About habitat and paper

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simus343
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About habitat and paper

Post by simus343 »

So cheers to Joseph Jenkins for this idea :beer:. He believes people may find it interesting, I am going to go further and say the SE Chapter, where the particular plant species and habitat are found. It basically explains some of the "pros" of paper production, some of the cons, and some of the in-betweens involving restoring habitat from what was once basically paper-farms.
Joseph Jenkins wrote:
simus343 wrote:That's a lot of paper to print 20 copies, but, working with wildlife and ecosystem restoration and management in the southeast I can say this and back it up - cut down the trees! There's plenty of paper-grade slash pine to go around!
Being from Alabama, a much less environmentally friendly state than Florida, I can't help but completely disagree with this statement. Our heavy harvesting of pine pulp wood (especially in the coastal plain) and subsequent pine plantations has negatively affected our biodiversity. Historically, the average age of our trees in the southeast were 200-400 years old with under stories open enough to drive trucks through. Now, due to the mass planting and harvesting for pulp wood, our trees are an average of 25-35 years old. This does not allow for large fallen logs, root balls, tree hollows, and an open under story that is characteristic of older stands. This has probably been a leading factor (in addition to fire suppression) to the declines in countless species including gopher torts, indigo snakes, red cockaded woodpeckers, eastern diamondbacks, etc. I would agree that there is plenty of slash to be cut, but it is only getting replanted with more slash or loblolly pine. In addition, it matters less what species of pine is most common in an ecosystem. What matters is the age of the stand, because this affects the fore-mentioned structure of the stand.

So, for the sake of our wildlife and our herping conquests, I say reduce and recycle. There are a number of paper plants running that now process only recycled paper in the US, and I imagine many more would open if we would just recycle more paper. This will cause a drop in the pulp tree prices, causing managers to allow their stands to reach older ages for lumber.

-Joe
My response that was originally a PM.

I suppose I could have worded it better. Where I work, on 56,000 acres of private conservation land, the land use to be Slash Pine Plantation. We are gradually cutting down all of the slash and replanting longleaf. Slash doesn't create the extensive root systems historically used by many herps to the SE United States. It does decay faster, but at such a rate that moves into and past its "herp stage" for a majority of herps rather quickly. Dead Longleaf lasts longer and provides better and longer lasting micro-habitat for herps. As the land I work on as well as adjacent conservation lands are working to restore the Longleaf-Wire Grass ecosystem, hundreds of thousands of slash pines are being cut down, all good to be used for paper pulp and not much else.

The problem/not problem based on how an individual looks at it is, the paper mills near here are basically overwhelmed at the rate we have been cutting down slash these past years and don't want all of the extra slash we have just sitting around. (edit: not to mention the other tree farms selling to them). The don't want to pay for the transport of the trees and neither do the people cutting them down - it costs too much for the budget many NRC areas have to work with. So, we pile the trees up, and make habitat. Then comes the inevitable prescribed burn to start restoring the understory. There is too many slash piles that are also too large, to check to make sure there is no trapped wildlife, herp or anything else. In these large piles we have found on the land I work on, collectively hundreds of dead animals after the fires from Diamondbacks to Armadillos, cooked alive with no Gopher Tortoise burrows or other areas to retreat into - as a result of the old pine farm. So by not taking our extra slash to make paper or something else, we end up creating unwanted death-traps as we work to restore their habitat.

I also didn't mean take from pine farms, there is plenty of slash being cut down to restore habitat in parks throughout the SE.
The original deforestation devastated our wildlife, after that it was not able to recover. Now as more and more places work to restore the original fire-dependent ecosystem, slash pine is being cut to restore historical habitat.

So, this isn't to disregard what you said, as I complete agree that pine farms (except the ones that provide Pinus palustris grass-stage for reforestation ) should not be supported. I am just explaining a pro-ecosystem restoration view point of paper production that I have gained from working in Natural Resource Conservation.
- end response

So this seems like it could be a good conversational topic and bring up some good thoughts, ideas, and insight - so, feel free to write up any thoughts on this that you all may have :thumb:.
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Noah M
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Noah M »

I worked at a state park for a while in Indiana. It was a new park and much of the land did not look how management wanted it. For example, part of our property was an old Christmas tree farm. We also had a nice fen on site, but there were several large sycamore trees nearby, affecting water flows. I was told that all (or most) of it would eventually be cut down (though not while I worked there). I did help thin out some of the smaller brush around the sycamores, but I was not trained well enough to saw those giants down.

