Thinking about writing this... gave me greater appreciation for Jefferson's dialogue between head and heart. My heart believes in no timber cutting on the national forests; my head sees pitfalls with that position. While I have called for Zero Cut in the past, I have recently given hard thought to it. We're really faced with four questions:
1) Is Zero Cut eventually desirable for all public lands?
2) Is Zero Cut feasible now?
3) Should the Sierra Club, at this time, embrace the Zero Cut policy you propose?
4) Should any conservationists, at this time, advocate Zero Cut for all public lands?
I believe that the great majority of commercial logging on the public lands and all logging on many individual national forests for wood and fiber is not appropriate. There are exceptions, however, such as northern New Mexico with dependent Chicano logging communities and certain parts of the West where the national forests contain all the harvestable timber for sawmills and for poles and posts. The level of logging on the public lands needs to be significantly lowered in any case.
I [have] grave doubts about the Forest Service's ability to "manage" public lands in a truly ecologically sensitive manner. I generally believe that the government is incapable of managing public lands correctly. Any regulatory agency becomes a captive of the industry it is supposed to regulate. (That's why we are needed.) The 1964 Wilderness Act, for example, was not a reform measure, it was a pair of handcuffs on federal agencies to prevent them from destroying wilderness on the lands they managed (nonetheless, the agencies have done an impressive job of twisting the Wilderness Act to their own purposes).
I'll go even further: I do not believe that reform of democratic society, political and social institutions, and human civilization is possible. I suppose this makes me a realist instead of an idealist, a pessimist instead of an optimist. Some would even say it makes me a misanthrope, or worse, a conservative. For this reason, I do not believe it is possible for us to achieve real reform of federal land management, or to arrive at any kind of sustainable economy and society. My fundamental political strategy is to protect as much biodiversity as we can, using whatever ethical means will work in each situation or particular time. Recent political events have only convinced me more of the rightness of this approach. Conservationists need to be flexible, creative, and opportunistic....
At the recent Society for Conservation Biology convention I asked a dozen or so top conservation biologists, who are also very strong conservationists, for their opinions on whether the Sierra Club should support Zero Cut for all national forests. Unanimously, they said no. Because the public forests have been so badly mismanaged, considerable rehabilitation needs to be done. For example, one conservation biology grad student (with Earth First! leanings) said he had researched the question for a class with the intention to justify Zero Cut. His research led him to believe instead that Zero Cut would be ecologically destructive and could lead to virtual elimination of lower-elevation ponderosa pine forests in the Southwest. There are probably many national forests, though, where Zero Cut is ecologically the best course now or in the very near term. All this begs the question of how we design and control silvicultural methods to restore damaged forest ecosystems.
My reading of current political trends tells me that if we say Uncle Sam should not be in the logging business, then market revolutionaries (they aren't true conservatives) in Congress will agree with us. Their solution will be to sell (or give away) all national forests to private timber companies except for existing [designated] wilderness areas and those national forest lands obviously not valuable for timber (though most of these would be given to ranchers).
We should work for a national policy where protection and restoration of biodiversity are the primary goals for public lands. Despite wide (but shallow) public support, we will not achieve that for some time (if ever). I strongly believe that we should not tie the Sierra Club's hands from successfully working for incremental steps to that goal. It is far more likely, regardless of the position the Sierra Club takes on Zero Cut, that we will be facing very strong political efforts to "open" existing national parks and wilderness areas to commercial logging than we will be facing any practical possibility of eliminating logging from all public lands.
I fear that [a Zero Cut] policy could prohibit the Club from supporting incremental steps to scale back public lands logging. And it could prevent us from supporting less-than- perfect wilderness areas. I have yet to see an ecologically ideal wilderness area established, though I have supported much wilderness legislation. This is an important point. I fear that [a] Zero Cut policy... would prohibit the Club from supporting any wilderness bill that might allow logging of any kind elsewhere in the national forests. I also fear that a Zero Cut policy would prevent us from working within the Forest Service process to make certain timber sales less destructive. For example, the California Wilderness Coalition recently negotiated with the FS on a timber sale in the Sierra which would have cut old-growth forest. The CWC managed to get the FS to modify the sale to remove all old growth and other ecologically sensitive areas (including part of a roadless area) from the sale. Would Sierra Club chapters or staff be prevented from doing that under [a] Zero Cut policy?
This is my bottom line. Prohibiting any and all Sierra Club entities from any position or action that would allow any commercial logging on the public lands would handcuff us into inaction.
We should encourage the growing on kenaf and hemp of private lands already in agricultural or plantation status. For all I have read, they are superior to wood for paper fiber. However, it would be far more ecologically destructive to convert any public forests, no matter how badly logged and abused, to kenaf or hemp farms. (I would support a Sierra Club policy that no public forests be cut for paper fiber.)
I think there are some areas of the national forests where excellent forestry (Gordon Robinson's term) can be practiced for timber production. These should be those areas where community stability and local economies and local use of wood products (such as Hispanic northern New Mexico) need national forest timber because there are no alternatives on nearby private lands. This does not reflect an ecological position; it reflects a social position. I am not suggesting that all groups buy into this.
Some groups need to campaign for Zero Cut as a national policy so we can analyze how effective that position is. I wish, though, that they would focus their energies on making the best public case for Zero Cut and on mobilizing grassroots support for Zero Cut instead of attacking those conservation groups that do not support Zero Cut.
We need a range of positions in the conservation movement to appeal to the public and influence the powers that be. Some groups should work for Zero Cut. This sets goal and debate parameters; it is an easy position to explain to the public which generally (but vaguely and weakly) opposes national forest logging; and it allows "mainstream" groups like the Club to take increasingly stronger positions and yet appear to be reasonable political players. Before conservation groups really offer uncompromising or extreme (within the context of mainstream political thought) proposals, we must build a strong, mobilized constituencies for those proposals. There is also a subtle but real difference between not opposing all logging on public lands and supporting logging on public lands.
So, how do I answer my four questions?
1) Is Zero Cut eventually desirable for all public lands? Maybe. But it's a ways away.
2) Is Zero Cut feasible now? No, for ecological, political, and strategic reasons.
3) Should the Sierra Club, at this time, embrace [a] Zero Cut policy... ? No. But our forest policy should be strengthened.
4) Should any conservationists, at this time, advocate Zero Cut for all public lands? Absolutely.
--Dave Foreman in his letter to Jim Bensman