Saving the West
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” John Muir
Decades of fire suppression in the western United States created forests that have too many trees. The same forests are in constant danger of mega fires, destroying property, wildlife and water supplies, and potentially devastating whole communities. We need to restructure forested areas throughout the west by selectively removing excess trees and returning fire to the ecosystem. In short: fewer trees will create more abundant and healthier forests!
In today’s economy, the mixed pine forests of the Central Sierra Nevada of California have relatively little commercial value, and the current backlog of dead timber from previous fires and massive tree mortality—100 million+ trees and counting—filled the major mills to capacity for the foreseeable future and left no market for live timber. Finding effective commercial uses for Sierra timber is critical for the long-term well-being for California as a whole and the Tahoe-Truckee Region in particular. The amount of timber potentially available for extraction is staggering. Literally billions of board feet of timber will burn without control unless we change the way we manage our public and private lands.
Taxpayers spend over $1.5 billion annually on fire control to protect 15 million fire-endangered acres in California. With current burn rates approaching 500,000 acres per year and growing, we will lose the entire forest within a few decades if we don’t change course. These fires also release vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, paradoxically increasing total atmospheric carbon load. If we continue business as usual, the Sierra may soon become a net carbon emitter rather than an agent for sequestration and bulwark against future climate change.
California is simultaneously in deep crisis over water; reservoirs and groundwater levels are at historic lows. Forests supply 2/3rds of California's water, yet the focus during the drought is on the demand side, e.g., water conservation. We pay too little attention to protecting the supply of water at its source. Large wildfires harm water supplies by degrading water quality with increased runoff carrying topsoil, debris, ash, and fire-fighting chemicals. Elevated nutrients feed algae blooms. Sediments reduce reservoir capacity.
Previous efforts to address fire and drought failed because they have not used a whole systems approach. Industry and citizen groups rarely communicate. Responsibilities are fragmented among local, state, and federal agencies; regulations work at cross-purposes. Citizen groups resist forest management plans due to legitimate concerns of past histories of disregarding environmental protections as well as knee-jerk reactions to any form of tree removal.
To address this problem and develop a whole systems approach, we (Center for the Study of Force Majeure, Sagehen Creek Field Station, National Forest Foundation, P’isew ‘Mangal, Shift Consulting and special advisor Amy Horne) formed a coalition that believes there is a major opportunity for a broad range of stakeholders to succeed in resolving in these seemingly intractable problems. We call our group, Saving the West. We start with specific successes in California, working closely with government agencies other foundations, community groups and entrepreneurs, with the intent to broaden our geographic scope in the entire west where similar problems of fire suppression, drought, the need to implement work at scale and connect to a broader public through targeted communications and art. Yes art! We are working on a solution that integrates:
- Low impact, ecologically designed forest management projects at the multiple stand and forest levels;
- Long-term job creation focused on small business and underserved communities in economically depressed regions;
- Support of a community-centric manufactured wood products industry based on renewable small-tree source materials to run/produce semi-stationary sawmills, cross-laminated timber, oriented strand board, small-scale biomass, woodchip, post-and-pole, and pallet production. Higher value small-diameter wood utilization will not only reduce the heavy carbon footprint of steel and concrete needed in building, it will store massive amounts of carbon indefinitely. New technologies for clean burning fuel will support local electrical generation and heating needs; and
- The use of art to generate new ideas and metaphors that can convey complicated climate change, conservation and resource management messages to a far-ranging audience.
Research at the Sagehen Creek Reserve shows how this can be done. At Sagehen contracts are let and timber can be harvested in bulk as early as the summer of 2017. Several other forest health projects in the Tahoe-Truckee Region are rapidly developing in similar ways with a goal of providing reliable wood supply over time.
Innovative construction projects are breaking ground in the Reno, Nevada, today. One example is the West 2nd Street project, a 17 acre development with a 6-year build out that looks to include manufactured wood in its construction of multiple buildings. The rapidly expanding Reno zone offers potential demand for other potential large and medium scale wood consumers for Eastern Sierra timber. Beyond this region mass timber buildings are being built in large numbers in Canada, England, Australia and Europe.
We are actively pursuing companies or groups interested in exploring the value of using wood to produce sustainable products for a broad range of consumer, commercial and construction uses. Saving the West welcomes any interest you may have in our project.
SAVE THE WEST! LESS TREES! MORE FORESTS!