Warning to environmentalists: the smoke is changing opinions on forest management.
The forest issue is flipping. It used to be that "natural" was good. Now "natural" is a hazard.
Democrats need to re-discover logging and forest management. Voters in the American west are re-thinking forest land.
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| Hazard day: visability 200 yards |
For decades the battle had been between
environmentalists, who wanted "quality of life," versus the timber industry that argued that clearcuts and pollution were good. "Those are jobs you smell."
The political parties aligned here in southern Oregon. Democrats supported individual citizens concerned about livability and the environment. They sided with the little guy against the powerful industry groups, with the money to lobby and finance the campaigns of the "pro-job, pro-business" Republicans. Democrats wanted restrictions on harvest volumes and lumber mill pollution.
In general, environmentalists were in favor of "preserving" and doing less. They spoke to the value of camping and tourism and the clean water and air that comes off natural forests. And they favor wilderness--preserving wild, untouched places. Republicans supported the do-more-cut-more view of monetizing the forests for wood extraction. Republicans had the support of the Chamber of Commerce and business community and small government/low regulation oriented voters. Tourism was dismissed as a niche, low-wage industry.
The local alignment fit the national line up. Democrats for "livability," and protecting endangered species and the environment. Republicans for freedom and jobs. Democrats complain about coal and fracking; Republicans talk of "clean coal" and "Drill, baby, drill."
The smoke is changing things.
For the past few summers the forests surrounding southern Oregon have been burning up Last year the forest fires started in earnest in August. This year they started in early July. The air is hazardous to breathe on some days. On others, it is merely "unhealthy." It makes summers--the height of the tourist season--unbearable.
Perceptions of the forest have changed. Those uncut trees are just waiting to burn up and fill your house and lungs with bad air. Forest fires can kill you. Today some 500 homes in the city of Redding, California, about 120 miles south of here burned up, notwithstanding all the resources of a city fire department. You cannot protect yourself; the fire jumped the Sacramento River. Last year hundreds of homes burned up in the city of Santa Rosa when the fire jumped a ten lane freeway. East of Portland a fire jumped the Columbia River.
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| Better day: visibility two miles |
The fires and smoke reverse the polarity of the "livability" political argument. Trees and natural forests aren't the presumed good guys anymore. Now they are a menace. Not just a potential menace--like bears or cougars. They are a menace in your face. They breed fires that burn up homes deep inside city limits. It causes evacuations. It fills vast areas with miserable air that destroys your summer BBQ, cancels your camping trip, keeps your kids from going outside to play, and ruins the visit from out of town relatives.
Timber "harvest" had formerly been dangerous talk for a Democrat. "Harvest" implied a crop, and natural forests were to be considered a complex organic whole, of trees and water and wildlife and a source of pristine air. Environmentalists generally wanted relatively few trees cut, and their organizations used the tools of lawsuits to bring federal timber sales to a crawl, to protect the spotted owl, to protect a waterway, to question the data in an Environmental Impact Statement. Stop the clearcuts! Stop the rape of our natural environment! Save the wildlife! It was a politically viable position.
Democrats need to re-callibrate, both policy and message, because the facts on the ground have changed and the public perception has changed. "Harvest" cannot be a dirty word anymore. There is an opportunity for Democrats to describe increased timber harvest as a good thing, both for jobs and the environment. Logging would reduce some of the fuel load and it would create the revenue that would allow better thinning of brush and over-dense vegetation. Theoretically, this should not be hard for Democrats, since it is consistent with the overall Democratic message that a wise government steps in to address problems. Fuel-loaded forests are now understood to be a problem.
Managing the forests better--more--would be a popular argument in the midst of dense smoke in cities. The impediment will be the portion of the Democratic environmental base that is uncomfortable with logging and willing to make the argument that forest fires are natural, and therefore some combination of inevitable and beneficial. Natural is good. Logging is selling out to corporations. Forest management is "centrist." They resist having the forest fires blamed on them. Reduced cuts aren't the problem, they argue. Thinning could be done with tax money, not forest harvest revenues. Natural forests aren't the ones that burn the most.
There are these arguments to be made, but it is a tougher sell amid the smoke.
Forests they helped preserve are burning up. Breaking news shows homes on city streets on fire. People watch the news and breathe the air and think this is intolerable. The forests are analogous to MS-13, aggressive and dangerous and a very easy target for public concern by Republicans who see a political opportunity.
There are these arguments to be made, but it is a tougher sell amid the smoke.
Forests they helped preserve are burning up. Breaking news shows homes on city streets on fire. People watch the news and breathe the air and think this is intolerable. The forests are analogous to MS-13, aggressive and dangerous and a very easy target for public concern by Republicans who see a political opportunity.
