Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9406260147
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JUSTIN ASKINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Bill Devall's work has always inspired me. His two volumes on deep ecology ("Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered" and "Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology") remain important guides to thinking and living well. Though "Clearcut" is a much more sobering volume with its many large photos detailing the devastations of industrial logging, its overall effect, especially its final section on "ecoforestry," is much the same as the earlier works.
The structure of the book is straightforward.
Start with a number of provocative and well researched essays on the actual\ effects of clearcutting, follow that with over 170 pages of disturbing\ photographs (dozens are 12 and by 19) of what is going on on public and\ private lands across the United States and Canada, and then conclude with a\ series of pieces on how and why we must change to a system that employs the\ principles of "ecoforestry":
"First, respect for the forests as equal partners is made explicit. Second,\ the agricultural model of forests as tree farms is rejected. Third, the human\ use of forests is based on satisfying vital needs that can only be defined\ through local and regional direct experience with forests. Ecoforestry cannot\ be controlled from Washington."
The last sentence is crucial and points to the biggest culprit directly\ responsible to the American public for the decline of our woodlands - the\ National Forest Service.
While there has been recent talk about ecosystems management and retaining\ biological diversity, the key indicator of moving toward this policy - the\ creation of new and larger wilderness areas - has gone virtually nowhere.\ Instead, throughout the country the Forest Service continues to build\ thousands of miles of roads and to clearcut hundreds of thousands of acres,\ often in areas that would have been appropriate for wilderness designation. If trees could actually be farmed, then such a policy would not be particularly harmful; the forest would simply grow back. But evidence is mounting that the Forest Service policy - and the general procedure in the private sector - of tree farming by clearcutting (and partial clearcutting techniques like seed tree cuts, shelterwood cuts and green tree retention) simply does not work.
As Chris Maser writes, "We are liquidating our forests and replacing them\ with short-rotation plantations. Everything Nature has done in designing\ forests adds to diversity, complexity, and stability through time. We decrease\ diversity, complexity, and stability by redesigning forests into plantations."
Herb Hammond points out that second-growth Douglas fir has low structural\ strength and that "the highest-quality, strongest paper made from wood comes\ from long-fiber, old-growth coniferous wood." Hammond details a number of\ problems with tree farming techniques including the fact that German\ foresters "have encountered excessive windthrow in plantations as old as 170\ years. Notwithstanding their maturity, these planted trees did not exhibit\ natural root form."
"Clearcut" is necessary reading for anyone concerned about our forests, and\ the final pages offer some excellent advice on how the public can get involved\ in changing our destructive forestry practices.
- Justin Askins teaches at Radford University.
by CNB