Log and Burn, or Leave Alone? Indiana Residents Fight US Forest Service Over the Future of Hoosier National Forest
The mighty, valuable oak is at the center of conflict between federal officials and logging opponents over how to manage mature forests in an era of climate change.
Log and Burn, or Leave Alone? Indiana Residents Fight US Forest Service Over the Future of Hoosier National Forest
The mighty, valuable oak is at the center of conflict between federal officials and logging opponents over how to manage mature forests in an era of climate change.
June 4, 2023
PAOLI, Indiana—When Jesse Laws rides her 7-year-old palomino, Roscoe, in Hoosier National Forest, she often steers his reins toward the tall pines. Needles carpet the trails, muting the clop of his shoes and shifting the feel of the air.
“The ground stays moist there, so it’s cooler and so quiet,” says Laws, whose great grandparents founded a saddle club in these woods about 30 miles north of the Kentucky border. “There is nothing more peaceful than listening to the breeze in a pine stand from the back of a good horse.”
But the tranquil evergreens Laws loves soon could disappear.
In two of the largest projects the U.S. Forest Service has ever undertaken in the historic Hoosier, the agency plans to log more than 9,000 acres, conduct prescribed burns on another 28,000 and build more than 27 miles of roads.
The “Houston South” and “Buffalo Springs” proposals have engendered fierce local opposition, not only from horse riders and hikers but chambers of commerce, and elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike.
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When added to the impact of two similar restoration projects already underway in adjacent counties, the “Oriole” and “German Ridge” projects, the Forest Service’s plans would transform about 18 percent of the Hoosier.
The contest taking shape in southern Indiana is part of a larger battle now being waged over the future of the National Forests, the nation’s greatest reservoirs of forest carbon, in a changing climate. President Joe Biden has sought to protect mature and old-growth forests, but clearly his Forest Service is resisting the concept of preserving older forests as a strategic reserve of carbon, which some climate scientists have advocated.
Last month, the Biden administration announced a plan for new regulations to enhance “climate resilience” in those forests. It was a follow-up to a first-of-its-kind inventory ordered by Biden that showed mature and old-growth forests make up 60 percent, or 112 million acres, of the forests managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
But the Forest Service has more than 20 projects underway like the Hoosier plans that include logging or burning in 370,000 acres of those mature and old-growth forests, according to the Climate Forests Campaign, a coalition of environmental groups.
The Forest Service, which is taking public comments through June 20 on what its new climate rules should look like, argues “restoration” and “vegetation management” activities, like the Buffalo Springs and Houston South projects proposed in Indiana, may be better in the long run from a climate change perspective.
“With predicted changes in climate, especially hotter, drier summers in the Midwest, Hoosier National Forest [is] more likely to experience wildfire and we must plan appropriately to have a fire-resilient forest in place,” the Forest Service said in written responses to Inside Climate News.
More than half of the stands in the Hoosier are 80 years old or older, and there has been a sharp decline in establishment of new ones, the Forest Service said in its assessment of the carbon impact of the Buffalo Springs portion of its Hoosier proposal.
“If the Forest continues on this aging trajectory, more stands will reach a slower growth stage in coming years, potentially causing the rate [of] carbon accumulation to decline,” the assessment said.
The plan is to make way for new oak habitat by clear-cutting 1,100 acres and otherwise culling mature trees the Forest Service says are less resilient and beneficial to the ecosystem, including maple, beech and pine.
But Richard Birdsey, who spent 40 years with the Forest Service before his retirement as a distinguished scientist in 2016, says, in effect, that the agency’s climate science in this instance is wrong. Such a fall-off in carbon absorption can take hundreds of years to unfold as trees die and decay. Middle-aged forests of the eastern United States would continue to absorb and store carbon over the next two crucial decades for staving off the climate crisis—if they are allowed to stand, he said.
“If you look back at what these forests were once like, presettlement, those areas had on the order of twice as much carbon stock as they do now,” said Birdsey, now a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. “It’s not like, all of a sudden these 100-year-old forests are going to start losing carbon. If left alone, they’ll grow in most cases to twice their age.”
Recent scientific papers Birdsey has co-authored show how protection of large-diameter older trees can help further biodiversity and other forest resilience goals, and how more robust forest conservation policy could help mitigate climate change. “If you harvest an older forest, it creates what’s called a carbon debt,” Birdsey said. “You’ve removed a lot of stored carbon, and in order to replenish that we’re looking at decades, if not centuries.”
Having worked in the eastern U.S. for the Forest Service, Birdsey is familiar with oak restoration like the agency proposes in the Hoosier. He said the agency may have reason to pursue such projects, but should not try to justify them on the basis of climate protection.
“There might be other reasons—let’s say for wildlife—for removing some of the trees and allowing some different species to grow,” Birdsey said. “But that has nothing to do with climate. And in a case like that, you just have to accept that it is not going to be good for climate.”
The Case for Cutting the Hoosier
The Forest Service’s Land and Resource Management Plan for the Hoosier, the guiding document for its current projects, was completed in 2006—before the most recent science on older trees and carbon sequestration. It was also before rules changes under President Barack Obama that put more emphasis on community input and managing National Forests for recreation and other uses besides timber harvest.
Although the law governing the 154 National Forests says management plans should be updated at least every 15 years, the average plan age is 22,with some dating back to 1983. (Congress now includes language in annual appropriations bills exempting the Forest Service from the 15-year requirement as long as it is acting in good faith.)
The 2006 Hoosier plan stresses one tree above all others: the mighty oak, which dominates the landscape but is not regenerating young trees—a phenomenon recognized for decades in forests of the East. The hickory tree, oak’s partner in the deciduous ecosystem since the American chestnut was wiped out by blight in the 20th century, also is declining. The Forest Service says restoration of the oak-hickory ecosystem in the Hoosier is crucial to wildlife that rely on tree fruits, or mast, like acorns and nuts.
Oak’s economic value clearly is a consideration for the Forest Service, which describes thinning and prescribed fire as methods of “timber stand improvement.” “The stumpage price for oak consistently ranks near or at the top among all commercial hardwood species,” said a 2014 Forest Service synthesis of studies on oak regeneration that also detailed its uses—for fine furniture, flooring, whiskey barrels, pallets and railroad ties.
The Forest Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, refers to the nation’s forests as “Lands of Many Uses,” but chief among them is harvesting timber. It sets targets each year for wood production and acreage cut, and employees are evaluated on meeting such goals. Although the amount of timber harvested from national forests has fallen from its peak in the late 1980s, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore has told Congress the agency is working toward increasing output by more than one third to 4 billion board feet per year—harvest levels last seen during President Bill Clinton’s administration.
To meet those goals, Congress has given the agency authority to enter into “stewardship agreements” with outside groups that stand to earn revenue from timber sales and other management activities and are strong advocates for harvests. Regarding its plans for the Hoosier, the Forest Service said, “projects such as this are strongly supported by many conservation-focused groups and communities.”