Tag Archives: rainforests
Rainforest Scientist and Advocate Receives Prestigious Publication Award
We’re pleased to announce that Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation was selected by Choice as one of its “Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011.” Learn more from the press release or from Oregon’s Mail Tribune.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Deja Vu in Kiwi-Ancient Forests
To the untrained eye, New Zealand forests have a tropical feel somewhat out-of-character in a temperate world. Like Australia, these rainforests owe their existence to the ancient ark of Gondwana that broke away from Pangea at a time when dinosaurs were still flourishing. Some of the species like giant Kauri trees have lineages dating back 100 million years.
Father of the Forest - Giant kauri estimated at over 2000 years old. Photo credit Dominick DellaSala.
And when it comes to temperate rainforests, New Zealand has a lot to boast about. Isolation from mainland areas and long lineages have provided the backdrop for a maternity ward of unique species. Nearly 80% of the flowering plants, conifers, and ferns are endemic (found nowhere else). Reptiles give birth to live young and frogs completely skip the tadpole stage. Many birds are flightless and threatened because of introduced predators (mostly rats and opossums). And many of the conifers are unique – known as podocarps because seeds are not concealed in scaly cones like northern hemisphere conifers.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Occupy the Tongass Rainforest?
Taking America by storm with actions reminiscent of the 60s, “Occupy Wall Street” has gone viral in an attempt to raise awareness about corporate interests being placed above public needs. But the movement has yet to sound alarm bells on the Tongass rainforest, where a native corporation is seeking to develop and log over 100-square miles of public lands through a legislative lands transfer proposed in Congress.
With 290,000 acres of corporate holdings and 560,000 acres of subsurface rights, the for-profit Sealaska Corporation is the largest private landholder in Southeast Alaska and largest of 13 regional native corporations established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Decades of Sealaska clearcuts run scatter shot across the region, holes punched in a verdant rainforest web-of-life. Here’s what’s at stake if the proposed land transfer takes hold.
The Tongass Rainforest (photo credit: John Hyde for Sierra Club)
The Tongass is the “crown-jewel” of the national forest system. It contains one-quarter of coastal temperate rainforests that once stretched nearly unbroken from Alaska’s Prince William Sound to California’s magnificent coastal redwoods. Throughout the world, forests are vanishing at an alarming rate of 60 acres every minute of every day, but the Tongass stands tall as one of the largest remaining tracts of relatively undeveloped rainforests in the world (see Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation).
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
In the Case of Tar Sands Oil – Oils Well, Will Certainly Not End Well
Canada’s growing interest in exporting some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world is a threat to not only North America’s wildlife but also a rational energy policy and a stable atmosphere. NASA and climate scientist James Hansen called this project a climate game-changer because burning Alberta “tar sands” oil could raise CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm), pushing us dangerously away from the 350 ppm safety net that he and other scientists have recommend (we are currently at 390 ppm of CO2 and rising at about 1-2 ppm per year).
If President Obama approves the proposed pipeline connecting the Alberta tar sands to refineries in the Gulf Coast (over 1700 miles away), it will show that oil runs thicker than environmental and human health concerns. The so-called Keystone XL pipeline may only be the beginning of more such projects to come. Another pipeline, known as the Enbridge (named for the oil company) pipeline, would connect Alberta tar sands oil with refineries in coastal BC, traversing First Nation’s and other pristine lands over a distance of nearly 800 miles.
To extract the tar sands oil, hot freshwater is combined with caustic soda and mixed with petro-laden sands dug out of the earth by giant excavating shovels. Boreal forests that get in the way are leveled in the process. The slurry is then piped to extraction areas where oil is skimmed off the top and toxic tailings sent to ponds where they pose wildlife hazards. The resulting process has been labeled the dirtiest oil on earth not only because it requires 2-5 barrels of freshwater for every barrel of bitumen (crude) extracted, but because in the extraction process 10-45% more greenhouse gas pollutants are emitted. The oil then needs to be shipped long distances via subsurface pipelines, introducing ground disturbances and possible pipeline leaks to farmlands, forests, and wildlife migratory pathways, including those of the endangered whooping crane. On July 27, 2010 an Enbridge pipeline spewed 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River (largest spill in Midwest history) and on July 2, 2011 a pipeline operated by Exxon Mobil leaked unknown quantities of oil into the pristine Yellowstone River causing local evacuations.
