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The Northern spotted owl is small as owls go. Weighing little more than
600 grams and standing less than half a metre tall, the physical size of
the bird is overshadowed by its imposing political stature. For the mottled
brown owl has become a symbol, a cause celebre and the star of a drama set
in the majestic coniferous forests of America’s Pacific northwest.

The spotted owl gained its exalted status in July this year, when the
US government declared it a ‘threatened’ species. The designation was made
after wildlife biologists demonstrated conclusively that the bird can survive
only in the old growth forests of northern California, Oregon, Washington
and southern British Columbia. And biologists working for the US Forest
Serivce found that one pair of owls needs as much as 900 hectares of ancient
forest to thrive and raise their young. Under the 1973 US Endangered Species
Act, a plant or animal that has been officially ‘listed’ must be given stringent
protection. A comprehensive strategy to preserve the owl is soon to go before
Congress for approval. There is no doubt that the plan will reduce drastically
the amount of logging allowed on federal lands.

Clearly, the northern spotted owl has ruffled the feathers of the powerful
forest industry. Jim Geisinger, president of the Northwest Forestry Association,
predicts dire economic consequences, including the loss of 100,000 jobs
over the next 10 years, if the industry is barred from logging the owl’s
habitat. The loggers believe it is they, not the northern spotted owl, who
are endangered.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, are claiming the designation as
a victory in their battle to save North America’s virgin forests from the
logger’s chainsaw. The owl is an indicator species: it reflects the health
of the forest. By saving habitat for the bird, irreplaceable forests and
their inhabitants are preserved for all time, says Andy Stahl, a resource
analyst with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Seattle.

The battle lines are sharply drawn: greens versus loggers. But between
these two a new group is emerging. Members of this group are scientists
who are quietly rewriting the ecological rules of the forest. Over the past
decade they have developed a fuller understanding of what an old growth
forest is, what makes it tick, and its complex role in the environment.
These scientists believe their work can help to determine how much old growth
remains in North America and the best way to manage it. They hope that a
scientific approach to the problem will lead to new ways of thinking about
forests generally. Because the war rages across the continent, although
the battle is thickest in spotted owl country. At stake are the last stands
of ancient forest in North America.

When Europeans first stepped ashore on the east coast of North America
they gazed upon a seemingly endless blanket of primeval forest. Hardwood
and white pines stretched south from what is now Canada to the liveoaks,
cypress and pines of the American southeast. In the far north, the pine
forests gave way to the taiga of the subarctic which reached across the
continent to meet the Douglas firs, hemlocks, spruce and redwoods that swept
down the Pacific coast. High in the Rocky Mountains were vast stands of
spruce, lodgepole pine and alpine pine. Settlers kept few records and researchers
are only beginning to reconstruct a picture of those virgin forests. So
it is difficult to estimate how much native woodland has been lost, says
Ken Lertzman, an ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His
‘best guess’ is that two-thirds of Canada’s original forests are gone. Across
the border in the US, the Wilderness Society calculates that 95 per cent
of America’s original forest has been logged.

It is almost as hard to assess the extent of today’s old growth forests.
Part of the difficulty is that outside agricultural areas, the area under
forest has not decreased much: ‘What we’ve done is convert old growth into
younger stands, more managed forests,’ says Chad Oliver, a silviculturist
at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Statistics compiled for a Canadian government document, Canada’s Forest
Inventory 1986, indicate that Canada has more than 100 million hectares
of unlogged old forest. But the data come mainly from forestry sources,
which take into account only ‘productive’, or loggable, forests. The forestry
industry’s definition of old growth reflects the logging life of a forest
rather than its biological life.

For similar reasons, good nationwide data are not readily available
in the US. However, John Butruille, of the US Forest Service, believes that
the figures compiled by the Forest Service are sound for the 19 national
forests he manages for the Forest Service in Oregon and Washington. These
heavily logged states have approximately 10 million hectares of forest,
of which about a quarter is old growth forest, says Butruille.

