| A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999 |
|
A Total Forest Management Plan
|
|
|
The Trevey staff assume that the private owner of forested land in western Virginia (a region of opportunity without clear borders) may be a little belligerent but "willing to talk." Most published forestry information is by public foresters (international, federal, and state) and almost all of them have (appropriately) a governmental and public-land bias. Seeing and reducing the bias is a difficult task; it may be impossible to reduce it substantially. If a public agency or corporate entity wants to be involved in the Lasting Forests, then an assumption of a single general public person must be assumed. It is appropriate that this "person" or any landowner will say "on this hand I want x but on the other hand I want y." Nevertheless, there has to be the assumption of one decision maker. This requirement is not an expression of distrust of the government or of asocial behavior.
The private landowners with whom the staff of The Trevey interact are often new land owners, those seeking improved returns from their land, or those seeking generally improved satisfaction and quality of life for them or their families resulting from land ownership.
Unlike in past efforts to suggest improved forestry to landowners, Lasting Forests owners (served by The Treveyare not assumed to be ignorant or to need education. Most owners, as everyone, can learn more about forests and forestry, but most, as the old farmer joke goes,"ain't farmin' half as good as I know how." There are other reasons (than information or knowledge) for not doing superior forestry. Lasting Forests addresses these problems on the way to developing a superior, modern forest under sophisticated management for the owner.
Lasting Forests demonstrates the blending of ecological, economic, cultural, social, esthetic, energetic, and enforcement principles to achieve productive forests in to the long-term future. Forests are designed and managed to produce, dynamically, a set of diverse benefits for society and customers. Continued success depends upon land enhancement in the present.
The Forests are private land and under superior management, at lest a level of management equal to that of public and corporate lands, and significantly better than unmanaged lands. These are lands in a democracy with a market-based, free-enterprise system. Open to authorized state or federal inspectors, the lands are managed for the private benefits of the private owners. Regulations or policies on affecting production or practices will generally be opposed as unfair competition of government entities with the private Lasting Forests enterprise.
Competition with corporations for land owners to enter their land owners' programs will be real. Given their clear objectives of wood supply for their mills, their past liquidation of land holdings (allowing private land owners to bear all investments, risks, and taxes of land ownership), and limited service, Lasting Forests will usually be the preferred option between joining a corporate forest and the Lasting Forests.
The Regional Situation
In the Southeast, a majority of private (non-industrial) landowners own between 100 and 1000 acres. Only 5% own larger tracts. About half of the owners live on their lands. There are 200 million acres of forest in the southeastern states (18 million in Virginia). In general terms 70% are privately owned (about 13 million acres in Virginia), 20% are industry lands, and 10% are public (Brunson et al. 1996).
Owners of forest land receive little income from their land. Less than half of the owners in the Southeast (40%) receive any income and it is less than half of their income for less than 5% of them. The only way that most of these people can seem to be reasonable in a money-dominant society is to claim that they own forests for wildlife, natural beauty, personal recreation, and the satisfaction of land ownership. "Investment in land" is generally stated by about half of the owners after the above four factors are tallied. Investment in land generally with increasing value (and with speculative high gains) is widely recommended for holders of diverse portfolios. With apparent high costs and rumors of low returns, it is reasonable that intensive forestry within a total resource management system has not emerged. Lasting Forests is a alternative to achieve financial gains and the typically stated benefits.
Most forests are in small tracts. There seems to be no other way to make money from a small tree stand than just to cut, then to wait for 60 or more years. This is called "waiting", not forestry.
To maintain a forest, trees are cut, replanted, and next year, a few more are cut, and replanted. This is called a "rotation" and when practiced well, the same area is re-harvested again in, say, 100 years, those years being the length of the rotation or "rotation age." If one acre per year is cut every year for 100 years, at the end of year 99, the owner will know exactly what acre is to be harvested next year. It takes 100 acres to implement this simple plan. Most owners do not have even 100 acres. Most do not want to cut only one acre per year (for many reasons). The result is that there are large cuts, long periods of waiting, low financial returns on land production, and deteriorating sites. The next harvest will usually be worse than the previous one. Some people do not care. They want to "get theirs" now; they have no responsibility, they say, to future generations. (Having just collected money from a harvest it is good that a past generation did not feel the same way about them!)
