Conor here: In case you need some good news after a long, hot 250th birthday weekend.
Interview by host Steve Curwood from “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, of Bill Moomaw, a distinguished visiting scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Cross posted from Inside Climate News.
When we take a look at the history of the United States, after the European colonists landed, some of the most dramatic changes they made were to the landscape, and especially our forests. Clearcutting ran rampant, but now, on the 250th birthday of the United States, many of our forests have recovered, particularly in the Northeast.
Since they function as carbon sinks, maintaining our forests is a key tool we have for mitigating the effects of climate change. During negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, the United States even tried to argue that our forests should be taken into account as an offset for our historic carbon emissions.
Bill Moomaw is a Tufts emeritus professor and a distinguished visiting scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. He was a lead author of several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports; the organization shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Moomaw has spent decades studying how the process of rebuilding American forests could shape the country’s climate future.
STEVE CURWOOD: Can you take a look back in history to when the United States was just getting started?
MOOMAW: After arriving on the Mayflower, John Winthrop is quoted as saying: “We have been sent to a wilderness filled with savages and wild beasts.” Clearly, they weren’t impressed with the massive forest they saw or the people who were here, and had this notion that the forests were in the way.
To make it look like England, they had to have agriculture, they had to clear forests for their villages, and it didn’t stop there. The value of the tall white pines in the primary forests that were here were so magnificent that the sovereign in England required that they all be saved for Her Majesty’s ships in order to have the tallest masts, taller than the Spaniards, for example. Forest was just seen as a resource and a barrier, and therefore it had to be removed. That’s the New England part and the Virginia part, which were the first areas settled.
CURWOOD: How much of the forest was lost in the Northeast once the Europeans came?
MOOMAW: Well, it took a little while, but by 1850 New England was probably 80 percent deforested, and in some places 90 percent and 100 percent. It was just absolutely decimated.
It wasn’t until after 1900, when [first head of the U.S. Forest Service] Gifford Pinchot returned from Europe, learning how the Europeans had managed their forest in order to be a resource for hundreds if not thousands of years, that we changed our practices from wanton destruction. I mean, we were cutting down whole hemlock forests in the Northeast, in New England, just to get the bark, to get the tannin to tan leather. The rest was just dumped and then burned. These raging fires in New Hampshire—they were burning the wood that they had just cut down.
CURWOOD: What needed to happen to have the forest come back in the Northeast?
MOOMAW: Well, it’s a remarkable story. To give you an example, Massachusetts—which is the third-most densely populated state in the United States—is 60 percent forested today. Now, it was probably 90 percent-plus forested when the Europeans arrived, but it went through a period in which 80 percent to 90 percent of the forest was removed, and that was exacerbated between 1850 and 1900 by the railroads.
The railroads had to be fueled, they were fueled by burning wood to make steam. The railroad tracks had to have ties, so trees were cut down to make ties for railroads. What we extol as this great industrialization in America in the last half of the 19th century was a disaster for the forests.
But around 1850, the Ohio territories were opening up, and New England farmers who had been cutting down forests and then plowing the rocks discovered all you had to do in Ohio was cut down the forest, and there were no rocks.
So they abandoned their farmland, and the regrowth of forest in the Northeast U.S., particularly New England, is the greatest forest recovery in the history of the world, and it all happened because of what I call benign neglect. It was not a plan, it was just abandonment of agricultural lands that receded spontaneously for the most part.
Now, in other parts of the country, forests that were cut were then turned into giant tree plantations of single species. We didn’t really plant our way back into forests, we planted our way back into tree farms, because if you’re a forester and you have a piece of land, you wanted to improve it—meaning to replace the trees you’d cut down with the trees you wanted to cut the next time—so the species were changed to accommodate that. So we didn’t get our natural forest back in some parts of the country, but in New England we pretty much did. It’s remarkable what has happened in the last hundred years.
CURWOOD: So in the East, we can essentially celebrate that they’re mostly back?
MOOMAW: Well, we can. I think it is worth celebrating, too. The battle’s not over, in the sense that most states have a Department of Natural Resources, which means that a forest is considered a resource—something to be exploited for economic reasons.
There’s been this huge battle going back to the late-19th century that somehow some people thought, well, we should save some of our forests. John Muir is the most famous person who was advocating that, and so while Gifford Pinchot was saying we needed to use it as a resource and use it wisely, Muir is saying it was somehow sacred and should be protected, and that’s been the debate.
