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search (FIR) research effort in southern Oregon during the 1980'8. Their conclusion 

 was that the start of a successful reforestation following timber harvest needed to 

 begin with the harvest itself 



We are convinced that, as the federal agencies pay more attention to ecosystem 

 management principles in guiding, their forest harvest decisions, it wiU almost cer- 

 tainly dictate silvicultural methods that lower the risks associated with clearcutting 

 many forest sites. It is ironic that clearcutting, designed primarilv as a means of 

 improving reforestation of shade-intolerant species, has contributed to so many re- 

 forestation failures when used on the wrong site or under the wrong conditions. The 

 fact that clearcutting works in some places, and is needed in some places, must no 

 longer mean that it is used everywhere. We're convinced that the agencies are mov- 

 ing in that direction, and that those efforts will help avoid some of the future prob- 

 lems. 



But ecosvstem management is no panacea, either. Some of the best-planned ef- 

 forts may fail, either b^^ause people are still learning, or because unforeseen events 

 overwhelm the best-planned situations. We have to accept the fact that there will 

 be failures, and be ready to provide the follow-up investment and care that it takes 

 to overcome them. 



There is another issue associated with current discussions of forest ecosystem 

 management that may also cause major problems. I'm afraid an "icon" is emerging 

 as people laud "pre-settlement conditions" as a goal for today's managers. That is 

 a concept that ought to be used with great care. For one thing, we don^ know what 

 those conditions were. When forest ecologists have a hard time describing how a 

 particular forest ecosystem functions after years of observation and research, what 

 makes us think we can "interpret" how they worked in the past from a few grainy 

 photos and a random explorer's journal note? 



Even where we think we know what presettlement conditions were, that informa- 

 tion has little bearing on what we confront today. First of all, most of those forests 

 weren't "pre-management." Native Americans manipulated forest and range lands 

 consideraolv. Second of all, we can't return to that. Major wildfires, even low-inten- 

 sity ones, tnat swept across millions of acres virtually every summer before settle- 

 ment, would today run into towns, crop fields, houses, and human lives. People 

 won't tolerate pre-settlement smoke levels to prevail; they would violate clean air 

 standards and cause an irresistible public outoy about the health impacts of smoke. 

 Neither the country (nor the world) is the way it was in the 18th Century; the for- 

 ests cannot be, either. 



So ecosystem management must be based on what we need today, in terms of 

 goods and services from forest lands. We need to learn how to mimic or utilize natu- 

 ral processes, such as fire, but within the parameters that modem populations and 

 lana use patterns can tolerate. That won't be easy, and global change doesn't prom- 

 ise to maKe it any easier. 



There is an organizational issue involved, as well. The basic premise of environ- 

 mentalists a couple of decades ago was that public forests (particularly the National 

 Forests) were captured by local interests (the industry) and that the only way to 

 break that hold was to "nationalize" these issues. By bringing forest issues to Con- 

 gress, appealing to the fact that these forests belonged to all the people," the tran- 

 sition was successfully made. Now forest decisions are made in Washington. One re- 

 sult is a host of alphabet-soup laws such as NFMA, FLPMA, NEPA, E^ and a host 

 of others that prescribe a complex, expensive, and often contentious process for mak- 

 ing forest management decisions. Because some elements of these laws are often at 

 serious cross-purposes, or because people just fuid them very hard to follow without 

 slipups, federal forests are now managed more by lawyers, accountants, and "proc- 

 ess managers," than by resource specialists. 



That's a decidedly mixed blessing, even for those who promoted it so vigorously. 

 And it will be deadly for any type of ecosystem management, which is, at its heart, 

 adaptive management. Managers need to meet change; try to predict the onset of 

 destructive events or thresholds and avoid them; try to manipulate the vegetation 

 in the system so that it is more resilient under the pressures oi stress. 



When they try something, and it fails, they need to be able to go right back in 

 and try to rectify the mistake, before the situation gets even more dimcult. That 

 means decentralized, science-based management decisionmaking, flexible and able 

 to respond to fast-changing conditions. It means pubUc involvement, but the public 

 must be close enough to the forest to deal in the realities of what is happening on 

 the land, at the time. 



All of that is impossible when decisions are dictated from headquarters, and the 

 forest conditions today don't line up with the legislative or regulatory prescriptions 

 of last year. Both the "nationalization" of decisions accomplish^ in recent years and 

 the centralized organization of agencies like the Forest Service are inconsistent with 



