5/20/02
KUFM / KGPR
T. M. Power
Shifting American
Forest Degradation Problems to Tropical Rainforests
One of the more worrisome charges against efforts to protect the habitat of endangered species and old-growth forests in the Northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest is that such efforts actually drive more species to extinction by supporting the destruction of ecologically far more important tropical rainforests.
The basic charge is that when timber harvest is limited in our region, those harvests simply shift to other forests, including tropical forests that are far more important ecologically and home to many, many more endangered species. Because of that, we are told by timber industry spokespersons, forest preservation efforts in our ownregion are self-defeating, leaving the world’s forests and endangered species, on net, worse off.
Analysis of how international timber markets adjust to reductions in one source of timber supply, however, clearly indicates that this is not the case. The reductions in National Forest harvest in the Northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest did not lead to increased harvests in the tropics. Instead it largely shifted production within North American and Scandinavian Europe. Within the United States, harvest shifted primarily to the South.
The reduced federal harvest in our region led to a rise in the value of harvestable trees. This increased the incentives and payoff for private landowners to plant trees and tend those plantations more intensively. Those intensively managed plantations can have much, much higher timber productivity than natural forests. For instance in the southern states plantations are capable of producing a commercially valuable trees in as little as 10 to 20 years while in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies that rotation can take 30 to 75 years. In Georgia, for instance, a new plantation is many times more productive of wood fiber than a natural forest, yielding at age twenty 14 times as much wood fiber as an unmanaged natural forest.[1] When the higher costs of managing a tree plantation are accounted for, the profitability per acre is still almost 12 times as high. [2] It is not surprising that timber production in the US is projected to shift to the south and rely heavily on such new plantations.
The same is expected worldwide. Rather than invading virgin tropical forests in the pursuit of new timber supplies, it is the sub-tropical regions of the world, including the American south, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa, that will be turned to. And it is modern intensive plantation technology that will be used to produce the wood fiber. There will also be increased harvests in eastern Canada, the Pacific Northwest, and Scandinavian forestlands.
Of course, wherever those harvests take place there will be environmental damage. How do we know that it will not offset whatever was gained by reducing timber harvests in our region? That question can only be answered by looking closely at the environmental impacts of timber harvest in various locations.
Consider the emerging intensively managed tree plantations in sub-tropical areas. Those plantations will use fertilizer, pesticides, genetically manipulated stock, and involve frequent entry to treat, thin, and harvest the trees. One could argue that this intense management has much higher environmental impacts than selectively managing sustainable timber harvests in a natural forest. But that emphatically may not be the case. Most of the new plantations are being established on marginal farmland. Forests are not being cleared for the plantations. Those farmlands are human dominated landscapes where fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically manipulated crops have been used for many years. As cropland they were frequently entered several times a year and provide little or no wildlife habitat. Shifting from food crops to wood fiber production may actually reduce the intensity of the manipulation of the land.
Similarly, if, because the remnant ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest have been protected, harvest shifts to the northern forests of the United States, eastern Canada, and Scandinavia, that harvest will be shifting to much less mountainous lands that have been managed for commercial timber for a century or more. These are lands that were roaded and harvested repeatedly in the past. Even the additional harvests that are expected to take place in the Pacific Northwest will be of second growth on lands roaded and harvested over the last half-century. It is not at all clear that shifting harvest to less mountainous lands already heavily committed to commercial timber harvest while protecting relatively pristine old-growth forests represents an environmental loss.
Finally, it is not international commercial timber markets that are causing the destruction of tropical rainforests. That tragic and destructive deforestation is associated with two quite different economic forces. First, the subsistence activities of growing poor populations are leading to the clearing of those lands for subsistence agriculture, fuel wood, charcoal, and local building materials. Second, international agricultural markets for beef, soybeans to feed the beef, coffee, palm oil, and cocoa continue to support deforestation. Americans eating MacDonald’s hamburgers play a much more important role in tropical deforestation than forest preservation efforts in the United States.
Timber industry claims that efforts to preserve America’s remnant natural forests do more harm than good simply do not stand up in face of the facts. Those efforts to paralyze responsible conservation efforts by arguing that most environmental protection is self-defeating should be seen for what they are: self-interested obfuscations aimed at protecting industrial privilege.