The Stuggle between Conservation and Preservation in the West

Question for Discussion: According to Limerick,
what are the major contradictions facing Federal
and State government efforts to conserve and
manage the national parks and forests?

Reading: Limerick, Legacy of Conquest,
pp. 293-304, 308-310; Nash, "The Value of
Wilderness" ; Leopold, "The Land Ethic" ;

Video: 60 Minutes": Timber Wars; Forest Service DVD:
1970s Clear Cutting,

Understanding the Ecology of Nature

Limerick, Mankind the Manager (in-class)
Definitions of Conservation and Presevation
(in-class)
Conservation vs. Preservation
Forest Service Multiple Use and Sustained
Yield Management (MUSY) (in-class)
Leopold, The Land Ethic (in-class)
The Sierra Club on Logging (in-class)
The Economic Case against Logging in
the National Forest (in-class)
The Forest Service and Conservation
Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative (in-class)
Nash, The Value of Wilderness (in-class)
Limerick, Mission to Environmentalists (in-class)
Lewis, Logging in the National Forests (in-class)
The 1995 Salvage Rider Law (in-class)

Conservation vs. Preservation

U.S. Forest Service National Forests
in the U.S. (in-class)
The Progressive Period: Conservation
Policy (in-class)
Definitions of Conservation and Presevation
Who was Gifford Pinchot?
The Evolution of the Conservation
Movement: 1850 to 1920
The Early Conservation Movement in
Context

The Forest Service & Conservation
U.S. Forest Service website (in-class)

U.S. Forest Service National Forests
in the U.S. (in-class)
Forest Service: Managing Multiple Uses
in the National Forests
Protecting America's National Forest
NRDC: The Roadless Area Rule(in-class)
Roadless Areas in the National Forests Map
Native Forest Network
Sierra Club: Forests Main webpage
Sierra Club: Forest Protection & Restoration
(in-class)
The National Forest Protection Alliance
The Cost of Federal Timber Sales Program (in-class)
The Economic Case against Logging in
the National Forest (in-class)
Weyerhauser.Com

Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative
President Bush Unveils Logging Plan for
the National Forest
President Bush: Cut Logging Restrictions (in-class)
Bush argues for Common-Sense Forestry (in-class)
Bush Unveils Healthy Forests Plan
President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative (in-class)
What is the Healthy Forest Initiative? (in-class)
By the Numbers: The Wild Fire and Logging Debate
Healthy Forest Restoration Act (2003)
Wild Fire Information Center
Sustainable Northwest
Forest Conservation Portal

The Debate over the Yuccal Mountain
Nuclear Waste Facility (in-class)
See Video of Clear-Cutting in the 1970s
Definitions of Conservation and Presevation
(in-class)
Timber Sales on Public Land have cost
Taxpayers Billions ( in-class)
Limerick, Mankind the Manager (in-class)
A Forest is More than Just Trees (in-class)
Leopold, The Basis for a Land Ethic (in-class)
Leopold, What is a Land Ethic? (in-class)
Nash, The Value of Wilderness:
Developing a Rationale to Preserve Forests
(in-class)
U.S. Forest Service Mission (in-class)
U.S. Forest Service National Forests
in the U.S. (in-class)
Lewis, Logging in the National Forests (in-class)
Forest Service: 1960 Multiple Use and Sustained
Yield Management (MUSY Doctrine) (in-class)
The 1964 Wilderness Act (in-class)
The National Forest Management Act of 1976
(in-class)
Sierra Club: Forest Management in the U.S.
Sierra Club: Recreation, Restoration Key
to Vibrant Forests
1995 Federal Subsidies to Logging Industry
(in-class)
The Economic Case against National Forest
Logging
CNN: National Forest Logging is Bad Business
(in-class)
The Cost of Federal Timber Sales Program(in-class)
The Sierra Club on the Economic Costs
of Logging and the value of Recreation (in-class)
The 1995 Salvage Rider Law (in-class)
Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative (in-class)
Commerical Logging Causes Forest Fires
Global Warming: Reasons to save the Forests
in the 21st Century
President Obama Forest Service Policy (2009)

What is Conservation and Preservation?

