NATIONAL PARKS

Forest and Bird, Issue 45, 1 August 1937, Page 3

NATIONAL PARKS

By Mr. E. P. Menecke, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture, Washington.

THEIR FOREST MANAGEMENT.

“ FITHE park forester, it seems to me, deals -fl- primarily with the wild vegetation; that is his legitimate field. He preserves the wild forest in good growing condition. He works in large masses of trees and plants, and protects and fosters their growth. He is essentially, then, a biologist and ecologist. If he wants to shape the ; forest to the best advantage, and to protect the forest against unfavourable influences, he must know and understand the life and laws of life of the plants that compose the forest. This lifts his attitude toward the forest out of the purely mechanical. All plants, all trees in the forest are the objects of his care, and he must have an understanding of the conditions under which those particular plants or trees grow and of the effect that his treatment of the forest will have on those conditions.” In many types of forest the easiest and simplest way of making a fire-break is to strip a clean and straight swath through the forest. When it becomes advisable in a park, in order to accomplish identically the same purpose — that of creating an artificial barrier across the path of a possible fire, as a precautionary measure, the objective of preserving natural beauty as much as possible and the avoidance of glaring scars dictates departure from straight lines and the leaving of a certain proportion of the natural growth within the barrier zone. Planting practice for the commercial forest appears to be pretty well standardised. It permits the use of whatever species is calculated to bring the greatest economic return, whether the ratio of the several species be the same or different from that found in nature, and whether the species be indigenous or not. Planting projects in the natural park are usually undertaken on areas where logging, excessive fires, agriculture, disease, or insects, or some or all of these, have destroyed the native vegetation to such an extent that there is little or no prospect of a renewal of forest cover for a very long period of time. Here the effort is to restore or hasten the return of such a forest as originally grew there. That means the use

only of indigenous species, in something approximating natural proportions. It means that two trees may be planted in a row, but never three—that the spacing shall simulate that of nature; and that once established, those “unhampered processes of nature” shall not be interfered with. To the commercial forester, trails are primarily a means to the end of providing the readiest possible accesschiefly for protection —to all parts of the forest. What may be viewed along the way is almost wholly incidental. In the layout of park trails, we need the counsel of the forester, who is equipped to say where they should go in order to serve their protective purpose. Since, however, they must serve another purpose of equal importance, that of providing the park visitor a means of access to certain natural features that may interest or exalt him, and of doing that, again, with the minimum of disturbance of the natural appearance of the park, he must be willing to accept modifications of the strictly practical and utilitarian, in order to contribute more to the enjoyment of the trail user. He must even be content to leave certain areas trailless—to take his trails around, instead of through them, in order, for instance, to avoid interference with certain wildlife features, or wildlife habitats that are counted as important assets of the park but that might be accorded minor significance, or none at all, in the commercial forest.

Forest improvement is, of course, one of the important means by which the immediate economic value of the forest is heightened. It is based primarily on the comparative values of different species of trees as well as of individual trees of the same species. The commercial forester, for instance, will speak of certain species as weed trees; of certain individual trees as undesirable. To the park forester “there ain’t no such animal” as a weed tree; they all have their own contribution to make to the natural forest picture; and the very tree which, in a commercial sense, may be most undesirable, may, from a park standpoint, be of exceptional value.