CLEAN WATER
You may have heard that clearcuts and logging roads can lead to landslides that muck up clear running streams, and a 1996 study in Oregon confirms those fears. But it's possible to have a working forest and clean water to boot. In fact, FSC guidelines demand it. For example, the City of Astoria, Oregon, has earned FSC certification for its logging in the same lands that produce the city’s drinking water. The City's forest will provide enough timber to build 140 homes each year forever, while providing pure water for its ten thousand citizens.
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HEALTHY HABITAT
A forest isn't just a bunch of trees, standing in a clump. It's a network of creatures, plants, and microorganisms that all fit together -- an entire web of life. The loss of these intricate connections is what makes large clearcuts so destructive. For instance, one study finds that salamanders are less than a third as abundant on clearcuts as in mature forests. But some logging -- like the kind certified by FSC -- can actually be good for wildlife. Thoughtful cutting recreates tree canopies of many sizes and species faster than if the same land were set aside as wilderness, making young forests hospitable to wildlife as quickly as possible. |
GREATER FIRE SAFETY
Too many folks have been hurt in recent years by wildfires. We need to remove the underbrush right around where we live, so that wildfires can burn without igniting our houses. But how about farther afield: Can the type of forestry we practice help the situation? Turns out that it can. Scientists have found that replanted clearcuts are the type of forest most likely to burn hot. On the other hand, harvest practices that are common on FSC-certified lands -- like selective cutting and thinning -- are the same ones that have been found to reduce the severity of fire.
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CARBON STORAGE
Our climate is changing. More and more scientists agree that the chief cause is the carbon dioxide released from our burning of fossil fuels. But trees can help. They suck carbon dioxide from the air and use it to build their branches, trunks, and roots. The bigger the trees in a forest, the more they absorb. Studies along the West Coast have found that FSC-style management, emphasizing mixtures of young and old trees, will hold twice as much carbon as the young, even-aged forests that we typically see with industrial logging.
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