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- Info
Sustaining Private Forests in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the Forest Fragmentation 2000 Conference
| Author: |
Decoster, Lester A., ed |
| Date: |
2000 |
| Periodical: |
Alexandria, VA: Sampson Group, Inc. |
| Link: |
http://www.sampsongroup.com/interest.htm
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| Abstract: |
Forests are being parceled and peopled. More and more of America's private working forests are being fragmented into smaller pieces that are less viable economically and ecologically: so concluded most of the more than 50 papers and posters presented at the Fragmentation 2000 Conference. According to Best, Peterson, and several other presenters at the conference, the trend is accelerating faster than population growth because Americans are increasing their per capita use of land for housing and other urbanized uses. About 3 million acres (a Connecticut-size hunk of forestland) is being split into pieces smaller than 100 acres every two years, according to one estimate that was regarded as conservative by most conference attendees. Nearly as much, around 2.4 million acres of forestland, is also being converted to developed land every two years. Many of the events driving this unremitting movement toward developed uses and smaller pieces of fragmented forests are Dynamic Unintended Consequences: DUCs. They are Dynamic (full of life) because they are attached to how Americans live: we keep adding more people who increasingly live in larger houses on bigger lots in or near forests. The results are often unintended. We don't set out to split forests into green remnants surrounded by houses, streets, parking lots and malls, and policies that push landowners to sell their working forests for development aren't deliberately adopted for that purpose: but those are the consequences of common lifestyle choices and many public policies supporting those choices. The DUCs contributing to America's forest fragmentation are often overfed by the American dream: big houses on big lots in a country setting, good roads and good schools achieved with low tax rates. It's understandable that most people want these things; so opposing these desires is unlikely to succeed. But Americans want forests and the benefits of forests too. Where there are wants, there are ways. Some forest fragmentation from natural disturbances, such as storms, fires and aging, has always occurred and is even necessary for functioning forests. Some human-caused fragmentation is also unavoidable and necessary as populations change, but some is an unintended by-product of choices and policies that accidentally stack the deck against keeping land in forest uses. Three elements below are familiar repetitive human-caused occurrences, commonly called fragmentation. 1. Fragmenting ownership of a large forest tract into several smaller ownerships (also called parcelization); 2. fragmenting the vegetation of a large expanse of forest into isolated pieces by inserting new uses and different mixtures of plants and animals; 3. fragmenting forest uses by converting pieces of land to other uses. Some DUCS: 1. Fragmentation rates are increasing faster than population growth. Development-supporting economies keep expanding out over the landscape, replacing forest-and-farm-supporting economies. 2. A "bow wave effect" extends far in front of expanding development. It raises land prices, taxes, social and regulatory pressures that discriminate against rural land uses well before a development rush. 3. Subsidized development demands subsidized services, which increases demand for more development... Most residential development costs government more in services than it pays in taxes. 4. Plants and animals thriving on edge-and-disturbance effects expand; those needing large undisturbed expanses decline. 5. Exotics and invasive weeds replace native systems. Vulnerability to insects and diseases increases. Plantings at developed sites create 67% of the invasive exotics in the U.S. according to Alavalapati. 6. Timber harvests "go terminal" in and near developed areas. One last cut is made in preparation for development; then the infrastructures and economic incentives helping keep land in forests disappear. Since this is not accompanied by a reduction in U.S. demand for forest products, imports rise, driving up harvests outside the area while local forests are unused. |
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