Katie's Sightings

Old Growth Forests!

Diane and an Old Growth California Red Fir — Abies magnifica

Haypress Creek Trail

I lucked out and went on three hikes in the last eight days! They all differed from each other in elevation, landscape, and ecosystem, but they all included Old Growth Forests. The old trees were absolutely amazing to see! There were White Firs, California Red Firs, Douglas Firs, Ponderosa Pines, and Incense Cedars. They were all HUGE! Additionally, it was incredible how straight most of the trees were, and how they barely tapered for the first 50 feet! It was hard to capture their size in photographs, because my wide-angle camera lens compresses how the trees look. Sometimes, their massive size isn’t apparent because the trees around them are giants! My friends Terry and Diane measured one ancient Douglas Fir and it had a diameter of 7 feet and a circumference of 22 feet! WOW!!!Old Growth Ponderosa Pine — Pinus ponderosa

We hiked along several miles of forests, sometimes on logging roads and sometimes on a trail until we came to the Old Growth Forest. It wasn't close to any of the roads we had walked on, but it wasn't that far from them either. We were so glad that somehow they had never been cut down, even though many areas nearby had been logged. Probably the US Forest Service has protected them, unlike their policy of not so long ago. The following information describes Old

Growth Forests and their history. It is from the website www.sierraforestlegacy.org.

“There are a variety of definitions for old-growth forests, but they are generally defined as forests in their later stages of development, Trees sizes for old-growth have been variously defined as trees over 24" to 30" in diameter with medium to high canopy cover; however age is the most important factor, and some ancient trees may not appear huge in girth. Old growth trees are—at the minimum—150-200 years in age. Tree size and age-related structure are a result of growing conditions, species type, elevation, and climatic conditions resulting from the diversity of ecosystems.

There has been an alarming decline in old-growth forest acres and structure in the Sierra Nevada since the 1850’s Today, it is estimated that only 12 percent of mixed conifer old-growth forest remains, a staggering loss of approximately 82 percent of the historical acreage of old-growth found in mixed conifer forests.

Much of this loss is from the high-grading (a type of selective cutting where some or all of the biggest and best trees are cut) of large trees, railroad logging, and clear cutting logging practices, which continued up to the early 1990's on Federal land and continue today on industrial timber lands in the Sierra Nevada. During the logging ‘hey-days’ of the 1980’s the Forest Service was producing over 1 billion board feet of saw-timber annually from the Sierra Nevada, much of it in large old-growth trees.”

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