Today's Stories

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 11, 2008

The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Proposal

Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

By GEORGE WUERTHNER

The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Proposal (BCSP) has gotten a lot of positive press, including most recently in an editorial in the Missoulian on December 1st  and another on December 9 in the Billings Gazette. To put it bluntly, the BSCP appears to be a trade of public trees to the local timber industry in exchange for their support for wilderness designation.

The major part of the plan appears to be a public subsidy of the Pyramid Lumber Company based upon flawed assumptions about forest health, fire suppression, and the effectiveness of thinning as a fire hazard reduction mechanism. Other alternatives to achieve the same goals that would not involve logging are not given serious consideration. Plus, the real environmental costs of logging are ignored and glossed over to make this proposal sound environmentally benign or even environmentally beneficial.

One of the potentially positive aspects of the BCSP is the removal of culverts, closure of roads, and other activities that would benefit the environment. But how these removals and restoration activities are funded is problematic. Stewardship logging is an Orwellian idea whereby money generated by the presumed profits of timber sales will be used to repair land damaged by logging. With such an incentive, it’s easy to imagine that agencies will advocate more logging to do more repair of logging damaged lands. That’s like advocating more gambling to fund gambling addiction programs.

While I don’t doubt for a minute that the plan’s proponents have the best intentions and goals, I believe they may have deluded themselves into thinking the BCSP is a good thing for Montana and the public by ignoring and/or glossing over some potential problems. Nevertheless, I do want to acknowledge that the folks working on the Seeley Lake District, including the Tim Love, the district ranger, as well as all others involved in this proposal, are a very committed and honorable group of public employees and citizens.   The Wilderness Society, for instance, has created a GIS program to evaluate where thinning might be most appropriate based upon such considerations as distance from roads, forest type, and other factors that help target logging to places where it might be most beneficial—if logging were to be done.

However, in their rush to reach consensus, there has been a tendency to forgo critical review of the plan’s underlying assumptions, particularly on the part of environmental groups who should be providing such a critique. Without such a balanced review of the pros and cons of the proposal, I, as well as the American people, cannot determine whether the BSCP is ultimately in the best interest of the country and the forest ecosystems of western Montana.

While I have serious reservations about the logging aspects of the BCSP, the designation of 87,000 acres of wilderness additions to the Bob Marshall and Mission Mountains Wildernesses would be a terrific net benefit. The area includes important grizzly, lynx and wolf habitat, plus spawning streams used by bull trout. Monture Creek, as well as other parts of the proposed wilderness additions, are important trail access points into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  The closure and full restoration of old roads, if implemented, is welcomed as well.

FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS

Flawed assumption number one is that the forests in the Seeley Lake area are suffering from fire exclusion, hence more dense than would otherwise be “natural.” Yet recent research suggests that the role of fire exclusion on increased stand density and biomass accumulation may be exaggerated, especially for forest types other than those dominated by ponderosa pine.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that a fifty-year period of time between 1940s and late 1990s (ending with Yellowstone in1988) was a time of cooler and moister climatic conditions in the northern Rockies compared to the preceding decades, as well as the last few decades.  Cool, moist weather would have limited the spread of fires, and also contributed to higher tree seedling survival—both of which would naturally lead to denser forest stands, more residual biomass, and fewer large fires.

Flawed assumption number two is that the current spate of large blazes in the Northern Rockies is a consequence of “fuels build up” due to fire suppression.  One of the reasons for this flawed assumption is the widespread application of the Southwest Ponderosa pine fire regime model which postulates that frequent low intensity fires kept fuels and stand density low. Many apply this conceptual model to all forest types even though most of the forest stands within the BCSP, as well as the rest of the northern Rockies are not ponderosa pine, but species that tend to burn naturally with mixed to high severity fire regimes.  

And to make matters more interesting, there are some researchers now suggesting that the Southwest model does not apply to even ponderosa pine outside of the Southwest, suggesting that stand replacement blazes may occasionally occur at longer intervals imposed over the shorter fire frequency in ponderosa pine in the Rockies and elsewhere. 

Indeed, the majority of forest types burning in the northern Rockies in recent years are stands of lodgepole pine, western larch, grand fir, sub alpine fir, Douglas fir, aspen, and other species that are naturally characterized by mixed to high severity fire regimes and naturally longer intervals between fires than those found in pure ponderosa pine forests. It is doubtful that most of these forests—with the possible exception of dry Douglas fir stands have been significantly altered—even if one assumes that fire suppression, not climate, is responsible for current conditions.

The large blazes we are witnessing are likely more a consequence of changing global climate than due to fuels. When you have drought, low humidity and winds, you get conditions that make fires unstoppable. We are experiencing longer periods of hot weather, often coupled with drought and frequent high winds. Under these conditions, fires burn through all kinds of forest stands and densities with equal ferocity.

So the impressive blazes we are experiencing are less likely due to “forest health” but largely to climatic conditions favorable to rapid fire spread.

EFFECTIVENESS OF FUEL REDUCTIONS

This brings up another problem with the BCSP. Proponents argue that logging can reduce fuels and thus reduce fire risk. On the surface this seems to make sense. Reduce fuels, lower fire risk. However, there is a lot of research that finds mechanical thinning of the forest is seldom effective at stopping or even reducing fire intensity under severe fire conditions. And severe fire conditions are the only ones that are of real concern since these are the only fires that typically are a threat to communities. In some cases, due to the increase in fine fuel residue left by logging operations, it can actually increase fire risk.

