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By R. F. Mueller
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The following article was first published in the Mabon, 1985 Edition of Earth First! (V, VIII, 20 -21). However, virtually all descriptions of conditions in the article are as pertinent at this time (June, 2003) as when they were first written. The article is offered as background for long range planning that extends beyond current specific wilderness or other preserve proposals such as may form parts of US National Forest Plan revisions or private land trust planning. However some suggestions, such as the priority given to riparian zones, could, with great advantage, be included in the latter.
During the past decade many millions of acres of public lands have been set aside in the West, and particularly in Alaska, for the expressed purpose of preserving whole ecosystems - and even many of these large preserves are clearly insufficient. Yet in the eastern United States only small fragments have been designated. Why? Is it because the eastern ecosystems are less worthy of protection, or is it because such protection is precluded by the large private land holdings? To the contrary, it's generally recognized that eastern deciduous forests, with their flood plains and prairie openings, are some of the most diverse temperate ecosystems anywhere, while the region contains 24 million acres of National Forest land alone. Despite this eligibility, the acreage devoted to ecosystem preservation is far less in the East than in the West, even when the proportion of public lands in the two regions are compared. This state of affairs is brought to our attention most strongly in the recent designation of eastern Wilderness Areas, which average less than 10,000 acres, as compared with some western Wildernesses in the range of a million contiguous acres. Clearly, this two order of magnitude imbalance is justified neither by geography nor by biology.
We do of course have numerous public "playgrounds" in the East, including several National Parks and Recreation Areas as well as state parks, wildlife management areas and other facilities. However, except for possibly the National Wildlife Refuges - which are largely confined to wetlands - these exist primarily to serve human needs, and in practice nature protection is only ancillary to them. As we shall see, even the designated wilderness was planned largely to satisfy human esthetic values rather than nature's requirements. This absence of an ecological perspective and the Grand Vision in the East have resulted in sundered ecosystems and lack of watershed integrity. Now it's time for a new initiative to revise and upgrade nature protection in the region.
In a stimulating article (EF! Eostar,1983), Reed Noss proposed the creation of a deciduous forest ecological preserve in the Ohio Valley. What could be more logical than to extend this idea to the eastern mountain forests, given their already substantial tracts of National Forests? Also these forests have a certain geographic coherence and unity imposed by the NE - SW trending ranges and inter - mountain valley streams of a strong trellis drainage pattern, features which only lack the integration which could be gained by adequate preserve boundaries.
The Us forest Service's recently proposed land and resource management plans for the region again remind us of the abuse and exploitation to which these lands have long been subject and which their planners wish to project in the future. As a consequence there has been an outcry from citizens, particularly in the mountain regions themselves. Under these plans our most precious mountain landscapes would be sliced into ever smaller fragments by roads and powerlines, and devastated by clearcuts and mines. Wildlife would be rigidly managed as an adjunct to logging, and common species such as deer and turkey would be favored over the wilderness species bear, eastern cougar and the large raptors.
These Forest Service plans are totally without merit not only because of their blatant rapaciousness, but also because they perpetuate and expand land use practices that continue to fragment what should be unified systems and because they subvert the most fundamental biologic and watershed imperatives. In this day of rapid advances in the earth sciences they fail even to acknowledge the importance of hydrologic and nutrient cycles or selectively fix on certain aspects of these cycles to promote their nefarious ends. For example, one stated justification for clearcutting is that it would increase the water yield (read run - off) for a watershed, since getting rid of trees decreases evapo - transpiration which feeds moisture into the air. Never mind that this would also increase the flashiness of streams, thereby intensifying drought, flooding and erosion, while the water - trapping and holding capacities of the landscape and the climate - moderating effects of evapotranspiration would be impaired. In a nutshell, the Forest Service would ignore all the criteria for poor watershed management most evident in the current rash of worldwide environmental catastrophe.
Closely related to these inept and deceptive water management policies is the disregard of forest nutrient demands by proposed expanded logging of marginal timber stands on steep terrain and dry, nutrient - poor soils, which, when bared by clearcutting, would rapidly lose their remaining nutrients through leaching and erosion. These points regarding nutrients have been made with particular force for the Jefferson and George Washington National Forests by Prof. Jesse Thompson of Roanoke College in his report to the Citizen's Environmental Council of the Roanoke Valley. It should be obvious that the detailed nutrient evaluation should precede any logging of these forests.
Although the land currently being logged in the eastern mountain forests is presumably the most accessible and productive in these forests, studies by Alaric Sample of The Wilderness Society (Issue Brief, July, 1984) have shown that the timber sale return on management and road building is frequently 10 cents or less per dollar invested. It's obvious that the future returns from more leached, eroded and nutrient - poor soils would be even less, and that logging in these mountains would eventually be less like resource extraction and more like an armed conflict against nature.
To return these forests to a healthy, productive and ecologically harmonious state, we must first acknowledge that the land is worthy of protection for its own sake regardless of any short term benefits that might accrue to our species, and that what is best for the forest is best for us in the long run. Pure wilderness ecosystems must be given priority over the human activities which now defile these mountains. Of course this rehabilitation of the eastern wilderness is justified all the more by the economic bankruptcy of these activities.
Although a variety of habitats are included within the eastern National Forest proclamation boundaries, most actual public land holdings are confined to the highlands, while the designated Wilderness Areas lie in the most rugged cores of the ranges. The streams which drain these Wilderness Areas, and which nurture their wildlife, are small secondary drainages to larger local mainstems. In the slightly metamorphosed rocks of the sharply folded Appalachians, these secondary streams lead into mainstems which form broad valleys with rich flood plains between and parallel to the ranges, but in the more massive and highly metamorphosed rocks of the Blue Ridge and elsewhere, the drainage is more complex. As might be expected, the small wilderness streams flow over the most resistant and nutrient - poor rocks. Fairly typical of the Virginia wilderness is the St. Marys River, with virtually the entire watershed in almost pure coarsely crystalline quartzite, a rock which contains only minute amounts of the important nutrients such as potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and calcium.
