It would be foolish to not take care of our forests. But what constitutes proper care? It’s a worldwide question with local answers.
For some in Massachusetts, a hands-off, no-logging approach of doing nothing seems most appealing. However, doing nothing is a narrow approach that can never meet all of our needs.
True, many forest features develop best without our influence. Indeed, no-cut areas are part of a sound management approach. However, even within areas where timber is logged, there are thoughtful ways to sustain natural development.
Hardly hands-off, people around the world have always tended to engage purposefully with nature to create “biodiverse cultural landscapes” (People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years, Ellis et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021). Those readers who garden in their own backyard continue this tradition.
Regrettably, in Massachusetts, most of the record of Native American practices that shaped the pre-contact forest vanished in the 1600s. Fragmentary historical accounts indicate that forests were kept open and that fire was an important tool, at least near seasonal settlements. But contradictory scientific conclusions leave us a bit in the dark, especially regarding scale and intensity, and especially in oak and pine forests.
Our understanding of the past has been much better preserved in California. In her book “Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources,” ecologist M. Kat Anderson cites extensive interviews with Native California elders whose grandparents, dating back to the 1800s, still carried out the very types of landscape-level practices lost long ago in New England.
For instance, Native Californians traditionally used fire as a tool to stimulate and open the forest, including to promote oak trees for acorns and to cultivate large quantities of young-forest sprouts to make the myriad baskets central to their way of life. Elders speaking to Anderson lament the modern idea of a hands-off wilderness as neglect, a sentiment exemplified most clearly in the words of a Southern Miwok elder, who said: “The white man sure ruined this country. It’s turned back to wilderness.”
Speaking on camera about the modern-day survival and revival of old practices (“Tending the Wild: Complete Broadcast Special,” KCET), one younger-generation Shmuwich Chumash basket weaver describes the relationship between Native people and nature not as hands-off, but rather as one of gathering and tending, taking and giving back, with a pushing back and forth in search of balance.
A key fact here is that non-indigenous observers, whether intending to take or to preserve, have repeatedly overlooked Indigenous roles in shaping nature for their needs, and have repeatedly mistaken culturally managed landscapes for pristine wilderness. Even sharp-eyed naturalists such as John Muir have been fooled.
Clearly, if done thoughtfully enough, the benefits of the wild and the managed can co-exist. We see this today in Massachusetts, where residents often do not even realize that the wonderful forests around them have been logged.
True, California and Massachusetts are not the same. And, true, our modern ways differ vastly from those of older, indigenous ways, both conceptually and materially, whether here or there, then or now. But among those things we perhaps share across cultures and time is an irreducible need to actively seek specific outcomes from the forest around us.
Yes, across cultures, we still enjoy winter heat from wood. Here in modern-day Massachusetts, though, we are less in need of sprouts for baskets. Instead, we need serviceable lumber with which to build and improve houses. And though few will cultivate nutritious acorns for food, many wish to see the full diversity of wildlife thrive in our landscape. And though we do not need to keep nearby forests open and walkable for hunting and berrying, we seek smart ways to sequester imperceptible carbon from the air and supply a reliable flow of drinkable water to our reservoirs. In short, we continue to rely on the forest for our survival.
Thus, there remains a great impetus not merely to appreciate the forest, but also to purposefully engage with it. The question is always how. Some approaches are bound to be more hands-on than others. Unique answers will always be needed for each place and time. Indeed, sometimes doing nothing will be the best choice. But doing nothing as a blanket rule will never suffice.
In that spirit, I encourage readers to reject any of the proposed legislation (such as H 912 and H 1002) that would increasingly force us to manage our forests, in effect, by doing nothing.
Michael Mauri is a forester based in South Deerfield.