Introduction
Reed Noss conducted an impressive study of our nation's ecosystems
for the United States Biological Survey. The study was for the federal
government, undertaken by the Department of Interior. Noss concluded
that Ohio's state management was skewed toward preserving a few Pleistocene
relics while ignoring the old-growth forest that once covered our state.
"An important contextual consideration for conservation on a state scale is the entire geographic range of a community or species. The Nature Conservancy (Master 1991a) recognizes the problem of scale by giving higher priority to global than state rankings. However, not all state governments recognize trends beyond their boundaries and may be extremely provincial in their decisions, yet, agencies do not consider them of higher priority for protection. Instead, agencies often focus on the curiosities, such as relict or peripheral community types that were never common.
For example, the natural-areas program of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources devotes more attention to bogs, fens, and other Pleistocene relics that can be managed conveniently in small reserves as living museums than to the forest ecosystems that once dominated the state (R. Noss and personal observance). Forest area in Ohio recently increased to about twice its value in 1939-42 but is still onl 27 percent of the state, whereas it was more than 95 percent before European settlement (Good 1979; King 1990). The secondary forests, mostly in the Appalachian Pleateau of Ohio, are heavily fragmented by roads, gas pipelines, unreclaimed strip mines, clear-cuts, and other intrusions. Like most second-growth forests, they are structurally impoverished compared to old-growth forests. Only some small patches of old-growth forest remain in Ohio (Good 1979)."
This paper takes the landscape ecology principles and applies them to a practical old-growth forest restoration proposal calling for the purchase of lands to connect existing public lands into a contiguous reserve, then the expansion of the reserve into a shape more conducive for wildlife and recreation. First, the paper will explore how Ohio was before the recent European invasion. Then I will discuss how it changed. The bulk of the paper uses landscape ecology to design the future of the Athens Unit of the Wayne National Forest, which comprises the bulk of the public lands in the proposed area. The Wayne is particularly good to focus on because it is increasing in size at about 5,000 acres per year. The Wayne National Forest Management Plan provides powerful evidence that the forest needs to be more contiguous and less fragmented through the purchasing of new lands. Lastly, the role of landscape ecology in the environmental movement, and the need to focus on politics is discussed.
Ohio's Forests
Ohio was once 95 percent forested with ancient oaks, chestnut,
hickories, maples, beech, sycamore, elms, tulip, walnut, buckeye and scores
of other specie up to 500+ years old, 10 feet in diameter and more than
160 feet high with only occasional breaks where natural disturbance or
Native American agriculture took place. The canopy was entirely connected
to form a forest ecosystem hundreds of miles across. Ohio was the
heart of the eastern heartwood forest. It is among the most diverse
of forests in the United States. Woodland bison, elk, wolf, passenger
pigeon, carolina paroquet, black bear and dozens of other specie once graced
the dense woods.
Today, those specie are extinct or extirpated from Ohio.
Only one half millionth of Ohio's virgin forest remains, mostly in the
50 acre Dysart Woods in Belmont County. Bioregionalist and water
restorationist Freeman House likened Dysart woods to a half-ripped-out
book of the vast library of virgin forest that once existed. And
nowDysart Woods is threatened by tens of thousands of acres of longwall
mining that is occuring all around the forest, and threatening to come
ever closer.
What is left has been cut over many times, criss-crossed with
toxic-spewing utility lines, roads, suburban sprawl, parking lots, malls,
chemical golf courses, toxic dumps, leaking oil and gas wells and monoculture
chemical farms. Public lands represent only 4 percent of Ohio, with
the Wayne National Forest being about half of that. Only 24 percent
of the Wayne National Forest's purchase boundaries have been bought, leaving
a fragmented forest in small chunks.
Ohio was logged heavily in the early and mid 1800s to run the steel-making furnaces. The landscape was sold off to private interests, leaving little opportunity for recreation or wildlife habitat. Scientists began calling for public forest reserves. Western forests were created from lands that the federal government already owned. Such lands were not available east of the Mississippi. Congress passed the Weaks law in 1911 to enable the Forest Service to purchase lands for a forest reserve. Section 1 of the agreement is entitled "Agreements to Conserve Forests and Water." Congress authorized action "for the purpose of conserving the forests and the water supply of the States. (Sec. 1)"
"The Secretary of Agriculture is hereby authorized and directed to examine, locate and purchase such forested, cutover or denuded lands within the watersheds of navigable streams as in his judgment may be necessary to the regulation of the flow of navigable streams or for the production of timber."
