ENOLA HILL REPORT WAS NOWHERE NEAR
OBJECTIVE
Dear
HCN:
I work as a recreation forester for the
Mount Hood National Forest where the Enola Hill timber sale is
taking place and the sale has no “350-year-old Douglas fir that
loom,” as HCN intern Bill Taylor reports (HCN, 5/27/96): The trees
are about 90 years old, assuming they were germinated after a big
1910 fire that swept much of the area. The sale is not a 158-acre
clearcut; it is selective cutting of trees (with helicopters)
affected by laminated root-rot fungus. The 6 acres of clearcut that
were tossed into the sale by the frenetic demands of the salvage
rider were dropped because subsequent negotiating with Hanel Lumber
Co. enabled the Forest Service to delete parts of the sale. Those 6
acres are located in what President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan
designates a Riparian Reserve where one does not harvest timber
unless it somehow benefits the riparian habitat such as to thin
timber to create larger diameter (future old growth) trees. The
remaining Enola Hill sale is within a designated viewshed in which
the agency would never prescribe ugly clearcuts regardless of
silvicultural needs.
The Native American argument
over Enola Hill is probably the weakest argument out there. The
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs – with known history on the
involved lands – have repeatedly denied any cultural link to Enola
Hill, other than berry picking throughout the whole area, and have
refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Friends of Enola Hill
pronouncements.
Put yourself in the shoes of Rip
Lone Wolf’s Nez Perce ancestors. Would they have walked across the
state of Oregon to the west side of the Cascade Mountains (wet,
dark and miserable to a Columbia Plateau Indian) when they could go
a few miles to overlook Hells Canyon in quest of visions? I doubt
it, but I was not a Nez Perce 150 years ago. Our local Indians,
within 50 miles, say their ancestors did not use Enola, or at least
never passed down stories about it.
My friend and
co-worker, Beth Walton, the Mount Hood National Forest
archaeologist- not an anthropologist – has consistently told the
Friends of Enola that the agency would gladly and enthusiastically
protect known cultural sites if they are pointed out. If Lone Wolf
can point out verifiable burial sites, you can bet the agency will
honor and protect them to the point of bringing criminal charges
against anyone who threatens them. However, such sites must be
credible, otherwise anyone with the intent of stopping a timber
sale, hiking trail, or snowmobile parking area, for example, could
claim the entire national forest as a special site deserving
protection. The Forest Service takes American Indian cultural
values very seriously, but we must be sure we are not dealing with
crackpots who may cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of
dollars in needless reviews (or litigation) as this case has
done.
Finally, the 9th Circuit Court had nothing
to do with this timber sale. That court was involved with an
access-to-private-land issue on Enola Hill several years ago with a
road use permit that the Forest Service issued to loggers who had
to cross a mile of public land to do what the landowner lawfully
contracted them to do. In the Enola sale case, a U.S. District
Court agreed with the Forest Service compliance process and the
view of Enola as general forest without cultural
concerns.
Doug
Jones
Maupin, Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Enola Hill report was nowhere near objective.
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