Good point. Forests evolve over time. Problems that take years to build up cannot be undone overnite. Worse, the base of intelligent decision making is shrinking. Case in point:
I just returned from a tree removal project I am working on in Southern California. It is a popular campground on Highway 2 in the Angeles National Forest. Over the last two years, roughly a third of the trees in the campground have died due to bark beatles. At first, the USFS had fire crews cut down the dead trees as they died. Soon, there was logs everywhere...what to do?
In an effort to reduce the fuel load (which was really starting to build up) they then brought in a small wood chipper. They then cut off all the tree branches and fed them through the chipper. They started to cut some of the logs up for firwood...but the trees kept dying. So they had to keep falling the dead trees because they were a danger to the campers, which meant that they didn't have as much time to chip the flammable branches and tops. After a couple of years of this, they decided to pay a contractor to remove the logs...which now totaled approximately 225,000 board feet (enough to build around twenty houses).
At this point, three quarters of the logs have deteriorated to the point that they are no longer good for lumber. The ones that are still sound have blue stain fungus, which devalues the logs by 50%. The nearest sawmill is in Terra Bella, just south of Fresno, a five hour drive - one way. Thus, almost half the value of the logs is consumed by the expense of trucking them to the sawmill.
Regulations aside, any good forester would have dealt with the problem immediately and removed the infested trees. Because the logs would still be sound, the value of the logs would have paid for their removal. If administered in a cost effective manner, the timber sale would have benifitted the campground and returned money to the treasury. Instead, the public must now spend tax money to clean up the campground (ie pay someone to haul the logs away).
Why did this happen? In this case, the resource was wasted because it was treated as a sacred cow until the time came to remove it. Then suddenly, the value of the logs came into question. How much are the logs worth wondered the USFS? When the contractor was awarded the contract, some federal employees were convinced he would "make alot of money on the logs".
I have been hired to supervise the job and help the contractor remove the logs. At first it appeared we would have to landfill the timber that was deteriorated. Fortunately, we located a firewood outfit near Fresno that would take the logs and pay the trucking..so we get rid of them for free...not much money in that is there?
Now comes the interesting part. The trees that are left are weakened by drought. Why is that? Shouldn't trees in Southern California be drought tolerant? Even the most drought tolerant Ponderosa Pine will whither and die when a manzanita and live oak understory thicket sucks all the moisture out of the ground. Not an ordinary understory mind you...impenetrable. Too thick to walk through, to tall to walk over, and too choked with dead brush to crawl under. So what can be done to save the trees? Cutting the underbrush would reduce the moisture stress on the trees right? So that is what they did...on some of it. Actually, just a little part of it. A "beauty strip" 50' wide on both sides of the road, with a fuel break on the ridge line. What about the rest of the area?
Large trees in the campground have been declared "high value trees" and were sprayed with insecticide last month. The contractor used a 40' boom truck and wore white suits with gas masks. So Ernest is right, the USFS wants the trees to live right now, and are ignoring the cause (over grown vegetation). When I asked the fuels management officer whether they were planning to reduce the brush, he replied that funds were tight, and they were looking at other ways of treating the fuels besides hand clearing. Like what I asked? Well like mastication and burning he replied. I didn't follow up with the logical questions like: How do you expect to masticate a large area given the steep slopes here? or How will you burn off 90 years of fuel accumulation without burning up the trees you are trying to save? The mental image of a hooded migrant worker hoseing down a 150' tree with insecticide from the top of a boom truck flashed through my mind...
The public has entrusted the care of the National Forests to people who don't know what the hell they are doing.
Those guys in the bunny suits don't come cheap.
The worst of it is, while they're wailing about being underfunded, they've spent more money than necessary for a more destructive result.