Deanne Kloepfer of the Wilderness Society in Seattle argues that the
Forest Service’s ‘timber-oriented definition’ gives figures that are far
too low. ‘Our total estimate for both states (Oregon and Washington) is
950,000 hectares,’ she said. ‘Of the total amount of old growth, 39 per
cent (374,000 hectares) is protected.’ Kloepfer believes these figures show
that overlogging of old growth forests is more serious than the Forest Service
admits.

Regardless of how much is left, virtually all unprotected old growth
in Canada and the US will be logged to extinction unless both countries
change their policies on the use of public land, says David Handley, a forester
and the manager of resource analysis for the Canadian timber company MacMillan
Bloedel. According to Handley, there are three reasons for this: at present,
the biggest, most commercially valuable trees are in old growth forests,
most old growth forests are on publicly owned land where cutting is permitted
or encouraged, and the forest industry needs time to make an ‘orderly transition’
from logging virgin forest to harvesting secondary stands first cut many
years ago.

The rate at which trees are cut is measured on several scales: cubic
metres per year, ‘board feet’ per year, and hectares per year. Most accessible,
though, is the ‘how long before it is gone’ scale. On that measure, optimists
estimate that the old growth in the west coast forest will last another
60 years; pessimists foresee the demise of unprotected stands in as little
as 15 years.

Disputes arise over old growth statistics because what is measured depends
on who is doing the measuring and why. Broadly speaking, environmentalists
measure patches of beautiful old trees, whereas governments and loggers
work on the basis of saleable timber. Many scientists and foresters, however,
are not convinced that both approaches are wrong and are based on out-of-date
notions of the ecology and biology of old growth forests.

In recent years there has been a profound shift in the principles of
forest ecology. Ecologists believed that the forest was a closed, stable
ecosystem. ‘We used to think that a forest was basically a group of species
that had evolved together or been together for a very long time,’ Chad Oliver
said. ‘Now what we find is that a forest community is a group of species
that may have recently migrated together and then, in the future, might
migrate in separate directions.’ The far-reaching implication is that all
forests are dynamic, interactive structures that respond to natural disturbances
such as drought, disease or a change in climate. According to the new school
of thought, it is wrong to assume that, over hundreds of years, a forest
grows to a mature, climax, stage where it remains in perfect balance forever.
Chaos is the norm and change is the consequence.

Old growth forest is born of catastrophe. A wind storm, wildfire or
other natural disaster begins the process by clearing a patch of forest,
says Jerry Franklin, an ecologist with the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest
Research Station and the University of Washington. Soon local plants resprout,
and others grow from seeds blown in from farther afield. Within 20 or 30
years, young trees are beginning to grow up; their canopies merge and shade
the plants below. For another 30 years or so, the only breaks in this dense
layer of young trees are the gaps created when trees killed by the original
cataclysm fall though the new canopy.

Mature trees drop out

After 100 or 150 years, depending on the species, the youth of the forest
is over. During this mature stage, growth slows and the ancient trees gradually
die. In the Pacific northwest, old Douglas firs soaring to 150 metres drop
out and are replaced by much shorter hemlocks, cedars and silver firs. This
phase may continue for several centuries, sometimes even for a millennium.
Usually, though, another dramatic disturbance sweeps through the forest
long before the old giants reach the end of their biological lifespan.

Following the new logic, an old growth forest has characteristic attributes:
significant numbers of huge, long-lived trees; many large, standing dead
trees, called ‘snags’; numberous logs lying about the forest floor; and
multiple layers of canopy created by the crowns of trees of various ages
and species. ‘Old growth forests are structurally complex and rich systems,’
says Franklin. From top to bottom, they are teeming with life. In the Pacific
northwest alone, biologists have identified more than a hundred species
of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish: bear and elk, flying squirrels,
a rare seabird called the marbled murrelet, frogs and toads, and salamanders,
and fish such as the steelhead and coho salmon – and the northern spotted
owl.