Mechanically thinning by hand, followed by piling of debris and burning has been shown to be more effective at reducing fire intensity and spread, but this is a very costly operation, often running into the thousands of dollars per acre. Furthermore, it requires continued repeat treatments to maintain effectiveness since removal of small trees and shrubs by fuels reduction projects leads to less competition and enhance rapid growth of new trees and shrubs. In other words, you don’t do this once and call it good. As a consequence, this might be an appropriate strategy if used in a surgical manner in and near Seeley Lake, but it is unlikely to be implemented across the landscape as a whole simply due to cost.

We should not forget that the National Park Service does a tremendous job of fuels management without logging, but the Forest Service always seems to see logging as the answer to all that ails the forests. Much like the old time doctors who always advocated bleeding a person to rid the body of “bad” blood that was presumed to be causing illness, the Forest Service tends to default to logging as the “cure” for all ills real or imaginary.

A far more effective and less costly way to protect Seeley Lake home owners is to reduce the flammability of homes themselves by mandatory metal roofs, keeping gutters free of debris, and other means that are remarkably successful at reducing home losses to fires.

LOGGING IMPACTS

One of the biggest problems in the plan is that it fails to consider the full range of negative impacts associated with logging. Logging always degrades the forest ecosystem. Logging roads and skid trails become vectors for the spread of weeds. Yes you can spray herbicides on these weed infestations, but spraying is seldom 100% effective, so every time you log, you help to spread weeds, which in the long run may be one of the worse threats to ecosystem health.

Logging roads cut slopes, severing down slope water flow, and capturing water on roadbeds, which then runs off with greater volume and erosive power. Not surprisingly, logging roads are a major cause of sedimentation in streams, negatively impacting fish, and aquatic life. 

Logging roads also act as vectors for human entry through illegal ORV activity. A study by the MDFWP has shown that closed logging roads facilitates easier hiking by hunters, thus increases access, leading to a reduction in security for hunted and trapped species.

Logging equipment compacts soils, decreasing water infiltration and reducing soil productivity by eliminating space for soil microbes from bacteria to nematodes.

Logging removes biomass, much of necessary for future forest growth. Live trees, dead logs on the ground and snags are not a “wasted” or “excess” resource that can be removed without impacting the future resiliency of the forest. These physical structures provide the home and feeding areas for many species. Dead trees, in particular, have great, but mostly unappreciated ecological importance in the maintenance of the forest ecosystem health.

Logging alters stand age structure, species composition, and other variables in ways that we don’t fully appreciate or acknowledge.

The full and complete restoration of roads is more than putting up a gate. It requires the restoration of slope and replacement of top soil, removal of culverts and naturalization of stream channels, and revegetation. To fully restore a road is a costly endeavor, and seldom occurs. So ask a lot of questions about just what the BCSP means when they say they will “restore” or “close” a road and how will they pay for this?

Yes one can mitigate some of the worse aspects of logging impacts—if you even know what these impacts are—but logging has many impacts that appear to be glossed over by all the parties to the BCSP.

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

But beyond the problem that we are creating more environmental damage by logging so we can fix the damage created by past logging, there is the issue of implementation. Given that the demand for lumber is at near record lows, the demand for public logs will likely result in very low bids. Some proponents expect timber demand to rise in the future, making the plan’s economic assumptions more viable. However, at this time it’s not clear there will be sufficient additional funds over and above the cost of implementing the timber sales to do other restorative work like road closures. With such uncertainty, there should be no logging. On other stewardship contracts in the Montana, the trees were cut, but much of the lauded restoration work that was supposed to happen did not occur.

Furthermore, we don’t need to log the forest to pay for these activities. Keep in mind that the BCSP is advocating a subsidy of $12 million for implementation of the plan, much of it a direct subsidy to Pyramid Lumber to facilitate its purchase of a biomass burner to reduce the energy costs of its operations to the company. If we had $12 million to throw at Pyramid Lumber and the Seeley Lake Ranger District, we could use that money to fund road removal and other activities that would both create jobs and benefit the environment without the negative impacts of logging.

Even if one believed that it was in the public interest to subsidize the economic opportunities of Seeley Lake, one can question whether other ways of spending the money might produce greater long-term benefits. Perhaps using that same amount of money to hire more teachers for the Seeley Lake schools might result in more long-term good than subsidizing a lumber company. Or maybe creating more cross country ski, mountain biking, and hiking trails in the area might ultimately result in greater economic activity than subsidizing a logging company. I have not seen any evidence that the BCSP has considered any other options.

THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

That the timber industry and Forest Service would gloss over logging impacts is not surprising, but it’s unforgivable that environmental organizations like TNC, TU, NWF, MWA, TWS all fail to articulate these costs.  If environmentalists fail to articulate the real environmental costs of logging, who will?

Given the uncertainty about many of the basic assumptions of the BCSP such as the need for “restoration” and whether thinning will reduce fire risk, and other issues of economic viability of the stewardship proposals, one would hope that environmental organizations would default towards no manipulation of the land and/or the least intrusive methods that could accomplish the goals (like NPS fuels reduction, and mandatory regulations to reduce flammability of homes) rather than advocating intrusive and often environmentally destructive logging activities as a cure to questionable ailments. How can the public decide whether this BCSP serves the real interests of the American people if all we get is a one-sided view of the proposal that clearly serves the timber industry?

Is the BCSP worthy of public support? It is impossible to tell given the one-sided support for the proposal we have seen so far. One thing is certain; many of the real environmental and economic costs are ignored, while the presumed benefits are exaggerated. The BCSP might be a good starting point for further discussion, but without revisions, as it now stands, one can’t determine whether it’s really a public benefit or just a benefit to the local timber company.

George Wuerthner is editor of Wildfire.  

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