Democrats are the "do something" party. They will do something about the forests burning up, or they will get creamed politically.
12 comments:
I'm sorry, explain again the direct connection between not logging and fires?
Anything can be politicized but fires and smoke have been a part of the forest forever. What's new about that? More frequent and severe storms due to climate change. The tension between loggers and environmentalists is unfortunate because they fundamentally have the same interests. No rational conservationist advocates no cutting and the smarter logging companies are adopting sustainable strategies aided by government oversight. It's something that should be worked out between these groups and refereed by the agencies responsible. Science needs to be applied, not economics and politics. Studies indicate that logging can actually make large fires worse and that they are more likely due to increased "extreme conditions" (humidity, temperature etc.)
Those that are pointing to the smoke as the fault of environmentalists are in denial and oversimplifying a complex issue, not to mention scapegoating for short term profits.
Wood is a miracle. An inexpensive, versatile building material that comes out of the Earth. But trees have another,r more important function, providing breathable oxygen for humans. Let's decide what comes first.
“Untouched unsoiled places” are a myth! What is meant is these are the places settlers and immigrants had not developed. Overlooked is the fact that North America was inhabited with indigenous people, the late comers misnamed them Indians. The forests and plains were “managed” by and for the benefit of the tribes living there. In the Northwest, fire was used to drive game animals out of deep cover. That practice cleared the forest of a fuel supply, that when burned would destroy the forest. A lumber outfit in Medford, MedCo, had vast holdings of limber and were managing it in one hundred year rotation. The forests provided jobs and the managed forest was safer from large fires. Slash and underbrush could be moved to large piles and burned in the winter. In the 70’s, with the beginning of Earth Day and the Sierra Club, concern for the environment and certain practices, like wigwam burners at saw mills drove an expanding urban population to demand regulations of these burning, and other polluting practices. The regulations were highly successful. Forest lands and milling it into lumber became less profitable. Turning timber into lumber was outsourced by sending raw logs overseas resulting in fewer and fewer good paying rural jobs. Rural communities fell into a downward spiral. One such occurrence I saw first hand in Burns when the Yellow Jacket mill closed. This and other events brought on the Sagebrush Rebellion still being play out today in BLM and USDA-Forest Service practices and policies. The practice of fighting forest fires and range fires actually increased the amount of fuel to be burned and deprecated the range of browse for game and cattle. Allowing homes to be built in these areas has placed in conflict resident safety and game management practices by placing both areas, forest and rangeland; and, rural dwellers in conflict. Land use practices and the chaffing regulations are the underpinnings of rural resentment toward Democrats.
Peter, You knew that this blog would touch a raw nerve! I posted this on Facebook recently,
I start fuming when I see columns like this one in the Medford Mail Tribune this Sunday:
http://mailtribune.com/…/fires-show-more-forest-management-…
My REBUTTAL
Some points, - the Klamathon fire was started by human activity. It raced thru open juniper and pine country, and a town. Only then did it come north into timber land. The immeasurable loss of life and property was largely down near the town. I drove by on I-5 to confirm this on July 23 and it looked like it burned the grasses, but some of the oaks and junipers were partly burned an might survive.
Few are saying Let it burn. This is a misunderstanding of the views of conservationists. Broadcast burning off season is advocated by most everyone.
The Hendrix fire partly, at first at least, burned thru private forest logging slash, ....hummmm.
Building roads thru steep and rugged country creates a lot of problems, too. Problems of erosion, and more human invasion and idiots doing irresponsible things to the land.
Forest fungal interrelationships are broken up by roads and logging, making the remaining trees and forest floor plants vulnerable to disease and invasion by non-native plants. A lot of logging areas look like a mullein forest afterwards!
Logging and roading every last mile cannot be done due to various land designations, like, ummm, wilderness
(And the author of this rant just praised the Klamathon fire people for acting quickly to put out that fire, where it ended - in the wilderness.
The author of the rant had to, just had to mention the recent expansion of the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. There are currently no fires in the Monument Expansion area! There are roads in this area. A lot of it is in Oak Savannah country and park-like open pine and fir forests. So it ain't broke, don't fix it!
And a word about moisture, etc in old growth forests, such as there are in the Ashland watershed. The Hendrix fire is growing, but very slowly compared to the Kamathon fire that rapidly shot thru flammable dry grass, juniper, and structures. Same with the speed in the Carr fire near Redding.