"...The lands acquired under this Act shall be permanently reserved,
held, and administered as national forest lands..." One of the reasons
given for the acquisition of land is "for the purpose of preserving the
navigability of navigable streams.
The Wayne National Forest was lagely purchsed in the 1930s, though
purchasing has continued to this date. It is now more than 225,000
acres and increases roughly 5,000 acres every year. Environmentalists
say the National Forest is an incomplete, fragmented landscape. The
purchase boundaries are 832,953 acres.
Proposed Forest Reserve
This paper proposes the creation of a contiguous forest reserve
stretching from the Hocking Hills to Wolf Creek State Wildlife Area, and
including Ash Cave State Park, Old Man's Cave State Park, Conkles Hollow
State Park, Cedar Falls State Park, Hocking Hills State Park, Hocking Hills
State Forest, The Athens Unit of the Wayne National Forest, Zaleski State
Forest, Waterloo Wildlife Area, Lake Hope State Park, Trimble State Wildlife
Area, Burr Oak State Park. Combined, there are more than 100,000
acres already publically owned. About a hundred thousand more acres
would connect the fragments into an oblong-shaped reserve. Another
200,000 would expand the core to provide potential habitat for the return
of our lost megafauna. State Routes 33, 56, 13, 78 and the smaller
roads within the reserve present major obstacles, as do the towns and the
rampant sprawling development that is subdividing the farms and now-forested
areas.
The Wayne National Forest officials know that their lands are fragmented and incomplete. The Wayne National Forest Management Plan the the Forest Service has been operating under for 8 years reads, "Through the years, funds appropriated for land acquisitions by Congress have been insufficient to buy all needed or offered lands within the boundary of the Wayne National Forest. Funds are allocated and used to acquire lands suited for producing timber, wildlife and recreation opportunities and those that badly need watershed and other protection or rehabilitation. The existing National Forest System is scattered, and management efficiency can be improved. These public lands are very important in the State of Ohio, particularly for outdoor recreation, where the amount of public land per capita is one of the lowest in the nation."
According to the Forest Service plan, "Further acquisition would
add valuable public lands in the state and increase management cost effectiveness
by:
Reducing costs of identifying and maintaining boundaries
Reducing costs of identifying and maintaining boundaries
Reducing need to acquire access to scattered parcels.
Reducing possible occurrence of trespass.
Reducing unit costs for timber, recreation, etc.
Many people believe that additional National Forest System land
needs to be acquired, particularly in certain areas, and recognize the
importance of consolidation.
Public comments included:
Acqurie more land
Acquire unique habitats, such as bog, prairies and wetlands.
Acquire good forest land and consolidate.
do not exchange lands.
Prevent erosion by purchasing abandoned farm lands.
Protect and enhance visual quality by the acquisition of scenic
areas.
Protect archaelogical resources
Actively pursue land acquisition and consolidation along the
Little Miskingum River
Prepare a land acquisition plan to assure that acquisition of
priority parcels takes place.
Acquire mineral rights for special areas such as Buffalo Beats."
The Forest plan states that "optimal acquisition of 203,791 additional acres" should occur, along with exhange of lands for consolidation. "Land consolidation in the forest will create almost solid blocks of ownership 3,000 to 5,000 acres or larger in size."
Recreation
A large impetus for the purchase of new lands is recreation.
Carefully managed, recreation can help more people get close to nature.
Having people visit our public lands is very important politically, while
they are being so poorly managed. When people see the forest, they
are far more likely to act in its defense. Recreation also can provide
tourism that can answer the jobs question that the anti-environmentalists
like to raise.
"The Wayne National Forest provides a significant portion of rural, public land available for recreation in Ohio. Many people look to the forest to provide a place for recreation where human presence, development and management are not readily evident. Elsewhere in the state, this type of recreation is in short supply. These people tried to expect the Forest to be public land managed exclusively or primarily for recreation rather than for a variety of goods and services including recreation.
