Under the canopy of old ponderosa pines and Douglas fir a marten pauses, scenting the air in its quest for sustenance. Young pileated woodpeckers call incessantly for food from their nest in an old pine snag. A half-mile away a goshawk swoops towards an unsuspecting ground squirrel as it scampers through shooting stars and blue camas flowers. An olive-sided flycatcher, who arrived from South America but a few weeks ago, perches atop a tall pine, taking a momentary break from feeding forays for its young. The early morning forest is filled with the songs of vireos, pee wees, flycatchers, sparrows, wrens and chickadees. A rufous hummingbird flits amongst the many flowers of spring. At the edge of a meadow still wet with the last melting snows of winter a wolverine pauses, satiated from its feasting on an elk, killed and cached by a cougar.
Though this area has remained untouched by the "managing" hand of modern humans for centuries, it will soon be torn and rent by the roaring steel engines of bulldozers, chainsaws, skidders and trucks if the federal land agencies have their way. Unbeknownst to the wildlife, whose territories are defined by their travels and the travails of survival, the forest in which they live has been proposed for "disposal" by the federal agency entrusted with its care. It is part of over 90,000 acres of public Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in northeastern Oregon to be traded for 70,000-plus acres of private lands in the Northeast Oregon Assembled Land Exchange. This forested "parcel," like thousands of acres of others, is to be traded to a timber corporation for logged-over land filled with stumps and sparse seedlings deemed "more important" and "easier to manage."
Land exchanges of public lands for primarily cut-over corporate "timberlands" are the growing rage among corporate profiteers and their government servants across the Western US. Indeed, these exchanges are touted as good for the economy and the environment by a pathetic alliance of corporations, government agencies and mainstream "environmentalists."
For years corporate timber has given little thought to cutting sustainably. The moonscape legacy they have made of their own land is well known, as is the logged, fragmented devastation they have helped wreak upon public forestlands.
Consequently, as activists have slowed or stopped some logging of old-growth forest habitat on public lands, corporate timbers' appetite has increased. With land exchanges they have created a way to get around federal laws protecting wildlife, forest habitat and water quality. Essentially, timber sales are being disguised as land exchanges--private stumps for public trees.
With the color-coded maps of "disposal" and "acquisition" lands, the exchange often resembles some nightmare corporate Monopoly game from hell. The game essentially goes something like this: Road, clearcut or heavily log all the trees that can be economically accessed on private corporate lands, then trade them for publicly owned old-growth forests. These forests are then logged at a profit while the public pays the tab for restoration on the newly acquired devastated lands.
The exchange process itself is usually controlled by the timber corporations or a for-profit land exchange corporation (often created with "seed money" from the timber corporations). Clearwater Land Exchange, a profit-seeking venture reputedly started with money from Boise Cascade and Louisiana Pacific, initiated and has now been designated facilitator of the Northeast Oregon Land Exchange by the BLM. In a February 15, 1996 letter from Clearwater to the BLM (obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request), the for-profit venture clearly states whose interests it represents, telling the BLM, "Remember the timber companies control the transaction and can only be satiated with the federal timber lands."
Most of the land exchanges involve federal welfare subsidies for the corporations in the form of "cost-share" agreements, and the northeast Oregon exchange is no exception. The federal government will pay Clearwater half the costs of land surveys and timber assessments. In addition, all administrative costs will be assumed fully by the BLM. The exchange will cost the federal government an estimated $870,000. Meanwhile, Clearwater stands to reap millions of profits--at the expense of wildlife, ecological heritage and taxpayers.
Land exchange profiteering ventures such as Clearwater have a track record of over-appraising logged-over industry land, under-appraising federal public lands and misrepresenting the amount of actual old-growth forests being traded away from public ownership as well as the actual conditions of the industry lands being acquired. In the Northeast Oregon Land Exchange the BLM is complicit in such misrepresentations. The actual amount of old-growth forest to be traded is more than four times that reported in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) itself for the exchange.
