Building bridges to the future - American Forests magazine - Editorial

American Forests, Sept-Oct, 1994

AMERICAN FORESTS has, for almost 120 years now, sought to mobilize the American public in support of tree and forest conservation. At times in that history, th situation could be labeled urgent--in the early years, for example, the call to protect what remained of the nation's forests from destruction rang loudly against images of exploitive logging, lack of restoration, and widespread destructive wildfires. A young nation, fearful for its supply of essential timber, rallied around a young conservation organization's call for a national forest reserve, and for professional management and conservation treatment on all forest lands.

Throughout that history, it is clear that the leaders of this organization, bot on the Board and staff, reflected the leading scientific thinking of the day. Thus, we were ardent proponents of some ideas that make us cringe today. Times change, science learns, technologies emerge, and people's values adjust. We go back to the 1930s and read what our predecessors were saying about the virtues of using dynamite to straighten and "improve" streams, and realize how far public opinion and scientific theory have come in half a century. That makes us more humble as we ask what kinds of forest conservation and management ideas should drive thoughtful conservationists in the upcoming century. While we're pretty sure those new ideas won't be what we promoted in the 1870s or 1930s, we can't be totally certain that the "hot" ideas of the 1990s will prove fully adequate either.

What we can say with assurance, however, is that the emergence of new land- and water-management concepts in the last quarter of the 20th century has been accompanied by massive controversy. We believe one reason is that these new concepts are being driven by basic changes in scientific views about how the world works. As a result, today's changes involve not just new ways of implementing widely agreed-upon and well-accepted basic values, but new basic values themselves.

We have attempted, in this magazine, to chronicle how those new values are driving forestry toward the next century. This issue is no exception with, for example, the report of the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters. Look through any recent issue and you can find several stories that chronicle new land-management methods emerging on all lands--public and private, rural and urban. Review two or three issues in depth, then go back and reread Wallace Kaufman's article featuring the ecological concepts articulated by Daniel Botki ("How Nature Really Works," March/April 1993) and the connections are dear. Foresters today are increasingly working from a different "world view" than did their predecessors.

The idea that forests (and other natural systems) achieve and maintain a "balance" or a "climax condition" that remains essentially stable over long periods of time has fallen out of favor. In its place is the sense that the onl constant in nature is change itself--that forests are not a well-defined mix of resources, organisms, and processes working in predictable and patterned fashion, but instead a community of organisms drawn together as much by chance as anything, operating on a highly complex resource base in a changing and ofte chaotic environment.

People, as an integral part of that mix, affect forests and the forces that constantly act on forests. When people destroy resources, reduce species diversity, or interfere with essential processes, they kill the goose as they search for the eggs. It is as destructive to the humans involved as to the environments they ravage. The conservation movement has been, for 120 years now trying to change that kind of destructive behavior.

Today, however, we are challenged to articulate clearly and forcefully what we believe should constitute good human behavior in relation to forests and other natural systems. In attempting to do so, while shifting to a new "world view" o how nature really works, we run the risk of both alienating established professionals and confusing the public greatly. Consider, for example, some of the basic ideas that fall prey when the centuries-old notion of natural balance is questioned.

The idea that people can effectively control natural systems gives way to the idea that people's management can affect those systems but not always in predictable ways. Thus, we speak of "adaptive management" in place of "control. Old notions about straightening streams for more effective runoff, excluding fire from natural systems, and relying on chemicals to eliminate insects or diseases fall into disarray. Instead, we begin to ask how we can live with the floods, fires, and pests that are part of natural systems, working to keep them within acceptable bounds that allow the ecosystem to keep functioning while we enjoy the fruits of its growth and production. We talk about management in term of "intelligent tinkering" that "keeps all the pieces" of nature intact, even when we're not sure what some of those pieces are good for. The fact that some minor species is alive indicates an inherent value and a role--maybe a critical one--that our children may discover. We don't want that discovery to come too late.