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Denies natural cycles { May 24 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/6827603p-7765154c.htmlhttp://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/6827603p-7765154c.html
Friend of the Forest
Caretaker keeps plants and critters happy on utility company's lands.
By Mark Grossi
The Fresno Bee
(Published Saturday, May 24, 2003, 4:35 AM)
SHAVER LAKE -- John Mount needs spotted owls, flying squirrels and some really creepy fungus to build a better forest.
Mount's job as a professional forester is to make a profit each year from a private forest around Shaver Lake and Dinkey Creek. He cuts down trees and sells them.
But, strolling through a mountain meadow at about 5,300 feet, he praises a log that might rot for 200 years and make uncounted generations of bugs happy. Rotting logs and bugs. Why does he care?
"If you lose part of the food web, you're not going to have a healthy forest," said Mount, 64. "People talk about saving the spotted owl's bedroom -- nesting sites in trees. You need to save the kitchen, too. The spotted owl eats flying squirrels."
This is one holistic forester. He believes his approach will make more trees available to harvest now and in the future.
Mount's 20,000-acre forest, which belongs to Southern California Edison Co., produced enough lumber last year to build more than 450 houses. That's as much as some million-acre federal forests, which have drastically reduced timber harvests in the past decade to protect sensitive species.
But over the past 24 years, Mount's work has paid more than timber dividends. He has made Shaver Lake, east of Fresno, safer from catastrophic fire.
With logging and small, intentional burns, Mount routinely thins out overgrowth, a major villain in immense forest fires.
As fire season dawns again this month in California, such overgrowth in the Sierra Nevada creates seasonal anxiety for public officials, mountain residents and firefighting agencies across millions of acres.
Overgrowth last year helped fuel the 150,000-acre McNally fire in Sequoia National Forest -- the biggest fire in memory there. It torched a vacant resort, forced surrounding residents to flee and burned seven nests belonging to spotted owls, which have been considered for Endangered Species Act protection.
Such a fire would threaten any wooded mountain area, including Edison's forest. But Mount believes his work might slow down such a fire and could help save developments around Shaver.
"He's certainly keeping the fire danger down and helping the ecosystem," said Chuck Peck, executive director of the Sierra Foothill Conservancy. "The forest around there reflects more of the historic condition of the Sierra."
The historic forests were more wide open. For thousands of years, lightning fires reduced thick vegetation in this 400-mile-long range. The first European settlers in the 1800s found open, parklike forests, and they easily drove their wagons through the trees.
But by the early 1900s, public agencies began snuffing fires as quickly as they spotted them. Without the natural cycle of fires, low-growing vegetation grew, and smaller trees crowded together in open spaces.
Decades later, the forests are loaded with overgrown areas, ripe for wildfire. Clearing out the forest would now take years under any circumstances, but federal officials face an emotional debate between logging companies and environmentalists.
Environmentalists fear logging companies will take too many large trees and harm the forest ecosystem. Timber industry officials say environmentalists have gone too far in opposing most logging, thus allowing more growth in the forest.
The debate continues even after federal officials spent a decade studying the problem and coming up with a restoration plan called the Sierra Nevada Framework. The plan, which covers more than fire danger, provides guidelines to reduce the overgrowth.
"We have public involvement in our process on the land we manage," said spokeswoman Sue Exline of the 1.3 million-acre Sierra National Forest, which surrounds Edison's land. "It's not as easy as just doing it, as you would on private land."
The U.S. Forest Service isn't standing still. Each forest burns some overgrown areas each year.
This year, the agency is providing $7.5 million to help the state, many communities and others create more healthy forest conditions. The money will be available through grants for a variety of projects from wildland fire prevention to improving the health of trees in cities.
But federal managers for 11 national forests, covering more than 11 million acres, can't manage the forest as quickly or aggressively as private landowners, who hold more than one-third of the Sierra forests.
On the Edison property, Mount said his land management does not simply mean cutting trees. He said he is mimicking nature, selectively preserving tree communities of various ages and sizes.
Edison, which owns and operates a chain of hydroelectric reservoirs that includes Huntington and Shaver lakes, gives Mount the freedom to perform restoration work as well.
Mount walked through one such area, a meadow where a sawmill existed about a century ago. He described how he is nurturing the meadow, raising a small berm in one spot to keep water in the area where grasses and sedges grow.
A large white fir tree stands, withered and brown, at the edge of the meadow. Mount said he allowed the tree to die because dead trees are part of the natural landscape.
"Something like 80 species of wildlife depend on dead trees," he said. "Aside from the obvious woodpeckers, bats and nuthatches, there's an army of insects. When trees fall over, different species will use them."
He pointed to a bald eagle in the distance, among ponderosa, incense cedar and sugar pine trees. He said three bald eagles have fledged in one year around the area.
"That's a test of the forest's health," he said. "These large birds need lots of food to fledge more than one offspring."
To Mount, health also means available timber. The reduction of thick underbrush and crowded stands of young trees opens more room for healthy trees to grow larger.
Mount estimated the available timber has increased more than 50% in his forest since 1979 when he began logging, intentionally burning certain areas and planting ponderosa pines. He said he wants the timber to more than triple by 2033.
On a ridge some distance from the meadow, one of Mount's assistants was burning underbrush, including a shrub known as "ceanothus." It crackled and snapped as a late-morning breeze whipped it, but the fire remained low, meandering in a carpet of pine needles and leaving small piles of ash behind.
"It's not pleasant to walk through all this ash to plant trees," Mount said. "But we'll go right into the middle of these places because that's where the plant life will regenerate the best."
The reporter can be reached at mgrossi@fresnobee.com or 441-6316.
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