Two opposing factions had emerged within the environmental movement by the early 20th century: the conservationists and the preservationists. The conservationists (such as Gifford Pinchot ) focused on the human management and wise use of nature, whereas the preservationists sought to protect and perserve nature from development and human use. [3] The idea of protecting nature for nature's sake began to gain more recognition in the 1930s with American writers like Aldo Leopold , calling for a "land ethic" and urging wilderness protection. It had become increasingly clear that wild spaces were disappearing rapidly and that decisive action was needed to save them.

"Conservation" is the wise use of natural resources to benefit the greatest numbers of people, for the longest time. The term conservation was introduced in 1907 by Gifford Pinchot and W.J. McGee to embrace the collective use and preservation of forests, waters, soils, and minerals. The conservation ideal was natural resource management for the greatest good of the greatest number over the long run. The conservation movement emphasized resource development that generated jobs, affordable housing, food, safety, and health. Conservation implies sound biosphere management within given social and economic constraints, producing goods and services for humans without depleting natural ecosystem diversity, and acknowledging the naturally dynamic character of biological systems.

The preservationist approach wants
to preserve nature in its natural state, untouched by human development. The 1964 Wilderness act describes the larger goal of preservationists: "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain ..."
- The Wilderness Act, September 3, 1964

Limerick, Mankind the Manager

See the Wise Use Movement

"In the American West, Pinchot felt sure that nature would inevitably be put to use....The choice, Pinchot thought, was between wise use
and wasteful use. In light of that alternative, the
preservationist advocating "no use" was simply another variety of fool." (294)

Pinchot believed that "forestry was "Tree Farming," a process in which trees were harvested, replanted, and harvested again....
The purpose was to "make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation." The job was
not to stop the axe, but to regulate its use." (298)

"Managed forests also become, for some opponents, unfortunate models of humans' misunderstanding and misuing nature, trying to treat forests as crops when nature intended them to be the antithesis of domestication." (301)

[Environmentalists would say that forests are
living environments that support a diverse variety of species. They are not simply tree farms to be managed like a crop.] Chris Lewis

"The greatest source of conflict was the rise of recreational interest in the forests. More and more articulate, voting Americans valued the forests for hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting. The "Multiple Use Act of 1960" wrote this interest into federal law, directing the Forest Service to provide for "outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes." (302)

Nash, The Value of Wilderness

"Argument 1: Wilderness as a Reservoir of Normal Ecological Processes. What Leopold meant was that wilderness is a model of healthy, ecologically balanced land. At a time when so much of the environment is disturbed by technological man, wilderness has vital importance as a criterion against which to measure the impact of civilization. Without it we have no way of knowing how the land mechanism functions under normal conditions. The science of ecology needs nature reserves as medical science needs healthy people. "

Argument 2: Wilderness as a Sustainer of Biological Diversity. It is axiomatic in the biological sciences that there is strength in diversity. The whole evolutionary miracle is based on the presence over time of an almost infinite diversity of life forms. Maintenance of the full evolutionary rapacity that produced life as we know it and, we may suppose, will continue to shape life on earth, means that the size of the gene pool should be maximized. But with his agriculture and urban growth, modern man has made extensive inroads on biological diversity.

Argument 3: Wilderness as Formative Influence on American National Character. It was not until the census report of 1890 pronounced the frontier era ended that many Americans began to ponder the significance of wilderness in shaping them as individuals and as a society. The link between American character or identity, and wilderness, was forged, as historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued so persuasively in 1893, during three centuries of pioneering. Independence and individualism were two heritages: a democratic social and political theory and the concept of equal opportunity were other frontier traits. So was the penchant for practical achievement that marks the American character so distinctly. If wilderness shaped our national values and institutions, it follows that one of the most important roles of nature reserves is keeping those values and institutions alive.

Argument 4: Wilderness as Nourisher of American Arts and Letters. Time and again in the course of history the native land has been the inspiration for great works of music, painting, and literature. What the American painter, Alan Gussow, calls "a sense of place" is as vital to the artistic endeavor as it is to patriotism and national pride. And "place," it should be clear, has to do with the natural setting. Subdivisions, factories, and used car lots rarely inspire artistic excellence. Nature commonly does. Parks and reserves, as reservoirs of scenic beauty that touches the soul of man, have a crucial role in the quality of a nation's culture.

Argument 5: Wilderness as a Church.
With the aid of churches and religions, people attempt to find solutions to, or at least live with, the weightiest mental and emotional problems of human existence. One value of wilderness for some people is its significance as a setting for what is, essentially, religious activity. In nature, as in a church, they attempt to bring meaning and tranquility to their lives. They seek a sense of oneness, of harmony, with all things.

