Rejoice!
My broken right wrist is improving! Now I’m able to operate a chainsaw! I’ve
found out a maneuver for a chainsaw is a very good exercise as rehab. “Take a
full-grip, and operate with a slow movement of both right and left wrists.” It means
substantial weight-training for hands and arms. Perfect. One morning after a
forestry activity the day before, I was surprised to find out a lighter feeling
around my operated wrist. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Life gives me lots of new findings …
And so, recently I have visited several deep mountains for thinning and
pruning. I have another new discovery: soil.
Kanagawa Forest Instructor Association has a field for forestry in a slope of Mt.
Nabewari 鍋割山 (ASL 1272m), at around ASL 800-900m. According
to FAO (2015), Japan places ourselves as World #2 for forest coverage of the territory
with 66%, next to Finland (73.1%). 40-70 years ago, when the government gave a
generous subsidy for commercial afforestation, people planted cedars and
cypresses with gusto, which makes 40% of Japanese forest afforested area. It
means quite a lot of our forests, 10,290,000ha to be exact (2017), were planted
by human. You see? Japan does not have a wide territory, nor for a “vast expansion”
to plant trees like in Siberia. Inevitably Japanese afforestation expands to
the places like “What on earth were they thinking when they introduced these
trees in such a remote area!?” Frankly, the area for Mt. Nabewari is one of
such places.
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| This is the entrance to our field. |
To be
fair, not all of these “strange” places for afforestation went through
commercial deforestation and haste afforestation with allergen, aka coniferous
trees. For one thing, during the total war of the 1930s and the 1940s, Japanese
Imperial Force did not bother long-term management of the mother land so that
they just ordered to cut, cut, cut the trees “to build fighter airplanes, or the
like, by wood”; were they crazy? In 1945 when the war was over, many slopes of
Tanzawa 丹沢 were miserably bold (for this topic, pls. see my
posts in September 22 and October 27, 2017). Planting something ASAP for avoid landslides
at least was, and is, a reasonable option. In any case, very fragile soil of
Tanzawa does not need to wait for a totalitarian Japanese Empire to have frequent
deep-seated slope failures. So, it may be such considerations, not greedily pursuing
profit from cutting trees, that made our grandpas to afforest such places that
requires at least 2 hours mount climbing to reach for forest instructors with car-access
privilege.
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| It’s
not in the forestry field for the Association, but on Hadano Forestry Road 秦野林道, some 2K away from the activity site. On the last days of this July, it was a perfect mountain slope, but in mid-September, after several visits of typhoons, the place was like this. The scree was spreading over the forestry road. I guess it would be tricky for a car to maneuver this point. The other side is a tumbling-down valley for some 50 meters. Yes, there is a crash barrier in a spec same as for the downtown … Good luck for drivers. This is Tanzawa. |
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| To
reach to the forestry field, we proceed along the Ushirozawa gorge 後沢. Sometimes, we had to mend the road to go further. |
The area
Kanagawa Forest Instructors are taking care of for these 10 years is a public
land owned by Kanagawa Prefecture. It expands the west side of a ridgeway hiking
course to the peak of Mt. Nabewari. Across the narrow 1m wide trekking road,
the east side is owned by the national government and populated by natural broadleaved
trees, not afforested coniferous forests like in the west side ... There must
have been some story behind it … Anyway, if you aim for the peak of Mt.
Nabewari from Yadoriki Bus Stop 寄, you’ll find such area
between Kurinoki-bora 栗ノ木洞and Ushirozawa Nokkoshi 後沢乗越. (If
you take a standard hiking course, it takes about 3 hours of continuous uphill to
the area from the bus stop.) Unlike hiking roads, inside of a forest does /
should not have a treaded route by visitors. Sure enough, the forest floor for
the field of Kanagawa Forest Instructors is close to “natural.” And that’s the
thing I was surprised.
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| The
spot where the forest instructors operated some 10 years ago … Now the place has at least sunshine reaching to the ground. |
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| Peeking
into the national side, the east side of the ridge way to Mt. Nabewari |
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| The ridge way from Yadoriki to Mt. Nabewari |
The
ground we entered was steep and scree-covered slopes with not much variety in vegetation.
The cypresses are clinging to the ground with their roots spreading bare on the
surface. I could not be optimistic for those surviving that would one day
become gigantic trees protecting the ground to collapse. My senior instructors
told me the area is receiving heavy pest damage by deer so that the floor is dominated
by plants hated by the animal. Hmmmmmm. … I moved up the slope almost crawling,
and thinned and pruned not-so-well growing cypresses on the poor soil. “Don’t
cause rocks to fall. It’s a very dangerous area …” Of course … Even at around ASL
800m, the heatwave of this summer attacked us ferociously. It surely was an
adventure … The condition of the land might be due to heavy deforestation some 80
years ago, or it had been like that for millennia. I have not been deep into
the national side, but just at a glance it seemed the floor for the broadleaved
trees in the east slope was not much different. What instructors do in the west
side was thinning and pruning to make the growing condition somehow better for
the afforested trees. Sisyphean task (literally, yeah)? Could be. At best, it
would take a very long time to have a tangible result from our activities … But
if we don’t do it, the outcome shall be worse with serious land collapse. I
recalled the episode in Tokyo where in 2005 a deer-infested and impoverished cedar
forests collapsed and destroyed water supply network for Okutama Town 奥多摩町 (Takatsuki, 2015). That’s we have to avoid
happening here …
* Seiki
Takatsuki. “On Deer Problem: the direction of unbalanced nature.”
Yamakei-shinsho, Tokyo, 2015. 高槻成紀 「シカ問題を考える：バランスを崩した自然の行方」ヤマケイ新書：東京、2015.
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| From this photo, you may think it’s not bad for the forest floor. |
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| But
the most dominating plant there in August was this pretty Boenninghausenia japonica. It’s a relative to oranges. When you pick them, it smells nice … Even though, with some reason deer hate it, and so the flower survives in this forest. |
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| This
is another spot the instructors operated several years ago. Could you see the soil condition? |
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| Anyway, the prefecture built barriers to prevent deer from coming in. The effect of it is … The place is too wide to close off, perhaps. |
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| This is the place we did thinning and pruning … |
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| A
diedback cypress tree due to, this time, bear-infestation. An Asian Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus) peeled off a swath of cypress bark to lick sweet sap. They effectively prosecute gardling for this tree. The leading nature photographer of Japan, Gaku Miyazaki 宮崎学, wrote in his blog the bears did not attack a tree randomly, but carefully chose weakened ones for their tasty treat. He continues, as such, observing many diedback cypresses would be an indicator for the health of the forest. Thank god, we did not find many bear-diebacks on that day … |
With my
recovering wrist, I am now venturing into Doshi Village 道志村 for thinning activity as well.
Very broadly speaking, Tanzawa and Doshi areas belong to the same geological range,
called Fossa magna that has very
unique characteristics in Japanese archipelago. Though, strikingly, Tanzawa and
Doshi are damned different each other. Next week, let me tell you my adventure in
Doshi forest this year.
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| Broad-leaved forest along the ridgeway to Mt. Nabewari |
If you find an environmental issues
in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation
Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター
657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121 〒243－0121 厚木市七沢657
Phone: 046-248-0323
You can send an enquiry to them by
clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/
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