Capability of the Wayne National Forest to fulfill public recreational expectations is limited by a number of factors. The Forest's scattered land ownership pattern and high density of public roads limit possibilities for recreation environments which are largely unaffected b human activities. Competing demands for space by a variety of forest users such as horse riders, hikder, off-road vehicle riders, hunters, mushroom pickers, berry pickers and solitude seekers make it difficult to get away from other forest users.
Indicator of problem
Indicator species are like the proverbial canary in the mine.
They indicate when there is trouble. In Ohio, forest interior specie
are in decline. Other neotropical migrant birds are threated because of
a loss of forest habitat throughout their ranges. The proposed Hocking
Wilderness area would provide invaluable refuge to forest interior specie
like the Cerulean Warbler.
The Forest Service has lists of forest specie of special concern.
These are specie that are threatened with low numbers caused mostly by
habitat loss. According to Athens Ranger District Wildlife Biologist Lynda
Andrews, the Cerulean Warbler is listed as a federal candidate specie for
the Endangered Species Act, and is considered a forest sensitive specie
on the special concern list of the Forest Service. Andrews said the
Cerulean warbler lives and nests in the tops of trees in the Wayne National
Forest.
"It's hard to see them because they live in the tops of trees.
They are blue and white... and inhabit mature woods. They have a
very vocal call. It is declining in range. It prefers large
mature-wooded tracts. They avoid isolated tracts of 20-25 acres."
In a conversation with Bill Moyers, Comparative Religion scholar
Joseph Campbell discussed the religious implications of the destruction
of the songbirds in one of the oldest living cultures today.
"The pygmy legend saw the man killed the bird, and with the bird
he killed the song and with the song himself," Moyers said. "Isn't
that a story about what happens when human beings destroy their environment,
destroy their world, destroy nature and the revelations?
Campbell responded, "destroy their own nature. They killed
the song.
Moyers, " Isn't mythology to story of the song?"
Campbell, mythology is the song.
Native religions give us the deepest insight into the truths of our evolutionary path where we must evolve, having been crafted through millennia immortal to the great temporal expanse of wilderness that we can only dream of in today's ecological war zone. Ours is one of newness, and shunning the old. Our leaders to often bow to the almighty dollar rather than the almighty Creator.
With the loss of specie like the carolina parquet and the passenger pigeon that once graced our state, we have already lost nature's song's forever. But unless action is taken quick to restore and preserve old-growth forest expanses, many more songs will be lost as well. Many other warblers, vireos and mollusks that depend on the forest-filtered water are threatened or endangered. These specie could be used as umbrella species to protect an endangered ecosystem for any unknown endangered specie that likely exist.
Cerulean Warbler habitat conservation
For the continued survival of the eloquent Cerulean Warbler,
what is desired is a maximization of natural habitat for use by various
specie. This means preserving as contiguous a chunk of native forest
as possible, allow the forest to grow to old-growth, and connect these
wild areas with corridors.
"It is curious that over the years we have made a mental transposition of the matrix and patches. Originally the matrix was viewed as the extensive climate habitats found by Europeans on arrival on the North American continent. The patches were the disturbance through logging, cultivation, drainage, planting and spraying. The amount of climax habitat has declined. Thus the remaining undisturbed habitat has become the patches and the extensive disturbance areas are now the matrix," Noss wrote.
The Wildlands project is a national effort to focus on areas that are already relatively wild and publicly owned that provide the best areas to preserve biodiversity. These collaborative planning efforts by environmental groups and biologists can focus attention on the areas most critical to be preserved. Old-growth deciduous forest is one of 88 endangered ecosystems in critical need of restoration. The Cerulean Warbler shows that this habitat is sorely needed. Many other warblers, vireos and molusks need refuge.
Until recently, wildlife management meant insuring enough game animals for hunters and fisherman. That has changed, however, with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act and ecosystem management approaches. Aldo Leopold represents how many in forest servicein calling for the preseration of more land. Leopold wrote that every cog in the wheel must be protected for the health of the greater whole ecosystem. This means studying the habitat of wildlife, delineating reserves and, by far the vast majority of the work, winning a campaign for more land acquisision from Congress, the Forest Service, the State of Ohio, private donors and non-profit organizations.
