What is forest health? We are bombarded by a variety of natural resources organizations – like the one I am employed for – about the importance of maintaining or improving forest health. However, it seems few take the steps to define what “forest health” actually is. Forest health can be as arbitrary as other terms and words used throughout natural resources jargon: pollution, toxicity, sustainability, natural, wilderness, primitive, pristine, open space, preservation, and conservation, etc. Adirondack wilderness activist Bob Marshall once remarked that “wilderness” was an area that took two weeks to traverse by horseback without crossing a road. Does this fit your definition of wilderness? What about “toxic?” One may ask, “Is substance X toxic?” It depends upon how many parts per million it takes to cause harm, but “harm” must first be defined too. The terms preservation and conservation have been so misused that they have been mostly rendered meaningless. A preservationist fences in a forest and stands proudly beside its caged ecosystem, only to realize that what is inside the fence continues to change behind his back, and often undesirably. Is this what you intended to preserve? In college we were taught that conservation meant “wise use” of natural resources, but being “wise” means different things to different individuals. The lists go on and are beyond the scope of this article, but allow me to fixate on this one, “forest health.”
Forest health can be as subjective as the aforementioned words and terms. Some define a forest’s health by its resilience to disturbances, while others by its mere biodiversity in flora and fauna. Many who make a living in the woods base their definition upon the products that can be ascertained from thereof. At the Catskill Forest Association (CFA), we believe it is a mixture of all these parameters. However, since most of the forest is owned by private forest landowners, it will ultimately be the landowner that decides what the appropriate standard of health should be. For most landowners, it seems that forest conditions containing mature trees exhibiting very little pest damage meets their standard of forest health. Others are simply satisfied that it is not a parking lot, or a field.
It has been the responsibility of the CFA to connect individuals and landowners to their forest so that they can better visualize and realize some kind of standard of forest health. It is our goal to enhance the “health” of one’s forest in a way that it is able to afford the greatest amount of opportunities given its present conditions. Therefore, one general definition of an extremely healthy forest is one that affords the landowner many opportunities: maple sugaring, wood products, wildlife habitat, recreation, forest edibles, hunting opportunities, etc. As opportunities increase for the landowner – in general – so do the opportunities for the non-human component as well. In order to meet a wider variety of forest uses or opportunities, differing forest types, age classes, and species composition are required.
In other words, as forest uses diversify, so too will forest types and the flora and fauna associated with them, benefitting both humans and forest ecosystems in general. In the 19th century, most landowners homogenously desired a pasture for feeding livestock, and the diversity in forest types was drastically reduced, if not removed in many areas. Today, it seems many landowners are biased towards older, mature trees where cutting or burning is limited. Although this bias has not been as severe as the former pasture days, it too has reduced both our opportunities and the potential diversity in flora and fauna.
Last week, I had the opportunity to go camping in the Catskill Forest Preserve’s Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, where I was able to devote plenty of time to thinking about “forest health.” Tramping around I couldn’t help but to ask the question, “Is this a healthy forest?” Fresh in the back of my mind was a recent CFA woodswalk on American ginseng. Last weekend, CFA brought its members onto state land and showed them where they might find this wonderful plant. Although illegal to harvest there, the intention was to show landowners ginseng’s preferable conditions so that they might plant it on their own properties that afforded similar conditions. The forest contained mature trees of sugar maple, red oak, ash, and basswood. The forest floor contained an abundant and diverse mix of tree seedlings and herbaceous growth. The opportunities there were many. It could be tapped for maple syrup. Poor quality trees could be thinned out in order to enhance the growth of valuable timber crops. Larger cuts could be made in order to provide young forest habitat to enhance certain wildlife species since young tree seedlings were already present. Forest edibles and medicinals abounded: ginseng, nettle, mushrooms, to name a few. Mature red oak trees could be released from competition in order to enhance acorn production for hungry wildlife while enhancing hunting opportunities. The options were many there. Clearly, this forest offered many opportunities. It was a healthy forest.
Now back to my camping experience. I had a great time camping in this State Wilderness Area, but I was there for many reasons, besides measuring its forest health, to go into here. But, was it a healthy forest? No and yes. It depends what the question is and what the expectations are of the individual. However, in many ways, it did not meet my expectations. Unlike the ginseng woodswalk, this area lacked a healthy understory. The only tree seedlings found growing were mostly American beech, striped maple, red maple, and fern. There should have been others, but the deer had already eaten them. There was very little herbaceous growth, since herbs never grow beyond the deer browse height of five feet. Although many blame the scarcity of ginseng on poaching, the white-tailed deer does browse it, as fresh nibbles testified on our ginseng walk.
Some forests are healthier than others for a variety of reasons. Some are plain lucky since they exist in an area where deer browse pressure is low for a variety of reasons coupled with good site conditions. However, the forest health conditions experienced during my camping trip are not exclusive to that area. Unfortunately, they are growing. Humans have relinquished their role as participant in the forest to random natural disturbances and the white-tailed deer. Forests that contain both little sunlight and high deer browse are most at risk of affording fewer opportunities into the future. Vegetation that requires abundant sunlight – berry and nut species – or does not grow above deer browse height are most at risk. In general, areas that have experienced limited hunting and forest management for a few decades or more are even more at risk. In many cases, the conditions created under these circumstances are a forest floor containing only plant species – native and non-native – found unpalatable to deer. Such a forest may be offering diminishing returns or opportunities into the future – perhaps a true definition of unsustainability.
On a brighter side of things, all of this can be avoided. We should not simply blame deer and the undesirable vegetation they leave behind. It is currently illegal to cut trees on state forest preserve, so enhancing forest health there is out of our hands for now. Besides, many people travel there not to measure forest health, but to seek solitude and exercise, or so I think. However, if you own a few acres or more, you can make a difference. Forests can be made “healthier” by knowing which trees should be cut, which should be left behind, when, where, and how many. As in a garden, the proper allocation of sunlight can bear many fruits of one’s labor, and how fruitful is a garden left to random disturbances and deer browse anyway? If you are interested in measuring and possibly improving the “health” of the forest on your property, contact CFA. We might be able to shed some light on the matter. www.catskillforest.org
