Value of an undisturbed forest is left out of logging equation.
Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Samuel PorterFrom 1960 to 1990, logging companies savaged old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. At first, opponents of old growth logging were presented as people who wanted to have places significant to them kept intact at the expense of the general interest in economic growth. Environmentalists appeared as making unreasonable demands.
But a shift occurred in the national psychology when majorities began to see important intrinsic values in the forests of the Northwest, and dangers to the ecosystem. Instead of small groups on their own, Oregon environmentalists became a part of a large nationwide coalition.
With this redefinition and growing ecological consciousness, activists began to win battles that took old growth out of the market. Wilderness sanctuaries are now widely perceived as an immense source of wealth for the whole society, though the struggle against those who do not want to admit this redefinition continues.
Like the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Northwest environmental history should be a rallying point for environmentalists who have been on the defensive far too long on several fronts - including climate change, energy and forest management.
But that takes leadership and an articulate vision and strategy that calls into question our society's utilitarian assumptions - assumptions that, I submit, underlie the new plan advanced by 35 Oregon State University School of Forestry seniors and distinguished forest scientists Norman Johnson and Jerry Franklin.
The plan intends to resolve the difficulty of logging public lands in Western Oregon.
According to the Aug. 2 Register-Guard, the plan "would increase logging, protect old growth, end clear cutting, allow forests to naturally regenerate, diversify stands for the benefit of more species, and even reimburse the counties where forests are located for ecological services ... forests provide."
The plan promises what the Northwest Forest Plan, the current management strategy, could not deliver: "substantial logging and compliance with environmental laws."
Rather than old growth reserves and areas for clear cutting, the new plan points to Western Oregon's "moist forests" and Central Oregon's "dry forests," taking into account different fire patterns that would guide forest management.
Some rules would still apply: trees 150 years old or more would not be harvested; at least 25 percent of a harvest area would not be cut; species regeneration would be allowed instead of replanting; early successional forests with a variety of plants and trees would replace monocultural Douglas fir plantations; and logging, including mature and more valuable trees, would provide "a steady, perpetual, and predictable income" and revenues to counties.
The federal government would reimburse counties based on the value of standing forests as, for example, carbon sinks. In addition, the plan sees forests as providing "millions of dollars a year in recreational value" people currently do not pay for.
The plan is a significant advance. But it appears cast in primarily economic language, suggesting certain prejudgments. The premise is there is a single standard of value - money - and that resolving the gridlock is a matter of maximizing quantities of that value.
In contrast, old growth forests consist of diverse species ecologically valued for what they are in themselves as irreplaceable parts of a whole - let alone the diverse, intrinsic values forests have for many citizens.
Yet the plan evokes the image of national forests as administrative depots for distributing multiple useful goods, and as markets for competing private interests - an image that reinforces gridlock and stymies debate.
Some, including but not limited to deep ecologists, would say the natural environment makes demands on us and objectively calls on us to respect its crucial features, to restore and not destroy them.
The utilitarian reasoning of Johnson, Franklin and their students cannot take this in. They might say, "We can understand how you feel but it is not a correct perception of what is important."
But when Henry David Thoreau says, "In wildness is the preservation of the world," he is expressing a perception of a reality others do not yet realize. Again, the response could be, "Glad you feel that way. I feel that way too." But this does not do justice to Thoreau or others like him.
The crucial question Johnson, Franklin and their students fail to address is: Can we breach the gridlock with a plan based primarily on utilitarian assumptions that make the idea of intrinsic value impossible, especially when we do not yet know or agree on what the deeper reasons are for managing the forests?
Sam Porter of Eugene has taught environmental sociology in the University of Oregon's Department of Sociology and in the UO's Central Oregon programs in Bend. His research examines the cultural, moral and social dimensions of the conflict over Oregon's federal forests.
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| Title Annotation: | Local Opinion |
|---|---|
| Author: | GUEST VIEWPOINT By Samuel Porter |
| Publication: | The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) |
| Date: | Sep 9, 2010 |
| Words: | 781 |
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