By Karen Maki

California has an opportunity to reduce clearcutting and grow larger trees as a means to address climate change. Instead the California legislators have passed legislation to promote thinning. What is needed are new programs that will incentivize less destructive logging and the retention of older trees. 

Recent California law (SB 1386) requires California to include natural and working lands (NWL) in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Previously, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the agency charged with overseeing the reduction, has only considered emissions from transportation, commercial and residential, industry, electricity, agriculture.  Forests were not included in the GHG emission assessment and recovery plan.  

This law could provide the impetus to better manage state-managed forests to address climate change. CARB outlined a process for doing just this in their draft concept paper for an eventual more detailed implementation plan. 

A main of focus of the draft concept paper is to enhance resilience and potential carbon sequestration through forest management and restoration. Reducing clearcutting and emphasizing protection of large older trees would seem to be an obvious way to accomplish this. Both practices increase forest carbon and resilience in both the short- and long-term. 

To expand, clearcutting is the most destructive form of logging to wildlife, watersheds, and carbon sequestration and storage to address climate change. All trees and vegetation are removed creating temporary deforestation or "dead zones" (1) for 13-20 years until the plantations’ newly planted conifer seedlings can sequester enough carbon dioxide to outpace the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soil disturbance and the burning slash waste from the logging operation. Plantations are typically logged every 40 years and thus function as carbon source half the time. They are vulnerable to drought, disease, low dry season stream flows, landslides and flash floods, fish kills, regeneration failures, etc.  If a wildfire gets started, a plantation burns hotter and more completely than a forest diverse in age and species. Clearcutting is not necessary. Forests can be logged using selective logging, which involves removing some trees and leaving others behind so that there is always a forest.

Another option is retain larger older trees, which sequester and continue to store the largest amounts of carbon.  As they grow, they need carbon to build and maintain their large frames. Their large roots systems hold water in place - slowly releasing it during summer and preventing winter flash floods. Their large branches shade streams making them more habitable for fish. Larger trees are less vulnerable to fire than younger trees.  

However, less intensive forest management practices like selective logging and retention of older larger trees are having difficulty getting traction.  They have few advocates and no existing programs or funding.   The forestry industry favors thinning because it is an understandable response to the public’s demand that something be done to protect them from fire, and it reduces regulation and provides funding for the forestry industry. 

Thinning can be helpful for reducing fire risk and creating more resilient forests depending on where and how it done, and what follows. However, thinning always creates GHG emissions in the short-term when we desperately need to be reducing them. The benefits from thinning are estimated to come in 20 years when we may have already locked in higher temperatures from climate change.  If thinning is done, it must be offset by reduced clearcutting and other commercial logging.

In conclusion, to utilize forests to address climate change, we must emphasize climate smart forestry practices right now which reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration, carbon storage, and climate resilience.  These practices include:  

• Forest carbon reserves of older and diverse trees
• Prohibition of the conversion of natural forests to plantations
• Incentives for selectively logging forests rather than clearcutting
• Incentives for conversion of even-aged plantations to uneven-aged  forests with selective harvest  management

We will need strong climate-minded legislators and a supportive insistent public to pass legislation and provide funding to promote climate smart forestry, 

Karen Maki is a volunteer for the Stop Clearcutting CA Campaign. 

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(1) Talberth, J., 2017 Forest Carbon Policy (https://sustainable-economy.org/report-climate-legislation-must-include-big-timber/ , first link under READ)