Why have private land owners not practiced good forestry? Their lands were abused, their areas are too small, they do not have knowledge, they do not know where to get advice, they do not know where to get help in implementing advice, they could not financially (borrow the money for or take the risk for) the advice or the help, and usually (in the past) the advice was rejected because it was unrelated or at odds with their objectives. Any one of these reasons is sufficient to prevent forestry for the private owner of small tracts. Lasting Forests addresses them all positively, allowing profitable superior forests to exist.
Land
Fundamental to the Lasting Forests concept is that land exists, not forests. That same land can be covered by deep water of a pond, a camp site, a corn crop, or a shopping center. While certain other things may not be suitable for a tract of land, trees are rarely the only thing for which any tract in uniquely suitable. Trees are thus a decision. Trees have no intrinsic "right" to an acre. Land exists as a mappable unit. It is a volume--latitude, longitude, and elevation. After this apparent statement (but the acceptance of which is absolutely critical for mapping, data recovery, and for making research findings work for the owner), then other analyses can begin. After the analyses, then the decisions may begin. These three variables describing the volume are the only three variables that are "given." They constitute land. Land units may be covered with roads, ponds, trees, or buildings. At a cost (or over time) these can or are likely to change. They are said to be a designated use. That field is in corn; that is a white oak stand. Each evident mappable area may be in transition. Such areas have a temporary designation. They may be changed for many reasons.
Permanent use is a designation given to cultural sites and to areas not likely to change over 200 years (e.g., a large lake). [Nothing is permanent as we can see from the pyramids, and archaeological and geographical evidence.] "Permanent" is assumed to be for the life time of the owner; planned rotation age; 50-year planning horizon; or a group assumed to exist in perpetuity.
The designation of "permanent use" need not be viewed by others as rational. There are many reasons why a field will always be a pasture; why that area will always be a pond, that area will be in trees. The reasons may be listed, but they do not have to be. There is no law that requires a match of action with some person's expression of "rationality." Once a permanent use designation is made (or even hypothesized) then the cost of benefits of the designation can be evaluated. The use may be changed, but it is not likely unless their are clearly massive costs or losses due to such designation. Usually the difference will not "make any difference"; permanent means permanent. An Ancient Forest Stand is an example of a permanent use designation in most management plans.
Withdrawn areas are those for which an alternative use actually or is likely to exist. An owner may "know" where a pond is to be built. The pond does not exist but the use of the land as a pond is assumed. The area is "withdrawn" from considerations of forest or other land productivity. It may be included as a real pond in a total system analysis. Withdrawn areas are those no longer likely to produce tree products under any circumstances. These include talus slopes, roads, trails, ponds, streams, developed campsites, loading and parking areas, heliports, permanent wildlife "clearings", and similar areas. The analyses of productivity of land, actual or potential, are done for the active areas-- these areas neither designated, permanent, nor withdrawn. "Withdrawn" implies from removal timber production. These areas produce other products and perform other services.
The Forest Stewardship Council Principles (#9) assert the need for management activities in high conservation value forests and that such activities shall maintain and enhance the attributes that define such forests (or areas.) Decisions regarding high conservation value forests are considered in the context of a precautionary approach, often using simulations.
The analyses are then conducted on the total area but productivity-per-unit-area over time may be estimated separately for each type of use for the active areas.
Scale
Many people think that "scale" is a more important or more interesting topic than ever before. The potential for a forest to be productive is strongly related to its size (and of course other factors, but this need not be said for each factor). A forest must be large enough to justify management costs. Where advice may cost $500, then at least $500 in extra benefits (confidence, risk reductions, or net gains) should be expected to be obtained as a result of the advice if it is followed. To pay less is likely to be infeasible to a consultant; to pay $500 or more is likely to be judged readily as irrational.
Any small tract of land with trees that cannot experience a reasonable rotation (either in stabilizing wood removed or area treated) suffers the problem of scale. Where the area of ownership is large, a single Lasting Forest may have many contained units. When the area is small (or a small mapped part of a larger area), they may be (voluntary of course) managed as a type-beta Lasting Forest.