There is no denial that the topic of the moment, whether on Main Street, Wall Street, or the Halls of Congress, is jobs. And while the oil business generates thousands of jobs, it comes with a high cost to future jobs, future economies, life-giving freshwater, boreal forests, and marine life (should a spill occur). What would tomorrow’s labor force think of our quest today for jobs if myopic decisions set the stage for oil spills that will decimate commercial fishing, tourism, marine life, and freshwater?
Simply put, the more we depend on fossil fuel extraction, the further we are from transitioning to sane, rational, and sustainable connections to the very basic life-giving provisions in the natural world that sustain us. Nature has limits, our atmosphere has limits; inevitably, water will someday be worth far more than oil. Destroying boreal forests to extract oil, which absorb massive amounts of carbon, will also add to greenhouse gas pollutants, raising our procrastination penalty even further.
President Obama can block this project. For the plan to go forward, the President must sign off on it (and Congress has no role in that decision). This is a critical test for an administration that has so far failed to show the strong leadership on environmental issues that the nation—and voters—expected. Conservation groups have been protesting in front of the White House to make their point about dirty oil being a threat to the nation’s environmental security and that this pipeline is just bad politics (for more information go to www.350.org). The insatiable demand for fossil fuels by the US as well as China (which is the destination of much of the oil from tar sands) will someday come back to haunt us as it already has in the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and other tragic oil spills. Ultimately, maybe the dinosaurs will have the last laugh, as we liberate extracted molecules from their long-decayed buried bodies that now trap sunlight and cook the planet!
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Historic Temperate Rainforest Agreement Down to the Fine Print
After 30 years of controversy that tore at the social fabric of Tasmania, the federal and Tasmanian governments of Australia finally signed the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to provide support and funding that will help the timber industry transition out of native-forest logging and will protect the region’s high-conservation-value rainforests. In sum, the government will provide much-needed financial support for workers and contractors to cease logging native forests while it takes legal steps to protect these forests as formal reserves similar to national parks. Financial support for a major pulp mill, which would have literally chipped away at globally irreplaceable rainforests, will be abandoned due to a prohibition on use of government funds for the mill (for further details, see a discussion on the Wilderness Society, Australia, website).
Native forests in Tasmania are global champions in carbon storage and include the tallest flowering trees on earth. These forests are now part of an historic agreement to end logging of native forests in Tasmania thanks to the efforts of conservation groups. Photo credit: Vica Bayley, The Wilderness Society (Tasmania).
Tasmania’s temperate rainforests are world class. Both the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International ranked them among the most outstanding rainforests on earth, and several of the proposed high-conservation-value forest reserves are juxtaposed with World Heritage Sites recognized for their importance to global biodiversity. In these rainforests, size matters as they include the largest flowering tree – sweet gum (Eucalyptus regnans) – which can grow taller than a 25-story building and live longer than 400 years, the largest (nearly 1 meter) freshwater crustacean (tayeta), eagle (Tasmanian wedge-tail), and marsupial (the infamous Tasmanian devil). The 477,000-hectare (1.2-million acres) Tarkine Wilderness in northwestern Tasmania is one of the largest intact temperate rainforests in the world and this, among several other areas, would be protected under the agreement.
