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“It was the first time they had to rationalize old-growth clear-cutting, not for the usual [reasons of] jobs and resources, but as some means of preventing future catastrophic wildfires,” says Ingalsbee. “So I happened to be sitting at the table for the process as the Forest Service is kind of thinking aloud, ‘how can we reframe old-growth clear-cutting as something good for the environment?’”
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“Those big, old snags are key ecological structures that help shelter and provide for the next forest. A lot of wildlife depend on that,” says Ingalsbee. “In their analysis, [the Forest Service] went out and saw nothing but black and barren, muddy slopes and said, ‘It’s a moonscape, it’s a dead zone.’ But within a couple years, there were half a million new tree seedlings per hectare. It was phenomenal.
“In the burned parts of the forest, that’s where the northern spotted owl prey base just exploded. That first spring, there were, I think, seven [breeding] pairs of owls. Six of them fledged young birds, which is really phenomenal reproductive success for that species.”