Work is underway to describe several options for Forests or parts of them. One is for trust lands. These are dedicated forests, those which landowners dedicate for perpetual existence as forests. They are carefully managed for esthetic, recreational, and other benefits. Owners and families retain the forest and their use in perpetuity and retain public benefits and services (scenery, carbon storage, water, watershed values, flood peak reduction, fishing, and other benefits are derived from the dedication and foregone taxes). "Limited-liability partnerships" are being formulated, allowing many forests, separate from each other, to be managed as a single forest. Instead of 10 20-acre forests, a 200-acre forest composed of the 10 units is managed as a single unit. Harvest regulation, management, boundary work, protection, sales, harvests, and marketing are done from a single office to achieve cost effectiveness--and annual returns when profits are made. The expectation (the lowest measure of success) is that at least annual real estate taxes will be paid and land ownership will not be a net annual cost. At least this will reduce the tendency of society to liquidate forests and to forego all of their real and potential benefits. Complex other enterprises (other than log sales), all seeking to produce forest-related profits, will be discussed in later sections.
Giles has described the total system, the concept that lands need not and should not be managed as forests, or fields, but as total farms. A "summer-place" may be a cabin, yard, field, and wooded area. It is bought, sold, taxed, and thought about as "the place." The Lasting Forests are not merely forests but parts of larger land holdings. Decisions are made by individuals, not about forests but about their total holdings. To sell or buy, to fertilize, to delay harvests--all are decisions made in the context of annual income, taxes, family health, and owner's age.
A forest, as important as it may be to a forester or recreationist, is a part of an estate. If the owner is "bankrupt", no optimum management strategy can be devised (unless "clearcut and sell" is the strategy. A forest needs to be seen as one "stock" in a stock-and-bond investment portfolio. It may be "up" or "down" or "holding its own. "
A portfolio manager will rarely make decisions about the fate of any stock-holding without thinking about the total holdings, long-term objectives, estimates of total holdings financial performance, and naturally, estimates of future interest rates, the nature of the economy, and how likely political change may influence it. The forest is a "stock holding" in the land portfolio. The forest is an element in the annual tax return. Its net returns may influence capital-gains taxes and even the tax bracket of the owner. To cut or not cut timber may be a tax-based decision, not acceptance or rejection of a forester's recommendation based on superior tree growth models and financial models of the forest itself. Most land owners now know more about stock value growth than tree growth.
Scale influences costs. A small cost that may be overcome by being involved in Lasting Forests is that of contracting for, arranging for, and reducing the travel costs for the owner and the forester. Travel time and costs from office to any forest, on average, are great. A forester working with 10-20 forests within an area, could readily regularly visit each forest for a few hours, make observations, up-date records, all at no appreciable extra costs.
A single computer, accountant, office, legal counsel, advertiser, products marketing group, and security group serve all forests. All are likely to be prohibitively costly for the small tract owner but are affordable for the larger total unit of Lasting Forests.
The apparently high cost of forestry consultants is, in part, due to the few customers and high overhead and expenses per customer. The Lasting Forests concept stabilizes the forester's income, reduces costs, and by other incentives, makes the forester's service affordable. It may have been affordable before, but since less than 20% of private forest harvests are now done under the guidance of a forester (1997), it seems that the appearance has been otherwise. One objective, not intended to be hidden, is the desire of the staff to move land to its highest and best use and to bring more forested land under wise management. Lasting Forests is one way to achieve these vague but oft-stated goals.
Baseline
Perhaps large, direct financial gains cannot be made from a Forest. The Lasting Forest concept is that the cost of analyses and management can be justified on the basis of a type of insurance, i.e., protecting the owner from injunction or suits claiming damage from the property (e.g., odor, noise, silt, runoff, erosion, or wildlife damage). The same types of observations and analyses can achieve some research objectives in establishing a baseline, a description of the current situation of inventory, structure, and processes.
Protection that results from the baseline service is a form of affordable insurance for the land owner.