Many of Tasmania’s amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals are found nowhere else on earth, and some of the plants have affinities dating back to an ancient landscape when dinosaurs were dominate and continents were joined as Gondwana. Tasmanian rainforests, as well as those on the Australian mainland, also have been crowned by scientists as global champions in storing vast amounts of carbon in massive trees, dense foliage, and productive soils, an amount equivalent to nearly six times Australia’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Turning rainforests into wood chips for glossy magazines, as previously proposed, would release most of this stored carbon as a greenhouse gas pollutant, impacting threatened species like the wedge-tail eagle.
Although the ink has barely dried on this historic agreement, the fight to protect these rainforests is far from over. Conservation groups are busy advocating for specific set asides as additions to World Heritage Sites, support is needed from all political parties of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, reforms are being proposed for plantation management, and there is much-needed private lands conservation work ahead. Should all go as planned, the Tasmanian agreement will be hailed as a global model in efforts to save these remarkable but forgotten rainforests. In the weeks ahead, I will be drafting a scientist sign-on letter thanking Australia’s prime minister and Tasmania’s premier for their commitments to the agreement and requesting the designation of high-conservation-value forests identified by conservation groups as new set-asides. Stay tuned!
Sources: Australia’s temperate rainforests store about 300 metric tons per hectare (Keith, H., B.G. Mackey, and D. B. Lindenmayer. 2009. Re-evaluation of forest biomass carbon stocks and lessons from the world’s most carbon dense forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (28):11635-11640). Carbon dioxide emissions were obtained from the United Nations data source on emissions (2007).
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Governor Parnell Can’t See the Trees for the Rainforest
Containing about one-third of the world’s coastal old-growth rainforests, the Tongass is the “crown jewel” of the National Forest System. Its pristine rivers produce more salmon than any other place on earth. The regional economy is tied to the health of this fishery and wildlife, which in turn, depends on how the Tongass rainforest is managed.
Logging on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska threatens remaining intact rainforests
Most of the productive forests are verdant old growth Sitka spruce and western hemlock, with ideal conditions for abundant salmon, deer, and other subsistence wildlife. But most of the largest trees were logged decades ago. Industrial logging was slowed by landmark policy changes in the last quarter of the 20th century, including the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. But if Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has his way, the Tongass will return to the clearcut strategy of the past.
The Governor recently announced that the State would challenge the Roadless Rule as it applies to the Tongass as well as a federal judge’s recent decision overturning the Bush-era exemption to the rule in Southeast Alaska. In his announcement, Governor Parnell stated that, “this is the wrong time for the Forest Service to further restrict timber supply, new mining jobs and development, and impose higher energy costs on communities.” He also wants to dam and mine the region’s salmon bearing streams and announced a “timber task force” that could lead to a return to unsustainable and damaging logging.
The Governor’s myopic view of the life sustaining Tongass rainforest is at odds with the region’s sustainable economic drivers. Southeast Alaska employment is no longer dominated by natural resource extraction; rather, today’s jobs are in non-extraction services (44%, many in tourism), government (36%), leisure/hospitality (10%), commercial fishing and seafood processing (8%). The mining and wood products industries are dead last, each representing 1% of regional employment. The economic engines derived from old-growth rainforests, intact forest roadless areas, subsistence wildlife, and, especially salmon are what is driving the economy today and into the future.
In trying to prop up the few jobs in logging and mining on the Tongass, the Governor would seriously harm other job sectors— especially Alaska’s healthy salmon and trout populations that pump nearly $1 billion into the local economy every year.
Cruise ships, local guides, and bush pilots are busy not because tourists come to see clearcuts, but because they come for fishing, wildlife viewing, sight seeing, and other rainforest amenities. We know from other regions, like the Pacific Northwest, that logging, road building, mining, and dams have together nearly devastated commercial and recreational fisheries.
Fiscally the Governor’s proposals do not pencil out. According to the Forest Service, total revenues from all timber sales on the Tongass combined were $5.5 million from 2002-2008. During this time, the agency spent nearly $30 million of taxpayer dollars just on building timber sale roads. Far more was spent in planning and administering these sales. The road construction budget for one sale alone (e.g., Central Kupreanof) is $6 million. A University of Alaska study pegged the cost to the U.S. Treasury of each timber industry job in Southeast Alaska at over $170,000 annually.
