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CounterPunch
August
29, 2002
A Real
Healthy Forests Initiative
by Michael Donnelly
With all the Big Timber-generated hysteria about
"environmentalists causing forest fires" as rationale
for another Public forest grab, a real analysis of the situation
is in order. In none of industry's calls for more logging, do
we have any explanation of, perhaps, the greatest mystery of
the Universe: how did these forests ever limp along for tens
of thousands of years without the aid of foresters?
In the 1950s, the Forest Service (USFS)
embarked on a program they called "Snag Management."
Operating on the theory that snags (dead standing trees) were
"lightning rods," the USFS began to lop them off and
leaving the trunks on the ground to decay. The results can be
easily seen today with a short stroll down the South Breitenbush
Gorge National Scenic Trail in the Oregon Cascades. The USFS
often sweetened the pot for the cutters by allowing them to take
live merchantable trees off to the mills when they sanitized
the ecosystem of the offending snags.
Decades later, the USFS realized that
the snags were the Wildlife Hotels of the forests. These snags
served as the homes of many of the predators needed to eat the
bugs that periodically outbreak in the forest. So now the USFS
is paying folks to climb perfectly healthy old growth trees,
plant explosive charges in the tops and inject heart rot into
the trees in a process called "Snag Recruitment."
It was all part of Smokey Bear's full
court press against "forest fires." And, it is just
one of the faulty fire prevention efforts that have been a multibillion
dollar form of corporate welfare, for the benefit of Big Timber.
In Smokey's 60 years of demonizing fire, one of the four elements
in which these forests evolved, this zero tolerance of fires
policy has cost the taxpayers, damaged ecosystems and, indeed,
made the forests, themselves, MORE vulnerable to major, catastrophic
fires.
First, the USFS sells off the big, most
fire-resistant trees at a loss to taxpayers (a subsidy estimated
at over $1 billion per year). Taking down these trees opens up
the forest floor to more sunlight, drying it out and making it
more fire prone. Then the USFS replaces the mature stand with
plantations of highly flammable even-aged monocultures. Then
the USFS embarks on a program of fire suppression, allowing the
buildup of small, sickly trees and brush.
Now, we have George W. Bush coming to
Oregon and calling for more of the same. His "Healthy Forests
Initiative" proposes to log more than 2.5 million acres
of federal forests under suspension of all applicable environmental
laws. As usual, it's another Bush "initiative" that
guts environmental protections, provides financial breaks for
already wealthy individuals and corporations and does away with
pesky public oversight. Couldn't have anything to do with the
fact that the timber industry contributes 82 percent of its millions
in annual political contributions to Republicans, could it?
The goal? To get at those large, moneymaking
trees that have been off-limits to Big Timber under current environmental
protections. While spouting a lot of rhetoric about the need
to clear away the "fuels" that have accumulated as
the result of Smokey's success, the USFS and industry are really
about cutting the big, merchantable trees. The small trees and
brush around human habitation -- the real threat -- have no commercial
value. So, the Forest Service chief has said that large, mature
trees must be cut to make the "thinning" efforts financially
feasible.
That's not all. In Oregon's largest forest
fire ever, the Biscuit Fire in the Siskiyou Range in SE Oregon,
over 45,000 acres of Ancient Forests were torched, not by nature,
but by the USFS in an unnecessary "backfire," set to
protect a town that wasn't even threatened. In fact, estimates
are that over a third of all acres burned so far this year in
the West were ignited by such USFS backburns. (That doesn't even
account for the hundreds of thousands of acres of fires deliberately
set by federal firefighting employees in Colorado and Arizona.)
Here's my Healthy Forests Initiative:
-- Place all remaining Ancient Forest
stands off limits to logging;
-- Spend part of the over $1 billion
the USFS costs the Treasury annually on timber sales on clearing
the sickly trees and brush around the edges of the National Forests
instead;
-- Purchase and remove homes built in
highly vulnerable areas;
-- Allow nature's regular, low-intensity
fires to once again burn through the forests, cleansing them
of built-up fuels and the breeding grounds for destructive insects
and diseases;
-- Suppress fires only where a loss of
life is immanent;
-- Change the Forest Service's mission
to make Clean Water production the top priority;
- Fund the Forest Service's transition
into a full on Recreation Agency.
The forests will recover, the taxpayers
will save money, recreationists will have a safer, more enjoyable
experience and our water supplies will be more protected and
predictable. Smokey's well meaning, though failed efforts should
be ended and sent to that repository of other follies of the
past, like Snag Management. And, current follies like the Bush
"Healthy Forests Initiative" must be recognized for
what it is, a Big Timber handout that, like Smokey, only exacerbates
the problem.
PS As to the canard about environmentalist
obstructionism causing forest fires, the General Accounting Office
of Congress found that our of a total of over 10,000 legitimate
"Fuels Reduction Thinning" projects, only three! were
appealed by environmentalists.
MICHAEL DONNELLY,
from Salem, OR is a small woodlot owner and longtime defender
of Public Forests.
He can be reached at: Pahtoo@aol.com
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