Some folks who were at the park and saw us cutting down trees were upset - they thought we were destroying habitat. They were right, but the goal was to provide better habitat.

Who is to say one is better than another? We find animals we like, we find out what habitat they prefer, and then we build it.

As far as supporting pine farms and paper plantations. I would much rather see a plot of land on rotation with fast growing trees than cutting down old growth forest and using that wood for paper. Paper (and wood products) are not going away anytime soon. They're a heck of a lot more eco-friendly than plastic, petroleum based stuff. I'd much rather have a nice kitchen table made of wood, sequestering carbon for the decades it's around, that can and will biodegrade instead of some hunk of plastic that will be around for a much longer time, won't biodegrade and may end up in the ocean choking fish.
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Joseph Jenkins
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Joseph Jenkins »

I think the goal of ecological conservation is to preserve ecosystems as close to their natural/historical state as possible. So with that in mind, I would say that, in upland coastal plain habitat, the long leaf pine would be the preferred species. Not because we picked it, but because it historically defined the southeast and the long leaf ecosystem is considered the most bio-diverse in North America.

We have cut down virtually all of our coastal plain old growth long leaf in AL.

Wood furniture is the way to go in my opinion.
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Noah M
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Noah M »

I think the goal of ecological conservation is to preserve ecosystems as close to their natural/historical state as possible.
There is no such thing. The "natural/historical state" is socially constructed - we (Homo sapiens) decide what this "state" is. We don't let "nature" decide because "nature" is socially constructed too.

Here is a good starter piece, and it's almost 10 years old now.

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Tr ... _Main.html
simus343
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Re: About habitat and paper

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captainjack0000 wrote:
I think the goal of ecological conservation is to preserve ecosystems as close to their natural/historical state as possible.
There is no such thing. The "natural/historical state" is socially constructed - we (Homo sapiens) decide what this "state" is. We don't let "nature" decide because "nature" is socially constructed too.

Here is a good starter piece, and it's almost 10 years old now.

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Tr ... _Main.html
I agree and disagree. I will start with why I disagree. It is why many people are in favor of returning habitat to "historical" (whatever that actually is as you pointed out Noah). I want to see the more bio-diverse ecosystem, not what we have created in the United States by decades of Fire Suppression and old growth Longleaf clearing.

I also agree on the point of what we have now could logically be argued to be the true natural ecosystem. 1) In some areas where it is being restored, it is all native plants that have mereley become "too dense" from fire suppression and therefor created what is naturally called the Climax Ecosystem - or the ecosystem that has not been "reset" to ground zero (i.e. right after a burn, land slide, tsunami, volcano explosion, etc). 2) The areas that are now Pine Farms. The human species is invasive no-where on Earth. We have moved all over the planet on the will of our own species. Some individuals maybe not by their individual will, but still that of our own species. Therefor, we are native everywhere. What we have done to the enviroment, modifying it and bending it to our prefered needs and desires, is equally comparable to a beaver building a dam or gohper tortoise digging a burrow. Regardless if this helps other species or not, a species native to an area merely modified the land to suit its needs. So technically any ecosystem that exists, created by humans or any other organism or natural event out there, is the correct one.

Now back to where I disagree actually. Through writing the above paragraph, I realised that should our species decide to restore the habitat to a historical state, be it a forest, giant ocean, or land void of liquid water, that ecosystem would still technically be the "correct" ecosystem as a species has merely made it that way. Also, being a huge fan of Souther Hognose Snakes and Flatwoods Salamanders to name two species, I'd like to see the coastal plain's midpoint rather than climax, where there is no more flatwoods salamadners or southern hognose snakes. The climax of the SE US does not provide the habitat these species require and would likely wipe out at least the Flatwoods Salamander because of their need for upland seasonal ponds. So say I own 20 acres of land (I wish haha), I would restore it to the perfect ecosystem for the Flatwoods Salamander. Even if I didn't care what other species I may affect by this, possitively or negatively, by me, an animal choosing to live where I do, and modify my "habitat" to my desires, that would be the correct and proper ecosystem.