Thus there is a convention of confining nature preserves in the eastern mountains to small watersheds, picturesque in terms of rapids, gorges and that favorite Forest Service category of "scenic vistas." While these streams are relatively sterile biologically, they flow into the larger intermountain streams whose flood plains are the repositories of the nutrients garnered and concentrated from diffuse mountain sources through flood deposition and subsurface flow. Unfortunately, although not heavily populated, the riparian zones of these intermountain valleys are usually in a degraded state due to a variety of human impacts, including livestock grazing. It's not for nothing that such steams in Virginia bear names like "Cowpasture," "Calfpasture" and "Bullpasture."
All of this brings us to a major problem. The designated Wilderness preserves are too biologically unproductive and isolated from the nutrient - rich and diverse riparian zones of the local mainstem valleys with which they should form a more unified system. Rather they were designated merely to gratify narrow human esthetic tastes for "pretty scenery" and invigorating hiking.
In a more recent article (EF! Beltane, 1985) Noss discusses related problems in his review of a book by the ecologist Larry Harris (The Fragmented Forest ). Isolated and confined preserves don't really safeguard the species they contain in the absence of sufficient communication with like areas through travel corridors and without adequate buffer zones to separate them from surrounding areas of intensive development. The importance of riparian strips in this scheme was also stressed by Harris.
In the eastern mountains the role of drainage networks is, if anything. even more critical than in some other areas, since there are fewer mineral nutrient sources in their rocks as compared with the geologically young volcanic deposits on which many western forests are developed.
The eastern mountain forests present an opportunity to create a system of ecological preserves that could embrace areas in the range of several hundreds of thousands of acres. These preserves could be created on the major ridges but could also include certain of the major intermountain valleys and mainstem streams of the trellis pattern, particularly the valleys in which some public land already occurs. The individual areas could be linked by communication corridors which should include riparian zones whenever possible. This system would of course require the acquisition of some private land, mostly within National Forest proclamation boundaries. However, this land should be acquired with minimal impact over a considerable time period and avoid condemnation whenever possible. These preserves would also require the closing of some Forest Service roads and secondary routes. These closures could be mitigated in accommodating the private land phase - out by gradually limiting traffic to private inholder access.
The mountain wilderness cores with flanking and radiating riparian strips, and communication corridors could give way to a surrounding zone of greater access and more intensive human use. Although this zone would be devoted largely to recreational activity (hunting, fishing, camping etc.), it might also include some timber production based on rotation periods long enough to justify economically productive selective logging. A major function of this zone would be to act as a buffer between the Wilderness Preserve and an outer zone in which more intensive recreation, logging and traditional firewood gathering would be permitted.
The integration of the intermountain mainstem rivers and communication corridors with the expanded mountain wilderness cores would provide a more viable habitat for wilderness species and make available to them the nourishing flood plains and diverse riparian environments of these larger streams. Wilderness designation of these valleys would bring about the reclamation of the presently degraded state of these riparian zones and provide new nutrient reservoirs which would result in wildlife proliferation not seen in years.
While the concept of ecological preserves for the eastern mountains hasn't yet been presented for public approval, there is much support for wilderness in the region and this support favors ecological aspects rather than recreational opportunities as was brought out in responses to Forest Service surveys (Draft EIS for Land and Resource Management Plan for the George Washington Forest, 1985) . The public also recognizes the relationship between forest degradation from road building, clearcutting with short rotation periods, deficit timber sales and the unfair impact of these sales on competing private timber production. It is only a moderate step then from this recognition to an appreciation of the need for reclamation of the mountain wilderness on the scale envisioned here.
The eastern National Forests which are the best candidates for conversion to ecological preserves are the Jefferson and George Washington in Virginia. Although these forests show a range of climatic conditions, they lie in a general trough of low rainfall relative to surrounding areas. In addition they also occupy a belt of shallow soils consisting largely of imperfectly weathered rock fragments ( Agricultural handbook No. 271, Forest Service, 1965) . These are the soils developed on rocks such as the quartzites previously discussed. As a result, trees grow relatively slowly, and while they form forests of picturesque beauty and good wildlife cover, timber quality is poor except in local coves and riparian zones, which should never be logged anyway. Given these conditions and the impractical lust for timber production as evidenced by the short rotation periods employed by the Forest Service, the timber receipts to cost ratios ( R/C) have been only 0.08 and 0.10 for the Jefferson and George Washington respectively. In the words of Prof, Thompson, "...the National Forests of Virginia could be in better hands." I believe these hands should be those of some agency other than the Forest Service, which has done such a poor job of administering wilderness (EF! Yule, 1984) .
Other likely candidates for conversion to ecological preserves are the following National Forests with their (R/C) numbers as given by The Wilderness Society: Daniel Boon of Kentucky (0.16), Cherokee of Tennessee (0.23), The Monongahela of West Virginia (0.30) and the North Carolina National Forests ( 0.31) .Also the Jefferson - George Washington - Monongahela complex lies close to the major population centers where water and air resources are under the greatest stress from a multitude of pollutants and where, consequently, the mitigating effects of significant wilderness are most urgently needed.
It was the eastern wilderness forests, spreading over plains, river banks and mountain heights that, above and beyond all the mercenary instincts of European society, first imbued the American soul with its special love of freedom and independence. That wilderness deserves to live again, and it can in a system of eastern ecological preserves.
R. F. Mueller, an Earth First! contact in Virginia, formerly did environmental research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.