Argument 6: Wilderness as a Guardian of' Mental Health. The value of wilderness and outdoor recreation is the opportunity it extends to civilized man to slip back, occasionally, into what Olson calls the grooves of ancestral experience." The leading advocate of wilderness protection in the l930's, Robert Marshall, spoke of the "psychological necessity" for occasional escape to "the freedom of the wilderness." Olson and Marshall were referring to the fact that wild country offers people an alternative to civilization.

Argument 7: Wilderness as a Sustainer of Human Diversity. Just as it promotes biological diversity (see Argument 2), the preservation of wilderness helps to preserve human dignity and social diversity. Civilization means
control, organization, homogenization. Wilderness offers relief from these dehumanizing tendencies; it encourages individuality. Wild country is an arena where man can experiment, deviate, discover, and improve. Was not this the whole meaning of the New World wilderness for those settlers who migrated to it from Europe? Wilderness meant freedom. Aldo Leopold put it this way: "of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" For novelist Wallace Stegner wild country was "a place of perpetual beginnings." ..

Argument 8: Wilderness as an Educational Asset in Developing Environmental Responsibility. To experience wilderness is to discover natural processes and man's dependency upon them. It is to discover man's vulnerability and, through this realization, to attain humility. Life in civilization tends to promote antipodal qualities: arrogance and a sense of mastery. Not only children believe that milk comes from bottles and heat from radiators. "Civilization," Aldo Leopold wrote, "has so cluttered [the] elemental man-earth relation with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry." Contact with wilderness is a corrective that modem man desperately needs if he is to achieve tong-term harmony between himself and his environment.

Wilderness can also instruct man that he is a member, not the master, of a community that extends to the limits of life and the earth itself. Because wild country is beyond man's control, because it exists apart from human needs and interests, it suggests that man's welfare is not the primary reason for or purpose of the existence of the earth. This seemingly simple truth is not easily understood in a technological civilization whose basis is control and exploitation. In wilderness we appreciate other powers and interests because we find our own limited.

Leopold, The Land Ethic (full text)

The Basis for a Land Ethic

"There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.

The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. It is the third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken. Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong." (2)

"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." (2)

In the forward to A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture."

"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such." (3)

"One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbirds are examples. Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin , it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance." (6)

"Lack of economic value is sometimes a character not only of species or groups, but of entire biotic communities: marshes, bogs, dunes, and 'deserts' are examples. Our formula in such cases is to relegate their conservation to government as refuges, monuments, or parks. The difficulty is that these communities are usually interspersed with more valuable private lands; the government cannot possibly own or control such scattered parcels. The net effect is that we have relegated some of them to ultimate extinction over large areas. If the private owner were ecologically minded, he would be proud to be the custodian of a reasonable proportion of such areas, which add diversity and beauty to his farm and to his community. " (7)

"To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic selfinterest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the un-economic parts. It tends to relegate to government many functions eventually too large, too complex, or too widely dispersed to be performed by government."(8)

"Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life." (10)

"Another change touches the flow of energy through plants and animals and its return to the soil. Fertility is the ability of soil to receive, store, and release energy. Agriculture, by overdrafts on the soil, or by too radical a substitution of domestic for native species in the superstructure, may derange the channels of flow or deplete storage. Soils depleted of their storage, or of the organic matter which anchors it, wash away faster than they form. This is erosion.

Waters, like soil, are part of the energy circuit. Industry, by polluting waters or obstructing them with dams, may exclude the plants and animals necessary to keep energy in circulation." (10-11)

What is a Land Ethic?

"A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity." (13)

"In my own field, forestry, group A is quite content to grow trees like cabbages, with cellulose as the basic forest commodity. It feels no inhibition against violence; its ideology is agronomic. Group B on the other hand, sees forestry as fundamentally different from agronomy because it employs natural species, and manages a natural environment rather than creating an artificial one. Group B prefers natural reproduction on principle. It worries on biotic as well as economic grounds about the loss of species like chestnut, and the threatened loss of the white pines. It worries about whole series of secondary forest functions: wildlife, recreation, watersheds, wilderness areas. To my mind, Group B feels the stirrings of an ecological conscience. " (13)

"In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes: man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the search-light on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism." (14)

"It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, of course, I mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense." (15)

"The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." (15)

"The evolution of a land ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional process. Conservation is paved with good intentions which prove to be futile, or even dangerous, because they are devoid of critical understanding either of the land, or of economic land-use. I think it is a truism that as the ethical frontier advances from the individual to the community, its intellectual content increases.

