I don't like logging. From the Romans who logged the Mediterranean to the US Forest Service in the Tongass, commercial forestry has been an unprecedented disaster from which this planet will never recover. I've never seen a timber sale that I have liked. I've never seen one where there wasn't a better alternative, where higher values weren't being sacrificed, be it fisheries, watershed, biodiversity or the other host of goods and services that forests provide when they are left unlogged. I'm probably not a deep ecologist, and I don't see a problem with logging done in a sensible way. With a horse and an ax, maybe, for a nearby home or schoolhouse. Or a few fence posts to keep the cows in the pasture, to make a decent boat to get up and down the river. These are traditional uses and they normally don't lead to deforestation the way commercial logging always does. By definition, deforestation means converting a forest into something other than a forest. We know a tree plantation is not a forest. It does not function like a forest; it does not replenish itself. And neither do second growth forests that have been managed primarily for timber or pulp production. I've been all over the place an have not yet seen one managed site where higher values, both economic and intrinsic, weren't being lost due to an undue emphasis on timber.
This is why forestry is not a true science. It is a cult of priests who preach the unprovable dogma of sustained yield, and now they're at it again with forest health. It is the biological version of manifest destiny, and it is being used with the same results. Small wonder then that US Forest Service employees wear uniforms resembling those of the US Cavalry. Forestry is an alien religion being forced on the people through a vast array of institutions, from nature schools for kids to paramilitary law enforcement units like those used at the Sugarloaf Timber Sale last fall. Like the STASSI of formerly communist East Germany, its agents are everywhere, even in your own family. If they can't indoctrinate you they will bludgeon you. You must believe!
As you can imagine, my opinions on this subject have led me into some major confrontations with many so-called experts in the field. Usually these experts have forestry degrees, but occasionally they have biology degrees, or MBA's, or they wrote a book, or maybe inherited or made a fortune and like to go to conferences. Their buzzword is sustainable forestry, but what they're really talking about is commercial logging.
Sustainable forestry, of course, is a lie. Those who support sustainable forestry are not talking about forestry at all, but about logging. They want to sustain logging. Sustaining a given forest might require a ban on logging, but as Donald Trump would say, "Where's the money in that?" Foresters hate wilderness and logging bans because it precludes them from doing anything fun. Biologists support logging because the US Forest Service and the timber industry, through the major universities, are their major employers. Conservationists, for the most part, are divided on the issue or don't know what they want.
That is why Wilderness Society President John Roush couldn't understand the uproar when he sold logging rights to his land in the Bitterroot Mountains. And that is why environmentalists are having such a bitter and protracted battle over consensing about ending commercial logging on public lands. Recently, three high-profile figures have checked in on this issue. You may have read their positions here when they were printed in an earlier issue. I'm talking about new Sierra Club Board Members David Brower and Dave Foreman, and former Audubon VP Brock Evans. Brower and Evans have recently come to their senses and are supporting a proposed Sierra Club resolution against commercial logging on National Forests. Unfortunately, former Earth First!er Foreman is now on record opposing the resolution. His rationale-a commercial logging ban would be bad for biodiversity. Translation-forest health.
Currently, a group of Sierra Club members are leading the charge to make reforms in the Club's policy. This group includes a growing number of well-known grassroots activists who want to be able to campaign for an end to commercial logging in all federal public forests. They have put a new resolution on the next member's ballot that would allow them to do so without prohibiting other local chapters from supporting less protective measures. Foreman opposes the resolution, and recently, Reed Noss of the Wildlands Project has come out and stated that a no-commercial-logging policy would be unscientific and bad for the Club.
In a heated exchange over the phone recently, Dr. Noss challenged Chad Hanson, who wrote the Club's ballot resolution, to come up with one peer-reviewed scientific paper that proves stopping all commercial logging on public lands would protect biodiversity. Hanson challenged Dr. Noss to come up with one peer-reviewed scientific paper to prove it would not. That was the end of the conversation.
This may well be a defining moment for conservation biologists. By supporting commercial logging on public lands, they are buying into, and now selling, the forest health scam. We need to manage it, we need the timber, we need the jobs, and it will be good for the forest. Sound familiar? Does it sound like science or that old manifest destiny repackaged as good medicine for the forest? Yes, the high priests are at it again, and they won't tolerate infidels. Foreman's heavy-handed and some say anti-democratic tactics to quash this measure have enraged even a few of his friends. And the reformers within the Club are being branded as unscientific, unrealistic people who threaten the Club's progress in preserving wildlands.
But let's forget the personalities and look at the facts for a minute. The timber industry wants to log the National Forests for the same reason we want to protect them. It's where the trees are at. It is the largest reservoir of publicly owned forest we have and therefore the easiest to protect. Does it encompass all the threatened forest ecosystems in the US? NO! But I don't believe you can protect forests unless they are in the public domain and safe from commercial logging. That domain will have to be greatly expanded to include other threatened and devastated ecosystems before we can be assured that our nation's forests will get on the road to recovery. As history has shown us, loggers love loopholes in the law. If you give them rights to log, they will log as much as they can. Its in their blood.
Using public lands to form the initial building blocks of a system of biological reserves makes sense. Allowing areas slated for biological reserves to be degraded further through commercial logging is risky and irresponsible, and I haven't seen any scientific evidence to the contrary. The real issue is not what constitutes sustainable commercial logging in biological reserves, but what defines non-commercial logging. As I see it, that would be an incidental amount of timber cut to provide for traditional and customary uses in a way that does not sacrifice other forest values. This non-commercial logging could be used in limited cases as a tool to protect biodiversity, just as controlled burns or thinning might be used to manipulate habitat types. But the goal should be to cut as little as possible, for local uses, rather than trying to meet the timber demands of an unsustainable economy.
The movement to end commercial logging on public lands does not seek to end all logging. Rather it seeks to set the terms for a new debate on global deforestation. Forests are not commodities to be bought and sold. They are communities to which we belong. Although private-land logging will likely continue into the next century, ultimately we must get some of these forests into the public domain if we are to have a chance at preserving what's left of these ecosystems. We can't let the current political reality against federal intervention divert us from our primary goal. We have to change this reality.
Conservation biology is proving to be more politics than science. It seeks to go beyond just studying nature to advocating its preservation. Therefore it would seem that advocacy is one of conservation biology's most important responsibilities. Advocating for timber sales in the pursuit of forest health is a dangerous strategy, especially if there are conservationists on the ground who oppose them. Our message here should be clear and simple: Biological reserves and commercial logging are proven to be incompatible and detrimental to traditional and customary uses of the forest. While wild forests do possess intrinsic values, it is ultimately our dependence on the many services that they provide, services that make our lives possible, that make preserving them so important. We can make houses and paper and boats out of many different materials, but we cannot replace the shelter that wild forests provide for biodiversity, or somehow duplicate their role in stabilizing our climate, or do without the water they provide that makes agriculture possible. Nor can we improve them with logging. Remember, no compromise means no compromise.