And his mention of "science based management" .....Hello, he works for the timber industry, and he only means logging!. It is the utmost temerity to suggest that we "manage" forests! They have not even finished one rotation cycle yet in some places. It is not a crop of corn, being harvested every year. And we eve make mistakes with corn!
Gawd, I hate the smoke, too! But be safe firefighters! I know some of you,
And maybe most people think that the fires have gotten worse. There have historically been huge fires all over the Northwest, observed by the earliest white men in ships at sea hundreds of years ago.The Tillamook Burn was a huge series of fires starting in 1931. I remember 1987, in Ashland.
http://mailtribune.com/…/fire-from-the-sky-changed-everythi…. Re: 1987 Silver Fire.
Added to the original post:
The fire up in The Dalles area burned 23 square miles of grassland and crops. Not forest land. The Santa Rosa and other California fires last year burned big. Maybe started by electric company activity. Wildfires there ravaged more than 245,000 acres, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 42 people. Not forest land. The Greeks have had huge fires, (arsonists, they think) - Not forest land. Climate change may much more likely be the culprit, explaining why things are so dry. The Redding fire, Carr fire, started with a vehicle malfunction and has burned more than 45,000 acres, as I write this, - not in timber.
Here is another article on Native Americans' burning of the valley _
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/anthropogenic_fire/#.W1zT47gnaM_
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Not sure any of these links are going to pick up here, but copy and paste should get them available.
Thanks to all commenters.
I mostly look at perception and message, not science. I am trying to observe politics. If, in fact, the science fully backs an environmental position then supporters had better get out there and start selling it with every bit of energy they have.
I likened the smoke and fire problem to MA-13 because it is visible and an easy scapegoat, not because I think MS-13 represents most immigrants. But this is a democratic republic and what the people think really matters. People think the smoke is intolerable and they think that it wouldn't be burning up in the woods if it had been harvested and made into houses. Is that oversimple? OF COURSE! The public perception is changing because the smoke feels worse than in the idealized past and something is responsible. Even if it is climate change or something too big to change anytime soon, there is still the symptom to manage--fire and smoke. If Democrats say that the science says that there is nothing much we can do so we will study the problem, while Republican say the smoke is intolerable and there is indeed something we can do--cut moe trees--then Republicans will win this argument. They will have a plan of action, even if it is the wrong one, and that will look good to people. FDR tried things, and people liked that.
Pete, we've tried to "sell" - i.e., teach people the facts about fire and the "managed forest" - for years. The timber industry has been successful in shouting loud enough to drown us out. No sensible person believes that logging should completely stop in the National Forests: I've written a book or two on the folly of that approach (one of them won the Oregon Book Award in 1999). But logging DOES NOT STOP FOREST FIRES - if not done properly, it contributes to them. Read the history of the fires in Michigan at the end of the 19th century. Check which fires in our area right now are burning slowly and are containable, and which ones are creating firestorms like the Carr fire and the Klamathon Fire. It's not the fires in the natural areas that are the problem. The demand by Walden and others to manage the forests more intensely will increase the problem, it won't solve it. The cause of increased fires isn't logging slowdown, it's climate change. The forests are drying out, and heat stress is causing them to become susceptible to disease, which kills the trees. Dead trees burn faster than live ones. I understand the political problem, but it's caused by deliberate misinformation from industry sources and politicians like Greg Walden who want to cut more for profit, not for protection against fires. Don't buy into their lies, and don't contribute to the problem. Please.
I can't believe how so many progressives could be so misguided.
What does Lomakatsi do in the forests above Ashland every year? They THIN the forests in order to prevent forest fires. If it's acceptable and desirable in Ashland's forest, then why not in everyone Else's forests? Isn't that a little hypocritical?
Besides the fact that thinning forests alleviates fires, it also creates timber revenue, which can be used to combat fires, and to pay for public services (like for schools and cops).
I get really irritated at the pseudo "environmentalists" who embrace a "let it burn" attitude. Not only does it cost money to fight fires, but it also burns valuable resources. I believe last year's (2017) fires consumed a few billion dollars worth of resources.
I'm a strong supporter of the O&C Act of 1937. It provides for sustainable cutting of timber on O&C lands. Those lands were specifically set-aside to produce revenue for the region, but instead they've become a political football of the left, and now they are over-grown with brush, and waiting to explode.
O&C timber grows at about 1.2 billion board feet per year. I support the cutting of about 800,000 board feet of timber per year. That would easily be sustainable, plus it would remove timber from the forest before it burns (or gets bugs), and it would create jobs and revenue (and alleviate fires). Right now, we're cutting less that 100,000 board feet annually.
