John Taylor responds to David Lindenmayer on logging and increased fire risk.
The greatest risk to our forests is catastrophic fire. And forest fires are increasing in frequency and intensity.
Whether the forests are in state forest or national park, are logged or unlogged makes little difference – the high intensity fires we have seen in the 21st century are a new paradigm; they consume all and present great challenges for forest managers.
A case in point is the alpine ash forests of the Victorian alps. Alpine ash is killed by hot fires and regenerates from seed. Two large fires burned in the alps between 2000 and 2010. The first killed mature alpine ash stands, which regenerated when seed on the trees was released after the fire onto the burnt forest floor. The second fire killed the regrowth, which was too young to have produced any seed, and so the forests were replaced by scrub.
This presented an interesting issue for park managers – were the fires natural processes? If so, the removal of the forests had to be accepted. Or were they anthropogenic and therefore some intervention was warranted? In the event, the burnt alpine ash sites were seeded from the air (techniques developed by foresters to regenerate logged stands) and the alpine ash forests continue.
Perhaps garden managers have more options on dealing with the challenges presented by climate change – over time we can change the species in our gardens and make other interventions, to a much greater extent than natural area managers.