Big Basin Heartbreak

The news of the CZU Lightning Fire in California hit home for me this past week as the fire swept through Big Basin Redwood State Park—California’s oldest state park and protected habitat of the endangered Marbled Murrelet. This robin-sized seabird comes inland from the Pacific Ocean to the mature and old-growth forests during the summer to nest on the wide branches of the trees. Big Basin Redwood State Park was the center of the discovery of the murrelets’ nesting site in 1974 in a 220-foot-high Douglas-fir, the kind—and perhaps very tree that held that famous nest—that are being burned and scorched now as the fire engulfs 78,000 acres of Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties. Many of the redwoods will survive—there is some good news here from KQED.

While writing my book , Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet (Rodale 2005 and Mountaineers Books 2014), about this extraordinary bird, I spent much time in this spectacular “big-trees” state park visiting the site of the nest discovery, camping with my family under the very tree where the nest was found, and hiking the park trails under thousand-year-old trees and feeling as if I had walked back in time.

Photo of the author at Big Basin Redwood State Park (by M.D. Ruth)

Big Basin Redwood State Park’s historic Headquarters and Visitors Center burned to the ground (details and photos here) and there is extensive damage in the historic core of the 18,000-acre park, including the popular campgrounds. The headquarters building was the site where the park rangers and historian gazed down on a strange downy chick, saved by a tree trimmer in the August 1974, that they identified out as a marbled murrelet—the first confirmed and later documented scientific evidence that these birds nested in trees. Now this historic building is gone.

The remains of the headquarters building at Big Basin Redwood State Park, the site where park rangers solved the great nesting mystery of the marbled murrelet in August 1974. Image by Randy Vazquez/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News Via Getty Images

The 1974 discovery eventually placed the murrelet on the list of federally threatened and endangered species and helped project much of its nesting habitat from logging—the single biggest threat to this bird’s survival. While the redwoods and other conifers are thick-barked species and adapted to withstand fire, the murrelets themselves are not adaptable. Their populations in California and throughout their range (north to Alaska) have been declining precipitously. The increased frequency, intensity, and duration of wildlife is not merely a “threat” to these and other birds and wildlife. These fires are happening now.

Please consider making a donation to the Sempervirens Fund to help restore Big Basin Redwood State Park. The Sempervirens Fund is a non-profit land trust dedicated to the conservation of forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains. To the first 20 of my readers who donate $50 to help restore Big Basin Redwood State Park, I will send you a complimentary copy of my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet. Just send me (mariaruthbooks@comcast.net) a screenshot of the to of the email acknowledging your donation and your mailing address. Thank You!

Send me a screen shot like this (with your name in the To field and I’ll send you a copy of Rare Bird!

Seeing the Trees and the Forests

(Click on painting to advance image gallery).

Olympia artist Kathy Gore-Fuss captures the essence of our native forests in her beautiful and evocative paintings. Kathy is a pleine-aire painter who has set up her easel in many of our forested city parks--where grand old trees and a rich and tangled understory beckon.  These photos were taken at her recent studio show. Check out her portfolio here.

What Are We Talking About?

After a long walk in a neighborhood woods today, I understand less and less what we mean when we describe a tree or a forest as "old-growth." There are many definitions--some uninformed, some vernacular, some scientific, many political. And this is a problem when the definition is used to push timber sales through as in "we are not logging old-growth." Does this mean we (the Department of Natural Resources, Weyerhauser, whoever) is not cutting down certain really really big trees or that they are not logging in old-growth forests?

One sparrow does not a summer make. One really big tree does not an old-growth forest make. As we should expect, trying to define a state of a certain forest--one that has been growing, changing, living, dying, responding to natural forces for a thousand years (or more or less)--is not a simple matter. Old forests are complex and they don't translate easily into numbers or words.

 Alaska used to have a slogan that attempted to define its undefinability: "Alaska is a state of mind."  And old-growth forest is like this, too--a state of the forest. And that state takes in many qualities--large standing trees, large standing snags (dead trees with broken tops), fallen trees, nurse logs, nurse stumps, a broken canopy, trees of different age classes, certain understory plants. A forest featuring these qualities is one that has seen little human disturbance.

