K is for Keep

K is for keep.  Aldo Leopold, noted wildlife biologist said "The first rule to intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." What he didn’t say was stop doing anything

Aldo Leopold was a prolific writer and perhaps his most most famous quote is from his book “Game Management” published in 1933. He said: “The central thesis of game management is this: game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools which have heretofore destroyed it—axe, plow, cow, fire and gun.”

But this is tinkering, and what about keep, so where, how?  What’s thought of as easy examples of keep, wilderness and streamside buffer strips are subject to wildfires and windstorm generated blowdown. That does not seem like keep to me.  So how to really keep all the pieces, it may be like predicting the future, you have to create it.

The tools Aldo Leopold used to restore wildlife can also be used to restore and creatively prepare our forests to be resilient for whatever may be ahead.  Thinning trees with a chainsaw, grazing non-native species with goats, and the use of prescribed fire to control “fuel loadings” (brush and smaller trees that have grown in the absence of fire) are just a few examples of actively managing a forest to improve its health and keep all the pieces around.  A forest owner on the North Oregon Coast is planting wildflowers in harvested forest areas to provide food for native pollinating bees. A parking lot, subdivision or grassy sports field just doesn’t offer the same opportunity. Keep done right, is probably the most complicated and creatively challenging of all forest management activities.