Published on Friday, August 29, 2003 by the Long Island (NY) Newsday
Bush's Forest Plan Worse Than Fire
by Edward O. Wilson
The fires that have savaged forests of western North America this summer are
the ecologist's equivalent of a perfect storm.
The best way to avoid these catastrophic fires is by trimming undergrowth
and clearing debris, combined with natural burns of the kind that have
sustained healthy forests in past millennia. Those procedures, guided by
science and surgically precise forestry, can return forests to near their
equilibrium condition, in which only minimal further intervention would be
needed.
On the other hand, the worst way to create healthy forests is to thin trees
via increased logging, as proposed by the Bush administration.
The health-by-logging approach reveals the wide separation between two
opposing views concerning the best use of U.S. forests. The administration,
seeing the forests as a source of extractive wealth, presses for more
logging and road-building in wilderness areas. Its strategists appear
determined to mute or override the provision of the 1976 National Forest
Management Act requiring that forest plans "provide for the diversity of
plant and animal communities."
Environmentalists and ecologists, defending the provision, continue to argue
that America's national forests are a priceless reservoir of biological
diversity, as well as a historical treasure. In this view, the forests
represent a public trust too valuable to be managed as tree farms for the
production of pulp, paper and lumber.
The economic argument for increased road-building and logging is unfounded.
It is contradicted by the U.S. Forest Service's own measure of forests'
contributions to the nation's economy. Of the $35 billion yielded in 1999
(the last year for which a comprehensive accounting was published), 77.8
percent came from recreation, fish and wildlife, only 13.7 percent from
timber harvest, and the modest remainder from mining and ranching. Roughly
the same disproportion existed in the percentages of the 822,000 jobs
generated by national forests.
And that is only part of the story.
The Forest Service's accounting does not include long-term profits that
accrue indirectly from natural habitats. These add-ons derive from
peripheral tourist facilities and other businesses attracted by the
amenities of pleasant environments. Such economic growth is all but absent
in the case of logging and other extractive industries, for the obvious
reason that Americans do not find mill towns and logging roads appealing.
And there is more. If we have learned anything from scientific studies of
forests, it is that their biological diversity creates a healthy ecosystem -
a self-assembled powerhouse, generating clean water, productive soil and
fresh air, all without human intervention and completely free of charge.
Each kind of forest or any other natural ecosystem is a masterpiece of
evolution, exquisitely well adapted to the environment it inhabits. The
fauna and flora of the world are, moreover, the cradle of humanity, to which
we, no less than the rest of life, are closely adapted in our physical and
psychological needs. Each species and its descendant species live, very
roughly, a million years before suffering natural extinction. Worldwide,
habitat destruction combined with the other three of the four horsemen of
environmental ruin - invasive species, pollution and unsustainable logging -
have increased the rate of extinction by as much as a thousandfold, thereby
shortening the average life spans of species by the same amount.
Much of the loss of America's native plant and animal species is due to the
replacement of biologically rich natural forests with tree farms. From the
standpoint of species diversity and resilience, these cultivated woody crops
rank as no more than cornfields.
While tree farms can easily be expanded on private lands, national forests -
the reservoirs of much of our nation's biological diversity - cannot. The
euphemism used by the Bush administration and the timber industry to help
justify this practice, the Healthy Forests Initiative, does no justice to
the broad needs of the United States.
America's national forests are a public trust of incalculable value. They
should be freed from commercial logging altogether. The time has come to
free them from political partisanship and use their treasures to benefit all
Americans, now and for generations to come.
Edward O. Wilson, a professor emeritus at Harvard University, is author of
many books, including "The Future of Life."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
###
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice
issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your
own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Make your voice heard! Find out how to get Take Action Alerts
and other important Sierra Club messages by email at:
http://www.sierraclub.org/email
|
