Dear HCN:
Ed Marston may have been
right in his Aug. 22 opinion article that environmentalists have
won and there has been an amazing conversion at the Forest Service
and BLM and the beasts of contention can now lie down together on
Mr. Babbitt’s holy middle ground. But where is the
evidence?
Has he listened to Forest Service Chief
Thomas since those first calls on his troops to tell the truth and
obey the law? (What other department or service head has ever had
to do that?) Does it mean nothing that Mr. Thomas has told some
environmentalists that the old-growth reserves of Option 9 must be
entered more aggressively than he had expected because the matrix
(unprotected zones conveniently adjacent to timber monoculture
towns) has already been hammered too hard? That Thomas has said he
must target roadless areas in order to carry out forest
plans?
And those “internal cultures’ in the
agencies: Are those real shifts or just shiftiness? Beginning with
Dale Robertson we have heard of new perspectives, new forestry,
ecosystem management and landscape management; now I’ve heard from
biologists that they have been informed by Washington staff that
those phrases are passé. The new terms are “intensive
management” and, following that phrase’s short life, “extensive
management across ecosystems.”
Does this make
you dizzy? It should at least make one wary about the commitment of
department secretaries and service heads to changing old
policies.
Consider FEMAT, Option 9 and the
near-certain further degradation of that operation’s analyses. Look
carefully as well at the Eastside Ecosystem Management Project
(EEMP) now under way for the Columbia River Basin, including
western Montana, Idaho and parts of Wyoming, Nevada and Utah. All
the signs suggest that EEMP will be an even greater extravaganza
trumpeting ecosystem management than was FEMAT and will be an even
bigger bust for the idea of real ecosystem recovery than was the
earlier charade. Just plain logging is replacing clearcutting in
forest “eco-speak” here and in Idaho as a means of mimicking
wildfire. Forest managers in this area see logging as a major
“tool” in ecosystem management.
Much of it
clearly will be salvage and will be exempt from appeals (HCN,
9/12/94). Indications are that some will feature removal of large
old trees, including old growth, if declared to be susceptible to
root rot, bugs, etc. and deemed to “endanger” a stand, watershed,
landscape, ecosystem or life as we know it on
Earth.
Consensus has its place but not on the
West’s plundered forests, streams and range. The condition of those
lands demands that they be made whole, not split down the
middle.
Ross
Titus
Bigfork,
Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The battle isn’t over.
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