Crown Jewels A Video That Promotes Forest Degradation

I just finished watching the film Crown Jewels. Many conservation groups are promoting the movie, but few are willing to critique some of the flawed premises in the video.

It is admirable that the filmmakers want people to appreciate old-growth forests. But their message is confusing. On the one hand, they promote the idea that old-growth forests are ecological gems—i.e., crown jewels—but in other parts of the film, they promote logging using much of the same language and justifications that I hear from the timber industry.

I want to acknowledge that the filmmakers have good intentions. But the film is a mixed bag. Much of it promotes an anthropocentric perspective instead of a biocentric perspective.

It is as if the filmmakers must find a rationale for human management of forests by featuring what they call “sustainable” forestry.

There has been a lot of positive talk about sustainable forestry by the timber industry, politicians, and even among many environmental groups. Everyone is looking for a way to exploit the Earth and pretend they are not impacting anything. While sustainability is an admirable goal, most of what I have seen touted as sustainable practices are far from ecologically sustainable, especially when compared to wild landscapes.

In my experience, if someone is exploiting natural landscapes in a commercially viable manner, the activity is typically not ecologically sustainable. In nearly all instances I have seen, the so-called “sustainable” logging, grazing, farming, or fill-in-the-blank is only sustainable by externalizing most of the production’s actual costs (ecological impacts). That doesn’t prevent people from claiming that they have achieved the Holy Grail and found a way to exploit and protect nature. It’s the free lunch syndrome.

The filmmakers traveled across the United States, visiting different ecosystems and discussing with activists the need to protect older forests from logging.

However, around the 26-minute mark, the film contradicts its earlier message by promoting “sustainable” logging. I’ve written numerous articles about so-called “sustainable” logging. Generally, what is characterized as “sustainable” forestry is primarily about providing a long-term sustainable supply of wood for mills. It’s not about sustaining ecosystems.

I have never seen a “sustainable” logging operation, though I have visited some “certified” sustainable forests. There is probably some minimal level of tree removal that may have insignificant influences on forest ecosystems. However, the amount of tree removal necessary to justify an economically commercial operation is impossible to do, in my view, without harming forest communities.

The filmmakers visited several sites in West Virginia, Wisconsin, and other locations where they lamented the logging of large trees. They correctly point out that logging removes much of the forest biomass, logging equipment compacts soils, and other effects of logging operations.

But then they visit the Menominee Tribe logging operations in Wisconsin. And now the entire attitude has changed. Even though the tribe is logging giant trees- older and larger than the trees considered a loss to the forest in previous segments—if the tribe does it, it is now sustainable.

Not to get too snarky, but the filmmakers have drunk the Kool-Aid of the WOKE movement. If a tribe exploits the forest with chainsaws, feller bunchers, logging trucks, and so presumably using their “traditional ecological knowledge” such exploitation is acceptable. Logging of any kind sanitizes the forest.

The problem with the entire message is that ecologically speaking, logging does not “improve” the forest ecosystem. It only degrades it. It doesn’t matter if the person using the chainsaw is a tribal member or a white guy living in some small Oregon lumber town. The effect on the forest ecosystem is the same.

I have no doubt that tribal tree cutting with stone axes probably had little impact on forests–though we do have evidence from around the world where even stone age logging devastated forests over time (i.e. Easter Island).

However, logging, even selective logging, as practiced by the Menominee, removes significant biomass from the forest. Under natural conditions, some trees die and slowly rot on the forest floor, providing structural components for wildlife to hide under or for fungi, bacteria, and other elements of intact ecosystems to flourish. Down trees also provide nutrients to the soil and are a long-term storage mechanism for carbon.

Snag forests resulting from insect, disease, and high severity are unique ecosystem types relatively rare in landscapes. They are a “gift” to the landscape. These snag forests perform various ecological functions not replicated by “managed” forests.

Reducing competition means natural ecological sources of mortality from disease to insects may be reduced. This change in natural mortality sources has implications for the entire ecosystem.

First, insects, diseases, and other mortality sources are equally crucial to ecosystem health. One is contributing to ecosystem disruption if you eliminate the food and shelter of these natural morality agents through logging.

Furthermore, removing trees through thinning can impact the genetic stability of the forest. Some research suggests that even thinning may remove some of the rare alleles in the forest that hold survival value under changing conditions—like climate warming.

Reducing competition between trees through thinning may increase the survival of remaining trees, but how does anyone know which trees have the best genetic composition for long-term resilience?

In the film, the narrator examines three-foot-diameter logs and suggests that cutting trees until they are older is acceptable and contributes to a “sustainable” forest. However, in trying to justify tribal logging, the film’s narrator does not appreciate that older trees are even more ecologically valuable than smaller, younger trees.

Large trees store more carbon. Large trees remain in the ecosystem much longer than smaller trees. When they fall into streams, they provide structural habitat for fish and other aquatic life. They stabilize banks. Large tree boles in streams reduce erosion.

Next, at 38 minutes, the film endorses “prescribed burning” to reduce the risk and intensity of fires in the West. This strategy is promoted by the U.S. Forest Service, the timber industry, tribes, and many misinformed conservationists. There is little credible scientific evidence that human ignitions mimic natural disturbances. Nor was a tribal burning influence on vegetative communities widespread before European settlement.

While a few community types, including some southern pines, ponderosa pine in the West, and other plants do flourish with frequent fire, the vast majority of vegetation communities in the United States, particularly in the West, have long fire rotations, which means they do not burn frequently, nor are they dependent on frequent fires for their “health.”.

Frequent burning, as promoted in the film, was not part of their ecological makeup. Most tribal burning was localized and did not have any significant evolutionary influence.

Indeed, we have evolutionary evidence for this.

For instance, although sagebrush steppe is a common plant community across the West, it has no adaptation to fire. Burn sagebrush frequently, and sagebrush disappears. We have many sagebrush-dependent species like sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, sage thrashers, and numerous other species that rely on sagebrush, indicating a long evolutionary relationship with the plants. These ecological relationships between wildlife and sagebrush could not have evolved if tribal burning had been a significant landscape component.

Even more damming is that of the few species that rely on frequent fire, presumably practiced by tribal people, that existed for millions of years before humans colonized North America. Ponderosa pine, one of the species commonly asserted to depend on frequent tribal burning, has existed as a species for 55 million years. One has to wonder how ponderosa pine forests survived all those millions of years without tribal traditional knowledge to keep them healthy.  

The film is misleading because they visit some mossy, wet, old-growth Douglas fir forests in western Oregon and then talk about how frequent fire kept these forests healthy. These forest types often had hundreds of years between any fire. And when they did burn, it was typically known as a stand replacement blaze that kills most of the trees.

The film does not give that impression. Instead, it promotes the myth that tribal burning regularly swept these forests to maintain them and preclude episodic high-severity blazes.

I credit the filmmakers for their good intentions, but unfortunately, their film contains as much misinformation as anything ecologically accurate.

The filmmakers missed an opportunity to argue that we must reduce wood consumption. Alternatives to wood for home construction, such as hay bales, packed Earth, above, and, god forbid, maybe even promoting smaller homes, could substantially reduce the presumed “need” for forest logging.

What we do need is more wildland preserves like parks and wilderness areas where logging or other human manipulation is banned.

If you watch Crown Jewels, take the good message about old-growth forests, which are ecologically critical to the forest ecosystem. However, beware of any implication that human management somehow “benefits” forests. Forest ecosystems have persisted for millions of years without any human intervention. They didn’t need human management then, and they don’t need it now.