An example of well-known material not being integrated into applications in the fields and forests is that microscopic soil organisms are needed to breakdown leaves, stems, and other forest litter. Also they are needed to capture nutrients, particularly nitrogen, and actually to "pump" it into the roots of trees for growth. Forests, by several measures, are declining in productivity. It is slow and since there are few harvests (no more than 5 in any Eastern U.S. hardwood forests (usually only 3-4) then the "trend" is hard to see. If people argue that there is no decline, there is little evidence to counter the statement. If the argument is that there is decline, opponents suggest inappropriate sample sizes upon which to draw conclusions or argue that small changes of 1 or 2 percent are "not significant. Even a real half of a percent over 100,000 acres can represent a massive financial loss. Over many rotations, discounted at modest interest rates, even very small losses are spectacular.
The Lasting Forests concept is one of maintaining or restoring productivity and in some cases to approach maximum productivity but only within the context of reasonable profits. (There are few places where we even know what this productivity is or can be.) Pictures of historical giant tulip popular trees and oaks are of a size almost unbelievable. We believe that, with management, they can be seen again. In few places they can be afforded because past a point, gains in wood of specified high quality are not profitable. Tree volume, wood quality, and monetary value of the standing log become stable, then eventually decline. Lasting Forests staff works with all of the benefits of all trees of a stand. In each stand the total actual and potential value to the owner is evaluated. While wood value may decline in a very old stand, the floral or faunal complex may produce esthetic, recreation, tourism, bird-watching or other benefits suggesting appropriate harvest delay. (Even though there is financial loss in wood value, the net gains of the delay---especially for the long-term increase in site quality may fully justify the no-cut recommendation.) This not negative economics; it is a promotion of rational financial strategies to maximize profits and other benefits from a forest over a very long time. We may call it a program for "sustained benefits" if we must (wading into the "sustained yield" and "sustained development" morass). While supportive of "biodiversity" enthusiasm, we take it to mean and include more than endangered species preservation. We believe that a variety of animals are needed for a variety of plants and that plants, including trees, need animals for rooting-body development, fertilization, and many other parts of their complex set of life requirements and stand-support functions. We work to maintain and enhance particular aspects of forest stands, hundreds of such parts, and are reluctant to generalize and to amalgamate them unnecessarily as "diversity."
The Philosophy Behind the Work within Lasting Forests
Lasting Forests is grounded in "Caring for the Earth" A Strategy for Sustainable Living, a statement issued jointly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Conservation Union; the United Nations Environment Program; and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland in 1991. The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative of the Ecological Society of America recognizes issues of change in climate , biological diversity, atmosphere, land use, and biogeochemical processes. These all affect the workings of ecosystems.
Humanity must live within the carrying capacity of the Earth. There is no other rational option in the long term. Unless we use the resources of the Earth sustainably and prudently, we are likely to deny people their future. We must adopt life styles and development paths that respect and work within nature's limits. We can do this without rejecting the many benefits that modern technology has brought, provided that technology itself works within those limits.
Because of the way we live today, our civilizations are at risk. The 6 billion people alive now (2001), especially the one billion in the best-off countries, are excessively using natural resources and seriously over-stressing the Earth's ecosystems. World population may double in 60 years, but the Earth will be unable to support everyone unless there is less waste and extravagance, and a more open and equitable alliance between rich and poor. Even then, the likelihood of a satisfactory life for all is remote unless present rates of populations increase are drastically reduced.
The needs are two-fold:
The sustainable living ethic has as part of it a care for nature and people. It contains the expectation that mutually reinforcing actions will be taken as part of this caring ... actions at individual, local, national, and international levels.
The principles of a society following the sustainable living strategy are:
While the "strategy" was developed for everyone, it may seem to have greatest relevance or meaning to national leaders, heads of agencies, and corporate executives. Nevertheless, the strategy will have little chance for success unless caring and thinking people understand it and encourage others toward sustainable living. The strategy, at a minimum, may provide every person a measure against which he or she may compare personal behavior and life style.
There may be need for change in some areas. "Sustainability" is criticized on many grounds. The World Commission on Environment and Development used "sustainable development" to mean that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It seems that sustainability might imply actions that improve the quality of human life while living within the limits of supporting ecological, energetic, economic, esthetics, an socio-cultural systems. A "sustainable economy" is the product of sustainable development. It maintains its natural resource base. It can continue to develop by adapting, and through making improvements in knowledge, organization, technical efficiency, and wisdom. A "sustainable society" lives by the nine principles outlined here.
