Ten Years' Restoration on the Paradise in Moscow, Idaho

http://www.landandwater.com/features/vol47no2/vol47no2_1.php

Fire Ecology

Review of The WildFire Reader: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. Edited by George Wuerthner.

"...for the latter half of the twentieth century, every decade has been followed by a decade of increased expenditures on fire suppression activities, yet each decade has also been followed by one of increased losses in property and lives." Like the militarized "war on drugs", the equally militarized "war on fire" is doomed to failure, as pointless as shooting into a mirror. And how much more metaphorical can you get: that we are fighting the raging, fiery passion of irrational nature? The more we push, the more nature pushes back. Every "victory" in our mismanaged and ill conceived war on wildfire insures that the next fire will be even bigger and burn even hotter.

But the losses are not only in property and human lives, but in natural environments and diversity. Many authors wax lyrical about the ecosystems that existed before our warping of their fire ecology. Here is an example from my native Southwest:

"In prehistoric times, the Southwest's valleys were filled with perennial grasslands, blending to sparse stands of desert scrub (e.g. pinyon and juniper) in the higher valleys and deciduous desert scrub (e.g. catclaw acacia) in the more southern valleys. Pinyon and juniper woodlands merged to ponderosa pine forest at middle elevations (7,000 to 9,000 feet) and thence into mixed conifer highlands, depending on the latitude of the mountains. Ponderosa pine forest were open parklands of mostly older (100 to 600 year old) trees, with thick grama and bunch grasses at their bases. Those grasses prohibited most pine seeds from taking root, and they carried frequent, widespread low intensity fires that would kill most of the rest of the seedlings. Streams flowed from mountains in relative abundance to the valleys below to join larger rivers like the Gila, Rio Puerco, Rio Grande, Pecos, San Pedro, and San Juan. Those streams and rivers were sheltered by willow and cottonwood riparian forests, where beaver created wetlands critical to subsurface hydrology, and wolves and grizzly bears lurked among the flood nurtured trees.

Today, the Southwest is a land of relatively barren, deeply eroded valleys and overly thick uplands forests. The wold and grizzly bear are gone, the beaver is all but gone, exotic vegetation competes with native vegetation in key environments, and fire has a radically different place in the landscape. Deep human misperceptions about nature have forced dramatic change on the regional ecology."

from Fire in the Southwest: A Historical Context by Tom Ribe in The WildFire Reader: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

Tom Ribe's description highlights not only how much we have lost biologically from the natural fire adapted ecosystems, but how much we have lost aesthetically. The former forests were beautiful, accurately described as "parklands", while the current forests are referred to as "doghair" thickets. Not exactly inviting. This is a great opportunity for strategic conservation: when natural state and fire safe are also most pleasing to the eye, we have the opportunity to synchronize values among otherwise ideologically disparate voters. For example, the Nature Conservancy's firesafing through thinning for fuelwood program in NE Arizona could and should be rapidly expanded to "treat" most of the critical forest lands in America, perhaps thirty of a hundred million acres. Of course, grazing needs to be reformed as well, and if it could be tied into this matrix of [to usurp the Administration's maligning of the phrase] "healthy forest initiatives".

My only concern about thinning in the Southwest, is that I believe the ecosystems here are often carbon limited, especially in the topsoil, but also in terms of total biomass. There just isn't enough structural diversity to go around. I.e. there is not enough ground cover; downed trees to provide habitat, erosion control, and nutrient sink/sources. This, along with the vastly increased erosion of destabilized soils, is the reason "salvage logging" is one of the worst ideas. If the forest has already burned it should be left to recover, and the regrowth can be thinned at an appropriate time. Ideally, I believe thinning should leave biomass in the ecosystem.

For Gary Snyder's contribution to the volume, see http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma6/smokey.html

Rio Puerco: the Poster Child of Eroded Watersheds

[NOTICE - This Road Not Maintained by New Mexico State Highway Department]

* Frederick Jacson Turner, father of modern American history, wrote persuasively that the frontier (where less than 3 people lived per square mile) defined American life, but that it closed in the 1890's as the country filled up with emigrants and settlers. But the land is emptying out again, as chronicled in Richard Manning's Grassland. The old world ecology and thinking brought by the Anglo settlers is failing in the drylands of the American West and the people are leaving, the roads abandoned. Despite massive government subsidies, the remaining ranchers and farmers have less and less to stand on every year. Populations in most rural counties peaked in the early 1900's and have declined ever since. The exodus that started with the dust bowl has continued unabated, as has the soil erosion and ecological damage.
[Could this be restored to its original ecology of cottonwood/willow bosque and gallery forest?]

