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Add to FavoritesI used to live in an Oregon timber town totally surrounded by public lands. For those who don't know, the U.S. Forest Service and BLM are not in the business of logging. So, who else but the private sector is going to do it?
It is the function of the Forest Service and the BLM to manage the logging activity they decide needs to be done and they do a fairly good job at this. There are lapses, to be sure, but USFS employees are not the pawns of the timber industry they are often assumed to be.
Private logging contractors do the actual logging under the close supervision of USFS employees. Years of study by biologists, geologists, archeologists, etc., are undertaken before any cutting can take place.
If a timber sale is judged to be legal and not in conflict with federal environmental laws - and if it is not appealed by outside environmental groups, a timber company may be allowed to purchase the sale and pay for any roadbuilding and logging.
Many Western states are more than one-half owned by the federal government. If these are timberlands, they need some human help in management or else nature takes a more destructive course of clearing old and diseased trees by means of catastrophic wildfire. Then the USFS is called in usually to prevent - at great cost and environmental pollution - what nature has begun.
The U.S.. environmental movement has used photos of clearcuts on public and private lands to raise a lot of money which they have used to prevent the federal land management agencies from doing the necessary culling and occasional clearcutting that are required to keep these public assets healthy. The ammount of damage to Western timber communities has been intense in this self-righteous, but misinformed crusade to prevent any logging on public lands.
Without logging, which defrays some of the expense of managing these forestlands, the people of the United States get little reurn on these national assets. Who will pay for fires-suppression? Who will pay for the roads we like to drive through the forests? Who will pay for the rural schools?
It is a shame that the environmental groups have gone to the extent they have in preventing 90% of the logging on the small portion of federal lands that are even open to logging. It is a shame that people who have no understanding of what is needed to keep Western forests healthy, have the power to vote over the destiny of the economies of whole states and especially their most endanger human communities.
The national forests was chartered for the purpose of being used for a variety of uses, among them to produce resources necessary for the people of this nation. This purpose has effectively been defeated by the lobbying efforts of the extreme environmental groups.
We all suffer when the highly educated Forest Service personnel who are paid to watch over the longterm health of our national forests aren't allowed to do their work. Forest health suffers; wildfires increase, as well as disease. Communities decay, people move away for lack of useful employment opportunities. And, then we have to import our wood products from countries with less careful environmentl practices! What an irony.
Learn more about this author, Paul Kemp.
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No
Ninety-three percent of the forestland in the United States is privately owned. Public lands, such as state and national forests, comprise only seven percent. With the majority of forestland in the United Sates private and susceptible to logging, there is no good reason to allow logging on public lands and many reasons not to.
Forest ecosystems and the species they depend on cannot be adequately protected on private lands. Regulation of logging practices on private lands is sparse and logging is often carried out without regard to the needs of species that require large, mature areas of forest because to do so would be "uneconomical". Even if a legal framework existed, it would be difficult to enforce given the vast amount of private lands and the resource that would be required to monitor them.
The opposite situation exists on public lands. The infrastructure and legal framework exists to ensure that public lands provide what private lands cannot: large areas where wildlife and humans can benefit from protected forest habitat. And these benefits are immense.
One university study found that in the Eastern United States, public forest land left unlogged was nine times more valuable than public forest land that was logged. This is because intact forest provides clean air, fresh water, and numerous non-consumptive recreational opportunities that inject tourism dollars into local communities. As long as the forests stand unmolested, these benefits remain.
Logging interests, however, wish to continue logging on public forests, not because it is necessary to maintain the industry, but because such logging is heavily subsidized by the federal government. A recent study on the Wayne National Forest found that the taxpayers lose millions of dollars through unfair subsidies to logging interests by, for example, building roads and restoring habitat that the logging company would otherwise be responsible for on private lands. Logging companies want to continue public land logging because they get more bang for our buck, not because it is necessary.
Only five percent of the total volume of timber products produced in the U.S. comes from public lands logging. As a percentage of the total volume, it is insignificant and can easily be made up by smarter management practices on private land. However, that five percent takes a toll on the relatively small percentage of total forest land owned by the public. Each timber sale on public land greatly impacts the overall ability of the public forests to meet their highest and best use: protecting forest ecosystems and the non-consumptive services they provide.
Finally, some argue that forest "management" in the form of for-profit logging must continue in order to lessen forest fires. However, devastating forest fires are a product of logging company influenced management, not prevented by it. Years of fire suppression to protect timber "value", opening areas with roads to allow logging (which also brings in people who start fires), improper logging practices that leave highly combustible woody material behind, bringing heavy machinery into dry forest areas, and clearcut logging have done more to create forest fire hazard than anything else. Healthy forests perpetuated themselves for thousands of years before humans came to "manage" them. Forest fires were present then, but were not the devastating, soil ravaging fires we have "produced" through unwise management today. Stopping the logging on public forests will help prevent wildfires, not produce them.
Logging should be prevented on public forests because it is the logical decision. Public forests provide so much for so little when left undisturbed, yet contribute so little at such a great cost when allowed to be logged. Moreover, it is also the "right" decision because, despite any costs-benefits analyses, public lands are the last, best chance to protect the forests that so many species depend on. Proper stewardship demands no less than that we ensure this protection.
Learn more about this author, Joseph Hazelbaker.
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