I read with great interest the Oct. 1 editorial “What the decline in birds shows us,” as well as Bill Danielson’s wonderful column on the subject. I share these concerns.
On Sept. 24, the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture held a hearing on H-897: An Act Relative to Forest Protection sponsored by my state Rep. Susannah Whipps. The bill would protect all state land as parks and reserves to be managed in a minimal way, similar to our National Parks. This amounts to 11 percent of all land and 20 percent of forested land in our state. These are my comments for the hearing:
Today, we stand on the brink of a sixth great extinction as the rate of species loss approaches that of the five great extinctions of the geological past, each of which dramatically altered the history of life. A recent UN panel reported that about one million species are in eminent danger of extinction. Long-term sampling is showing dramatic declines in insect abundance, so much so that we hear of an Insect Apocalypse already underway. And you don’t have to be a scientist to see this. Many here today are old enough to remember when a summer drive in the country meant a windshield smeared with dead insects.
And still the evidence mounts. Just last week, scientists reported that there are now almost three billion fewer birds in the US and Canada than there were a mere 50 years ago.
The causes of the biodiversity crisis are many, but most trace back to the ever increasing impacts of industrial civilization: habitat destruction on a global scale, ever more resources diverted from natural ecosystems into the human project, more and more plastic, vast volumes of pesticides — every one designed to kill — and the list goes on…
A full-scale effort to reduce these impacts is clearly required, but the most important thing we can do is greatly increase the lands and waters set aside in perpetual protection from this assault. To quote the esteemed biologist, E. O. Wilson: “Many decades of research have convinced me … that we must save at least half of the Earth from industrial exploitation if we hope to avoid catastrophic plant and animal extinctions.” The bill now before us, H-897, is a modest but important step in this direction.
Logging, the greatest source of disturbance in New England forests today, has an overall negative impact on biodiversity. Continually removing wood robs the forest of essential nutrients and critical habitat. By repeatedly creating new openings, logging fragments the forest, which increases the risk of local extinction. We must recognize that it is not the species that thrive on such disturbance that most need our help. Disturbance is everywhere. What are genuinely rare and most in need of our protection are mature ecosystems where the wounds of disturbance have time to heal and the web of ecological interactions has time to develop to its fullest extent.
Any land use policy is likely to help some species and harm others, and protecting our public forests from logging is no exception. Nonetheless, there will still be ample early-successional habitat that logging now provides. Natural disturbance will continue as will logging on private lands. Moreover, there is suitable habitat for many non-forest species in wildlife refuges and military installations, around airports and farm fields, along highways and railroads, and so on. Where I live, power line easements provide habitat where shrub-loving species such as prairie warblers and eastern towhees are flourishing. By the same token, increasing mature forest habitat will help forest specialists such as the endangered cerulean warbler.
Forestry science will be of inestimable value going forward as we take stock of how much carbon and living diversity our forests contain. We object not to the science of forestry itself but rather to the goals it serves. All too often, traditional forestry is devoted to the singular purpose of maximizing the amount of wood products that can be harvested over time. This is an inadequate basis for managing our public forests because it fails to include critical benefits of profound importance, including carbon storage and biodiversity protection, as well as enhanced recreational, educational, psychological and even spiritual benefits that only the grandeur and majesty of mature forests can provide. For the people of Massachusetts and for all the inhabitants of planet Earth, we call on you to pass H-897!
Bill Stubblefield is from Wendell, holds a doctorate in biology from Harvard University, and is a proud member of the Wendell State Forest Alliance. For more information visit www.savemassforests.com.