Tony
04-05-2010, 10:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/04/AR2010040402625.html
An interesting article in the Post this morning about how some of our forests are trying to grow back.
Between 1630 and the nadir of Eastern forests in the late 1800s, the East lost about 1,000 acres of forest a day. Seeking timber and cleared farmland, settlers cut Vermont maples, Maryland oaks, Georgia pines, erasing a kind of forest that residents can barely fathom now.
To fix this forest, they need to set it on fire.
"It's counterintuitive, isn't it?" said Brian van Eerden, a Nature Conservancy official. Around him, on one recent afternoon, employees and volunteers were using "drip torches" to dribble out flaming gasoline and diesel fuel onto the forest floor, setting thigh-high fires that turned the underbrush into char. "Black is good," van Eerden said.
The fires, officials said, are for the woodpeckers.
An interesting article in the Post this morning about how some of our forests are trying to grow back.
Between 1630 and the nadir of Eastern forests in the late 1800s, the East lost about 1,000 acres of forest a day. Seeking timber and cleared farmland, settlers cut Vermont maples, Maryland oaks, Georgia pines, erasing a kind of forest that residents can barely fathom now.
To fix this forest, they need to set it on fire.
"It's counterintuitive, isn't it?" said Brian van Eerden, a Nature Conservancy official. Around him, on one recent afternoon, employees and volunteers were using "drip torches" to dribble out flaming gasoline and diesel fuel onto the forest floor, setting thigh-high fires that turned the underbrush into char. "Black is good," van Eerden said.
The fires, officials said, are for the woodpeckers.