The mechanism of operation is the same for any ethic: social approbation for right actions: social disapproval for wrong actions.

By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and implements. We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and we are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use."

Limerick, Mission to Environmentalists

"But Cronon's point is that there is no escaping the role, power, and consequence of human thinking and human choice. Nature does not legislate; nature does not write policy; nature does not decree what kind of settlement can occur in which place. Nature may, for instance, make available a certain amount of water, but nature does not declare whether that water will be used for agriculture or industry, sugar beet fields or stream flow for wild and scenic rivers. Responding to and interpreting the conditions presented by nature, human beings legislate, write policy, and determine which settlements will occur where and how they will get their water)."

"1. Preservationists could be much more assertive in claiming their share of the pioneer heritage. If you are willing to quote a bit selectively (which card-carrying historians are not permitted to do, but they certainly couldn't stop anyone else from trying it), you can
create for present-day preservationists an intellectual lineage reaching back to the pioneers... . Miners, ranchers, loggers, and farmers are the ones claiming a line of descent
-- and a line of honor -- direct from the pioneers, from the people who built the West. But the pioneers were complicated people and their legacy is equally complicated, and if preservationists were to select and arrange the quotations intelligently, they, too, could be claiming a direct line of descent from the pioneers. "

"2. Develop new strategies for rewarding restraint.... History, as well as current behavior, tells us that the charms of mobility and outdoor action have already been very well promoted, and thus there is every good reason to manipulate public opinion in order to place a positive and even heroic aura around acts of restraint and refusal of mobility."

"4. Re-examine and rethink ways in which conventional enthusiasm for nature unthinkingly glorifies individualism and free will. Why will people consent to restraint, in the interest of a common good, for nearly every other activity and then threaten to withdraw that consent when planning a visit to the outdoors? It does not take the Applied Humanities equivalent of a rocket scientist to figure this out. For 150 years, the principal selling pitch for experience in nature and wilderness has hinged on an appeal to individualism, independence, and freedom."

"5. Persuade environmental groups to become boosters of towns and cities. Give up the
anti-urban sentiment that has long been the live-in partner of the enthusiasm for nature that has rallied to the support of the national parks. Give up anti-urbanism, because environmentalists can no longer afford such a self-indulgent luxury. Anti-urban sentiment, often popularized and distributed by nature lovers, has been an enormous force behind the sprawling of American settlement, and the intrusion of houses into open space."

"8. Consider the comparison made by many between environmentalism and religion, and decide what to do with it. Frequently this comparison is offered with hostility, as when conservative Christian groups say that environmentalism has become a new pantheism, heathenistically exalting nature over both humanity and the Christian God. In truth, the characterization of nature preservation as a religion does not seem entirely without weight and relevance. "

"10. Imagine a full and productive joining of the causes of environmental well-being and racial equity. Sometimes imagined to be a refuge from the troubles and tensions of the rest of the nation, the national parks are fully tied into the United States 's complicated history of race relations. The creation of the parks, just as much as the creation of farms, mines, and cities, required the removal of Indian people. The opportunity for the privileged to enjoy their outings to parks often rested on a familiar racial hierarchy of labor. Many of the early visitors to Yellowstone remarked on the essential roles played by African American servants. "

"Broadening the environmental movement to include the great diversity of the national population requires a full reckoning with this history, a reckoning that involves much more than an occasional invitation for Americans of all backgrounds to consider the national parks part of their collective heritage....But there is a sizable variation, by class as well as ethnicity, in the degree to which involvement with the parks came in the same package as privilege and leisure. Well-intentioned efforts to invite all of the United States's citizens to enjoy their parks must still reckon with the inheritance of inequality. "

MULTIPLE-USE SUSTAINED-YIELD ACT OF 1960
(MUSY Doctrine)

Overview. This Act declares that the purposes of the national forest include outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed and fish and wildlife. The Act directs the Secretary of Agriculture to administer national forest renewable surface resources for multiple use and sustained yield.

Findings/Policy. The policy of Congress is that national forests are established and administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and fish and wildlife purposes. This Act is intended to supplement these purposes. The Act does not affect the jurisdiction or responsibilities of the states, the use or administration of the mineral resources of national forest lands, or the use or administration of federal lands not within the national forests. § 528.