Respect and care for the community of life
An ethic based on respect and care for each other and the Earth is the foundation for sustainable living. Development ought not to be at the expense of other groups or later generations, or should it threaten the survival of other species.
The benefits and costs of resource use and environmental conservation should be shared fairly among different communities, among people who are poor and those who are affluent, and between our generation and those who will come affer us.
All life on earth, with soil, water, and air, constitutes a great, interdependent system - the biosphere. Disturbing one component can affect the whole. Our survival depends on the use of other species, but it is a matter of ethics, as well as practicality, by which we can ensure their survival and safeguard their habitats.
Actions related to this principle are:
Improve the quality of human life
The aim of development is to improve the quality of human life. It should enable people to realize their potential and lead lives of dignity and fulfillment. Economic growth is part of development, but it cannot be a goal in itself; it cannot go on indefinitely. Although people differ in the goals they set for development, some goals are virtually universal. These include a long and healthy life, education, access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living, political freedom, guaranteed human rights and freedom form violence. Development is real only if it makes people's lives better in all these respects.
In lower-income countries, economic growth is needed urgently to improve the quality of life. In upper-income countries the need is to reduce resource consumption, energy use, and environmental impact while extending an acceptable quality of life to all. Universal education is the most important development target of all, because it can unleash the potential of so many people. Improved security against natural disasters and war would do much to enhance the quality of life.
Conserve the Earth's vitality and diversity
Development must be conservation-based: it must protect the structure, functions and diversity of the world's natural systems, on which our species depends. To this end we need to:
Minimize the depletion of non-renewable resources
The depletion of non-renewable resources like minerals, oil, gas, and coal must be minimized. While these cannot be used sustainably, their "life" can be extended, for example by recycling, by using less of a resource to make a particular product, or by switching to renewable substitutes where possible. These practices are essential if the Earth is to sustain billions more people in future, and give everyone a life of decent quality.
Keep within the Earth's carrying capacity
There are finite limits to the Earth's ecosystems to the impacts that they and the biosphere can withstand without dangerous deterioration. The limits vary from region to region, and the impacts depend on how many people there are, and how much food, water, energy and raw material each person used and wastes. Policies that bring human numbers and life styles into balance with the Earth's "carrying capacity" must be complemented by technologies that enhance that capacity by careful management.
Besides ensuring that using renewable resources is sustainable, three other actions are needed. First, population growth and resource consumption must be addressed in an integrated and realistic way, in national development policies and planning. The need to stabilize both must be widely understood. Second, new methods to conserve resources and avoid waste must be developed, tested and applied. Economic incentives and taxes can encourage economy in using energy and raw materials. Third, action to stabilize population must be based on understanding many factors that act together to determine family size. Family planning services should be increased, and linked with improved care of mothers and children and reduced infant mortality.
Change personal attitudes and practices
Adopting an ethic for living sustainably, people will re-examine their values and alter their behavior. Society must promote values that support the ethic and discourage those that are incompatible with a sustainable way of life. Information must be disseminated through formal and informal education so that needed actions are widely understood.
Changing people's attitudes and practices will require an information campaign, encouraged by governments, and led by the non-governmental movement. Plans to motivate, educate, and equip individuals to lead sustainable lives should be prepared in all countries. All communication media could help in carrying out the plans. Formal environmental education for children and adults should be extended and integrated in education at all levels. Curricula and teaching approaches, as well as the materials available to teachers, will need re-examination. More support should be given to training for sustainable development. Extension workers and trainers are badly needed to help farmers, fisherfolk, forest workers, artisans, the urban and rural poor and many other groups within society to use natural resources more productively and sustainably.
Enable communities to care for their own environments
Communities and local groups provide the easiest channels for people to express their concerns and take action to create securely-based sustainable societies. However, such communities need the authority, power and knowledge to act. People who organize themselves to work for sustainability in their own communities can be an effective force whether their communities rich, poor, urban, suburban or rural.
Actions related to this principle are:
Create a global alliance
Global sustainability will depend upon a firm alliance among all countries. But levels of development in the world are unequal, and the lower-income countries must be helped to develop sustainability and to protect their environments. Global and shared resources, especially the atmosphere, oceans and shared ecosystems, can be managed only on the basis of common purpose and resolve. The ethic of care applies at the international as well as the national and individual levels. No nation is self-sufficient. All stand to gain from worldwide sustainability - and all are threatened if we fail to attain it.
