Forest activist can be a pain, but he's right.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Victor Rozek For The Register-Guard

We stone our prophets. We ridicule them, call them crazy and push them aside. Prophets make us uncomfortable. They are demanding, adamant and infuriating in their rejection of compromise. They tell us hard truths, and we don't want to hear them. They admonish us to stop destructive behavior, and we are weary of being told to change. They call for inclusion on behalf of the disenfranchised, but we think our status secure so we ignore them.

Martin Luther King is revered today, but was feared and hated in his time. Bobby Kennedy threatened established powers, and in many circles he was despised. But if prophets have one thing in common it is their steadfast refusal to abandon their beliefs in the face of widespread disapproval.

In his own way, Tim Hermach of the Native Forest Council, profiled in the Jan. 22 Register-Guard, is a prophet. Yes, he can be abrasive. He can appear unreasonable. But like prophets before him, he understands what's at stake. His life's work is saving one of the planet's essential life-support systems: the forests.

His most controversial position calls for the total cessation of logging on public lands. Prophetically, it was a position he espoused before the world's glaciers began to melt in earnest, before 100-year storms began occurring with semi-annual regularity, before we began to appreciate that, although our planet is far from fragile, the conditions that support human life are at risk.

Still, it is a position frequently dismissed, particularly by those whose financial interests compel them to discount the noneconomic benefits of natural systems, the growing climatic threat and the often shameful history of timber industry practices.

But given that the issue of logging public lands is polarizing, let's set it aside for a moment and look at a recent development which strikingly illustrates the validity of Hermach's position. In a Jan. 29 Register-Guard editorial titled "Rivers of mercury," we were told that every one of nearly 3,000 fish from 626 streams and rivers in Oregon and 11 other Western states tested positive for mercury. Every one. We know that mercury causes a variety of serious health problems including impaired fetal development and neurological damage. Even though not all of the pollution originated locally, in retrospect, it now seems reasonable that perhaps - just perhaps - we should not have blindly compromised on emission standards. Of course there were prophets who warned us of the dangers of mercury contamination decades ago. But like most prophets, they were ignored.

The point Hermach is making is that difficult decisions must be made while there is still a choice to be had. Every human on Earth now carries more than 100 synthetic chemicals in his or her body. Every fish in the Northwest now has traces of mercury. We can continue mindlessly felling our forests until the environmental damage reaches a tipping point and becomes irreversible, or we can make the difficult decisions now.

Scientists tell us that the carbon dioxide level is the highest it has been in 650,000 years. Credible researchers are warning that a rapidly heating planet will be a hellish place to live. They, too, are prophets, and like Hermach they understand how urgently we need standing forests to protect us.

The question is: How much longer will we ignore them, and what will the conditions be when we finally pay attention?

Next time you see a massive clear-cut and wince; next time you fly over Oregon and see the mangelike patchwork of stripped earth that passes for public forests; next time you see rivers running sickly brown with erosion from insensitive logging practices, remember Tim Hermach. Remember, too, that the consequences of environmental inaction are often deadly and irreversible, and remember that there are principles that should never be compromised.

Victor Rozek of Springfield is a former editor of The Forest Voice, a publication of the Native Forest Council.