Now, The Good News: "This is a search for the unknown...Now the sun is here, and he simply watches the land year by year to see what happens, waiting for the next clues as to what the nature of this place might be...It's like a ratchet in that we take the first turn, then back off and let nature take a turn, as we listen and watch as closely as possible, knowing that we are not so much rebuilding nature in these places as nature is rebuilding us. With each turn of this ratchet, nature reveals a bit more of itself to our science."
[SUN]

"In some real ways, the effort to re-find the landscape, which is the same as the effort to re-attach our lives to the land, is a religious quest, and it makes sense to consider it that way.

[Erosion (so bad it took 2 photos to fit): The bridge on the left used to span the river chanel. This is why the road is closed. Nature fights back. ]

"...it is difficult to imagine what we have learned. Annual topsoil loss to erosion here in some years totals one hundred tons per acre, or an inch of topsoil removed every 1.6 years...the topsoil the grass had built was thought to be so deep as to be inexhaustible..." p.165 from Grassland, Richard Manning.
[Dead willow, killed incidentally with herbicide "friendly fire"]

Mutilated and mutated willows, the taste of heavy metals on the tongue: this place has been sprayed. "Many in federal agencies ignore the connection between livestock grazing and weed invasions. Since they deny the role of livestock grazing, they seldom reduce the number of livestock allowed to graze public lands, even in areas where weeds are a major problem. Agency personnel prefer using herbicides and biocontrol agents to eradicate the weeds rather than trying to prevent the invasion of weeds in the first place." From "Comrades in Harm: Livestock and Exotic Weeds in the Intermountain West", Joy Belsky and Jonathan L Gelbard. in Welfare Ranching, Earth Island Press
[Rio Puerco Watershed: this area could be a State]
John Wesley Powell recommended that states and counties' boundaries in the American West be demarcated based on watersheds, since water is the natural form that power takes on the land...today, as witnesses of the modern West's "Water Wars" can attest, more and more political boundaries are being created or determined by water rights.

The Rio Puerco is oft mentioned as an example par excelance of some of the worst erosion in the United States. Once the "Breadbasket of New Mexico", the Rio Puerco watershed is now given as a common example of the degradation that can befall such formerly productive areas through mismanagement and ecological ignorance. Enhanced rates of erosion on the "dirty river" are the cause and effect of downcutting in the soft alluvium that formerly supported such bountiful harvests. Unstoppable headcuts and devegetated banks, combined with a climate shift that creates more "flashy" events (which, of course, are also caused by devegated uplands that lack competence and capacity to absorb rainfall, leading to sheetflow and immediate runoff that feed back to cause even more erosion...
[Landslide]
The Rio Puerco Management Committee lists several causes of erosion, such as (over) grazing and the placement of the new highway. As you can see from this photo essay, the war between the road and the river is not over yet. However, much of the battle has already been lost, and the country abandoned without roads. The downstream is reachable only by unimproved dirt roads and crosses some of the remotest parts of the state.
[Fenceline showing effects of grazing, on the right, where thickets of sagebrush dominate]

Restoration workshop on the San Francisco River, NM

"Join SIA, NMWA and UGWA along the beautiful San Francisco River just downstream from Reserve, NM where we will be doing restoration in support of UGWA's work on the Gila watershed. Come lend a hand to a very successful US Fish and Wildlife 'Partners for Wildlife' project that began in 1994 and has been going strong since. This is a unique opportunity to see what a southwest desert river is supposed to look like!"
On the weekend of May 2 the "Tres Alianzas" (Sky Island Alliance - SIA, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance - NMWA, Upper Gila Watershed Association - UGWA) convened on the Rio San Francisco in Catron County, New Mexico, to discuss and implement permaculture restoration projects. Break-out sessions included Road Improvement, Induced Meandering, Acequias and Terracing, Firesafing, Forensic Ecology, and Philosophy of Human/Nature Interactions.

The San Francisco flows through the hill country of west-central New Mexico. All along the Mogollon Rim, where the Blue, Pueblo, Gila and San Francisco cut deep canyons amid vast grassy meadows, juniper, oak, and pinon grade to parks of stately ponderosa, pillars of the revolving cosmos.

# In this case, an oak (Quercus spp), alligator juniper and pinon pine (Pinus edulus) compete under changing conditions - locked in a slow dance - what we see here is a single frame of a vast motion picture of ecological succession. Can we, from this single frame, determine the past and the trajectory of future succession?
It seems the juniper, because of grazing and, somewhat consequently, lack of natural fire, grew up under and around the old oak. But now, just at the height of its glory, a usurper, the pinon, has broken through the juniper to overreach the triumvirate.
How can we influence this succession to firesafe a Southwest woodland. Clearing brush to rush succession -- but what to cut? SW forests are actually carbon-limited: e.g. not enough ground cover, downed trees provide habitat, erosion control, and direct nutrient infusion. It is foolish to try to "speed" succession by salvage logging, when that dead and downed timber is exactly what the forest needs to recover.