This hundred-year-old tree doesn't make the >80 cm dbh cut (which translates as 100 Inches in circumference), yet it is an important part of an old-growth forest. This is along the Lewis River in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, WA.  Photo by MM Ruth.

During my walk this morning, I talked with man who knew the woods and the flora well. I asked him if the trees in the woods were old-growth. He said no. They were big, but old-growth means original old-growth. I took this to mean the "virgin' old-growth--the massive trees that pre-date human disturbance. Which means that the trees I have been measuring and calling "old growth" are just really big second growth. In the woods where I was walking, this means the oldest trees started growing after the forest was clearcut sometime in at the turn of the 20th century. Which makes them 100+ years old. According to my fellow walker, these trees will only ever be "big second growth." 

I am not sure I buy this, but I am intrigued by the idea.

And by the controversy surrounding what the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is doing in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. A few weeks back, two timber sales were approved in an area of high-quality marbled murrelet habitat (aka old-growth forests, mature forest, late-successional forest) called the Olympic Experimental State Forest. The timber proposed for clear-cutting is not old--30-40 years old, most of it. However, those younger trees are in an area of old-growth forest--but outside the 100-meter buffer required around murrelet nesting sites. Removal of these younger, buffering trees is a problem for murrelets as the clear-cut allows for the incursion of nest predators, specifically Stellar's jays, which prey on murrelet eggs and chicks.

A young marbled murrelet chick is a vulnerable creature during its month-long development on the nest. This seabird depends on the coniferous coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest--forests we call old-growth, mature, old, older, late successional, and ancient. These terms may be synonymous. Or not.A precise definition is elusive, but critical to this threatened species. Photo by Tom Hamer, Hamer Environmental. Used with permission.

Removal of these trees by clearcutting is also a problem for the University of Washington. The University, like other state schools and institutions, receives financial benefit from certain state-forest timber sales. The recent timer sales in the Olympic Experimental State Forest are earmarked for UW...but UW scientist have contributed data to a major report that recommends emphasizing conservation efforts in this forest to achieve and maintain high-quality nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet. This includes the kind of clear-cutting DNR is proposing in a forest that should be managed using experimental silviculture methods that reflect the best-available science.

This latest timber sales show that DNR is still in the dark ages--using the equivalent of a club instead of a fine-edged blade to manage our state forests.

And thus, on March 31, Seattle Audubon, the Olympic Forest Coalition, and other conservation groups decided to sue the DNR over the proposed clearcuts in the Olympic Experimental State Forest. Today's Crosscut features an excellent article by Martha Baskin explaining the sale and the controversy and the plight of my favorite "chunky" seabird, the marbled murrelet.

What is Old-Growth?

When we talk about old-growth trees our minds may generate an image of a tree like this western red-cedar (above) or one of the mighty drive-thru California redwoods. The definition of old-growth varies depending on such factors as the species of the tree, the latitude at which it grows, geographical region, plant associations, soil productivity, elevation, and which federal or state agency you ask. 

If you ask, as I did one morning, a slightly hung-over college student to guess how big an old-growth tree is, you might get an answer like this: "Big. Really big. As big as my brain is right now."

In Rare Bird, I spent a lot of time in the old-growth coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest tagging along with biologists who were studying the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests in these forests. It was a constant challenge to avoid saying "big," "really big," and "wow."  Which is understandable because an old-growth tree is awesome and we are appropriately left speechless or nearly so. But this does not help the marbled murrelet whose survival depends on our understanding of its habitat--the forests we describe in shorthand as "old-growth." Few of us--slightly hungover or not--are not likely to provide any details.

Until the 1980s, scientists were hard-pressed to come up with a solid definition of an old-growth forest. During the controversy over the protection of the northern spotted owl and the logging of its habitat (old growth? second growth?), a seven-page definition emerged and was then distilled into this working definition: a forest that "has been largely unmodified by timber harvesting, and whose larger trees average over 200 years old or greater than 31 inches (80 cm) in diameter at breast height."  This gets distilled down even further to 80 cm dbh. 

