Dear HCN,
I am concerned about the
call to logging put forward in Frank Carroll’s essay, “Los Alamos
is burning” (HCN, 5/22/00: Los Alamos is burning), and I am
concerned about the “BLM … planting millions of acres in
non-native crested wheatgrass.” I am a biologist who used to work
for the BLM in eastern Oregon. Our forests changed because of years
of fire suppression. Western ecosystems sometimes burned
“catastrophically’ – and one of the reasons that some trees
survived fires was because larger trees have thicker bark. In many
instances, larger trees that are more able to survive a fire were
or have been logged. Over the years foresters invented creative
reasons that the trees needed to be cut. For example, I have seen
500-year-old Shasta red fir trees salvaged because some of the
trees in the forests had the wrong kind of mushrooms on their bark.
The foresters honestly felt they were doing the ecosystem a
favor.
In some instances, logging may help
restore ecosystems, but conservationists have a difficult time
trusting foresters because the timber industry has a long, poor
track record of destroying ecosystems.
I have the
same kind of distrust when BLM range managers speak of planting
millions of acres of non-native crested wheatgrass for the benefit
of the ecosystem. The range manager that I worked with at the BLM
would agree that the BLM has a long history of placing cattle
before ecosystem health. The timber industry also has a long
history of placing wood-fiber production before ecosystem health.
However, I have worked with several range conservationists and
foresters at the BLM with good ideas for improving ecosystems.
These scientists know that much of the distrust of foresters comes
from years of mismanagement. Trust will take years to develop and
will also require a serious change in
priorities.
Carl Reese
Knowles
McKinleyville, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline We’ve done it wrong for a long time.
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