June 11, 2007

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

Finding Common Ground in the Management of Our Public Forests

At times is appears as though the paralysis over the management of the National Forests continues with no relief in sight. Environmental groups continue, often successfully, to appeal any timber sale, whether it’s called post-fire salvage, hazardous fuel reduction, or habitat enhancement, if that timber sale enters roadless areas, expands the network of badly maintained roads, eliminates increasingly rare old growth, or threatens water quality because of the reckless use of heavy equipment along streams or on steep terrain.

Meanwhile, the commercial timber industry continues to blame environmentalists and Forest Service personnel for any production cutbacks or layoffs at lumber mills, even when those cutbacks occur in the midst of a major depression in home building that is affecting mills nationwide, even those that do not rely on federal logs. Despite the low prices their products bring because of the glut of production and anemic demand, the timber industry insists that the Forest Service return to the peak harvest levels of two decades ago.

But quietly there is a change taking place as environmentalists, the Forest Service, and independent elements of the timber industry find common ground in plans for active forest restoration. Some of the very environmental groups that fought to block new commercial timber sales are now cooperating in the planning of new timber harvests.

What has brought some forest preservationists to support “thinning” projects that include the removal of some commercially valuable trees is the realization that human activity in the recent past has pushed some forests so far beyond their normal conditions that it is unlikely that the forests can regain natural stability and resilience themselves. Active intervention to remove some of the dense tangles of vegetation appears called for in some lower elevation forests.

Although it could be called “thinning,” it might as well be called logging since often a considerable volume of trees is removed and taken to mills. In other circumstances non-commercial trees are felled and later, during wetter periods, burned.

What distinguishes these “logging” efforts from the earlier timber sales programs that were paralyzed by environmental opposition is the motivation behind the timber removal: These forest restoration “logging” operations are not driven by a commercial objective but by a biological one.

As a result, almost all of the old growth trees are left and the trees that are taken are considerably smaller than the trees harvested in the past. In addition, since it is the lower elevation forests that are most likely to be far beyond natural conditions, the forest restoration efforts do not involve entering high roadless areas and usually do not require any new roads. Because one of the original human impacts that triggered the forest mess we are in today was commercial livestock grazing in the National Forests, that disruptive force is also being reduced. Finally, rather than being aimed at “fire proofing” the forests, the restoration efforts seek to move forests to a stable and resilient enough condition that fire can be reintroduced and allowed to play a natural role in maintaining the forests.

The timber industry’s objection to this non-commercial approach to managing our National Forests is that it sacrifices jobs and income at lumber mills, which is also a more politically attractive way of saying it reduces timber industry profits.

Of course that same objection could be raised about the big chunk of the nation’s forests that are in private, non-timber-industry hands. Much of the nation’s forests are owned by farmers, ranchers, and other ex-urban rural residents. One of the interesting characteristics of these forest owners is that they do not manage their forests primarily for the commercial timber values. Even when tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are waved in their faces for the rights to harvest the large trees on their land, they tend to decline. They clearly see those forested lands as something other than a warehouse of commercially valuable trees and want to maintain the non-commercial forest values. When they allow timber harvest, it is on their terms, with them dictating the character of the harvest.

Given that non-commercial forest values dominate the management of our private non-industrial timber lands, it is not surprising that citizens want the management of their National Forests guided by similar non-commercial, natural heritage, cultural, and environmental values. It seems no more legitimate to insist that only commercial considerations guide our public forests when a quite different set of values guides our private forests.

Our attachment to forests should not be surprising. Just a little more than a millennia ago, our European ancestors treated large old trees with deep religious respect. Threads of Christianity continued that deep respect for the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. European settlement of North America involved a deep immersion in the continent’s forests. They were part of both the European-American and the indigenous population’s story. The values driving the change in the management philosophy of our National Forests have long and deep roots. Those values are also compatible with the ongoing harvest of trees. That is what we are now observing in a variety of settings across the continent. Maybe the “forest wars” are winding down!