There’s now a third view, which is that forests and other ecosystems are essential components of the Earth’s operating system. This is why we’re talking about them, for climate, for example. In that role, we can’t have a planet that has the climate that made our whole civilization possible if we don’t have forests and oceans and other ecosystems that are functional.
CURWOOD: Looking ahead for another 250 years here in America, how do you think our forest management will change? How should it change?
MOOMAW: I think it needs to change in a way that protects a large enough percentage that it will be able to maintain both the global climate and our regional weather conditions.
For example, the Northeast temperature rise with global warming is significantly less because we are so heavily forested. Those forests are both providing shade, but they’re also, in order to grow, drawing water up into their trunks, and the water contains minerals and nutrients they need, and then they evaporate the water from the leaves and it cools the surrounding area. So Boston, for example, is probably three or four degrees cooler than it has any right to be.
In other words, global warming would make it that much warmer, but our forests are cooling it by that amount, so it has a huge benefit from that point of view. And that has economic consequences, by the way. A few years back, when Worcester, Massachusetts had to cut, I think, 30,000 trees that were infected, the air conditioning electricity use went up dramatically, and we can’t all stay inside. People building houses can’t be air conditioned while they’re building houses, they have to work outdoors. Farmers have to work outdoors. I think it’s just really important that we have a climate that is suitable for all of us.
Two fairly recent good reads circling around ‘the woods’
Jim Harrison https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/107419.True_North The guy could write. Fantastically disturbing.
Annie Proulx https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25111119-barkskins Kind of petered out at the end, BUT, perhaps that was emblematic and intentional?
But neither hold a candle to this one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40180098-the-overstory
OK. On another note, just watched the Big Short.
Mid-east, oil, and AI have huge potential for similar crookedness and bail outs.
What a year!
Another fantastic book to read on the topic of forestry is The Golden Spruce. It’s mostly the story of one man’s crime against a single tree and his disappearance, but like The Perfect Storm goes into the history of New England fisheries, it goes in depth into the history of the Pacific Northwest’s forests and the logging industry. Extremely well written and actually may have been recommended to me here on NC.
I am glad the article differentiated between “tree plantations” and actual forests. I was recently treated to a guided hike through a mature (not old growth) forest right in the heart of Richmond, Virginia, which many people don’t even realize exists. It was spectacular walking through the trails and seeing the diversity of species all through the woods, which date back to Reconstruction/late 19th c. Tree plantations have minimal diversity by design, and therefore support only a narrow range of wildlife. To me, they are no different than a mono-crop cornfield, just growing on the scale of a couple of decades, and not months.
In my nearby NC mountains is the so called “cradle of forestry” because Pinchot worked for the Vanderbilt of Biltmore before the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot
So one should point out that Pinchot was a forest cutter as well as preserver and so is the current Forest Service which many say is more the former than the latter.
My husband and I visited the Pisgah National Forest/Biltmore for our honeymoon, while we stayed in Brevard – that was 21 years ago this week. Riding horseback in the forest and hiking to Moores Cove Falls are my best memories of that trip.
So often the people who use resources like Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, or even Grant Hadwin, are the ones who champion its careful maintenance and preservation.
Capitalism/Consumer Culture is a death cult – “Grab it while it’s still around to grab, and move on when it’s gone.”
Yes, the US Forest Service is about silvaculture, embedded with a few campgrounds for the proletariat. It is the National Park Service (Dept. Interior) that does most of the Preservation work.
It’s no accident that the Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, not the Park Service/Department of the Interior.
Golden Spruce. John Vaillant (sp? ) Fantastic read.
Uhhhh…the Southeast is not exactly chopped liver when it comes to regrowing forests since practically all of our old growth was razed and now large swaths of oak/hickory are available for re-razing to build housing developments. And while it will take years for the big trees that went down in Helene to regrow, they have been quickly replaced by succession plants in the undeveloped areas like the nearby state park. Nature heals itself with the plants it likes best (along with many many invasives around here) if given the chance.
Well, the planet is never the same twice.
Here’s a link to the why’s and wherefore’s of the US forests:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_woodlands_of_North_America.
or See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_woodlands_of_the_United_States
NYS hit it out of the park with the Adirondack forever wild forests. Some of the only places left in the USA with original forest growth that was never cut down.
