| A 50-yr precedent was reversed in 1995 when, following a powerful windstorm, salvage logging was disallowed in the protected Adirondack Park State Forest Preserve of New York, United States. Damage from a similar windstorm in 1950 had provoked massive salvage operations, approved by the New York State legislature on the grounds of fire prevention and resource conservation. Following the 1995 storm, state conservation officers and consulting ecologists were prepared with up-to-date assessment tools and a theoretical framework that treated large disturbances as normal ecosystem processes; the executive branch acted in accord with their recommendations to forgo salvage. Prior to these events in New York State, federal forest preserves in western states had... |
