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.
Our insatiable need to suppress wildfires over the last 150 years has resulted ecosystem chaos. One of the many fallouts of historic fire suppression is the invasion of trees into once-treeless ecosystems like grasslands and sagebrush steppe. Natural wildfire used to keep forest margins in check, but now open, treeless ecosystems are disappearing and its contributing to the loss of wet meadows and the listing of species like the sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken. One of the simplest conservation efforts is cutting back the young margins of the forest manually.
Usually these masses of tiny trees are then burned, but in some cases the trees are 40-50 years old now. These are not typically marketable trees, but small rural mills will take what they can and work with it, making boards, fence posts, and occasionally house logs.