Selected Definitions. Multiple use: management of all the renewable surface resources of the national forests to meet the needs of the American people. Sustained yield: achievement and maintenance of a high-level regular output of the renewable resources of the national forest without impairment of the land's productivity. § 531.

Authorization. The Secretary of Agriculture (Secretary) must develop and administer the renewable surface resources of the national forests for multiple use and sustained yield of the various products and services obtained from these areas. The Secretary must give appropriate consideration to the relative values of the resources of particular areas. The Act authorizes the Secretary to cooperate with interested state and local governmental agencies and others in developing and managing the national forests. §§ 529 and 530.

The 1964 Wilderness Act

WILDERNESS SYSTEM ESTABLISHED
STATEMENT OF POLICY

Sec. 2. (a) In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as "wilderness areas", and these shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness; and no Federal lands shall be designated as "wilderness areas" except as provided for in this Act or by a subsequent Act.

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS

(c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

NATIONAL FOREST MANAGEMENT ACT OF 1976

Overview. The National Forest Management Act reorganized, expanded and otherwise amended the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, which called for the management of renewable resources on national forest lands. The National Forest Management Act requires the Secretary of Agriculture to assess forest lands, develop a management program based on multiple-use, sustained-yield principles, and implement a resource management plan for each unit of the National Forest System. It is the primary statute governing the administration of national forests.
Findings/Policy. The Act contains numerous Congressional findings pertaining to the management of national forests, including: it is in the public interest for the Forest Service to assess the nation's public and private renewable resources and develop a national renewable resource program; to serve the national interest, the development of the renewable resource program must include a thorough analysis of environmental and economic impacts, coordination of multiple-use and sustained-yield, and public participation; the Forest Service has the responsibility and opportunity to assure a national natural resource conservation posture that will meet our citizens' needs in perpetuity; the knowledge derived from coordinated public and private research programs will promote a sound technical and ecological base for the effective management, use and protection of the nation's renewable resources. § 1600.

The policy of Congress is that all forested lands in the National Forest System are to be maintained for the maximum benefits of multiple-use, sustained-yield management. The Secretary must identify all lands in the national forest system that require re-forestation and treatment. This information must be transmitted to Congress annually along with an estimate of the funds needed to replant and otherwise treat all lands being cut over. The Secretary also must submit an annual report to Congress on the amounts, types, and use of herbicides and pesticides used on national forest lands.

The Sierra Club on Logging

Sierra Club: Forest Protection & Restoration

In 1999, recognizing growing threats to the health of our national forests, and following decades of study, the U.S. Forest Service set aside 58.5 million acres of our last wild national forest lands. After the most extensive public rulemaking in history, including 600 public meetings and a record-breaking 1.6 million favorable public comments, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule was issued.

The Value of Recreation in the National Forests

It's time we listened to these stories and learned from these lessons. We must ban clearcutting and put an immediate end to road-building in our last unspoiled natural areas. Increasingly, we are coming to recognize that our federal forest lands are far more valuable as intact, functioning ecosystems than they are for timber production. They shelter our wildlife, provide clean water, and serve as Americas family playground. By the year 2000, recreation in the National Forests is expected to contribute 31 times more income to the nation's economy than logging and will create 38 times more jobs. Already, private lands contribute the vast majority of timber, with less than 4 percent of the nation's total timber consumption coming from National Forests.

We must also put an end to taxpayer support of the timber industry. As the nation gets serious about deficit reduction, taxpayer-subsidized environmental destruction can no longer be tolerated. Expenditures on the Forest Services 1996 timber sale program neared $1 billion dollars, as our government paid for timber sale planning, overhead and road construction for the timber companies. In return, fiscal year 1996 timber sales generated receipts in the range of only $500 million none of which was returned to the Federal treasury. Instead, most of the receipts were funneled back into the agency's various off-budget slush funds for future logging operations. The timber industry should pay its own way on our public forests, as it does on private timber lands.
....Sierra Club: Stewardship, not Stumps

President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative

The "Healthy Forests" initiative calls on Congress to pass laws that would "expedite procedures for forest thinning and restoration projects" and "ensure the sustainable forest management and appropriate timber production."

Wildfires, the president said, have destroyed too much, and he criticized regulations that he said undermine effective management of federal lands.

"The forest policy of our government is misguided policy," Bush said. "It doesn't work."

