Road infrastructure

When I was studying forestry they really drilled into us the importance of good road infrastructure for forest management. Working in Maine I was able to see some good examples, but it is especially stark here in the Carpathians. I learned early on at the lishosp that practically no new forest roads have been built on this territory since the fall of the Soviet Union. But this does not mean that large areas of the lishosp have been inaccessible. On the contrary, they've reached almost every place that's not too steep to cut. They do this be using mountain streams as logging roads. I found this pretty shocking when I first saw it, but have learned that it is very common in the Carpathians, and makes forest management possible in a lot of unroaded areas.

It has some pretty clear ecological consequences, though. At the least, the weight of the skidders and log trucks distorts the streambed, often destroying the natural stream structure and creating two channels (in the tiretracks). Much worse than this, a series of skid roads run straight into the stream. In these steep conditions these skid roads often turn into mini-muslides. The skidders and trucks rip up the streamside vegetation, allowing for even more soil movement into the stream. In the most extreme example I have seen, a steep slope above a small stream was clearcut directly to the stream bank. The logs were then rolled down the slope, and picked up by a log truck parked in the stream. This only 100 yards from the site of a recent mudslide. 

I have talked with some foresters here about this, but it is a very touchy subject. If the use of these small streams for logging was prohibited, it would put most of their territory off limits to exploitation. I have come to see this as the most negative aspect of forest management here, in unfortunate contrast the many good aspects such as the system of protected areas. In fact, there is even an excellent network of riparian protective zones within the lishosp. But these are focused on the main river (Prut) and its largest tributaries. Small streams (potoki) are unprotected and treated more like transportation routes than natural water bodies. As a result, plumes of mud flow into the Prut from these streams whenever there is an ongoing logging operation. It is important to note that forestry is not alone in this problem - there appear to be few limits on streamside construction, and I often see big areas of floodplain stripped of vegetation to build new hotels. The ski resort Bukovel (Ukraine's biggest, within the lishosp where I work) is the biggest offender. Thanks to a huge amount of new construction there, the Prutets River (the Prut's biggest tributary) runs brown almost constantly. 

Some money is beginning to trickle into Carpathian lishospi to build new roads. I worked a few days with Volodymyr Korzhov, a forest roads specialists from the Institute of Mountain Forestry in Ivano-Frankivsk. He travels around the Oblast helping lishospi design new mountain roads to "Austrian" standards. As he told me, the quality of the road on the ground is often much worse than what he designed on the map. But at least these roads are not located in a stream! He took me to Osmolodske Lishosp, deep in the Gorgany Mountains on the Ivano-Frankivsk/Zakarpattye border. There we saw a beautiful new "Austrian" road that is being built into the Gorgany. I admired the quality, but also had to wonder what the new accessibility this road brings will mean to remote forests of the Gorgany... I think this territory would be a great place to do high conservation value forest delineation, before the logging starts. 

My first field study: Vorokhta Forest Management Unit

For the months of September and October I have been living in the Ukrainian Carpathians, doing a field study for my project in the Vorokhta region. I am working at the local forest management unit (Lishosp), which is publicly owned and managed by the State Committee of Forest Management. I am using this lishosp as a test case for how the new Ukrainian High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) standards could be applied in managed forests in the Carpathians. 

I have used FSC certification to frame this question, because the forestry administration in this province (Ivano-Frankivsk) has expressed interest in certifying all its lishospi. But FSC is basically unknown among field foresters here, and so my topic is met with a lot of suspicion! I think foresters fear that HCVF identification will remove even more of their acreage from the "exploitation fund" and place it in the "protective fund". There is probably some truth in this, but I believe that their existing network of protective forests (on steep slopes, around rivers, where rare forest types are found) already includes most of the HCVF in the territory. 41% of this lishosp is in the protective forest category. Clearcutting is forbidden in protective forests, and some are entirely off limits to forest management. 

I am really interested in the network of small protected areas that were established in Soviet times throughout managed forests. In the area I am working, there are several "monuments of nature", including relict populations of Pinus cembra, cliff forests dominated by Pinus sylvestris, and very high productivity beech forests.  I think the Soviet botanists and foresters who identified and protected these areas made a major contribution to biodiversity conservation. These areas usually go at the top of the list for HCVF in any given area. 

The pictures above are from "monuments of nature" and other protective forests inside Vorokhtyanske Lishosp. The gnarly looking pine is Pinus cembra, or Swiss stone pine. It is only found in small relictual stands in the Carpathians.

Hello from Ukraine! I have now been here for more than two months, but have only recently established any kind of reliable internet connection. So I've got a pretty big backlog of experiences to right about! I'm living in the Carpathians now, but my first Ukrainian post will be about a short trip I took to Polissie Zapovednik (Nature Reserve) in northern Ukraine.

My advisor Sergiy Zibtsev took me to meet the reserve because he is working on fire management issues there. The forests of the Polissie ("in the woods") region cover a big swathe of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Poland. It is a mixture of dry outwash sites and extensive swamps, with scots pine being the dominant species in both types. Silver birch is also quite common, and there is some Populus tremula. Quercus robur is present too, but site quality is so low in the Reserve that it only grows as a small midstory tree. The reserve was established to protect a complex of unique bog ecosystems, and the forests within it are generally very dry and unproductive pine sites. Picture widely spaced, slow-growing scots pine with a few scattered midstory oaks and a ground cover of blueberry. Also lots of scots pine plantations.

In 2007 there was a big fire here (550 hectares). Mortality in young stands and plantations was very high, while older pines in natural stands withstood the fire with minimal damage. The director of the reserve wants to start using prescribed fire to reduce fuel loading. His imperative is to protect peatland communities, which can be very badly damaged by creeping peat fires. He also wants to initiate prescribed burning in the neighboring forest management units and collective farms. Such coordination is not easy in Ukraine, and he is already working against very strong anti-fire feeling in the forestry establishment. 

Probably the most interesting aspect of the trip was the official response to the fires. They were regarded only as a disaster, even though fire is actually quite natural in Polissie and older pine forests are well adapted to it. Zapovedniks are strict nature reserves, but here we saw extensive salvaging of burnt stands, even ones that will easily survive the fire. Fire could actually help restore natural structural features here, but burnt stands are clearcut and replanted. We saw some areas that had very high fire mortality, which was followed by excellent natural regeneration of pine. But because the foresters must demonstrate that they did something in response to the fire, it is possible that some of this regen will be plowed under and nursery seedlings planted there instead! It is very important to show that burnt acres have been actively "reforested"...

Dr. Zibtsev is trying to convince the reserve managers to at least leave healthy residuals and fire snags during the salvage process, to help maintain some complex features in the next stand. He is also trying to identify stands that will survive the fires well and do not need to be salvaged.