***
A note on the climax ecosystems for those who don't know about ecological succession. What clear cutting does is basically mimic a tsunami or cat 5 hurricane or tornado, where trees are knocked over, uprooted, the soil turned as a result, and an area being left decimated. Fire mimics, well, fire. Chemical spraying would mimic the covering of plants by ash after a volcanic eruption, killing various plants because they are covered in soot (or chemical). This resets any ecosystem to "ground zero" where succession may begin. Species diversity starts off very small, rises to a peak where the greatest diversity is at - where species are pushing and shoving for every last resource, to become most dominant, and then starts to drop to a mid-point, as species out-compete one another, to the point where there is more bio-diversity than right after a "catastrophy" but less bio-diversity than the mid-point. The mid-point is the climax. So basically if humans were to "reset" earth, sure we'd likely be gone, but the chances are good that other organisms would still survive and begin to fill the niches of other organisms wiped out by humans. Evolution working away though, humans also try to self-preserve and so must keep their enviroment in a range where the species can survive, temp gradient, water, food - same as any other animal. This is a good reason to attempt to "work backwards" just a little bit to allow greater bio-diversity. If we keep our current medical knowledge, and live in a healther ecosystem, humans would be better off. Granted, we would have to unrealistically learn to opperate sustainably, something that I myself find unlikely at this point, without a mass-extinction-reset-event.
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Noah M
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Noah M »

I think you give a good rough overview of "climax ecosystems" but I think you're wrong here. When I was in college some years ago we were taught, as I suspect you are/were about the natural succession of ecosystems. More (relatively) recent evidence is starting to suggest this paradigm is just bogus and that places move through cycles and are much more complex than this linear thinking. They are actually complex adaptive systems. Resilience Thinking by Walker & Salt is a good primer on this. If you want something more heavy duty, go straight to Panarchy by Gunderson & Holling.

It is generally thought that patchiness and heterogenity lead to high biodiversity (a trait you describe during your mid-concessional stages). But being a geographer, I ask about spatial and temporal scale and resolution arguments, and it quickly becomes a hot mess.
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: About habitat and paper

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I don't live in the SE, and my experience there is small, but I'm going to share what I've seen and heard. Reptiles are more common in the tree farm areas than in the old-growth pine. Why? Because the tree farms get cut down periodically, opening up a large sunny area where rodents thrive for many years, thus creating much more food for snakes. Some of the most productive places I've hunted in FL were tree farms with garbage dumped along the sand roads. The piles of crap were loaded with snakes. I did not see the same results in the restored forest areas that were no longer logged at all. It was like night and day. Lot's of animals vs. hardly any. That's my 2 cents...now, chew me up and spit me out...
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Noah M
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Noah M »

Reptiles are more common in the tree farm areas than in the old-growth pine
Monocultures can actually be very good for some species, so I'm betting you found them in numbers, but perhaps not a wide diversity of species?

The other thing is you mention garbage piles. I wonder if garbage piles lasted longer in the plantations than on restored lands. You know, rangers and stuff cleaning them up compared to forestry people who don't really care as long they can still harvest their timber.
simus343
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Re: About habitat and paper

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Something to consider with farms vs "restored" lands that I have been thinking about for a few years now. I do find snakes much more common in disturbed areas such as farms, marinas, and housing. Could it be higher food supply from rodents and stocked fish? Possibly. Could it be that there is less availability of shelter and are exposed easily while moving from A to B? Possibly. Could it be both? Possibly. Could it be neither and something I have not yet considered? Possibly.

However, on the restored land I work on, I have seen the highest biodiversity and overall number of species in the shortest period of time of anywhere I have ever been - SE United States, NSW Australia, NT Australia, and Okinawa Japan. I attribute it to the time I have spent at work, during all seasons, during all times of day. Unless working in a park or NRC area, it is unlikely that in such restored areas of the SE, that people will see so much bio-diversity in such short time. Why? Easy answer. Many herpers, including myself while not working, have more than 1 area they like to visit. Even people doing surveys on a particular species. Most people go from area to area. They may choose area 1 on a certain day, and get skunked, while if they had gone to their area 4, they may have found loads of cool things. Being in the same area day after day after day, all day, in all seasons though, allows true bio-diversity to be seen, and possibly the discovery of new or rare species in an area.
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: About habitat and paper