The Forest Service needs to transition its timber program into restoration, taking out and repairing damaging logging roads and culverts, and thinning overstocked post-clearcut forests. This type of management is not measured in board feet but in restoration jobs and healthy fish and wildlife populations, which in turn create local jobs in sustainable industries. American taxpayers do not want to foot the bill for the timber industry, but are likely willing to invest in restoring damaged fisheries because it is good for the region’s ecology and economy.
The Roadless Rule protects 58.5 million acres of some of the most pristine areas in the nation, including the Tongass. Protecting intact rainforests is sound fiscal and environmental policy and an investment in the region’s future. The Governor’s tunnel vision would send the state down a too familiar dead end.
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation. Randi Spivak is Vice President of Government Affairs, Geos Institute, Washington D.C, and is a national leader in efforts to protect National Forest roadless areas and old-growth forests. Both have worked on the Tongass and other rainforest regions for many years.
Read this blog post translated into Estonian.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Logging Company Threatens Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest
Aggressive logging in one of the last remaining large blocks of temperate rainforests in the world – the Great Bear Rainforest – is jeopardizing an historic agreement designed to boost rainforest protections and shift logging from industrial clearcuts toward ecosystem-based management (a lesser form of logging).
"Spirit Bear" feeding on salmon, Great Bear Rainforest; photo credit Wayne McCrory, Valhalla Wilderness Society
The Great Bear and adjacent archipelago of Haida Gwaii are critically important rainforests (read more in Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World) because they represent over a quarter of the Pacific Coastal rainforest region, a vast area that stretches from Alaska’s Prince William Sound to the California coastal redwoods. Like its northerly neighbor, the Tongass, the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii are among the last places on earth where it is still possible to experience untrammeled temperate rainforests. These verdant forests are home to coastal giants like Sitka spruce, a white phase of the black bear (Kermode or “Spirit Bear”), a unique subspecies of goshawk, abundant grizzly bears and wolves, and prodigious salmon runs.
On March 31, 2009, the Great Bear Rainforest agreements were reached (and endorsed by the government of British Columbia) with conservation groups, logging companies, and First Nations to protect half of the intact rainforests from all industrial development while allowing some forms of logging under the yet to be developed principles of ecosystem-based management. And while the agreement falls short of the 70 percent protection targets recommended by scientists, it brought all the major parties together toward agreeing on these science-based goals.
That is except for the TimberWest logging company. The company’s history of opposing forest protections got them fewer restrictions on logging during the transition to full implementation of the agreements. Recently they boosted logging levels in the southern portion of the region before more restrictive rules come into place. This rush-to-log has put the company at the forefront of controversy.
Forest Ethics, Greenpeace, and Sierra Club, BC got a birds-eye view of the companies’ logging practices by flying over the southern region on June 11 where TimberWest was chipping away at coastal rainforests. If this were a hockey game, the company would be sent to the penalty box for un-sportsman conduct. TimberWest can still get out of the penalty box as it just changed ownership and conservation groups are asking the owners to turn over a new leaf (http://forestethics.org/timberwest-logging-threatens-great-bear-rainforest-solution) by supporting full implementation of the agreements now.
TimberWest clearcutting of the Great Bear rainforest; photo credit Garth Lenz
The agreements offer a unique opportunity to halt large-scale logging and manage the region responsibly. Corporations have more than a bottom-line responsibility to shareholders. They also need to be good neighbors and stewards of the same life-support services that provide local communities with clean water, coastal fisheries, a stable climate, and subsistence wildlife. TimberWest is being asked to act as a responsible citizen of the rainforest community by doing its part to abide by the agreements while there is still time to save some of the last intact old-growth temperate rainforests on earth.
