FSC Motion Recognizes Importance of Social Issues and the Role of Ecosystem Services

This post on "The Ecosystem Services Blog" brought my attention to a motion passed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).  I am referring to motion 1.1 passed by the FSC 6th General Assembly, "Recognition of social issues and the role of ecosystem services".  I found this interesting in light of the conclusion of my last post regarding southern pine bark beetle in southern New Jersey.  Although the FSC does not elaborate on how it will address social issues and their role in ecosystem services, I am intrigued to see such a widely accepted certification process giving this aspect of ecosystem management some attention.  I was also a little surprised that social issues were not already a part of the FSC doctrine.  I'm curious to see how they address these issues and anxious to see what they do from here.

Southern Pine Beetles in NJ/Raccoons in the Chicken Coop

I happened to stumble upon this post (with a comment by Ron Billings) and this post  on the Forest Business Network dealing with recent southern pine beetle (SPB), Dendroctonus frontalis, outbreaks in the NJ Pinelands.  The image above is from the NJ Forest Service Website dealing with SPB.  There is a lot of debate in NJ right now as to why SPB is so active in this part of the US and how it should be handled.  I have been thinking a lot about a forest manger's role in the ecosystems being manged and a recent seemingly unrelated experience got me to thinking.

A few nights ago raccoons visited our chicken coop, fortunately they did not get into the coop, but I have seen the after effects of raccoons in a chicken house before.  A neighbor and I were talking about why a raccoon will kill every last chicken it can when it gets into a coop, but may only eat one or two chickens.  I came to the conclusion that the raccoon, being an opportunist is just doing what comes natural under normal circumstances.  In the wild if a raccoon comes across prey that it can eat, it kills the prey as a natural reaction because the frequency of the next meal is uncertain.  The problem with a raccoon getting into a chicken coop is that it is an unusual circumstance where the raccoon is now surrounded by prey that can't escape, so doing what comes natural as a predator now leads to an unnaturally bloodthirsty reaction from the raccoons and can cost you an entire coop full of chickens.

What does this have to do with bark beetles in NJ?  After reading reading the above posts and their comments as well as witnessing SPB damage in the NJ Pinelands firsthand, I think that we are experiencing a natural reaction from a native insect to unnatural circumstances.  Don't get me wrong, I think that climate change certainly contributes to the spread of this pest in NJ, as Matt Ayres is quoted in the second link to the Forest Business Network.  However, the NJ Pinelands certainly do seem to be changing since human interactions with the land have changed over the last several decades.  It is well documented that on average forest basal area and volume per acre are increasing in NJ.  See Forests of the Garden State (Widmann 2005) and the Assessment of NJ's Forest Resources.  Development pressure has influenced the need for rapid wildfire suppression and contributed to higher pine stand densities in the southern portions of the state.  Social values in the state have lead to an aversion to any sort of readily visible forest management techniques, regardless of their objectives.

While direct suppression efforts have certainly proven effective against SPB, I think that in the long term SPB and other native insect pests will continue to become a problem in NJ until solutions to the root of the problem are also implemented.  Both posts linked at the beginning of this post from the Forest Business Network, point out changes in managing the ecosystem.  A culture surrounding the the NJ Pinelands where human activity and "natural" activity are considered as two separate issues have lead to a disconnect in how people interact with the forest.  If the past is any indication, I think that social change will have to precede political and eventually silivicultural change on the ground.  Unfortunately, social change tends to be relatively slow.