Aldo Leopold was a unique Forest Service employee reformer. He warned of a wilderness-recreation famine and proposed a new kind of management plan restricting logging to the most productive forests while reverting the remainder to recreation, game management and wilderness.
"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community. But his ethics also prompt him to cooperate. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters and animals, or collectively, the land," Leopold wrote.
Core areas
The existing parks act in varying degrees as core areas, except
for the recreation development. But they are small and, except for
Lake Hope, at the edge of the reserve area. The area between the
town of Crossenville (At the top, left corner of the map). Wolf Creek State
Wildlife Area and Zaleski State Forest would serve as as two core reserves
separated by Route 33. Wildlife under-passes and more passenger train
travel instead of cars would help the wildlife pass easier. Nelsonville
and its landfills and sprawl is another hindrence to crossing the greater
Route 33 invasion of mechanized humans.
The entire Monday Creek watershed should be protected as wilderness, and the watershed completely restored. This will take much effort, as the creek is now dead for much of its path. But the popularity of the watershed restoration project will help greatly in this effort. And the jobs provided by restoration (often to former coal miners) helps win political support.
Monday Creek is part of a major restoration project by Rural Action,
The Wayne National Forest, AEP and the Division of Mines and Reclamation.
Rural Action is an organization with 36 VISTA workers and half a dozen
paid staff. By far the single largest landholder of Monday Creek
is the Forest Service, which owns 38 percent of the 112 square mile watershed.
The national-level publicity of the Monday Creek project and the already
high percentage of National Forest ownership make the watershed a perfect
area for wilderness. The entire Monday Creek watershed should be
purchased and the creek restored to life in all its stretches. The
70,000 acre area should be designated as wilderness with the trees left
to grow in perpetuity. In general, the area should be left to manage
itself. Some low-intensity fire might be considered for any needed
regeneration. The removal of exotic specie, and limited low-impact
recreation would be allowed.
Wildlife Corridors
The first priority is the connect the existing areas of public
lands into a contiguous whole. The area between Zaleski State Forest
and the main portion of the Athens Unit of the Wayne National Forest should
be connected first, as it faces the most intense dangers right now, as
a new four-land and rampant development threatens to destroy ever more.
A corridor should be purchased to connect the Hocking Hills Parks and Forest
to Zaleski.
The corridors should be managed as core areas, with maximum wilderness protection. Buffer zones around the corridors would help further. Reed Noss and Allen Cooperrider, in Saving Nature's Legacy (Island Press, 1994), wrote that corridors are a way of connecting the patches back together.
"Connectivity is essentially the opposite of fragmentation. Instead of breaking landscapes into pieces, we are seeking ways to preserve existing connections and restore severed connections. The connectivity of interest to biologists and conservationists is functional connectivity, usually measured according to the potential for movement and population interchange of target specie. ... Despite the uncertainty about optimal width of corridors, mortality risks, tradeoffs and other uses of conservation dollars and other issues, the fundamental need for populations of many species to be connected in order to be viable is widely recognized."
A core reserve may not provide enough habitat for a species. Corridors allow these species to migrate to meet their needs. Corridors are most effective for a specie if they are of the same habitat as the specie lives in. "A prudent strategy would be to maintain or restore wide habitat corridors..." Noss and Cooperrider wrote.
"Creating habitat corridors and influencing the character of the intervening matrix can foster successful dispersal between patches, the lifeblood of a metapopulation's survival. ...Connectivity is the pattern of interconnectedness or networking of a landscape that, along with movement behavior, determines how individuals move among landscape elements. ... Corridors work because many specie are willing to traverse habitats that are not suitable for permanent residency to find a more suitable patch, to find mates or to escape from their current patch."
We must begin to restore corridors and link up the existing wild lands to preserve all of the native specie left and restore as many of the native specie that were extirpated as possible. Greenways also enhance the tourist potential of an area, provide safe bicycling routes and improve the quality of life of all the nearby residents, a benefit that cannot be quantified but that should be of higher priority to policy makers.
Buffer zones
The greater matrix canot be ignored in designing a reserve.
The areas around the core and the buffer zones should be managed as buffer
zones. The inner buffer zones would permit non-timber forest product
use, such as ginseng, ginger, goldseal and other herb growing, mushroom
growing, maple syrup tapping and low-impact recreation. The outer
buffer zone could include select-cutting and some dwellings, though preferrably
at not more than roughly one per 50 acres. A contiguous canopy should
be maintained in the buffer zones, with clearcutting prohibited.
