Ecological Restoration

The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. It is our intent to establish a regional vision and corresponding goals for Ecological Restoration consistent with this mission and the laws, regulations and policies that guide National Forest management.

Our goal for the Pacific Southwest Region¹ is to retain and restore ecological resilience of the National Forest lands to achieve sustainable ecosystems that provide a broad range of services to humans and other organisms. Ecologically healthy and resilient landscapes, rich in biodiversity, will have greater capacity to adapt and thrive in the face of natural disturbances and large scale threats to sustainability, especially under changing and uncertain future environmental conditions such as those driven by climate change and increasing human use. Our goal is based on a commitment to land and resource management that is infused by the principles of Ecological Restoration and driven by policies and practices that are dedicated to make land and water ecosystems more sustainable, more resilient, and healthier under current and future conditions.

Meadow restoration in the Tahoe National Forest

Ecosystem services are the goods and services that flow from wildlands and forests that are valued and used by people, and that directly or indirectly support human well-being. Wildlands and forests are valued for basic goods, such as wood, fiber, and water, but these ecosystems also deliver important services that are perceived to be free or limitless such as air and water purification, flood and climate regulation, biodiversity, scenic landscapes, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration and storage. The National Forests are important providers of ecosystem services to humans and to other inhabitants of our wildlands as well. Our commitment to restoration-based management includes a commitment to a renewed focus on the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services.

In the 21st century, three major drivers of change define restoration needs on the National Forests of the Pacific Southwest Region: climate change and shifting hydrologic patterns; increasingly dense and unhealthy forests; and rapidly growing human populations. These synergistic sources of change are resulting in increasingly over-allocated and undervalued ecosystem services (especially water); a dramatic increase in disturbance events such as uncharacteristic large-scale wildfires, floods, and insect and disease outbreaks; new and growing threats from terrestrial and aquatic invasive species; and a growing need to revitalize rural economies in California, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.

While sound restoration work is being conducted throughout the Region to increase forest and watershed resilience, important indicators suggest that disturbance impacts already outpace the benefits of this work, and that we will fall further behind over time. Wildland fires in California are becoming larger and more frequent. Of greatest concern is a notable increase in the area of forestland burning at high severity over the last quarter-century. Fire exclusion over many decades, in conjunction with other forest management choices, has resulted in dense, middle-aged forests over large areas of California. These forests are highly susceptible to severe wildfire, which fragments forests, emits carbon, increases erosion rates and sedimentation, negatively affects water quality and delivery, and damages old-growth forest habitats that sustain important components of the Region's biodiversity. Dense middle-aged forests are also more susceptible to drought stress, large-scale insect outbreaks and disease epidemics.

The ability of the Region's forestlands to sequester and store carbon has become a matter of national and international significance. Human additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are altering the climate, and federal land management agencies like the Forest Service are expected to play a major role in U.S. adaptation and mitigation responses to global warming. Mitigation responses revolve around the maintenance and enhancement of carbon sequestration processes on forestlands. In the Mediterranean climate that characterizes much of California, annual summer droughts and frequent fire are the norm, retention of carbon in most of the forest landscape requires stand structures and compositions that are resilient to fire. Nearly a century of fire exclusion in California, coupled with other management decisions on both private and public land, has resulted in forests that are at an increasing risk of loss due to large scale disturbances. There is an additional crisis taking place in our Southern California Forests as an unprecedented number of human-caused fires have increased fire frequency to the extent that fire-adapted chaparral can no longer survive and is being replaced with non-native annual grasses at an alarming rate. To counter these trends, forest managers will need to significantly increase the pace and scale of the Region's restoration work. Only an environmental restoration program of unprecedented scale can alter the direction of current trends.

From this point forward, Ecological Restoration will be the central driver of wildland and forest stewardship in the Pacific Southwest Region, across all program areas and activities. Future Land and Resource Management Plans, other strategic plans and project plans will identify Ecological Restoration as a core objective. Our Ecological Restoration work will include coordination and support for all wildlands and forests in the Region to promote an "all lands" approach to restoration. It will lead to a new way of doing business with our partners and neighbors, to coordinate work and priorities across forests and wildlands regardless of ownership. Collaboration across ownerships and jurisdictions to achieve Ecological Restoration will require active use of Forest Service State and Private Forestry authorities; an expanded effort to engage tribes, partners, and neighbors and to work in closer coordination with other agencies.