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs suspect that as many as 40 of these species may survive only
in the protective cocoon of an old growth forest. But the most numerous
residents, by far, are ‘inconspicuous, non-charismatic’ species, says Gordon
Orians of the University of Washington. He is concerned that too many public
debates focus on ‘a few charismatic species that may, or may not, be vital
in the functioning of the forest’. Hundreds of species of anthropods, from
insects and spiders to centipedes and beetles, are overlooked, he says.
And at the bottom of the heap are the forest’s fungi and microorganisms.
Yet these underrated forms of life are vital to the health of the forest.

All the forest’s creatures depend on its unique qualities for spaces
between trees shelter deer and bears. Snags are home to spotted owls, several
species of bats and flying squirrels. Large rotting logs protect the redbacked
vole, a small rodent that eats, and helps to disperse, the fruiting bodies
of mycorrhizal fungi that are so important in the nutrition of trees. Ants,
termites and beetles also live in the logs. As they carve out their nests,
they break the wood down into usable nutrients and create living spaces
for voles and other small animals. The logs also store enormous amounts
of water that protect animals during fire and provide water in times of
drought. Every component of the forest, from the crowns of towering trees
to roots buried deep in the soil, supports, and is supported by, a great
web of organisms.

Biologists have learnt much about the ecology of the old growth forest,
but they are only just beginning to untangle the many threads that link
it to the wider world. All the indications are that these venerable forests
are vital to the continuing well-being of both humans and nature.

Locally, forests are the key to controlling flooding and preventing
landslides. According to Franklin, the snags, downed wood and organic litter
of the forest protect hillsides from erosion. Logs that fall into streams
and rivers and jam them make the water ‘sticky’; that is, they capture debris
that would otherwise be ‘exported’ to communities downstream. They also
help to filter the water for valuable fish stocks and other aquatic creatures
by trapping sediment and woody debris. Likewise, they create deep, quiet
pools in which many species live and spawn. The forest also modifies the
weather. It helps to moderate extremes of heat and cold, and researchers
working for the Forest Service have found that the needles of the forest’s
conifers capture moisture from fog and clouds. In some areas of the Pacific
northwest, this accounts for up to a quarter of the local rainfall. And
while some scientists, such as Oliver, consider it a ‘red herring’, others
are convinced that old growth forests play a role in the global climate,
through the storage and release of carbon.

Whatever its value as an ecological and climatic stabiliser, Oliver
and others believe that the ultimate value of an old growth forest is biological
and aesthetic: it provides a life-saving habitat for dwindling species of
plants and animals and irreplaceable beauty for people. According to Oliver,
maintenance of species’ diversity and wilderness are the ‘real issues’ in
today’s old growth debate.

What scientists have learnt about the turbulent, complex life of an
old growth forest has convinced the University of Washington’s Oliver, Orians
and Franklin and Ken Lertzman of Simon Fraser University that ‘business
as usual’ is no longer possible in North America’s forests. Although foresters
such as David Handley of MacMillan Bloedel are confident and conventional
practices are evolving to meet the challenges of ‘multi-use’ forests – places
shared by loggers, hitch-hikers, campers and scientists – the researchers
are sceptical. Further, they say the answer does not lie in ill-conceived
compromises such as a recent case in British Columbia: there, the government
divided a forest in two, half for industry and half for conservation.

‘We must manage for biodiversity,’ argues Lertzman. ‘We must manage
across a landscape so we maintain all of the structures that seemed to have
occurred naturally over an area,’ adds Oliver. They way to achieve this
is to set aside large, contiguous patches of old growth which can serve
as refuges for plants and animals, Orians says. Next, says Franklin, scientists
and foresters must work together to apply the ecological lessons learnt
in the forest to the management of the vast areas of unprotected land that
will inevitably be logged.

