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Approved-By:  Rene Voss <[log in to unmask]>
Message-ID:  <002601bf0069$3491ce00$7542f7a5@uymfdlvk>
Date:         Thu, 16 Sep 1999 13:30:44 -0400
Reply-To: Fed-Forests <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Fed-Forests <[log in to unmask]>
From: Rene Voss <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Will Forestry Open Up to Environmentalism?
To: [log in to unmask]

FOREST INDUSTRY: Foresters Urged To Be Open
To Enviro Issues

The president of the Society of American Foresters urged fellow foresters
this
week to take risks and take a more open look at environmentalism.

James Coufal asked foresters at the group's annual conference in Portland,
OR, to consider the view of environmentalists, rather than see them as
"enemies." He added that foresters should "closely consider" the
environmentalist principle of acting cautiously to avoid unintended
consequences (Hal Bernton, Portland Oregonian, Sept. 13).

At the conference, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) told foresters that
overgrazing and cutting old growth timber threatens the ecological stability
of forests and wildlife. Kitzhaber: "Forestry has the power to change the
world, to make it a better place for the creatures that populate this
planet" (Charles E. Beggs, AP/Portland Oregonian online, Sept. 14). --DIL


        Foresters challenged to
        be more open to environmentalism

               The president of a national group of foresters opens
               the society's four-day conference in Portland

               Monday, September 13, 1999

               By Hal Bernton of The Oregonian staff

               The president of the Society of American Foresters on
               Sunday challenged his colleagues to take a more open
               look at environmentalism.

               James Coufal, in a speech that helped kicked off the
               society's four-day conference in Portland, said that
               foresters need to "accept truths wherever they arise" and
               "get beyond the common action of thinking that
               knowledge and good science is a matter of reaffirming
               what we already believe."

               Coufal's remarks were delivered to a professional society
               that, on the eve of its 100th anniversary, is suffering
               somewhat from an identity crisis. Management decisions
               once based on timber production are increasingly
               supplanted by concerns about fisheries, wildlife and
               recreation that the environmental movement has helped
               pushed to the policy forefront.

               These changing forest policies have sharpened debate
               within the society's more than 16,000 members drawn
               largely from the ranks of the timber industry, academics
               and public agencies. And they've put some foresters --
               particularly those who help manage public lands -- into a
               defensive crouch as they yield some of their
               decision-making powers to other professionals.

               But on Sunday, the foresters were urged to take risks.

               The conference's keynote speaker was Mae Jemison, a
               Dartmouth professor and former space shuttle astronaut
               who urged foresters to "find the child inside," liberate
               themselves from fear and "focus on change."

               Coufal, a retired forestry professor from New York State
               University, followed Jemison onto the podium at the
               Portland Convention Center. And he asked for people to
               consider the view of environmentalists, a group that some
               foresters "see as enemies and some see as fellow citizens
               of a democracy with differing viewpoints." Coufal said that
               environmentalists' calls for preserving the diversity of
               forest species and eliminating the use of toxic chemicals
               have broad appeal to the public. And he suggested that
               foresters should "closely consider" the environmentalist
               principle of acting cautiously to avoid unintended
               consequences in a world of many unknowns and
               enormous complexity.

               Coufal leads an organization that was launched back in
               1900 by Gifford Pinchot and other foresters at a time of
               an earlier public backlash against logging. Decades of
               intensive logging cleared most of the accessible timber in
               the eastern and midwestern states and many parts of the
               South, and some of the land was so denuded it wasn't
               even fit for forestry. During the first four decades, little
               progress was made in rebuilding the nation's timber
               supply. In 1945, the volume of the nation's standing timber
               was 43 percent less than estimated in 1909, according to
               V. Alaric Sample, who gave an afternoon talk on the
               evolution of American forest policy.

               Today, there's much more progress to report, said
               Sample, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Pinchot
               Institute for Conservation.

               Forest growth rates now generally exceed harvest levels in
               most regions of the nation and there have been big
               advances in using waste wood products and increasing the
               productivity of timber land. And during the past five
               decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on new
               protections for fish, wildlife and water quality.

               Society officials, in their public relations efforts have
often
               sought to emphasize this progress. And many foresters
               have felt that effort needs to be intensified to try to gain
               more public support for a wide range of management
               activities, particularly in forests suffering from the
effects of
               disease, insects and fire-suppression.

               But Coufal cautioned foresters against trying to push a
               narrow agenda. He said that foresters should not appear
               as a "chosen people" who assume the right to define the
               goals for the nation's forests."

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