The loss of certain forest ecosystems may be inevitable in a future shaped by climate change, the chief of the Forest Service said yesterday.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell delivered his frank assessment of the challenges posed by global warming yesterday as the guest speaker for the 2013 Pinchot Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. He stressed that his agency, now more than a century old, will need to adjust its standards and practices quickly to keep up with the rapid pace of ecosystem change under global warming.

"I can't stress this enough: The things we learned in school -- what's right for this stand of trees, what's right for this watershed -- might not work in the future," he said.

Among the changes, the Forest Service may have to suspend its long-standing mandate of restoring ecosystems that have experienced disturbance events, he said.

"There are certain areas that we are not going to be able to maintain. There are places we've seen where aspen [trees] have been lost, and we've gone in and tried to restore them, when the reality is, we've lost the site, it's not coming back."

Read the full article on ClimateWire (paywall)

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell yesterday urged Congress to permanently authorize an expiring program that allows proceeds from timber sales to be used for forest restoration, arguing it enjoys broad bipartisan support.

Tidwell said a recovering housing market has generated more demand for wood products, which could allow the agency to raise more revenues to fund forest restoration projects.

At a hearing before the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Energy and Forestry, Tidwell also discussed the effects of sequester cuts, the success of collaborative planning and the Bureau of Land Management's new hydraulic fracturing rule.

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