Publications

How much old growth should be preserved?

AMC Outdoors, September 2000

By Michele Pavitt

Scientists may agree that there is ecological benefit to preserving these areas, but they can't say how much old growth is enough. The answer could vary by plant or animal species. In other words, the forest sufficient for maintaining populations of lichens may not be large enough for supporting wolves, says Charlie Cogbill, an investigator at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. The AMC's forest ecologist David Publicover, however, considers the question moot since only a tiny percentage of these woodlands exists in the East. "The chances of us getting enough [of these natural areas] to be confident that we are maintaining all the species in these forests is very slim, so anything we can do to move in that direction is a positive step," he says.

There is, however, the option of creating old-growth forests starting now. Increasing academic and public interest in the subject offers hope for this possibility, said the scientists. Over the past few years, at least four conferences on old-growth forests have been held at colleges and universities in the East. The Eastern Old Growth Clearinghouse continues to provide information on these resources through newsletters and a Website.

"Put a fence around any place and in 400 or 500 years, it will be a primo area," said Cogbill. "That's the political issue — how do we decide what areas we want to set aside?" Cogbill suggests as criteria soil conditions, geological characteristics, and forest type, among others. But there are other interests at stake, says another scientist. "The bottom line is that for a forest to become old growth, it must be taken out of timber production," says Malcolm Hunter, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Maine. "That goes against the interests of many people."

The history of logging in the East is a tale of such competing interests. It began, as it had in Europe, with the widespread clearing and burning of forests to make way for agriculture and settlements. By the mid-1800s, the infamous timber barons had begun cutting a wide path of destruction, aided by technological advances such as the steam engine, says Publicover. "By the 1920s, the condition of what remained of the forest was frightful," writes expert and author Robert Leverett in Eastern Old-Growth Forests. "In mountainside regions, massive deforestation had disastrous consequences as whole mountainsides slid away when denuded of their protective forest cover."

A 1905 act of Congress, with strong support from President Theodore Roosevelt, established the U.S. Forest Service to protect vital watersheds and set an example of good forestry methods, writes Leverett. From its start, the Forest Service was given a dual role of protecting public forests and rangelands as well as meeting society's demand for timber products. Locally, about 45 percent of the White Mountain National Forest is harvested, says Publicover.