The 2002 wildfire season has been one of the worst in modern history, torching 6.1 million acres so far.

Forestry officials said they believe the main culprit is a long-standing policy that called for protecting the forests at all costs -- no logging, and no fires to burn off dry brush and create natural burn lines that might stop the spread of wildfires.

The result, officials said, is over-populated forests with mounds of wildfire fuel -- underbrush and small trees -- on forest floors.
.....CNN --Bush'sHealthy Forest Plan

The Need for Common-Sense Forest Legislation

Catastrophic fires, particularly those experienced in California, Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Oregon over the past two years, burn hotter and faster than most ordinary fires.
Visibility and air quality are reduced, threatening even the health of many who do not live near the fires.
The habitat for endangered species and other wildlife is destroyed.
Federal forests and rangelands also face threats from the spread of invasive species and insect attacks.
In the past two years alone, 147,049 fires burned nearly 11 million acres
- 2002 : 88,458 fires burned roughly 7 million acres and caused the deaths of 23 firefighters;
- 2003 (thus far) : 59,149 fires have burned 3.8 million acres and caused the deaths of 28 firefighters.
- Nearly 6,800 structures have been destroyed in 2003 (approximately 4,800 in California).
- The California fires alone cost $250 million to contain and 22 civilians have died as a result.

Lewis, Logging in the National Forests

For the last 100 years, Federal and State governments have worked closely with logging companies to support logging on both the national forests and on private land. Logging companies and timber interests have generously supported the political campaigns of Western politicians, who in turn help pass laws that given logging interests generous subsidies and tax breaks. We can see how this system works by looking at a recent Wilderness Society report on federal subsidies to logging companies.

1995 Federal Susidies to Logging Companies

In 1995, logging companies harvested 1 billion dollars worth of timber from the national forests. They paid the government $59 million dollars for the right to harvest this timber. But the federal government subsidized the logging of these forests by paying 200 million dollars to build roads into the forests in order for the logging companies to log and transport the timber out to process and market. In addition to building the roads, the federal government paid the counties where this logging took place 257 million dollars to cover the burden and expense of allowing the logging companies to use county services to log. Thus, the government spent 457 million dollars to support logging companies harvest over 1 billion dollars of publicly-owned timber in the national forests and received only $59 million dollars from the logging companies for the right to log.

Of course, these numbers don't add up. The federal government's support for logging is one of the main reasons large, global logging companies are still harvesting timber from our national forests. Without these subsidies, the cost of logging could easily be prohibitive. So why is the government supporting this logging. The West's politicians argue that logging creates jobs, supports the local economy, and supports regional corporations. But what is the unpaid cost of this logging?

Clear-cut logging, going in and clearing away entire forests, threatens the environment and the quality of life in the West. Clear-cut logging leads to massive soil erosion, which leads to the siltation of streams and the destruction of fish habitat and spawning areas. In addition, because the trees no longer hold down the soil, the soil runs off and destroys the fertility of the land. When the soil runs off and collects in the rivers and streams, downstream communities have to pay a lot more money to filter the mud and debris that has accumulated in their local water supply. By destroying fish habitat, clearcutting has caused the massive decline in the salmon and other fish stocks in both salt and freshwater fisheries. The fishing industry in the Pacific Northwest is been so damaged by government support for logging, that they are demanding that the government protect their industry to, and not just protect logging at the expense of the fishing industry. Clear-cut logging damages the diversity and health of the forest, leading to more disease, loss of soil fertility, and the inability of the forests to survive additional shocks such as fires and floods. Finally, the decline in fisheries, water quality, the loss of forest habitat and biodiversity threaten the state's tourism industry. All this because the state and federal governments and politicians want to support logging interests.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, environmental groups successfully challenged this government-supported logging in our national forests. Taking the government and logging companies to Federal Court, they charged that such logging threatened endangered species such as the spotted owl and the marbled murelette, which lived in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. The courts ruled that logging must be greatly reduced to protect these endangered species, which the government by law was mandated to protect by the Endangered Species Act. This was a victory for environmentalists and a defeat for clear-cut logging in the national forests. However, timber workers and logging communities that depended on continued cutting in the national forests became angry and bitter toward the environmentalists. Logging was their way of life, and without logging their economic survival was a stake.

