My response to Mike Leonard’s op-ed [“Management on Massachusetts public forest land”] has to do with the place of forestry practices in forest ecology rather than the specifics of H 897. First, their place in forest health, and second, their place in forest diversity.
Leonard states that “not managing these forests will make these forests less resilient … the health of these forests will continue to decline.” This statement implies an unmanaged forest will somehow fall into ecological decline until … what, exactly?
I would agree that if you want to harvest timber or other forest products, then best practice forestry techniques will help to assure sustainability, diversity, and health of the disturbed forest as it regenerates. However, it seems from the forestry perspective, an unmanaged forest is in decline because its economic usefulness as a source of timber declines, not because it is somehow unhealthy in an ecological sense.
Recent research is revealing unmanaged forests have a vast amount of diversity; largely unseen in soil, understory and canopy. Again, this diversity has little apparent economic value.
That view is changing; watch Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s “Call of the Forest,” or Ray Asselin’s “The Lost Forests of New England” (check it out on youTube). Also, if you would like to see a forest in “decline,” take a walk through the 100-plus-year-old forest at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead. You’ll see a lot of gnarly old trees, chaotic understory, and not much high-grade timber; but the forest is healthy and diverse nonetheless.
Finally, the comprehensive study published by Harvard Forest, “Wildlands and Woodlands,” discusses these topics in detail; it’s available online. There is an important place for forestry and forestry professionals in the management of Massachusetts public lands, but active management is not a necessary condition for either forest health or forest diversity.
Jeff Knox
Conway