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
TGIF – Thank God It’s Forested!
My 6 year old daughter, Ariela, standing alongside a "nurse log" - will her generation marvel in coastal rainforest giants?
There is no doubt that the Olympics of Washington State are ground zero for temperate rainforests–but are all the forests really “forests” in an ecological sense? As you know from my previous blogs, there are big differences between old-growth rainforests and the plantations replacing them. This is apparent on the Olympic Peninsula or in Alaska or most other rainforest regions that I have been writing about.
The windward slopes of the Olympics receive over 140 inches of rainfall a year. Abundant rain and productive soils allow Sitka spruce to tower over 300 feet and live for 700 years or more, world champions for their species in age and height.
A casual stroll through this Olympian rainforest reveals just how rich it is from the ground up. On the ground, “nurse logs” in different stages of decay are covered with tree seedlings with roots affixed to decaying bark. Many of the oldest trees have a tripod appearance to exposed roots, evidence of nurse logs that have since been erased by forest decomposers with the roots firmly fixed to where a nurse log once provided support. The ground cover, a verdant carpet of mosses, ferns, and lichens, is soft, spongy, and wet. Wood sorrel, skunk cabbage, candy stripe, and trillium are but a few of the bountiful wildflowers. Stout branches of big-leaf maple are covered with layers of moss that weigh over a ton when wet. The thick mosses also provide nesting platforms for a threatened coastal seabird, the marbled murrelet. It takes over a hundred years for moss mats to reach the right thickness for this old-growth dependent species to use as nesting platforms. Epiphytic licorice ferns penetrate the thick moss cover and are restricted to growing in the tree canopy.
Salamanders, tree voles, and flying squirrels sometimes live out their existence in a single-tree- top, which offers a microcosm of the rainforest ecosystem. The flying squirrel, in turn, is nature’s Johnny Apple-seed, coming down to the ground level and digging up the truffles (spore-producing structures) of mycorhizzal fungi. The spores pass harmlessly out the squirrels’ other end and propagate fungi throughout rainforest soils. The hyphae (threadlike filaments forming the mycelium of a fungus) then coat the roots of host plants and are responsible for an avatar-like network that allows the host to absorb nutrients and water. The squirrel, in turn, is on the main menu of the threatened northern spotted owl. Nothing in these rainforests is wasted!
The profusion of tree farms growing on these slopes is very different from their rainforest predecessors. The Olympic Peninsula is the home of one of the most heavily fragmented temperate rainforests on earth. I have flown over and driven by its clearcuts many times. Last week, while driving on Highway 101, I couldn’t help noticing the road sign: “State Trust Lands – Managed with Care.” In almost Orwellian fashion, just down the road from this sign was a large clearcut where rainforest vegetation was stripped to the bone, leaving just a few spindly trees. Managing state lands or any other rainforest land with care requires much more than leaving a few trees where a forest once grew. Webster’s definition of a trust is “interest held by one person for the benefit of another.” In this case the state would argue (as it has with road signs near cut-over and replanted forests) that the income from such practices is needed to pay for hospitals, roads, and schools. What’s missing from this trust is the calculation of true costs of managing the land this way in reduced water quality, declining salmon populations, threatened wildlife, and carbon dioxide pollution. The state’s antiquated notion ignores the full suite of values and services that intact, old-growth rainforests provide.
Clearcuts like this have nearly replaced the Olympian rainforests - is this what "managed with care" means?
The near destruction of the Olympic rainforest has been underway for decades. It has been slowed by the Northwest Forest Plan, but new logging proposals that would turn trees into biomass for fuel production as well as continued logging on state and private lands continue to chip away at the rainforest’s ecosystem benefits.
