As the Trump administration prepares to open Alaska’s Tongass National Forest for development and logging, West Virginia University experts Nicolas Zegre and Brenden McNeil discuss what that means for a planet in the throes of climate change. (WVU Photo)
As the Trump administration prepares to open Alaska’s Tongass National Forest for development and logging, West Virginia University experts Nicolas Zegre and Brenden McNeil discuss what that means for a planet in the throes of climate change.
Quotes:
AUDIO (Nicolas Zegre): “Tongass National Forest is an ecological oasis…”
“The Tongass National Forest is an ecological oasis. It’s old growth forest; old growth forest plays a really important part in the carbon sequestration but also portioning water. That part of Alaska, that part of North America receives high rainfall and also a lot of precipitation through fog. And, those old growth forests, those trees, play a really, really important role in controlling how quickly water moves through those ecosystems. So when we remove the old growth trees, we remove a really important function of those trees on regulating how quickly water moves through the watersheds.”
AUDIO (Nic Zegre): “The nutrient cycling of those systems, they…”
“The nutrient cycling of those systems, they are high salmon systems because of the nutrients the salmon receive from the forests. In the absence of these old trees, you’re disrupting the nutrient cycling that has very important impacts on the salmon fisheries in the region.”
AUDIO (Nic Zegre): “You know, all natural resources management…”
“You know, all natural resources management is a tradeoff. The current system is more beneficial for the salmon fisheries and the fishing industry, whereas cutting down the trees is more advantageous to the forestry industry. It really speaks to the complexity of managing natural resources for different industries that are depended upon for providing jobs for regions.” —Nicolas Zegre, associate professor of Forest Hydrology at West Virginia University
“When we cannot ‘find’ timber and pulp through reuse or recycling, we should be getting wood products from sustainably managed forests in less ecologically sensitive places, including the many well-managed forests here in the central Appalachian mountains.”
AUDIO (Brenden McNeil): “Old-growth forests, where they still exist…”
Old-growth forests, where they still exist anywhere on the planet, are an immensely valuable gift that cannot be replaced in our lifetime or even 10 human lifetimes. The Trump administration wants to log the Tongass old-growth forest, but this is akin to valuing your human life for nothing more than the calcium that could be gleaned from your bones. The recreational, aesthetic, tourism, fishery, wildlife, spiritual, and climate change mitigation values of an intact Tongass dwarf the value of its timber, many, many times over.
Rather than sell the timber at the expense of the taxpayer who will fund the costs of building the roads to access it, the Trump administration could provide needed relief to the southeastern Alaskan economy by stimulating its more profitable industries, such as fishing and tourism, that extract enduring, sustainable value from this world-class treasure of a forest.” —Brenden McNeil, associate professor of geography at West Virginia University
West Virginia University experts can provide commentary, insights and opinions on various news topics. Search for an expert by name, title, area of expertise, or college/school/department in the Experts Database at WVU Today.
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cw/10/29/20
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