Democrats are misguided in so many ways, and their forest policy is one of the many ways. I'm a real environmentalist. I don't support clear-cutting, but I do support sustainable cutting, and better forest management, and we're not getting that right now.
Let me make a correction.....I support the cutting of about 800 million board feet of timber on O&C lands annually, and not 800,000. That was a typo.
Don't put words in my mouth - or anybody else's, Curt. Nowhere in the comments here is there a suggestion that we should "let it burn." What there IS, is recognition that current logging practices contribute to fires, they don't control them. The biggest fire in southern Oregon right now is Taylor Creek, at 20,000 acres. That is burning in "managed" forest, and is the second big fire in that drainage in the last two years. About the smallest fire that is still burning is Timber Crater, at about 3300 acres. That is in Crater Lake National Park. They were started by the same lightning storm. Taylor Creek grew by more acres than that just in the last 24 hours.
Granted that there are other differences, among them elevation and species mix. It is still specious to say that management will save us from fire. It obviously will not.
I am no friend of pure preservation. I support judicial management for forest health, including fire prevention, just about everywhere, including in some areas that are now classified as wilderness. I was a board member of the Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy, back in the 1990s when we thought we could find a way for truly sustainable forest harvest and wilderness management to coexist - we had a staff forester, and were the lead organization for certifying sustainable forest products in Oregon, and we ran the local Jobs in the Woods program for the Forest Service. But between what the timber industry calls "sustainable" and what actually can be certified as sustainable lies a gulf that you could run a couple of hundred logging trucks through. Don't confuse the issue by assuming an identity that doesn't exist.
Oh my, Kurt A is spouting the company line again! Did you actually READ MY COMMENTS? i talk to some of the very points you raise.
Bill A. knows that I disagree on touching our wilderness areas. That is a slippery slope I don't want us to be on. There are many designations of public land that for many reasons limit or eliminate logging. That alone would change that amount of logging board feet you have pulled out of thin air, and by the way, I don't see a reference for your stating that amount.
The Ashland watershed has one main purpose, protect our water. So Lomataski thins to promote this one purpose for the land. It is not necessarily desirable from and aesthetic or recreation point of view.
You boldly states things with no backup. Thinning may, in some cases, where slash is cleaned up, like in the watershed, alleviate fires. However I see a lot of thinning with a lot of slash left. That played a role in the Hendrix fire, and this slash was on private land!
As Bill A. says, and I said, we are not for letting a lightning fire burn. The Native Americans did do a lot of fall slash and broadcast burning, especially in the valley and foot hill areas. Again, did you read my comment and the attachments about this? I think not.
The O&C Act of 1937 is one of several acts, laws and regulations governing public forest lands. The Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered species act, Wild Rivers Act, official forest plans established by the BLM and US Forest Service, all supersede the O&C act in time, and can override some of the provisions of that 1937 act. The Trump administration, of all things, has intervened in a lawsuit brought by the timber industry against the establishment of the National Monument Expansion! That lawsuit says that the President (Obama)violated the O&C Act. The summary judgement they ask for says that there is plenty of precedent for the O&C act to act along side other laws and regulations and restrictions. Am amazed at the good arguments by the administration (justice dept.)on this case, and I think that the lawsuit will be dismissed. Well, knock me over with a straw!
No, Kurt, you are a troll of the industry, your statements are full of errors, and you are not an environmentalist!
Curt, I wouldn't argue with Diane on forest law, if I were you. She knows far more about it than you do - or I do, for that matter, and I've written timber sale appeals and a couple of books dealing with forest practices. You're dead wrong about the O&C act.
Notice that Curt picks the woman to call "not bright" . People who know me are laughing their heads off! Thanks,Bill. I was one of the only ones to get a remand on an forest service appeal, and I helped run a lawsuit until a lawyer could be found to take it on.
We will see what the courts decide on the O%C law.
And it is not so bright to suggest that Gov Kate Brown runs the BLM and O&C land. That is a federal agency, and not a state one!
What is important is to remember what Peter is saying about the spin that the industry and naive people can give these fires. What is important is to stand up for our forests, by pointing out the real facts. Again, the huge fires burning fast have been the ones associated with cities and have been human caused fires. What is important is that the forest is a big, living entity, tied together by the fungal mycorrhiza and interrelationships that can be severed by logging, even thinning in some places, due to the trampling and breaking up of the soil. There are places where thinning is appropriate. But not on the scale proposed by Curt and others. And not in our Wilderness. And not in our Monument! Not for an LNG pipeline for a Canadian company to send natural gas to Asia.
Thank you, Peter, for bringing this up, as our candidates for office need to address this issue head-on.
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