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You hear a lot of talk among restorationists these days about "building ecosystem resistance and resilience" to try to maintain native biodiversity within ecosystems. What are some of the things you can do to achieve that? NS: In some cases there are some really obvious things you can do. I'm going to talk about what I know best, which is forests here in the Sierra Nevada. Many forests have become unusually dense due to a century of fire exclusion. By thinning those forests--whether by prescribed fire or mechanical thinning--you can increase their resistance and resilience to air pollution and . . . you name it. I can't think of a stress where an overly dense forest doesn't benefit if it's thinned. In a national park, the main way you get a forest to be thinner is by prescribed fire. It tends to kill the smallest trees and open up things a little more, and there's less competition among the trees, and those that remain tend to be healthier and grow faster. In other areas it may be more appropriate to go in with chainsaws and thin out the smaller trees--I know that's a political hot-button issue, but just about everything is these days. So you are suggesting that instead of trying to replicate ecosystems, you have to take the lessons you've learned from the past systems and try to apply them on the ground as conditions change? NS: Yes. I still think we need to look to the past to understand how ecosystems work; we definitely have to keep learning about how ecosystems respond to climate, to fire, to all these different things, and one of the best ways to do that is to look at the past. Maybe as we develop a better understanding of how ecosystems work, we'll be in a better position to conserve native biodiversity into the future. Is there anything beyond thinning that you're looking at that might help the forests? NS: No, not currently. The main reason I've been giving talks about this is to get more people to be thinking along those lines, about what we can do, because I certainly don't claim I have the answers. I'm just trying to pose the questions.
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