In order to make these huge logging operations disguised as land exchanges palatable to mainstream enviro-groups, they are usually presented as achieving various conservation goals, much like the "forest health/salvage" hoax. A common ruse used to frosting coat these illegal schemes is the elimination of "difficult to manage," "isolated" parcels of public land in order to "consolidate public lands into large blocks of contiguous habitat." Often, the supposed isolated parcels are in reality adjacent to other publicly owned lands. In this case, the BLM lands are adjacent to national forests and state lands.
In northeast Oregon an additional pretense is being used to justify the exchange: achieving public ownership over large sections of important salmonoid waterways in the John Day River system. However, not only is most of the industry land already logged, many of the publicly owned ancient forests to be traded are at the headwaters of tributaries to this river system. The EIS fails to assess or disclose the devastating sedimentation that would result from logging these headwaters forests.
Serious flaws also exist in the "logic" of consolidating public land holdings by trading isolated, difficult to manage parcels. Precisely because many of these isolated areas have not been managed, they often provide excellent centuries-old habitat. Many of these areas serve as dispersal habitat and connecting corridors between larger blocks of habitat. They fill an irreplaceable role by providing foraging, nesting and dispersal habitat; clear, cool waters; and stopover areas for far-ranging wildlife such as wolverines, migrating birds and potentially wolves, as well as elk, deer and wild horses.
While the many issues arising in these land exchange proposals may at first seem complicated, the more one looks through the misrepresentations, outright lies and justifications made by federal agencies and corporate profiteers, the more a single simple issue clearly emerges. At bottom, beneath the piles of agency EIS papers, this trade is just another chance to log ancient forests on public lands for corporate profits. Some of the exchanges currently being fought are:
Huckleberry Mountain/Weyerhaeuser Exchange--near Seattle, Washington, it includes land originally traded to Weyerhaeuser in a previous exchange, which was then clearcut and traded back to public ownership for yet more ancient forest.
Plum Creek/I-90 Exchange--also near Seattle, Washington, it was pushed through as a congressional rider by Senator Gorton (R-WA) on the recent appropriations bill. Supporters include the Sierra Club, whose local officials were won over by the inclusion of corporate lands near the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area. This exchange would result in the logging of two ancient forest roadless areas in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest--unless your opposition helps stop it!
Triangle Land Exchange--it would trade 4,863 acres of Forest Service lands in northeast Oregon for 7,410 acres of private and timber industry lands. Again Clearwater Land Exchange is the proponent, and public old-growth forests would be traded away to be logged.
Land Exchange WAOR 50525--located in northeast Washington, it traded 4,500 acres of mostly forested land, much of it containing old-growth forest, to timber companies in exchange for mostly shrub-steppe habitat. The trade was between the BLM and Clearwater Land Exchange. It was found to be illegal by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the BLM and Clearwater had already exchanged land titles, rendering the decision moot on all but four parcels where the deeds had not yet been exchanged.
Other land exchanges are occurring or have occurred from Arizona to Montana, Colorado to the Pacific Coast. They are part of the continuing saga of usurpation, a saga of cold, corporate greed. Left in its wake is devastation--stumps, mudslides, extinctions and vanishing ancient forests. Land exchanges, like corporations, are just another manifestation of this insanity.
So what can we do? As with all things, power exists in action, not in mere words alone. Power exists in connecting with the land itself, with nature. It exists in educating others and together taking creative, inspirational actions and risks in support of life--of living earth. If you live near any of these trades, get to know the land, help document, hike and educate. Take action at the offices of the "just doing my job" bureaucrats who would so readily offer up these lands for trade and destruction. Act against the corporate-owned politicians who assist such corrupt folly. And go directly to the corporations themselves, to their subsidiaries, their offices, their homes, their yachts and private clubs. Take nonviolent, creative direct actions.
For more information on land exchanges contact: Western Land Exchange, POB 95545, Seattle, WA 98145-2545. Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, HCR 82, Fossil, OR 97830. Also write or take creative actions against the following; USDA Forest Service, 14 and Independence SW, Washington DC 20250; US Department of the Interior, Office of the Inspector General, 1849 C Street NW, Mail Stop 5340, Washington, DC 20240; (202) 208-5745. Council on Environmental Quality, 722 Jackson Place, Washington DC, 20502; (202) 456-6224.