Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994 TAG: 9402070243
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES E. LOESEL and CHARLES A. BLANKENSHIP
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Dec. 20 editorial (``Old forests get new lease on life'') made some modest proposals about how the plan's direction should be changed to emphasize forests as special places (old-growth trees, watersheds, wilderness, hiking trails, rugged campgrounds, wildlife habitats, physical beauty). The editorial took great pains to find a legitimate niche for timber harvesting, but it argued against ``substantially below-cost sales of publicly owned timber.'' These proposals made a lot of sense.
However, the editorial didn't meet with the approval of letter-writers Jim DeMoss (Dec. 28, ``Harvesting helps forest survive'') and Charles Moss (Jan. 5, Foresters use scientific principles''), who presented a timber-industry point of view. They want to maintain timber harvesting as the central focus for managing the national forests.
Moss attacks the whole notion of below-cost timber sales by charging ``the only reason timber is below cost is that a politically rigged accounting system allocates a part of the cost of providing wildlife resources, recreation and forest protection to the timber program.'' In fact, the accounting system has been rigged to make most of the costs of building roads simply disappear. Building and maintaining roads to haul out timber are a significant part of the timber program on the Jefferson National Forest. For more than 20 years the General Accounting Office, the official watch-dog agency for the federal government, has found the Jefferson to have one of the worst below-cost sales records in the nation.
The timber industry wants to make other costs disappear, including overhead, planning and support services. If the industry is successful in further rigging the accounting system, we eventually will be shown a balance sheet in which revenues are greater than costs - but taxpayers will continue to lose $1 million a year on the Jefferson's timber program.
Because of persistent budget deficits, Congress and administrations will be unable to maintain past levels of subsidy to the timber industry in the form of below-cost timber sales. The timber targets for fiscal year '94 have gone down. For fiscal year '95, the administration will ask for slightly less, and in preliminary preparation for fiscal year '96, the Jefferson has requested even lower timber volumes. The timber industry knows that the argument about below-cost timber sales is largely a rear-guard action.
Moss wrote, ``Let foresters manage the forest using the scientific principles that produced our majestic resource.'' What he ignores is that national forests are to be managed for multiple uses, not just timber. When it comes to making decisions about recreation, grazing, minerals, wildlife, aesthetics, streams and wilderness, experts aren't usually foresters. In the Jefferson, where other resources are far more valuable than timber, it makes no sense to turn most decisions over to foresters rather than put them in the hands of the resource specialists.
DeMoss argues that decision-making should be left to the U.S. Forest Service rather than including the public. National forests are not corporate enterprises; they're public lands. Congress and prior administrations decided that forest-management decisions should include substantial public participation.
Moss and DeMoss present a number of arguments why timber harvesting should be maintained or increased for ecological reasons. They believe timber harvesting is largely responsible for creating the ``magnificent forest'' of today, and argue that timber harvesting should remain central to perpetuating this forest. Moss sees the forest as a garden that must be weeded, harvested and replanted.
For those of us who've been in some of the patches of remaining old-growth, the second- and third-growth forests are not all that magnificent. An area that's clearcut takes more than 20 years to recover so that it's even marginally interesting for recreation. At the cutting rate established in the Jefferson's plan, approximately 50,000 acres may be clearcut during 20 years.
DeMoss says ``history teaches and research corroborates that forest management, including harvesting, is necessary to retain the variety of organisms, structures and ecosystems that we all desire.'' If that's so, how did forests develop before there were foresters to ``manage'' them? Is there any evidence that old-growth developed because several hundred years ago foresters cut down the old forest, planted a new forest, weeded it, and tended it until it developed into the rich old-growth ecosystem we all desire?
DeMoss is worried that without logging the Jefferson will gradually change from an oak forest to one dominated by maple, beech and hemlock. In reality, fire, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, insects and diseases all contribute to interrupting the succession of the forest to beech, maple and hemlock. He should concentrate on what's really happening. The woolly adelgid is gradually wiping out hemlocks. Gypsy moths will reduce the percentage of oaks (now about 60 percent of the Jefferson's tree species). Yellow pines are being killed by southern pine beetles and dogwoods are being attacked by anthracnose.
This isn't an argument against timber harvesting. There are some sound guidelines for where, when and how timber should be harvested on national forests. But the 156 national forests are managed under a philosophy called ``multiple use,'' and the basic idea is that national forests should be managed for a variety of uses and values, including recreation, timber harvesting, grazing, mineral extraction, watershed protection, archaeology, wilderness and wildlife.
Sometimes these uses complement one another; other times they conflict. The challenge is to figure out how to combine these various uses and values in the best way, all within the limits established by law, public demands and scientific knowledge.
James E. Loesel is secretary of the Citizens Task Force for National Forest Management. Charles A. Blankenship is a retired Jefferson National Forest planning and recreation staff officer.
by CNB