgah Forest Partnership. He can be reached at lang@ecoforesters.org.