# In this case a packrat midden is also aiding succession, but not in the direction we would like: a thicket of woody perennials and wildflowers has grown up. Packrats, beavers, ants, and humans: Gardeners. A life of wandering and dispersing seed (wildcrafting).

All species are gardeners in that they tend to produce better habitat for other species; some produce better habitat for themselves, e.g. "keystone" predators and builders. Some degrade habitat for themselves and others, e.g. parasites. Humans are sometimes selfish enough to create habitat only for themselves, at the expense of others. So: are we also a weed, doomed to succession by other, more mature, species? Agents of disturbance. CF: People move like predators. Science News. Davide Castelvecchi. March 22, 2008; Vol. 173, No.12, p.190.

#In this case, a natural log jam has noticeably raised the floodplain of this small ephemeral creek, a tributary of the Pueblo River. Similar structures can also be built to slow erosion and create ephemeral pools and irrigate fields. These beneficial effects are lost to watersheds that experience "salvage logging".

# In this case second growth overshadows the downed logs of old growth, although there remain a few old growth juniper and oak.
The fallen timber all has rootballs, and Craig suggested we are looking at the aftermath of an old (50+ years ago) stand-replacement wildfire. Type change: the dominant pinon and juniper used to be understory to ponderosa. Without the ponderosa a new, drier ecotype predominates.

But even if we do know what it used to look like, that doesn't mean we know how to get back to that state. Restoration is historical, while replacement, a more neutral term, simply denotes a succession from one ecotype to another. State transition models (STMs) (cite article in Quivira) can be developed to implement flow-chart style managed succession, but such model are often idiosyncratic (to variables e.g. aspect, slope, microclimate in general) and unavailable to the particular ecosystem of interest.

These notes end with more questions than answers, more reflection than action. Out of all the things we can do to help nature heal, which is the longest lever? We have only a limited amount of muscle and money to bring to the task. And nature will heal by itself. But between the extremes of doing nothing and doing everything lies efficiency, a laser drawing out the path of life. I think now, for me, is a time of reflection. Walking with tools in the hand yet not using them. Such constant motion there now must need be a time of stillness.

New Mexico: Wolves, Telescopes, and Antelope

Nuevo Mexico lindo y Querido
Si me llego a morir navegando
Estira tus ala a traeme aqui
New Mexico beautiful and loved
If I should die while traveling

Strech out your wings and bring me back

Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie

Grassland is definitely not the work of a doting professor, but the keen wit of a hard-hitting journalist, which Richard Manning is. Reading Manning can still be difficult, though. Not because he writes poorly - the euphony is verse poetry at times. And not because he writes badly - the precision and economy of prose is exemplary. But because he is so smart it hurts, and so honest you want to crawl under a blanket and hide.
They say we should love that which is better than us, for we tend to become what we love, and by that logic I would want to edit this unwieldy tome. Grasslands feels as if it were written in pieces, which perhaps such a vast and encompassing interest as an entire biome must be. There is literally the feeling of your mind being tugged in many different directions;"broadening". Yet the entire work is cohesive, inevitable; massive yet solid. You feel it in your forehead. He wants to download everything, and it is delightful and excruciating to wonder at which droplets out of the entire firehose of creation, heaven and hell and the human psyche, he lets fall to the page, perfect and complete and confusing.
The work is relatively short - if he had taken more liberty with tangents, as Barry Lopez in Arctic Dreams, the read could easily have topped 1000 pages. This is, afterall, the story of an entire ecotype, 1/6 of the world. Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass falls easily within its radius, but so too does history and interview, travelogue and diary, speculative science and definitive natural history.
When I saw Richard Manning speak last summer I listened breathless as his shaking rustled the crumpled notes he'd scribbled "some contrairian thoughts on". His son had just left to a second tour in Iraq, and I wish him all of the best in his travels, and the forests around his home were all on fire, and I wish these natural places the undisturbed recovery that only nature, in her wisdom, can provide. That was Manning's point then -- that perhaps we shouldn't believe in the perfectability of humans anymore, of the good inherent in our work. Perhaps our every action is a mistake, and the idea of a sustainable agriculture, and hence civilization, is an illusion.
Such are the troubling thoughts Manning, and I, end with.

Catron County, NM

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