A lot of this reforestation is due to the rise and then decline of the wool industry in New England. There was a boom in wool production during the 19th century. Forests were cleared for resources, but also to pasture sheep.
My family still kept sheep for wool when I was a kid, but they haven’t had them for decades now. My parents currently live on several dozen acres of forest, but it was once all cleared pasture land less than 100 years ago.
I’m sure that both Moomaw and Curwood are aware that although the forests have returned, the character of the woods is entirely different now. Except for spots in northern NE the Elm tree is largely toast. The Chestnut is history and alas, the Beech tree is headed out the door quickly here in the south. The Chestnut and the Beech provided huge mast for the critters. The White Pine won’t be making a comeback anytime soon. The seedlings are a favorite snack of the deer infesting the woods. I almost ran one over on a backroad in Jamestown on Saturday…humans? what me worry? The buggah’ wouldn’t get out of the way.
About 50 years ago I was living over in South Kingstown. One sunny summer day I was heading down the beach on my bike. I was heading south over the moraine below Rt. 1 and suddenly came upon a gaggle turkeys crossing the road in front of me. I was so shocked I almost fell off the bike. I told everybody that I had seen a bunch of turkeys crossing Moonstone Beach Road. Of course I was crazy because turkeys had been extirpated around here a couple of hundred years. Fifty years later they regularly abuse suburbanites.
I live on the edge of a state forest in western MA The eastern hemlocks are infested with Hemlock Wooly Adelgid. Many of the trees have just toppled over. There is no effective treatment right now,
https://newenglandforestry.org/meet-the-eastern-hemlock/
https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/research/research-topics/invasive-plants-pests-and-pathogens/hwa/hemlock-a-forest-giant-on-the-edge/
Yep. I’m in Montague, same. The one in my yard looks bad. We’ve been paying for a treatment they said helps, but not enough to justify the price in this difficult year.
Speaking of the cooling effect of trees, as a hiker decades ago, a grove of eastern hemlocks in the summer was significantly cooler.
We have wild turkeys here but they are secretive like the coyotes that we also now have here.
I don’t hug them but I’m a huge tree lover.
There was an interesting video on Youtube about a botanist who meticulously documented the fauna in NY state. He documented the whole state for over 80 years, volunteers had picked up where he left off extending it to over 100 years. The one amazing observation he made was that he noticed that areas close to waterways with ideal farming characteristics had no softwoods( pine, cypress… ), but had mostly hardwood trees( oak, maple.. ) He compared his maps to maps of well known Indian trails and found a significant correlation. The areas where Indians would migrate through matched up to where hardwoods were likely to be found, conversely no trails would reflect high concentrations of softwoods. His theory was that Indians would clear the land using fire, then plant crops, eliminating the softwood trees, eventually the land would become dominated with hardwood trees, which were less susceptible to being burned off. The Indians would move to easier plots, rinse and repeat, changing the nature of the forests over time. I can’t look at a forest without looking for the concentration of hardwoods vs. softwoods to give me an idea of the history of the location. Another interesting place to check out is the Greylock state park in western Mass. If you hike to Greylock glen, you can get an idea of how the original New England forest looked. The loggers had cleared everything around the mountain, but was unable to log the glen, due to the narrow angles between the mountains, they were unable to extract the wood efficiently. They tried to dam the glen and raise the water level to float the logs out, but failed. Before they could get another crack at it with more modern equipment, the state had declared it a protected reserve. Its one of the oldest preserves in the state. Interesting historical point, Nathaniel Hawthorne would spend the day hiking up to the glen with a packed lunch, just so he could find inspiration and write poetry while there.
Our mountainsides in the Coast Range of Northern California have magnificent live oaks cultivated for centuries for acorns. Natives regularly burnt beneath these great trees to hold back Douglas fir seedlings (which deer won’t touch). White settlers did the same to maintain their grazing meadows. Now that agriculture is about efficiency, not utility, our hilly, marginal grazing lands have been abandoned, and scattered off-grid homesteads like mine aren’t enthusiastically starting fires anymore. Everywhere you find old oaks shaded to death by newer fir, and the forest fringes of meadows expand before our eyes as young fir benefit from the shade of their slightly-elders, endlessly encroaching on grasslands. Controlled burns are a bit of a fad here, but uncontrolled wildfire is a much bigger, fearsome reality. We’re losing our grasslands at an increasing rate.
What about beavers?