If the Olympic rainforest is going to survive as a functional living ecosystem, the last remaining old-growth rainforests need to be taken off the chopping block. Then perhaps we could have new state signs that read: Will today’s seedlings become tomorrow’s coastal giants? Will children marvel at the rich life these rainforests hold? How has an old-growth rainforest helped you today? And finally, maybe one day we will see a sign alongside an old-growth rainforest that simply says: TGIF! Thank God, indeed, It’s Forested.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Rainforests From 36,000 Feet: Transformed by Humanity’s “Bigfoot”
Tongass from 36,000 feet
En route from Seattle to Anchorage on May 4, 2011 to give a talk on the importance of the United Nations International Year of Forests, I could not help noticing the stunning view from my window seat at 36,000 feet. I could see massive glaciers straddling the tallest peaks of the Coastal Range, and, at lower elevations, verdant rainforests of Vancouver Island (south BC coast), Great Bear Rainforest (mid BC coast), and Tongass (southeast Alaska).
Unfortunately that also meant that I had a clearcut view, literally, of how humanity’s ecological “Bigfoot” is rapidly stomping out some of the most important temperate rainforests on the planet. Replacing structurally complex rainforests were expansive areas of clearcuts distributed in a shotgun blast of snow-covered openings easy to pick out from remaining green rainforests.
Gazing at the landscape below, I mentally went over the forest facts. Just how important are forests in a global sense? Well, based on the latest global assessments published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 2010) and other research (summarized in Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation), forests cover 31 percent of the earth’s surface, sustain about 80 percent of its biodiversity, and absorb the equivalent of over 35 times our annual carbon dioxide pollution. Forests cleanse the air we breathe, purify our drinking water, provide us with medicines, many yet to be discovered, and are linked to our food supply, particularly salmon in the case of the Pacific Coastal rainforests. And while deforestation rates have slowed globally, 13 million hectares (32 million acres) each year have been logged in the past decade, roughly 25 hectares (~61 acres) every minute of every day for the past 10 years.
An important subset of these statistics is the decline of primary (previously unlogged) forests. These forests represent 36 percent of the total forest cover. Most occur in South America, followed by North and Central America, and they have declined by about 40 million hectares (100 million acres) over the same time period. Over 60 percent of the world’s largest forested blocks (large enough to sustain all native species including wide ranging ones and natural ecosystem processes) are also gone and the remaining areas are vanishing quickly. For instance, Europe has no large intact areas and the contiguous United States has very few intact areas due to road building and logging. Road building on the U.S. National Forest System alone has resulted in over 400,000 miles of forest roads, enough to circumnavigate the globe 17 times.
Taking another glance from my window seat, I pondered what all this might mean for the Pacific Coastal rainforests, which, aside from the occasional windstorm and rare fire events (more so southward), once ranged nearly unbroken from the California redwoods to Tongass rainforest. Today, only 4 percent of the redwoods are intact, only the last 15-20 percent of old-growth remains in the Pacific Northwest, and logging and road building are advancing into the northern coastal rainforests. From 36,000 feet our activities are clearly transformative in a “Bigfoot” sense: furthering the planetary scale of forest degradation.
For the greater good of this and future generations, rainforests need to be sustainably managed for their vast carbon stores, salmon resources, and clean water – benefits that reach their greatest capacity in old-growth and intact rainforests. From an ecosystems services standpoint, old-growth rainforests are the true working forests. The massive long-lived trees, dense foliage, and rich soils of the Tongass rainforest soak up and store the equivalent of over 200 times Alaska’s annual carbon dioxide pollution. The Great Bear rainforest absorbs the equivalent of about six times British Columbia’s annual emissions, and the Pacific Northwest rainforests absorb the equivalent of roughly 13 times the carbon dioxide emissions of the entire U.S. Both the Tongass and Great Bear are global resources for salmon production (the Pacific Northwest used to be), an economic engine for regional economies. Under “no-logging” scenarios, the Tongass rainforest alone could generate $4 – 7 million dollars annually in the sale of carbon credits should this exchange take off globally, and assuming carbon trades at about $20 per metric ton (based on 2006 estimates). And while we must reduce our greenhouse gas pollution to stabilize the global climate, rainforests in particular, and forests generally, play a pivotal role in these efforts.
