Photo: Bridget Besaw, The Nature Conservancy

by Bronson Griscom, via the Nature Conservancy’s Planet Change Blog

Can tropical forests be logged sustainably and still maintain their incredibly rich biodiversity — and benefits to people? A new study published in the journal Conservation Letters provides evidence that, with smart forest management, the answer can be “yes.”

As a forest scientist and a co-author on this article, I believe our findings confirm a critical middle way forward in protecting tropical forests: maintaining the diversity of tropical forest plants and animals, reducing carbon pollution, securing economic opportunities for local communities, and recognizing that the world’s growing population will continue to have significant needs for timber.

Why a “middle way”? Why not just focus on halting logging of these forests wherever possible?

After all, our article does find that fully protected forests are often better at conserving more plants and animals than forests managed for timber. Also, cutting trees in the tropics generates as much carbon pollution as all the cars, planes, boats, and trains in the world. That’s why a lot of organizations like The Nature Conservancy, where I work, see protecting tropical forests as a powerful part of the solution to climate change.

But what happens when tropical forest logging is halted?

For one thing, what happens to the people in tropical forest regions who depend upon logging to put bread or rice on the table for their families? Getting rid of logging jobs may backfire as a conservation goal if the alternative livelihoods involve forest conversion. (We’ve seen this in Borneo, where villages face the option of engaging timber companies or oil palm companies … or attempting to refuse both and relying on subsistence agriculture.) Another problem: some builders might replace wood with another material like steel or cement, and the process of making those other materials generates more carbon pollution than wood. Furthermore, in some places loggers are a stronger force for forest protection than national parks. This dynamic has been demonstrated in community-managed forests of Mexico and Guatemala.

These are reasons why we considered the implications of a “middle way” in tropical forest conservation: a path that integrates logging and conservation. Our study reviews over 100 scientific papers and concludes that, in places with improved forest management practices, selectively logged tropical forests[1] retain the lion’s share of their plants and animals (85-100%) and carbon (roughly 75%). Not only that: timber yields can be sustained, albeit at a lower timber volume than the first cut.

In other words, tropical forests are surprisingly resilient to damage, as long as they are not completely cleared for another land use.

Read more

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

At a conference hosted by the White House this past Friday, President Obama spoke to a crowd of elected officials, sportsmen, environmentalists, ranchers, small business owners, and others about the many values and benefits of conserving our lands, waters, and clean air. In particular, he noted that protecting special places on both public and private lands can create jobs and boost the economy:

We have to keep investing in the technology and manufacturing that helps us lead the world, but we’ve also got to protect the places that define who we are, that help shape our character and soul as a nation. Places that help attract visitors and create jobs, but that also give something to our kids that is irreplaceable. And all of us have a role to play.

Watch it:

The president outlined recent successes and highlights of the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, such as the establishment of Fort Monroe as a national monument under the Antiquities Act, local collaboration to restore and protect Montana’s Crown of the Continent, and a new commitment to work with farmers to protect 1 million acres of grasslands and wetlands under the Conservation Reserve Program. He also touted recent steps he has taken to promote tourism to the U.S., like easing visa requirements so that more people can enjoy our American parks, lands, and heritage.

In his speech, Obama waxed poetic about the beauty of Hawai’i and his first visit to Yellowstone National Park as an 11-year old child, saying he “still remembers” traveling there and the awe he felt coming over a crest and seeing the park below. He invoked America’s great conservationists such as Teddy Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold when making the case for the protection of our lands and waters. However, he failed to mention climate change, which fundamentally threatens all the “places that define who we are.”

The president’s statement that conservation can support jobs and the economy is supported by both academic experts and the American public. In November, a group of 104 economists sent a letter to the president stating that “protected public lands are significant contributors to economic growth” and asked him to create jobs by establishing more parks and monuments. Also, a new poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies project found that 91 percent of voters in six western states said that protected places are “an essential part” of their state’s economies.

As Obama put it last week:

The bottom line is this: there will always be people in this country who say we’ve gotta choose between clean air and clean water and a growing economy. Between doing right by our environment and putting people back to work. And I’m here to tell you that is a false choice.

Land conservation and environmental protection are under a broad assault in Congress.  Republicans have launched campaigns to mine uranium around the Grand Canyon, throw open some of our last best places to drilling, and roll back presidential authorities to protect areas that local communities want to see protected.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This afternoon presidential contender Mitt Romney’s campaign announced the endorsement of Rob Keck, the Director of Conservation at Bass Pro Shops and a “conservationist and renowned hunter.”  In his statement, circulated by the Romney campaign, Keck said that:

Mitt also understands the importance of wildlife conservation, as well as hunting and angling’s economic and political engine that powers America. He will ensure that this tradition continues and is strengthened.

“He will fix America and lead the way in helping protect and preserve our rich hunting and fishing heritage,” Keck concluded.

But just two weeks ago, Romney admitted in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know ‘the purpose’ of public lands, which are incredibly important to hunters, anglers, and western economies.

As Dietmar Grimm of Trout Unlimited wrote recently in response to Romney’s unfamiliarity with public lands:

Unfortunately, it seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding among the candidates of what public lands do for us beyond their extraction values. In contrast, we as sportsmen and women know that public lands are much more. Every time we go into a fly or tackle shop before we go out on the water, we see the value we’re creating as sportsmen conservationists. Every time we head out to our jobs in our local communities, whether it is in the gas field, a local restaurant, or at a local community college, we see the value we’re creating as sportsmen conservationists.

As a money man like Romney should know, hunting and fishing on public lands provide enormous economic benefits.  In 2006, hunter and anglers visiting Interior Department-managed lands spent $2.4 billion in equipment expenditures plus even more in hotels, gas, and food costs. However, the connection that hunters and anglers have with public lands goes far beyond their economic value.  As Sean of the hunting and fishing blog Up the Poudre wrote:

Political winds blow hard during election years, and seldom align perfectly with the values of the people for which speech writers and pundits entertain. Red, blue, green, or other, it doesn’t matter. Common sense needs a place at the table. It was disheartening to listen to Mitt Romney last week, discuss his idea of value as it pertained to public land in the west.

In his endorsement, Keck also says he is “very concerned about the future of America and the ability we have to pass along our rich hunting and angling heritage to the next generation.”  But Romney has not shown any indication that he is willing to make tough decisions to preserve hunting and fishing for the next generation.  In fact, he has gone so far as to deny the greatest generational threat to this uniquely American tradition -– man-made climate change.  As Todd Tanner of Climate Hawks, a group founded to “harness the power of sportsmen to address climate change,” told Field and Stream recently:

Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything your care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.