NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/environm/14097

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-30 | 4.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!ogicse!amb4.ccalmr.ogi.edu!jhurst
From: [e-mail] (James Hurst)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Who ignores science?
Summary: Very rarely are things in black and white, so often shades of gray...
Keywords: Stop the Orygun Chainsaw Massacre, etc, etc.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 31 Dec 92 00:24:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: ogicse.47821
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: What good is a tree on the stump?
Lines: 90

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Dingo writes:
>
>       WASHINGTON - U.S. Forest Service officials are suppressing a
>       report they had requested of their own wildfile biologists
>       on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska in order to allow
>       timber companies to continue logging the largest and oldest
>       trees.

For background, the Tongass is the largest and one of the most remote of
our national forests, covering much of the southeast panhandle of Alaska.
It's actually pretty temperate, moderated by the Japanese current.  It
has a lot of big Sitka spruce, and similar soggy type trees.  Most of the
cut goes to two large mills, which have sweetheart deals pushed through by
Senator Ted Stevens a decade ago to supply low cost logs and plenty of
them.  As I recall, this deal represented a $50 million subsidy per year
to the Alaskan timber industry (which, btw, gainfully employs a few friends
of mine).

>       The report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
>       concluded that unless logging operations are scaled back by
>       nearly a fourth, several species of animal, including
>       goshawks, owls, brown bears and wolves, are at risk of
>       disappearing from large parts of the forest.

Interesting.  What is a sustainable level for the Tongass has been hotly
debated in recent years.  FOIA requests aren't that common, they tend to
happen under bureaucratic combat conditions, or around nosy reporters.

>          All are found
>       nowhere else in the world.

This is simply incorrect.  Subspecies doesn't cut it either.  Perhaps they
mean populations.  More likely, IMHO, they're just wrong.


>       The biologists, who have worked for the last two years to
>       document the wildlife species that need mature, old-growth
>       forests to survive, say they have been given poor performance
>       reviews, directed to water down their findings and told not
>       to release their report.

This has happened quite often within the Forest Service within recent years.

>One possibility is that the report is good science being ignored by
>the administration for the benefit of its friends in the lumber
>industry.

Certainly one that must be considered, particularly in light of the quite
substantial body of congressional reports and GAO findsing to this effect.


>The other possibility is that the report is biased by the fact that
>most Government employees are quite a ways to the left of any
>Republican administration.

Rather narrow minded of you to deem that there are only two possibilities
here, don't you think, John?  In my limited experience, there is probably
some truth to both, though there is certainly a pattern that lends credence
to the side of the biologists.

This press snippet presents a minor skirmish of a long running struggle over
the heart and soul of the USDA Forest Service.  Conceived by Gifford Pinchot
and given shape by Teddy Roosevelt, the Forest Service manages ~193 million
acres of public forests.  There are lots of statues governing the management
of these forests, including the Clean Water Act, the National Forest Management
Act, the NEPA, and the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act.  These laws,
appear to have been deliberately and systematically broken under pressure from
political appointees over the last decade.

The Forest Service is a divided agency.  Many of the old guard within the
agency believe that the mission of the agency is to provide a steady supply
of low cost lumber to local mills.  These are the timber sale planners and
the road engineers, by and large.  The other camp sees the mission to be the
care and protection of the public lands entrusted to the agency.  These are
the biologists, hydrologists, soil scientists, and ecologists, by and large .

The two sides are at war.  The ologists see the old guard as timber primacists,
willing to destroy their forests for the benefit of local industry.  The old
guard sees them as unpatriotic preservationists.  One of the lessons the
ologists seem to have learned is that to succeed as dissidents within the
agency, they must do good science.

In a war, both sides often do things difficult to justify.  Perhaps this
happened here, as John implies.  But there is certainly a well documented,
long legacy of abuse, subsidy, and environmental destruction on the Tongass.

                    Cheers,

                    Jim