The most productive, species-rich parts of ecosystems have always attracted human settlement. People have been part of the landscape for millennia and, for better or worse, we aren’t going away. Some of the most impactful conservation efforts can be accomplished working with those who live on, own, and manage these high-value landscapes. It also means finding common ground and looking for win-win solutions.
What is “conifer expansion”? In short, our insatiable need to suppress wildfires over the last 150 years has resulted ecosystem chaos, and one of the many fallouts has been the expansion of tree populations into once-treeless ecosystems like grasslands and sagebrush steppe. Prior to fire suppression, the natural cycle of wildfire would keep forest margins in check, but now open, treeless ecosystems are disappearing quickly. The problem is contributing to the loss of unique ecosystems, and ultimately contributing to the listing of species like the sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken. Paradoxically, just letting fire have free reign again through these new forests is problematic (high burn severity, weed spread, erosion, etc) so one of the simplest conservation efforts is first manually cutting back the young margins of the forest manually to their historic, fire-maintained boundaries. Then fire can be reintroduced, but in the meantime, there’s work to be done on millions of acres.
Usually these masses of tiny trees are then burned, but in some cases the trees are 40-50 years old now. These older trees are typically scrappy and have no market, but some small rural mills will work with them, making smaller boards, fence posts, and occasionally short house logs.