This this end, Franklin has pioneered what he calls the ‘new forestry’.
In the ‘old’ forestry, large, fragmented tracts of forest are stripped bare
by clear cutting, usually followed by controlled burning to remove stumps,
branches and snags. The new forestry tries to mimic nature’s disaster-style
‘logging’ techniques. ‘New forestry translates into maintaining snags, downed
logs, woody debris, and even large green trees and part of managed systems,’
says Franklin. ‘You cut a larger percentage of the landscape (at one time),
but then you get out and leave it alone.’

The new forestry is controversial, risky and unproven. But its potential
benefits to forest conservation are so great that already foresters in the
National Forests of Siskiyou and Willamette are applying the concepts on
a trial basis. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has
recommended creating an Experimental State Forest on public lands on the
Olympic Peninsula in order to try the techniques on a wide scale.

Franklin passionately hopes that the new forestry will prove itself,
catch on, and safeguard, the matchless forests of his childhhod. ‘Certainly
if all the old growth forests were gone today, the planet would not cease
to turn. It would still go on,’ he reflected. ‘But it has to do, not with
whether life is possible, but whether life is worthwhile. For life to be
worthwhile for me, we need that richness, that diversity and that opportunity
that the old growth forests provide.’

* * *

Hot spots in the old growth war

At 90 metres high, the Carmanah Giant is the tallest tree in Canada.
The mighty hemlock is also the symbol of the battle between environmentalists
and the forest industry on Vancouver Island. Last April the provincial government
set aside the lower half of the Carmanah Valley as a provincial park, but
ruled that the logging company MacMillan Bloedel could harvest the upper
half if studies showed that logging would not harm the watershed below.

Environmentalists are not satisfied with this plan. They claim that
the valley contains one of the last continuous tracts of old growth rainforest
in the country and should be preserved in its entirety.

Other disputed areas on Vancouver Island include the watersheds of Brooks
Peninsula and Clayquot Sound. Data collected for the American organisation,
Conservation International, show that of the 27 main watersheds on the island,
only one is unlogged, and none is protected.

In eastern Canada, the Temagami Wilderness Society is working to preserve
3500 square kilometres of old growth forest. The Temagami Forest contains
the largest known stand of Virgin white pine in North America. All legal
efforts to halt logging have failed so far. Last summer, however, the privince
established a Stewardship Council to oversee activities in the forest. The
Society is not represented, but on the council are sympathetic members of
the Teme-Augama Indian band, whose native lands claim includes the area.

For a decade the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council has launched
six law suits and has extensively lobbied the US Congress. The target is
the 1980 Timber Reform Act which guarantees that the Ketchikan Pulp Company
and the Janapese-owned Alaska Pulp Corporation can log in the Tongass National
Forest for the next 40 years, paying only nominal fees for the right. The
old stands of Sitka spruce and Western hemlock in the Tongass are home to
the world’s densest population of eagles and grizzly bears. Bills to revise
the law are now before both houses of the US Congress. ‘Meanwhile, the pulp
companies are going full-tilt,’ says Barth Koehler, executive director of
the Council.

The red-cockaded woodpecker makes its home in the old growth pine forests
of 12 southeastern states. The bird excavates a nest hole in a 75 to 100-year-old
pine. Resin seeping from the cavity protects the woodpecker from the rat
snake, its worst predator. It may well take years to complete a cavity,
but once the job is finished, generations of woodpeckers may use the nest.
The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund has begun legal action to stop the destruction
and the fragmentation of the bird’s habitat

In California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, the 2000-year-old sequoias
are among the oldest inhabitants on Earth. Last July, conservation groups,
timber firms and people with grazing interests, along with the State and
the US Forest Service, agreed to a new management plan for the Sequoia National
Forest. ‘In one stroke we rescued more than 40,000 hectares of primarily
old-growth forest .. and completely reversed the Forest Service position
on logging in Giant Sequoia groves,’ said Julie McDonald, a lawyer who represented
a coalition of environmental groups.