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Old-Growth Forest |
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What is it and why does it matter?
The easy and obvious definition of "old growth forest" rests on the age of the trees in a given stand. But to stop there is mostly to miss the point. Antiquity is just one measure of old-growth and doesn't begin to capture the complexity and the value of such forests.
The study of old-growth is relatively new and evolving rapidly. But we know enough to know that simplistic definitions will serve us poorly. Defining old-growth is harder than that, especially in the East with its great diversity of forest types. The best definitions will be keyed to specific regions and further informed by careful typing within a specific region. For all of that, age is a place to start.
Class A old-growth (classification relentlessly follows discovery) is considered to be a forest with no significant signs of human disturbance and which is characterized by trees generally older than 150 years. A more common front-end standard is that trees must be 100 years old or older. That tends to suggest a stand of trees never or at least not recently logged and minimally affected by human influence. |
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Other classes reach to areas with many old trees and some evidence of human disturbance decades past but suitable for old growth recovery-the pieces are there if we allow them to function.
Scientists are now able to tell us not only what old growth is but why it matters. David Publicover, senior staff scientist for the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), describes old growth forest as "a big self-rejuvenating compost pile," rich in the elements of regeneration. Old growth forests provide crucial resources that younger, immature forests cannot supply. From canopy to fallen, decomposing trees, old growth forests sustain a web of life that extends from soil-building micro-organisms all the way up the food chain.
In the middle of that sequence, standing dead trees provide shelter for mammal, bird and insect species. Flying squirrels and various owl species decline in some places because of the lack of mature, sheltering trees. Black bears, too, need older forests to thrive. They adapted to climb trees but too often find themselves in new growth forests full of trees too thin to climb. The antidote is forest left alone to mature and grow old.
By some estimates, nearly half the continent was once covered by native forest and old-growth was the natural product of natural processes. As soon as Europeans arrived on this continent, they set about to change the landscape, reshaping it into some semblance of what they had left behind. Driven as they were by dreams of burgeoning cities and rich farms, it probably never occurred to them that the continent offered a chance to forge a new relationship with nature, one that entailed living with rather than living against. And the forests of reference for these early settlers were carefully manicured European forests-where forests were left to stand at all.
Slash and burn techniques offered the shortest path to the dream and American forests dwindled. They continued to vanish into the 19th Century at the hands of the timber barons and their steam engines. Forests cut in their prime-and clearcut more often than not-do not become old growth. Eventually, though, the scale of the damage and the litany of loss began to make an impression. Modern conservation found its roots in that awareness.
Remarkable as it may seem to us today, even though countless acres of old growth were cut and burned, first by settlers hacking out a life, later by commercial loggers piling up profits, some pockets of old growth remained. Often, it was simply terrain that saved it-slopes too steep for farming, even if cleared, or simply too hard to reach. Some remained in patches too small to interest commercial loggers.
By the early 20th Century, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service played important roles in preserving old growth, though in the beginning saving the unique values of old growth was not so much a goal as the happy by-product of more generalized protection of "virgin" forests. Scenery was more at work than science. |
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Old Growth Protection Efforts Today |
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Today we are struggling to protect remnants-and they are no more than remnants--of old growth forest. For the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests, that work began with Rob Messick and the Western North Carolina Alliance and their "Seeking Older Forests Campaign" in 1994. Other groups-the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (SAFC) and the Sierra Club among them-became involved, providing some funding and helping with GIS mapping. Messick authored and published a report in 2000, "Old Growth Forest Communities in the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest," that provided the basis for efforts that followed. The report also included the results of earlier old growth verification work by Don McLeod and Bob Zahner.
Messick developed a science-based methodology for old growth assessment based on surveys he did in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Chattooga River watershed. From many sources, he collected a list of candidate old growth sites on the Nantahala-Pisgah and prioritized them on the likelihood that they contained old growth. He then visited many of the sites, winnowing his list down via these criteria: remoteness and lack of roads; and the presence of steep slope conditions, such as walls, gorges, massifs, precipitous mountainsides and odd, variegated ridge and valley slopes. He also considered nominations from other researchers who had visited various sites.
Messick's goal was to gather enough preliminary date to classify and delineate old growth sites on the Nantahala-Pisgah. He mainly studied forested lands at mid-elevations, but found that some "islanded" high elevation forest areas showed promise, too. Rough topography, mostly having to do with geologic causes, prevented access to many old growth areas in western North Carolina and thus helped ensure their survival.
Since Messick's pioneering work, old growth surveys have continued under the sponsorship of SAFC, The Wilderness Society, the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Center, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Western North Carolina Alliance. Field surveyors have included Messick, Josh Kelly, Jesse Riddle and many interns and volunteers. The old growth team is still documenting important old growth sites on the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forest. |
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The Situation Today |
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Globally, the situation for old growth forest is grim. The Rainforest Action Network reckons that only around 20 percent of the world's old growth forest remains. And only 4 percent of the forests in the United States remain uncut. The situation in North Carolina tends to reflect those percentages, but there is room for hope.
Around 7.5 percent of the land base on the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forests is known to be old growth-77,418 verified acres of old growth out of roughly a million acres on the two forests. In North Carolina, five delineated old growth sites totaling 16,150 acres are permanently protected in three wilderness areas:
- 10,039 in Linville Gorge;
- 5,926 in the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock; and,
- 185 acres in three sites in Elliot Rock.
Two small sites are now protected in Forest Service-designated Research Natural Areas, 1296 acres in Middle Creek and 45 acres in Walker Cove. Between the designated wilderness areas and the Research Natural Areas, nearly 17,500 acres of old growth are protected, about 22.5 percent of the total acreage of old growth stands.
Of the remaining unprotected old growth forest, about 54 percent of the 77,418 acre total, or 41,798 acres, are in what the Forest Service calls "Large Profiled Roadless Areas; 17 percent in Mid-Sized Protection Areas; and, 6.5 percent in Small Old Growth Areas.
That brings us back to the Mountain Treasures identified and described in this book. If all 76 large and mid-size areas we highlight receive some form of protection from commercial logging in the Forest Plan now up for revision, that would secure 71 percent of the delineated old growth forest in the Nantahala-Pisgah. Added to the 22.5 percent now protected, we would achieve safety for 93.5 percent of the total now identified.
Ultimately, of course, the best, the surest protection for these resources is formal wilderness designation. Too much of our old growth is vulnerable today and relies for its security on administrative processes, not congressional wilderness designations which are rarely, if ever, reversed.
The AMC's Publicover sums up the stakes: "You don't create irreversible changes without understanding the consequences. Getting rid of the old forests is a change that's irreversible in the short term, since they take 200 to 300 years to recover their old-forest characteristics." |
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