Individuals, except those directly involved in national and international work, will unlikely take direct action that will relate to the above principle. A society that generally supports the principle is needed.
Sustainability: The Pathways
The above nine principles of sustainability are widely held. There are many pathways that can be found among the principles. Sustainable living can be achieved in many ways. In the past, major subject areas (e.g., forestry) have been used for analyses and organizations. Alternatives are possible with concentration on objectives, on linkages, tradeoffs, and limits. The sector analyses have been favored in the past and have been useful. Sustainability is likely to be encouraged by the following:
Energy
Commercial energy is essential for development. But commercial energy production and use can cause serious impacts on the environment. There is much waste in the commercial energy industry and in the use of its products. The needed actions are:
Business, industry, and commerce
The lower-income countries must develop their industry to escape from acute poverty and achieve sustainability. This development must not be the kind that blighted the environment and imposed heavy social costs in many areas of the high-income countries.
We must adopt practices that build concern for the Earth in to the structure of business, industry and commerce. We need to introduce processes that minimize the use of raw materials and energy, reduce waste and prevent pollution. And we need products that do not damage people or the Earth. These needs will be met only if we establish a new relationship between business and industry and other groups working towards sustainable societies. Action is needed to: 1) bring governments, business, and the environmental movement in to a new dialogue; 2) commit business to sustainability and environmental excellence, expressed in high performance standards and advanced by economic incentives; and 3) build confidence in industry by discussion of objectives, processes and practices and open disclosure of the results of monitoring.
Human settlements
Although villages are still the commonest human settlement, the movement of people from rural to urban areas is swelling the cities of the lower-income countries. Cities generate and accumulate wealth, and are centers for education, new jobs, innovation, culture, and greater economic opportunity. But they are immense consumers of natural resources. They sprawl over and sterilize land; require enormous quantities of water, energy, food stuffs and raw materials; and generate enormous pollution.
Farm and range lands
More people are hungry now than ever before, and their numbers are growing. Large areas are affected by land degradation are resulting from mis-use. Much unused land has little agricultural potential and is best used to maintain life-support systems and provide timber, bushmeat, fuelwood and other wild resources. The increased food required to meet the needs of twice as many people must come largely form better use of the land already farmed. In all countries, progress toward sustainable agriculture will require:
National strategies should protect the best farmland against conversion to non-agricultural uses. Soil and water must be conserved through proper land husbandry. The impact of agriculture on marginal lands should be reduced; integrated crop and livestock farming systems promoted; and, in dryland areas, the productivity and sustainability of rain-fed farming improved.
Other key steps are to adopt integrated pest management, and to use regulations and economic incentives that will lead to less wasteful and hazardous use of agricultural chemicals. International and national action to conserve crop varieties and livestock breeds and their wild relatives is essential. Adjustments in the economic framework for agriculture could help farmers adopt a sustainable approach.
Forest lands
Forests, and closed and open woodlands still cover 40% of the Earth's land surface. They are part of the planet's life-support system and a priceless natural resource. Each country needs to:
International markets are needed for the products of sustainably managed forests, and help needed in lower-income countries to derive maximum benefits from using the markets.
Inventories and strategies are required to ensure that land is used according to its ecological suitability and potential yield. Forest conservation and agricultural planning must proceed together. Substantial areas of natural forests need to be protected to conserve biological diversity and life-support systems, but protected areas should be part of a system including production forest and plantation forest. All categories must be managed sustainably, but for different primary purposes. Good management procedures, and skilled forest managers and workers, will be essential.
Communities should be involved in managing the forests in their areas, and deriving economic benefits from them. Lower-income countries need favorable terms of trade for their forest products, and help to introduce and maintain sustainable management. International agreements like the GATT and International Tropical Timber Agreement should favor trade in the products of sustainably managed forests.
Fresh Waters
Life on Earth depends on water, but bad water management is reducing agricultural productivity, spreading disease, and endangering ecological balance. Action is needed in four main areas:
In the first area, studies to assess the status of water resources, and to monitor trends in their condition and use are vital. Awareness campaigns and education should secure public support for protecting water against pollution and for using it efficiently. More training would help improve management of water and of aquatic ecosystems.
