Editor’s note: This commentary is by David Brynn, the executive director of Vermont Family Forests.
[T]he climate is changing rapidly and credible predictions suggest we are in for a lot more rain and much more frequent gully-washing storm events. A healthy, resilient, temperate rain forest can best weather the gully-washing storm events of a rapidly changing climate. That is what rain forests do! Our forests will adapt but we must adapt our forestry to allow them to do what they do best. Conserving our water commons is at the root of ecologically sustainable forestry, resilient forests, and a flood-resistant landscape in the face of the peak flows of a changing climate.
To conserve our water commons we must answer three key questions: What is the commons and who are the commoners? What is forest conservation and why should our water commons now be its primary focus? Given the predicted storm events of a rapidly changing climate, what more can be done on less to protect our water commons?
What is the commons and who are the commoners?
Aristotle recognized three types of interests or things: public things; private things; and commonly-held things. When Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1609 the forestland was unenclosed and it included the air, the waters, the soils, the plants and the animals. The land was the commons. As Champlain paddled up Bitawbagok – so named by the Western Abenakis as “the lake between,” he looked at the temperate, rain-forested mountains to his east and exclaimed “Voila Verde Monts!”
The pulsatingly green, verdant mountains that marked the eastern edge of the lush catchment were made so by a combination of carbon-rich soils, ample rain, a wind-based disturbance regime, and a lightly-peopled landscape that had been held as sacred for over 10,000 years.
The native Abenaki people lived within the natural forest community in close-knit family bands. They were the commoners of their local catchments. Their ethnicity was ecological because their survival depended on it. The verdant forest Champlain witnessed was the Western Abenaki’s legacy of the commons. There was no tragedy of the commons other than the coming exploitation marked by Champlain’s arrival.
What is conservation and why should our water commons now be its primary focus?
In the early 1760s New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth made creative land grants enclosing sweeping hunks of the commons and turning much of what would be Vermont into privately held property. Land ownership was an essential part of the new economic order.
In the 1790s settlers poured into Vermont and by 1850 over 80 percent of the verdant, temperate, hardwood rainforest had been stripped or burned leaving the mountains deeply gullied and the receiving waters thick with sediment. Though Vermont is now nearly 80 percent forested many of the ecological impacts from those original clearings of the first enclosures still remain.
In the late 1800s George Perkins Marsh, Gifford Pinchot and a host of others called for a new economic relationship with the land. Pinchot said we needed conservative logging. He proposed practical, sustained-yield forestry “to protect forests from fire, insects and thieves; to encourage strong, abundant reproduction; and to provide plenty of high quality trees ripe and ready for the axe.”
In 1923 Aldo Leopold was inspired “to think like a mountain” by Pietr Ouspensky’s aptly-named Tertium Organum — released in English in 1921. Leopold agreed with Ouspensky’s notion that entire ecosystems functioned as one organism. It was Leopold who wrote that “Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve that capacity.” Leopold also wrote that sustaining the woodlot bank may be important but the essential task of forest conservation is to refrain from undermining the ecological functions and values by which forested ecosystems sustain themselves. He called this Group B Forestry.
And just as the blood that flows through our veins gives great insights into the nature of our relationships with our bodies, Leopold knew better than anyone that the water that flows through our forests and over our fields gives great insights into the nature of our relationships with the land.
The peak flow events of a rapidly changing climate require a new paradigm for forest conservation that includes private interests, public interests, and common interests. All three should be well represented at the conservation table.
In sum, there are two compelling reasons why lentic and lotic waters should be the primary focus of our forest conservation efforts particularly in these times when the climate is changing so rapidly and gully-washing peak flows are becoming so frequent and so destructive:
The condition of our rivers and lakes during and immediately following peak storm flows is an excellent indicator of ecosystem health and flood resilience, and water is still commonly held in Vermont.
Given the predicted storm events of a rapidly changing climate, what more can be done on less to protect our water commons?
First and foremost we must remember back to the verdant, spongy, unenclosed rain-forested catchments that so impressed Champlain. Our primary goal must be to encourage large portions of our ditched watersheds to renew themselves as spongy forest catchments. Our motto might be: “Slow food. Slow wood. Slow water!”
Our forest conservation efforts can help with this transition. How? First, we must recognize that, like politics, all sustainability is local. Our focus and our forest conservation units should be our home catchments. It is only there that we can cultivate an intense consciousness of the land which is so essential to its conservation. Like the Abenaki before us, we will need local commoners who are actively engaged in the type of forest conservation that Leopold inspired – understanding and preserving the capacity of forested home catchments for self-renewal especially in the face of storm events.
Second, we need to do a much better job of exploring, mapping, and celebrating our home catchments.
Third, we need to move beyond the acceptable management practices to optimal conservation practices that conserve the capacity of our forests for self-renewal in the face of major storm events. These optimal conservation practices must be crisp, effective, and measureable. They must address such things as: riparian zone widths and condition; access network condition and extent; stream crossing requirements; and much more. The key element for the optimal conservation practices is that they work exceptionally well for our unenclosed water commons in the face of gully-washing storm events.
Fourth, the Riverwatch networks are a super beach head and they should be expanded in number and scope. This means measuring water quality and compliance of source forests with the optimal conservation practices.
Fifth, starting with public lands, conserved lands, and lands enrolled in the Use Value Assessment Program, well-trained commoners should be much more actively involved in monitoring the level of compliance with the optimal conservation practices.
Sixth, public investments in private forest lands and enterprises should include provisions to protect our water commons even during storm events. For example, 40 Vermont schools have been heavily subsidized to heat with wood. How well is the associated logging conserving our water commons when it rains hard?
Seventh, we need a student-based Common Waters Corps to help with the monitoring. Let’s trade student debt for student data!
Eighth, most Vermonters agree that the Use Value Assessment Program is essential for keeping Vermont’s forests as forests. However, in light of the changing climate, the Current Use Program should be much less concerned about how much timber and how many agricultural products are being extracted from the enclosed portions of the land and much more concerned with how well our unenclosed water commons is being protected during storm events. How about renaming it the Current Health Program?
IN CONCLUSION
The peak flow events of a rapidly changing climate require a new paradigm for forest conservation that includes private interests, public interests, and common interests. All three should be well represented at the conservation table.
Along with the unenclosed air and critters, our unenclosed water commons is an essential leg of the forest conservation stool.
As holders of the unenclosed water, air and critter elements of the forest, we should re-invent our partnerships with the holders of the enclosed elements of the forest including its soil and vegetation to allow our ditched watersheds to return to being the spongy green catchments they naturally want to be.
The quality of our unenclosed water commons during storm events must guide our work.
As commoners we can re-create an ecological ethnicity based upon our healthy, resilient water commons.
And local organizations like The Lewis Creek Association, The Watershed Center, the New Haven River Anglers, and Vermont Family Forests can play greatly expanded roles in organizing the conservation, educating the commoners, and tracking the progress — storm by storm, forested catchment by forested catchment.
May the rainforest be with us!
