From Forestry Tips, by Clare Nunamaker
What do you think the biggest threat is to biodiversity and our ecosystems? According to two separate sources I've read recently, "land use conversion" is the answer.
There are certainly many threats to ecosystems. These include invasive species, diversion of water for human uses, pollution, and many more. But in "conservation triage," land use conversion comes out as the biggest threat of all. If the forest does not remain a forest, or if the wetland is drained, what ecosystem is left to conserve?
In forests, there is some wholesale conversion of woodlands to agriculture. Clearing forests for vineyards is one example. Here in California we also see forest lost to urban and suburban sprawl. Even when some trees remain, such as in forested subdivisions, the fragmentation and increased road density that results severely degrades the forest habitat.
Several years ago at a forestry training course for teachers, a forestry professor asked the predominately LA-based teachers what the forest they were standing in would look like in 50 years. The professor was thinking in terms of natural succession. But the teachers thought in terms of human expansion. The answer they came up with? That the forest would become a parking lot. As it was located in an area that is expanding, they were probably right.
Market forces are also encouraging forest conversion. Many land-rich cash-poor landowners want or need to actively manage their land to at least help pay for upkeep on roads, rehabilitation work, and property taxes. Yet the inflation-adjusted price of a plan to do so has risen almost 15-fold in 30 years, from a little over $2,000 to around $30,000 for a small landowner. The result is predictable, with more landowners selling out, and more forestland conversion.
There are ways to encourage retaining our natural ecosystems in the face of expansion pressures. Good land planning, incentives to landowners, and programs that help landowners pay for conservation easements are a few useful tools. The more effectively we can use tools like these to slow land use conversion, and the more we can keep this key issue in the fore, the more successful we will be in keeping our forests as forests into the future.
Clare Nunamaker is a Registered Professional Forester and member of NorCal SAF and the Forest Guild.
