There should be many hats off to Theodore Roosevelt. There are many reasons why he will always be regarded in history as one of the greatest presidents of the US. These reasons include his making the country a player on the world stage; before him the US was just another upstart nation that didn't really know what it wanted out of life, and was content up to that point to stay insular with its own problems. (Although it is true that he may have gotten the drive for this from the expansionism of William McKinley.) And don't forget his getting the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the process of making the country a world player, by helping to end the war between Czarist Russia and Imperial Japan. These reasons also include his determination to physically strengthen and maintain himself, as one who normally wasn't very physically fit, so as to be an example to others to do likewise, and which also then led to his founding of the NCAA. And these reasons also include his efforts in bringing the nation's long-term focus onto its own natural resources, which up to that time had been seen as either so limitless as to not need any serious attention, or to being so unknown that we needed to look elsewhere in the world for the raw materials we need. His focus of our attention on the importance of the nation's resources is what brought us our national forests, national grasslands, and what we know today as Conservationism: The wise and planned use of natural resources for assuring current and future productivity and prosperity.
Speaking of national forests: What people saw going on in the timber lands within the US in the early 1900's was a whole lot of cutting in old-growth forests (that's forests with trees of an average of 100 years of age or more, in other words, trees that had been around for a long time). This cutting of the old-growth forests wasn't done to no purpose of course, for at that time there was a huge demand for the building materials gotten from such cutting. Every part of the country was growing fast and needed all the building materials it could get. What people saw though, at the time of this heavy cutting of old-growth timber, was that this couldn't go on forever. Sooner or later we were going to run short and run out if we didn't make a plan for growth of new trees for the future forests we would need later. So one of the first things to result from the Conservation approach was the set-aside of some forest lands for long-term management to assure future supplies.
Something else that people saw going on in the large forest lands of the country at this same time was the phenomenon of the forest fire. While we were cutting timber badly needed for building purposes, we saw all kinds of good timber going to waste by being lost to the forest fires. Now of course forest fires were not new things that we just started seeing when we started cutting timber; they were always around here and there. But only when we started badly needing the timber products did we realize how much of the resource was being lost through fires.
So another thing that resulted from the whole Conservation mentality was the drive to control and suppress forest fires. When fires start they can build and turn to a raging disaster and eat up huge amounts of resources that could otherwise be put to good building use. If we can keep the fires down to a minimum, the more resources and materials we will have and the better off we will be. As a result, fire control and fire fighting became one of the top priorities for the long term management of forest lands.
Over time, though, people saw that the policy of fire suppression had some consequences that no one really expected. Fires would break out and crews would jump to them and knock them down, and everyone thought that was just great. But then the next fire broke out, and that next fire was worse than the last one. That next fire would be stopped in its tracks, and everybody was relieved but started to worry about another one. Then some time later during the next high-fire-risk period another fire would break out, and it was worse than the last, so much so that it was scary. Each time there was a fire to put out, that fire was bigger and badder than the one before it. This kept on going until, in many cases, a really big huge fire took place and wiped out a large area, not just hitting a large area but being so intense and hot that it did major damage to the soil itself. This kind of fire cycle took place in many locations all over the Western US, one of the most famous being a major fire in the Tillamook forest of Oregon. This escalating cycle of fires made people think twice about the ecological role of fire in some forest areas.
Try this experiment: Find a stick of wood and toss it on the ground in some corner of your yard where it is entirely exposed to the elements. There it gets wet from rain and some warmth from sun and wind. You will see something happening to it over time; you will see it slowly decompose and disappear through the process that we call rotting. This process of rotting actually involves being eaten up; wood that rots is wood that is being eaten by vast numbers of micro-organisms. These are tiny things, close to but not quite animals, that occur in incredibly vast numbers in almost every place on Earth's surface, which break down things that fall on it.
Just like all other living things, these micro-organisms need water, air, and food to live. In their case, the food is any plant or animal material that drops on the ground. Since they need water, if its too dry for them, they won't work on anything and won't break anything down. If there's no air, the same; they can't work. But in addition, they also need a good comfortable temperature to work in; if its too cold or too hot, they can't work then either. If you take a stick of wood and keep it frozen it won't rot, no matter how much water and air there may be. The key for these micro-organisms is that they have to have all of these factors at the same time: water, air, food, and warmth all together at the same time. Only then can they break their food down, the food being the organic matter on the ground.
Suppose you live in the US to the east of the Mississippi River, or in the lowland parts of South America, or in wetter parts of western Europe, or in places similar to these. You see trees blow over in storms, leaves fall down, branches break and drop, twigs snap off and fall, stalks break and drop, and this all from trees, shrubs, and a whole host of small plants. All these things falling down on the ground will form a mat of plant material sooner or later; sometimes first forming big piles that can take a long time to compress down. But one thing you see if you are in these regions is that most of what falls down rots away pretty fast. Leaves from one Autumn are gone entirely by the end of the next Summer. Twigs are gone within 2-3 years, branches in a little longer, and whole tree trunks can be little more than piles of rotten mush in less than 10 years. What's going on in these places is that the rate of accumulation of organic matter on the ground is roughly equal to the rate of decay. The forces of rotting are keeping up with the dropping of woody material. And as a result of that, there is no net accumulation of stuff on the ground.
