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State Plans California
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Southern Pacific Rainforests
(Area - 18,690,307 ha)
Description - This moist physiographic area extends from the
Pacific coastline of Washington and Oregon inland to the crest of the Cascade Mountains.
It ends arbitrarily at the Canadian border, and also includes the coastal ranges of
northwestern California. Save for coastal estuaries and some inland drier valleys (the
Willamette and the Puget Trough), the natural vegetation is coniferous forest. There are
six coniferous forest types, defined by elevation and latitude, including the coastal
Sitka spruce zone, low-elevation western hemlock/western red cedar, mid-elevation Pacific
silver fir zone, subalpine mountain hemlock, a mixed-conifer zone in the Klamath/Siskiyou
Mountains, and the redwood forest of northwest California.Conservation recommendations and needs - Although urbanization and conversion to pasture have affected some areas, this physiographic area has been and continues to be in forest cover. Forest management practices have shaped much of this region. Historically, practices including fire suppression, disease control, salvage logging, short rotations, clearcutting, slash burning, herbicide applications, and thinning have resulted in a loss of forest structural diversity. More recently, practices have changed, particularly on federal lands, with a greater emphasis on maintenance of ecological values and functions integrated into sustainable commodity production.
A very large percentage of the forest in this area is either publicly owned or owned and managed by large forest products companies. Achieving an integrated set of objectives with so few owners is more feasible here than in many other areas. Recent history, however, of environmental conflict over birds and other organisms related to old-growth issues and the Endangered Species Act has made cooperation somewhat more difficult. Much of the negative forces from this history are being overcome. Bird conservation objectives are tied to focal species that represent habitat attributes and/or ecological functions of various forest age classes. As examples, the need of Vaux’s Swift for large snags in old-growth systems, the need of Olive-sided Flycatcher for residual canopy trees in early seral stages, and the use of a closed canopy in young-to-mature aged forest by Hermit Warblers all drive parts of an integrated bird plan. These and other features, in certain quantities and combinations, should be maintained on planning landscapes at any point in time in a shifting mosaic of conditions.
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