The Forest Practices Board, an Alberta, Canada watchdog agency confirms that a post-beetle-epidemic pine forest is "not a biological desert" and can provide greater biodiversity than a mature lodgepole pine forest or a stand regenerating after clear-cutting or fire..........However, if salvage loggers show up and clearcut the site, perhaps to make wood pellets for the bio-fuel industry, then it's not just the dead pine that will disappear...... The forest industry tends to "not leave the living while salvaging the dead" - which means it is "standard operating procedure" for saplings, spruce and fir, along with any live pines, to be cut at the same time.....If the loggers can be controlled, wildlife and a new regenerating forest will spring back to life within a generation

'Dead' pine forests very much alive

Contrary to public perception, pine forest floors are flush with growth, and wildlife is abundant

By Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun


Phil Burton calls this place a jungle. It's not the tropical Amazonian rainforest or even B.C.'s temperate rainforest, but a stand of lodgepole pine located off the Pelican Forest Service Road about an hour's drive southwest of Prince George.

The federal forests researcher estimates the pines were about 30 years old when the mountain pine beetle epidemic swept through here in 2005. The pine may be dead, but the understorey on the forest floor is very much alive today, flush with white spruce, Douglas fir, sub-alpine fir, alder, and a thick swath of green shrubs and berries.

"Quite a diversity, a jungle in here," says Burton, co-author of the book Salvage Logging and Its Ecological Consequences. "The growth has actually increased because it's no longer shaded out by the trees." It is easy to think of a lodgepole pine forest killed by beetles as a dead forest with no value aside from being clearcut as

fast as possible for its economic worth.Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

BIODIVERSITY
A thick, living mature pine forest is relatively sterile compared with the potential for new plant growth once the pine needles fall and allow in more sunlight. Depending on soil conditions, once the pine trees stop sucking up water, the forest floor can become wetter and more conducive to growth of other plants.

The Forest Practices Board, a provincial watchdog agency, confirms that a post-beetle-epidemic pine forest is "not a biological desert" and can provide greater biodiversity than a mature lodgepole pine forest or a stand regenerating after clear-cutting or fire.

The board further urges that unsalvaged dead-pine forests be carefully managed, as they will "contribute significantly to future timber supplies, hydrological recovery, wildlife habitat and visual quality." Here's one simple example of how a dead forest can contribute to biodiversity: insects feed on dead wood and, in turn, are devoured by birds such as woodpeckers, which may then fall prey to raptors. "For everything we see as dead or as waste, other things see it as food or a resource," Burton says.

Standing dead pines can also provide shade for growth of young Douglas firs, a species of value to both the timber industry and to wildlife.

As well, dead pine can impair the ability of insects such as terminal weevils to find and attack otherwise healthy spruce trees, Burton explains.


Coyotes can forage easily for small mammals in dead Lodgepole Pine Forests

Less certain is the future of this vibrant patch of dead pine forest: it's quite possible that salvage loggers will show up and clearcut the site, perhaps to make wood pellets for the bio-fuel industry.
If that happens, it's not just the dead pine that will disappear. As Burton notes, the forest industry tends to "not leave the living while salvaging the dead" - which means it is "standard operating procedure" for saplings, spruce and fir, along with any live pines, to be cut at the same time.

While industry focuses its salvage logging operations on stands where lodgepole pine dominates, it argues it doesn't make economic sense to selectively leave all healthy species behind. Industry does leave trees when it suits it, however, including mature trembling aspen, since cutting one can lead to ever more saplings sprouting forth from the site.


WILDLIFE ABUNDANT

Continuing my journey with Burton along the forestry backroads, he calls out our position on a mobile radio to any logging trucks that might be lumbering our way. It is early evening, a good time for viewing wildlife in the small patches of forest that interface with the gravel road.

A beaver hauling a green bough in its mouth casts a gentle ripple across a pond. A small black bear with cinnamon-coloured fur, scared by our sudden arrival, shimmies up a mature Douglas fir. And a lynx strides out from bush, nonchalantly crosses the road, then melts back into the landscape.

Seconds later - in cartoon fashion - a snowshoe hare suddenly materializes, heading in the opposite direction. Then another, and another. Soon the road undulates with the furry prey. "Look at what he's waiting to eat," Burton says. "We're near the peak of the hare cycle."