<
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231113-bringing-back-californias-redwood-forests>
'Only 5% of California's redwood forests have never been logged. An initiative
to restore these forests is gaining momentum, aided by research showing that
redwoods store more aboveground carbon than any forest on Earth.
Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that established the Redwood National Park in
California 55 years ago. It was a long time coming, with proposals blocked in
the 1920s, 30s and 40s by an industry that was beavering through the most
valuable timberlands on the planet. When the National Park Service recommended
a park again in 1964, bipartisan support in the Senate, a nod from President
Johnson and, I believe, the trees' own power to inspire eventually got a deal
through Congress.
The national park was not the first redwood park. Several small California
state parks had been created decades earlier. But it was the first from which
most of the old growth had already been removed. Created in two phases, in 1968
and 1978, 75% of our national park had been razed. Overall, the public owns
over 100,000 acres (405 sq km) of injured, young forest on federal and state
land. Land managers are trying to actively nurture some of them into new old
growth. Tactics include one-time thinning of dense stands, prescribed fire,
closing roads, dropping trees in streams to make salmon-friendly pools, ongoing
selective logging to favour a few large trees, and just leaving the forests
alone.
Restoration has drawn recent attention and picked up momentum with the launch
of Redwoods Rising, an ambitious recovery program. Operations began in 2020 and
have been gaining urgency, as the impacts of climate change have become a part
of everyday life in the region, and a growing body of science has shown that
old-growth redwoods store more aboveground carbon than any forest on Earth, up
2,600 tonnes per hectare (0.01 sq km). That's three to five times as much as
even the oldest secondary forests. "The only vegetation that grows faster is
sorghum and sugarcane," says University of Washington scientist Robert Van
Pelt.'
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-domestic-violence-australia-malaria-rwanda-whales-dominica/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