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Most of the time (unless you are looking at gators or turtles) the habitat needs to be enhanced in some way to see the true densities of animals. In the western grasslands, board lines or sets as you SE people call them allow for this to happen. Without the coverboards and tins, 99.999% of resident snakes would not be seen, whether you spent an afternoon or entire year on the property. The densities of western snakes in CA boggles the mind once you get to see them. Try to picture 20 kingsnakes, 25 gopher snakes, 15 rattlesnakes, 100+ ringnecks, and a few garters and racers all on one acre of ground.
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BDSkinner
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by BDSkinner »

I remember seeing TONS of pickerel frogs on a christmas tree farm as a kid in NJ. I would rarely see them in other spots, so I thought that was was awesome. Simus, you brought up the questions I wanted to ask about disturbed vs. restored or old growth. I'll have to search and see if anyone has tested these. I've been around some of the forests of eastern NC and can only imagine what they were like with longleaf pines hundreds of years old all over the place. One good thing is that we are learning, figuring out what has happened and what could be done. I also have another bone to pick with the paper plants themselves...

I am a supporter of restoration, clear and simple. I just have a bad taste in my mouth when I see gimmicky plots to garner public support about this. At the university I went to they are promoting stream restoration for a small river that flows literally through this entire town. With the amount of runoff it picks up, violent, rapid flow and temperature changes and amount of trash and debris make it seem like a lost cause to me. It really is a terrible excuse for a waterway. On campus, someone is trying to make headway, planting trees on the banks and such, but it just seems like such a waste. I'd rather put that effort to get rid of a damn on the parkway or support research on what our forest reserves up here are holding and if it is worth selling again.

Ok, I'll stop now, but I will also be pondering this stuff for a while.


-Brad
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umop apisdn
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by umop apisdn »

Brian Hubbs wrote:Most of the time (unless you are looking at gators or turtles) the habitat needs to be enhanced in some way to see the true densities of animals. In the western grasslands, board lines or sets as you SE people call them allow for this to happen. Without the coverboards and tins, 99.999% of resident snakes would not be seen, whether you spent an afternoon or entire year on the property. The densities of western snakes in CA boggles the mind once you get to see them. Try to picture 20 kingsnakes, 25 gopher snakes, 15 rattlesnakes, 100+ ringnecks, and a few garters and racers all on one acre of ground.
I understand your example, and when considering fossorial species, it's nearly impossible for us to comprehend their densities in situ. But as an example of herps that can be found in breath-taking densities without the need for human enhancement, anyone who has never done so should take an opportunity to walk trails on a rainy night in the Appalachians. The salamander density and diversity is astounding.
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by simus343 »

In addition to what I said last time - I ran out of time and had to run, another reason why "restored" lands may appear to show less than in "disturbed" lands. Restored lands have proper Natural Cover. On Pine Plantations, at least here in NW FL, The only cover is whatever trash can be found by the herps. The pine straw layer is far too thin to support anything except the smallest fossorial snakes or little skinks. So when a trash area is found it may appear better, but what may be found there may be what there is until the next stream that can't be farmed - allowing larger herps to shelter, or until the next trash pile, is reached. In an area with Natural Cover, proper Natural Cover such as massive fields of Wire-Grass, there is so much cover that many herps may never be seen crossing a road or hiking a trail. Reason, they don't have to. If the animals can move under contiguous tracts of cover with minimal chance to be seen, such animals - without human factors involved - typically live longer to reproduce because they won't be spotted and eaten by that Kestrel or Red Tail Hawk.

I will also say I didn't say you'd see more animals in restored areas, I said more bio-diversity :P. If I want density I go to the back-waters of a local park for cottonmouths or to a nearby marina hangar for Banded Water Snakes. I can get plenty of both at each in warm weather. In areas with constant pesticide and herbicide application, I don't get to see Hyla andersonii.