To complicate matters, for the purposes of a major scientific study on marbled murrelet nesting habitat on Washington state trust lands, marbled murrelet nesting trees were defined as being >48 cm dbh ( >19 inches dbh (2008 Science Team Report). Scientists have discovered that marbled murrelets will nest in trees younger than old-growth--trees described as "mature"--if these trees have the right size nesting platforms. The right size is 4 inches or greater and that size may occur in younger trees where nest branches are deformed/enlarged by mistletoe.

For the generalist-naturalist, 80 cm dbh is a good rule of thumb.

What does 80 cm dbh even look like? Does 32 inches dbh make it any easier? Sure--imagining a tree with a trunk 4 inches shy of a wooden yardstick creates a visual impression--but not one as huge as I expected. Was the Douglas-fir in my backyard old-growth? How was I going to measure the diameter of this living tree? For that matter, why do scientists measure a tree's diameter instead of its circumference?  I wasn't going to wait for an answer. Nor was I going to wait for a blow-down and a chainsaw.

Seems like a lot of work to get an accurate measurement of a tree's diameter.

I converted 80 cm dbh to 251 cm circumference and then cut a piece of yellow flagging tape to measure that girth. FYI: 251 cm=98.9 inches, and, because we are friends, let's call it 100 inches. I went outside and wrapped by 100-inch tape around my Douglas-fir.  A juvie! It was only 75 inches around. I put the yellow tape into my coat pocket and whipped it out last week during a snow-shoe foray in the foothills of the Cascade Range at White Pass (southeast of Mt. Rainier).

Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old-growth tree--it's been 200 long years, will you still hug me? This hemlock's 100-inch circumference qualifies it as an old-growth tree--but is this tree habitat?     Photo by N.D. Ruth

This magnificent hemlock meets the old-growth standard of 80 cm dbh--or 100 inches in girth. This tree is in a lovely but it is not in an old-growth forest. To be an old-growth forest, this tree would need to be accompanied by other similarly big living trees, big dead standing trees (snags), fallen trees (nurse logs), a multi-level canopy, and an understory of younger trees and shrubs. This tree above is in a stand of younger trees and is bordered by Hwy 12 and a cross-country ski trail on side and a lake on the other. Because this stand is in an area used for recreation, the forest here has been managed for public access and safety--not as wildlife habitat. This tree is 100 miles from salt water and too far inland to be marbled murrelet habitat (they will nest as far as 50 miles inland).

The forest below is within the 50-mile breeding range of the marbled murrelet but is it marbled murrelet habitat?

This is an old-growth stand of western red-cedar, western hemlock Douglas-fir, and Sitka spruce in Rainbow Falls State Park, in the Chehalis River Valley southwest of Olympia, Washington.   ( Photo my MM Ruth)

This is Rainbow Rock State Park--a 139 acre park along the Chehalis River. Once surrounded by thousands of acres of old-growth forest, this is the remnant gem. The cedars, hemlocks, firs, and spruces all meet the 100-inch standard and the other qualifications in terms of snags, nurse logs, multi-level canopy, etc. But is this nesting habitat for a marbled murrelet?  Unless scientific surveys of this forest document certain marbled murrelet behaviors (such as flying below the canopy height, landing on branches), this forest cannot be declared "occupied" habitat. But based on other factors, this forest could be declared "potential" habitat--a place where marbled murrelets could nest. Marbled murrelet surveys are expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. And, they make people grouchy because surveys start well before dawn, which is really really early in the summer.

Because I am interested in getting to know the forests where I live, I have started taking my yellow ribbon with me when I go on a walk or hike. When I remember to also take my camera, I will start posting photographs here on my blog and and here.

Meanwhile, recommended reading: Old Growth in a New World" A Pacific Northwest Icon Reexamined, Thomas A. Spies and Sally L. Duncan, eds. Island Press, 2009.

Not recommended viewing unless you have 3'06" to fritter away on Tony Orlando and Dawn: This stunning "live" performance from the 1970s--the taste-free decade.