But this doesn't happen everywhere. There are places that don't get a large amount of water during a warm part of the year, where these micro-organisms only have a limited "growing season" to work on the decay of the sticks and leaves and needles. This would include, for example, a mountain area where most of the precipitation comes during the winter in the form of snow, and then when the snow melts and the water flows away, there isn't much water at all for the micro-organisms to work with. This also happens in what are called boreal areas, areas that are cold because of high latitude (far north). It can also happen in semi-desert areas that get rain in some huge amounts over a short time and then stay dry the rest of the time. Because the conditions of water and temperature are not favorable together for very long, the forces of rotting don't keep up with the rate of accumulation of woody materials from the trees and shrubs. But here's what happens when the rate of accumulation is greater than the rate of decay: There's a build up on the ground of more and more woody materials, all the time.
Now of course there is a reason why fires start and burn, because there is woody material that gives them their fuel, something for them to burn. Under "normal natural" conditions in places where the rate of accumulation is greater than the rate of decay, (the normal natural being where there are no people around to disrupt what would happen on its own), there is a build-up of woody materials for a time and then every few years or so there is a fire that clears out most of the build-up. Under these "normal natural" conditions, there aren't many huge colossal fires because the build-up of woody material is being reduced periodically by smaller fires that occur fairly often.
But the practice of fire suppression in areas where the rate of accumulation of organic matter is greater than the rate of decay has disrupted the "normal natural" fire cycle. The woody material is not rotting away and is not being taken away by small fires. As a result, it builds up and up and up. And then when there is a fire, that fire has a huge amount of fuel to burn, and so it turns into an intense and destructive one. This is why forest fires can get worse and worse all the time in different parts of a forest; because they have more and more fuel build-up waiting for them to use up.
What all this means is that there are places where fires have a role side-by-side with the micro-organism factors of decay. Where temperature and water limitations make it hard for the forces of decay to work on organic matter that is building up, to reduce it down to small pieces usable by other things like plants, fire occurs and knocks down the build-up. Fire in these areas is just one part of the big process of decay and recycle and re-use.
This has implications for land management in areas that are relatively dry or cold or for any other reason where the rate or accumulation of organic matter is greater than the rate of decay. When the goal is to reduce the extent and intensity of destruction from fire, or the amount of economic loss due to fire, there are at least three things that can be done:
(1) Allow low-level fires to burn, and allow this relatively frequently.
Basically, this approach involves the recognition that fire has a place within the process of the reduction of built-up organic matter in some locations. By allowing small fires in areas of limited normal decay, fires occur relatively frequently and there is not a large amount of build-up, so the fires do not get very large or hot. Most trees and shrubs can actually survive a low-level fire because of this; a low-level fire just uses up the small material on the ground and doesn't get so hot that it ignites everything.
(2) Mimic the usual role of fire by periodic removal of trees and shrubs so as to reduce the amount of organic matter that they would otherwise drop on the ground. This strategy of removal can be carried out in many ways and in many contexts.
(a) In developed areas, allowing even small fires is a very hazardous thing to do. Most houses are built of wood-based (framing and siding, etc.) and oil-based (roofing and siding) materials that are highly susceptible to fire. But development doesn't change natural facts. So long as housing developments are built farther and farther into wooded areas, they will be surrounded by trees and shrubs constantly dropping materials onto the ground, which leads to build-up. So trees and shrubs will have to be constantly removed so as to reduce the organic matter that the normal decay process has to digest. You can have trees around you, but they will have to be cut back forever. Periodic removal of trees and shrubs will artificially make the rate of accumulation close to the rate of decay.
One additional thing that would help with this is to gradually replace needle-leaved conifers with broad-leaved trees and shrubs; broad-leaves are easier for micro-organisms to digest and thus rot away, much easier than needles. (Note that in extremely dry areas this wouldn't work too well as broad-leaved plants are not as drought-resistant, or extremely cold areas as they are not generally as freeze-resistant.)
(b) Make more use of wood and paper as materials, cutting these materials in areas where natural decay is slow. Recently, it has become very fashionable to use "alternative materials" rather than wood or to reduce use of paper, both with the idea that this is saving the trees. But saving the trees has meant over time that they become part of the massive build-up of organic matter, and thus part of a spiraling fire cycle in places where normal, natural fires are suppressed. Using wood and paper means that trees will be cut and so will not add to the accumulation imbalance.
(c) When trees are cut from areas of slow decay, use harvesting methods that remove much more woody material than normal. This includes what is called whole-tree chipping for pulp-for-paper use and for fuel use, and also what is called dry-skidding, where trees used for lumber are removed entire even though its only the trunks and not the branches that are being used.
(3) Artificially increase the rate of decay of organic matter. This would be by far the most expensive thing to do and could only be done in dry areas, not cold ones. This would mean irrigating forest land, just like agricultural land is irrigated. More water in the ground would mean more available to the micro-organisms breaking down the plant matter build-up.
(published 5/12/19)
Reader Comment: It’s not clear how exactly this counts as applied philosophy. Is there an application of specific methods in this field?
Writer Response: That’s actually not a bad observation at all. The basic approach here is what might be called a critical review. (That’s where critical means something like being evaluative rather than being emotionally opposing.) And that’s something that we can call a philosophical method. The issue here is that there is a review of a particular subject matter within a particular field of interest with the goal of identifying underlying assumptions within that field. In this case it is underlying assumptions of the value of fire suppression. Once that underlying assumption is identified, the goal is to try to determine if that assumption is warranted or not; drawing out why it was thought to be a good idea at one time, and how it is that things may have changed since that time. As circumstances change, basic policies and practices have to change, but that usually only happens when it is clear that a change of basic assumptions is necessary. The fundamental point here is that we really don’t see that there are problems with policies and practices unless and until there is a critical review of the assumptions that underlie them.
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