As a result of greatly reduced logging in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many small logging companies shut down, larger timber companies laid off thousands of workers, and logging communities suffered an economic depression because of the loss of timber revenues. Timber workers, logging communities, and global logging companies such as Weyerhaeuser, Georgia Pacific, and International Paper put tremendous pressure on the state and federal governments to overrule the courts limits on logging in the remaining old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result of this pressure in 1995, Western Senators and Representatives led by Senator Slade Gordon snuck a law into a larger bill on benefits for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. This law, which came to be know as the salvage rider, said that logging companies could once again log in the national forests in order to cut down dead and damaged trees. And this logging could not be limited or regulated by current environmental and endangered species laws. Since 1995, the salvage rider has allowed thousands and thousands of acres of old-growth forests to be cut. With this renewed logging, timber workers and logging communities are beginning to recover from their economic depression caused by the courts halting earlier logging.

Environmentalists are angry at Western politicians and President Clinton for allowing the logging companies to continue logging and to do so despite thirty years of environmental laws that should protect the national forests and the environment from such logging. When asked about what the salvage rider has done for them, a small logging company owner said that it allows them another year of operation. Logging workers feel that it gives them more time to work as loggers, harvesting trees in the national forests. Both environmentalists and timber interests recognize that this renewed logging can only last a few more years; there are just not that much remaining stands of old growth forests to harvest. After this logging is over, they will have to wait fifty to one hundred years to harvest the second-growth trees. So the salvage rider actually salvages a dying industry for a few more years.

Why do the logging companies want to continue to log knowing that they will have destroyed the few remaining untouched stands of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest? They believe that a forest is just trees. That there is no real difference between a natural forest and a man-made tree farm, planted with rows and rows of fir trees. Logging interest believe that environmentalists do not understand the forest. They see environmentalists as having a flaky religious attachment to forests, which can't be justified by the need for jobs, to control and harvest forests, and to create profits for local timber industries. Timber interests defend their logging by arguing that they "re-plant" the forests they cut, and these second-growth forests will grow to be just like the old-growth forests the environmentalists wanted to save.

But can logging companies re-create the diversity, health, and complexity of the natural old-growth forests? No, a forest is not just a crop of trees. First, of all, natural forests with their deep root systems hold the soil and water in the forest, preventing both soil erosion and flooding. Re-planted rows of trees in clear-cut areas simply can't hold the soil down and keep the water in because their root systems aren't developed enough. By the time these trees mature, precious topsoil and water will have run-off the forest. In addition, in a natural forest, dead and dying trees fall onto the forest floor and provide nutrients to enrich the soil. Finally, in a natural old-growth forest there are a diversity of insects, plants, and animals that together create a healthy forest. Re-planting trees on clear-cut land cannot replace the diverse organisms that once lived in the old-growth forests. We do not understand the complex nature of old-growth forests, and therefore can't re-create them by planting trees.

But the larger question remains: Why would state and federal governments, politicians, and logging interests want to quickly log the remaining untouched old-growth forests, knowing that in doing so their industry will be threatened because there will be no more trees to harvest? Logging companies and interests, just like governments and politicians, are focused on short-term profits, not on long-term interests. And this focus on the short-term allows logging companies, timber workers, and logging communities to put-off facing the long-term problems. What will they do once they have destroyed the resource that their livelihoods depend on? What will the fishing industry do after the logging companies have destroyed the fish habitats vital to sustaining their fisheries? What will local and state governments do after the logging has created such massive flooding that whole communities have been threatened? What will local communities do when the soil erosion caused by massive logging has threatened their drinking water supplies? What will the states do when their tourist industry is threatened by the destruction of fisheries and natural forests for camping and recreation? All of these questions currently go unanswered.

The timber industry's focus on short-term profit and destroying natural systems that we don't fully understand is a classic example of the larger causes of the global environmental crisis. We continue to believe that nature will absorb our insults to it, that we can control and re-create environments, that short-term profit is more important than long-term health, and that science and technology will soon give us the power to correct for the mistakes we made in the present. All this comes down to our arrogant attitude that the future will take care of itself, what matters is our short-term interests. Of course, the environmental crisis is proving that the future won't take care of itself. If we don't soon take action to reduce our impact on the Earth, the future will take care of itself. The loss of soils, the pollution of air and water, the collapse of fisheries, and the loss of biodiversity will weaken the ability of the Earth to support our industrial civilization. Can we afford to cut down the forests now hoping that the future will take care of itself?
....Chris Lewis (1997)