Also, something I have noticed, is in disturbed areas, all of the areas with high population density, are all near undisturbed or restored areas. If I go to the middle of a city where there is a park - not a state park but more of a dog-park, I'll see turtles sure, but I might get lucky and here someone mention a black racer that was seen there a year ago. If I go to a golf course near restoration lands, I see many more snakes (all being faster species not slower species) that zipped across the highway to eat mice and frogs on the golf course. The only slow moving snakes I have seen where the snake had to cross a busy highway to reach where it was, has been Heterodon platirhinos. Every Pituophis or Crotalus I have seen in developed areas has been on lands directly up against a climax forest or a restored forest. Most of what I see in disturbed areas as Racers, Water Snakes, Green Tree Frogs, and Slimy Salamanders to name a majority.

To add to the good note about modified habitat by Brian Hubbs. I have never had the opportunity to set out large sets of AC in some areas that I would like. Based on my own observations and areas where I have just a few boards around, I'd be willing to gander that if 50 AC boards were places in a disturbed area and 50 more in a restoration area that haven't been burned in 2 years, more animals would be found from the disturbed area AC because of lack of other opportunities, but more species would be found in the restored area AC because of a larger localized bio-diversity coupled with lack of urban pollution.
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: About habitat and paper

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To add to the good note about modified habitat by Brian Hubbs. I have never had the opportunity to set out large sets of AC in some areas that I would like. Based on my own observations and areas where I have just a few boards around, I'd be willing to gander that if 50 AC boards were places in a disturbed area and 50 more in a restoration area that haven't been burned in 2 years, more animals would be found from the disturbed area AC because of lack of other opportunities, but more species would be found in the restored area AC because of a larger localized bio-diversity coupled with lack of urban pollution.
That is quite possibly true, but my example is from an undisturbed grassland habitat, not a forest, so I don't know. Forest and grassland are two different habitats.
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Joseph Jenkins
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Re: About habitat and paper

Post by Joseph Jenkins »

I think a major problem we are having in general when it comes to wildlife conservation is our lack of Natural History courses in all levels of school. If you don't know what used to be here, then how can you miss it or care to bring it back? If everyone here understood how abundant herps used to be, in Alabama for example, I think everyone's attitudes here would be much more for restoring old growth forests and the native(or pre-European if we must) habitat.

I have lunch with Dr. Bob Mount about once a week. As some of you may already know, Dr. Mount spent about 2 decades of his life in the 50's and 60's herping and collecting all over the state to gather the data he needed for his landmark book, "Reptiles and Amphibians of Alabama." He single handedly wrote the book for the 4th most herp diverse state at a time when virtually nothing was known about the herps and where they lived. No one has ever come close to this feat. Enough of my hero worshiping.

When I ask how abundant herps used to be in the 50's and 60's, it becomes abundantly clear that there has been a massive decline in the state. He used to go to Conecuh, and it was a BAD weekend if they only found a half dozen EDB's, a few pine snakes, a handful of coachwhips, a mud snake, a southern hog, and a few dozen other "common snakes." I've been to Conecuh NF nearly a dozen times, and have only seen 2 EDB's, and haven't found any of the other fore mentioned species. In north Alabama, hellbenders could still be found easily at night by wading in streams with a flashlight. The turtle I work with, the flattened musk turtle, still inhabited most of its historic range, instead of less than a quarter of it now. Tiger Salamanders were as common as marbled salamanders are now. An Alabama rainbow or coral snake was not an impossible task and pine snakes were common.

One should keep in mind that this is in the 50's and 60's, after the decline in herps had already begun. Indigos were extirpated from Alabama at that point (or at least so rare that Mount couldn't find any). Imagine what it would have been like to herp the southeast in the 1800s! The major crash appears to have happened in the 60's and 70's, so most of the old timers of today had missed the age of Alabama herping when populations were near historic abundances.

All this being said, I have a very hard time agreeing with the notion that we should not be restoring habitat to it's pre-European state, and we do have a good idea of what that the pre-European state is for the coastal plain.

You can make the species-entitlement argument all day long that we are just another player like a beaver in the "natural" ecosystem, but it is a morally flawed argument if nothing else. The American Indian was a natural player in the ecosystem. What we have done to it today is more comparable to a meteorite than a beaver and nothing short of a massacre. It should be noted that we have already had over 100 species in this state go extinct since Europeans came, making us the most extinct state in the lower 48. We have many on their way out (I suspect this number will be at least 130 by 2050 if we don't do something serious soon).
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