Water resources should be managed, using drainage basins as units. Economic instruments should be used to promote efficiency and economy. A cross-sectoral mechanism should coordinate all national agencies with responsibilities for water and land. Local communities should be involved in management of the water resources of their areas.
Water resource development needs to be integrated with the conservation of the ecosystems that play a key role in the water cycle. The value of natural wetlands as regulators of water flow and suppliers of food and other valuable resources is commonly neglected when developments are planned. The conservation of aquatic species has economic importance, besides being an essential element in planetary strategies to conserve biological diversity.
International action is often needed because 40% of the world's people live in river basins that are shared between several countries. Bilateral agreements and multi-national programs should be adopted, and the Ramsar Convention should be acceded to by all States.
Oceans and coastal areas
The oceans cover more than two thirds of the planet's surface. They are sources of food and oil, and highways for the world's shipping. The coastal seas are the most productive ecosystems on Earth, supporting 80% of the world's fisheries and yielding mangrove and other important products. Natural barriers such as coral reefs, mangroves, and salt marshes also protect densely populated coastal lands from storms. Yet the seas, especially the coastal zones, are increasingly polluted from the adjacent land, on a scale that threatens to impair ecological function and reduce their yield. Action is needed in five areas:
Information campaigns and education are needed to improve public awareness. National policies should be prepared for the coastal zone and oceans. All uses of the coastal zone should be subject to control, based on a plan, and all proposed new development subject to environmental impact assessment. Management of marine resources should be guided by ecological studies and designed to safeguard the balance of ecosystems. Prevention of pollution should have high priority. Key ecosystems should be safeguarded through a network of marine protected areas. A special effort is needed to protect threatened marine species and gene pools.
Rights to use marine resources need to be allocated clearly, and particular weight given to the interests of local communities. International cooperation, especially regionally, should be strengthened. Collaborative research and exchanges of information are needed as a basis for the sustainable use of the oceans. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea should be brought into force by the ratification of at least 15 additional states.
References
Brunson, M. W., D. T. Yarrow, S. D. Roberts, D. C. Guynn, Jr. and M. R. Kuhns. 1996. Non industrial private forest owners and ecosystem management: can they work together. J. For. 94(6):14-21.
Brush, G. S., C. Lenk and J. Smith. 1980. The natural forests of Maryland: an explanation of the vegetation map of Maryland. Ecol. Monographs 50(1 ):77-92.
Dealy, J. E. 1985. Tree basal area as an index of thermal cover for elk. U.S.D.A. Forest Service Research Note PNW-425, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Portland, OR 6 pp.
Gates, J. E. 1991. Powerline corridors, edge effects, and wildlife in forested landscapes of the Central Appalachians, p.15-32 in J. E. Rodiek and E. G. Bolen (eds.) Wildlife and habitats in managed landscapes. Island Press, Washington, DC. 219 pp.
Greenfeld, J., L. Herson, N. Karouna, and G. Bernstein. 1991. Forest conservation -manual: guidance for the cor~ervation of Maryland's forests during land use changes, under the 1991 Forest Conservation Act, Maryland Dept. Natural Resources, Annapolis, MD 122 pp. + appendices.
Leak, W. B. 1973. Species and structure of a virgin northern hardwood stand in New Hampshire. USDA Forest Service Research Note NE-181, Northeastern For. Exp. Sta., Upper Darby, PA. 4 pp.
Martin, A. J. 1976. Suitability of the line intercept method for sampling hardwood logging residues. USDA Fo~st Serrvice, Research Paper NE-339, Northeastern For. Exp. Sta.,Upper Darby, PA. 6 pp.
Schuerholz, G. 1974. Quantitative evaluation of edge from aerial photographs. J. Wildl. Management 38:913-920.
Wenger, K.F. 1994. What does ecological soundness mean. J. For. 92 (3):60.
Wiant, H. V., Jr., and M. S. Fountain. 1980. Oak site index and biomass yield in upland oak and cove hardwood timber types in West Virginia. USDA Forest Service Research Note NE-291, Northeastern For. Exp. Sta., Broomall, PA. 2 pp.
| Quick Access to the Contents of LastingForests.com |
|---|
This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision April 23, 2001.