Buffer zones can dramatically increase the effectiveness of biological core reserves by protecting the interior forest from edge effects, and increasing the overall habitat size. Buffer zones could be protected as public lands or as conservation easements. Select forestry is possible but better uses are recreation such as fishing and hunting and non-timber forest products such as mushroom, ginseng, goldenseal and maple syrup production.
Roads are a major obstacle to habitat preservation in buffer zones. "Road density in buffer zones should be low," wrote Reed Noss and Allen Cooperrider in Saving Nature's Legacy. Allowable activities are non-motorized recreation, selection forestry, light grazing and small-scale subsistence agriculture.
Buffer zones could also be made from conservation areas preserved by conservation-minded developers. Randall Arendt describes how the economic value of developments that preserve at least half of the area is actually increased because of growing desires to live near nature. On the outer buffer zones, developers could be persuaded to preserve the areas next to the inner buffer zoning, while providing for some development on the outer buffer fringe.
The political battle ahead
Making wildlife habitat a central concern of land use planning
will take some changing of the current political paradigm. Dave McCullough
makes this apparent in his book Metapopulations and Wildlife Conservation
(Island Press, 1996), as he described his efforts to preserve the Coal
Canyon Corridor in China Hills, Santa Ana Mountains, California.
McCullough had tracked endangered cougar using radio collars, finding that
they regularly used the Coal Canyon Corridor that connected a range of
150 square kilometers for the endangered wild cat.
But the town council would not preserve the corridor unless every other political subdivision agreed to preserve the land. A developer passed plans to develop 1,500 homes that effectively cut off the corridor. The developer and the local politicians were fortunate to have McCullough to warn them of the impending ecological disaster of stopping the corridor. But, as is often the case with greedy and short-sighted developers and politicians, they valued the dollar above nature. We need a grassroots uprising in defense of nature and wild creatures to combat the insatiable appetite for money and land destruction.
We must make biological diversity a popular battle cry for land preservation. People must become aware of the crisis our planet now faces. "as the remnant patches of habitat receded to a size too small to support populations without incurring local extinction, biologists quickly realized that hope for future preservation of many specie rested upon maintaining many habitat patches and having animals disperse among them. The problem of fragmentation demanded a solution."
Politicians must begin to give credence to environmentalists and
biologists arguing for the preservation or restoration of wildlife habitat
and corridors. Land should be planned and zoned according to the
needs of nature forest, and people second.
This could be done by prioritizing core reserve areas, buffer
zones and connecting corridors. Lands in these zones should be either
purchased by the government outright, or conservation easements purchased.
Development and adverse practices must be banned. These land use
restrictions could be zoned legally if enough political pressure could
be built.
Ultimately, the main problem is politics. Biologists know
how to preserve the remaining specie we have, but politicians are not willing
to take bold enough actions to achieve these critical needs. We all
must take responsibility for influencing politicians that are acting in
our names to preserve biological diversity and wildlife habitat.
In a democracy, everyone has a chance to make a difference. Unfortunately
very few ever do.
Bibliography
1) Andrew, Lynda; Interview; Forest Service Wildlife Biologist; May
6, 1996.
2) Arendt, Randal; Conservation Design for Subdivisions; Island Press,
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1996
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13) National Forest Management Act of 1976; U.S. Congress; October
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ibid; Sec. 6 and 11
ibid Sec. 6
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June 12, 1960
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ibid Sec. 6 g (3) (E) and (F)
ibid Sec. 8 (b)
ibid pg. A-12
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14
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The Wilderness Act, U.S. Congress, September 3, 1964
Frome, Michael; The Forest Service; Westview Press, Inc.; 1984
ibid.
Heartwood brochure
Leopold, Aldo; A Sand County Almanac; page 239
Personal Interview; Wayne National Forest Service Wildlife Biologist
Lynda Andrews; May 6, 1996
Noss, Reed and Cooperrider, Allen; Saving Nature's Legacy; Island
Press, 1994
Arendt, Randall; Conservation by Design; Island Press, 1994
McCullough, David, Metapopulations and Wildlife Conservation,
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ibid.