A 21st century vision of sustainability must become more than talk at the United Nations when its members assemble again in September to assess progress on the International Year of Forests. This is especially important here in the United States, which is the world leader in greenhouse gas pollution and according to the FAO (2005) was ranked 7th globally for deforestation of its old-growth forests.
Salmon, carbon, and clean water should be the yardsticks by which we measure progress toward sustainable forest management for the Pacific Coastal rainforests. As we move forward, timber production will be an important byproduct of ecologically based restoration. At the same time, we need to reduce, reuse, and recycle wood products while increasing reliance on alternative fibers (e.g., hemp grown on agricultural lands) to pick up the slack. As I wrap up my facts for the upcoming talk, the sobering view from my window seat reminds me that the next time I travel to Alaska to be sure to grab the aisle seat or watch a movie!
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Victory for the Tongass Rainforest
On March 7, a federal judge in Anchorage ruled in favor of the 
Organized Village of Kake and conservation groups in reinstating the roadless rule on the 7 million hectare (17 million acre) Tongass National Forest. The judge’s ruling strikes down the 2003 Bush Administration’s decision to “temporarily” exempt the Tongass from the national roadless rule that protects nearly 24 million hectares (60 million acres) of some of the nation’s wildest areas. Without the roadless rule in place on the Tongass, timber companies could build more roads to access Tongass old-growth rainforests.
Conservation groups view this ruling as a victory for wolves, bears, salmon, tourism, and Alaska’s job-producing fisheries as it means the U.S. Forest Service, aside from a handful of timber sales already in the roadless pipeline, can no longer punch roads into pristine rainforest to log centuries old trees.
The Tongass is the nation’s largest national forest—the crown jewel of the temperate rainforest network—and one of the world’s last remaining relatively intact rainforests. Roughly one-third of the world’s temperate old growth is scattered across thousands of islands rimming the coastline of Alaska’s southeast panhandle. Here, giant spruce trees seem to penetrate the clouds, wolves stalk unsuspecting black-tailed deer, and brown bears feed on wild salmon. This is one of the last places on earth where salmon are so abundant, they line up like rush hour traffic to make their way to ancestral spawning grounds.
Back in the early 1990s, I cut my intellectual teeth on the Tongass as an aspiring rainforest ecologist. I lived and basked in the verdant rainforest cataloguing the passage of giant trees headed for sawmills and the demise of old-growth wildlife dependent on this unique rainforest. Prince of Wales Island, where I did my research, was the sacrifice zone for rainforest logging as much of the island’s vast rainforest was being crisscrossed by a spaghetti-network of roads peppered by a shot-gun blast of clearcuts. At the time, many of the most biologically productive rainforests on the Tongass were destined for the chopping block.
This victory on the Tongass strikes a personal chord for me that began two decades ago when I first set foot on the Tongass. The Tongass’s majestic rainforest inspired me to take ecology to the next level—the halls of Congress and the White House where the future of this rainforest will someday be decided.
Although logging still is occurring on the Tongass rainforest, this decision on roadless areas limits the damage to old-growth forests already penetrated by roads. But for the Tongass rainforest to continue providing its bounty to commercial and recreational fisheries and subsistence users of wildlife, the next step in the journey must be a healing one. The Tongass has been granted a brief respite and there is light at the end of this tunnel. Hopefully, the next generation of forest management will transition out of old-growth logging and into restoration of streams and plantations, repairing and removing deteriorating roads and thinning over-stocked tree farms.
The situation on the Tongass reminds me of the heart-wrenching words of Aldo Leopold, “We live in a world of wounds.” As an ecologist, I know very well what Leopold was talking about through my journeys on the Tongass; I feel its wounds in my bones, its sap runs through my veins, and I see now how the offer of hope can be a healing one.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
