The Forest Through The Trees Part 3

It should really be said that pretty much any complex issue is almost always the result of numerous interconnected factors.  Things that feed into and build off of each other in a god awful cluster fuck.  Unfortunately, people too often simplify the world to promote just the factors that best match their worldview, declaring any other correlations irrelevant.  Such is the case with forest management in the western U.S.

Throughout a thirty year period from the 1960’s through the 1980’s, logging on national forests was maintained at very high levels, forming the base industry for the rural economy in many parts of the western United States.  However, not everyone was happy with this situation.  Starting in the late 1960’s, a growing environmental movement began increasingly focusing on the effects of logging in national forests.  Though forest management practices continued to evolve and trees were being replanted, the supply of old growth trees, the giants who had been there for centuries, was rapidly declining.  Environmental groups, the preservationists of their day, became increasingly concerned over the loss of old growth trees, both in terms of their intrinsic value and value as wildlife habitat.  Gaining political clout over time, these groups began to move the needle the other way, with early victories shifting logging on national forests more towards selective logging rather than clear cuts, states passing laws requiring private land owners to replant forests, and growing experimentation with controlled burning as an alternative to logging.  The logging companies of course resisted such efforts, sparking a new round of significant debate over the future of forest planning.

The debate at the end of the twentieth century had many similarities compared to the earlier debates, but also some distinct differences.  The later debates were unique in that people didn’t just disagree regarding their conclusions for the best way forward, but also what was the cause of the problem.  Growing climate science had revealed a decades long oscillation between warmer and cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.  Since this oscillation had some correlation to the noted rise and fall in forest fires over the past century, environmentalists began to claim it was the sole primary reason such variations existed.  At the same time, the loggers took the stance that the variation in forest fires could only be explained by logging practices.  Both sides increasingly yelled at each other, neither willing to give an inch, with both sides increasingly relying on strong arm lobbying tactics and lawsuits to try and get their way.  Strangely, this escalating battle coalesced around an owl.

The spotted owl was a forest dwelling critter who preferred to make its nest in old growth trees.  Beginning in the 1980’s, environmentalists and loggers began fighting over the owl’s declining population, with environmentalists demanding an end to logging in national forests.  They saw the spotted owl as the canary in the coal mine so to speak.  Over a decade of political wrangling followed, the details of which are far too boring really get into, but involved a lot of petty mudslinging and perceived backstabbing, eventually culminating in the owl being declared threatened (not endangered) in the early 1990’s and logging on national forest lands plunging by some 80%.  This was not all that great for many of the rural towns that depended on logging, who saw their economies crash, claims that tourism would totally make up for lost logging revenue proving inaccurate.  Apparently, it was not all that beneficial to the spotted owl either since its population continued to decline much as it had been before.

Unfortunately, the decision to severely curtail logging came at kind of a bad time.  Though the Forest Service had been experimenting with controlled burns as an alternative to logging, a severe months long fire in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 led to them abandoning such tactics completely.  As a result, tree stands became dangerously dense, overfilled with dead trees and undergrowth.  As the years marched on, larger and more severe fires became more common, exacerbated by climate change causing longer and drier summers and population growth leading to more idiots than ever living and recreating in the woods.  Fighting fires grew from 15% of the Forest Service’s budget to 52%.  Fighting fires each year became an industry unto itself.  Eventually, by the late 2010’s, the problem grew to the point where entire towns were being burned to the ground.

Scientists of course raised alarm bells, but of course their calls for a multi-faceted approach to forest management were almost completely ignored.  Scientists saw selective logging and controlled burning as two strategies that should both be utilized.  However, attempts to implement such plans were repeatedly met with opposition and lawsuits from both sides; the loggers not wanting to burn what they saw as perfectly good trees they could cut down and the environmentalists being not only against any type of logging, but also against controlled burns since it might damage habitat and most certainly would put smoke in the air.  In the meantime, by the late 2010’s the problem grew to the point where entire towns started being burned to the ground and major cities began filling with smoke each summer.  However, even then both sides continued as they had before, neither willing to look beyond their own narrow world views.  Both fiddling away to their followers as the burned. History is always full of stupid bastards.

The Forest Through the Trees Part 2

Industrialized logging at the turn of the twentieth century did not exactly have a lot of nuance.  It basically involved going into an area, cutting down all the trees, and then moving on.  At a time when large numbers of people were emigrating west and a growing world population was boosting demand for lumber to previously ludicrous levels, the uncut old growth forests of the western U.S. seemed like a gift from god.  Unfortunately, it was a limited gift.  Rapid technological innovation allowed loggers to keep up with demand, clearing large swaths of forest in a relatively short period of time.  This rapid pace of deforestation freaked the hell out of conservationists, who convinced President Teddy Roosevelt to lock up millions of acres of timber into protected reserves which became today’s national forest system.  This move did not really please the logging companies, or their investors, but overall it did little to slow the pace of logging.  After all, there was still a crap ton of available timber on private property, and the logging companies went after it with a gusto, becoming one of the primary economic drivers of the region.

The conservation movement of the period was a strange combination of groups with some fairly disparate ideas about what the future should look like.  On one end of the spectrum were the resource conservationists, who saw trees as a renewable resource which needed to be properly managed.  On the other end were the preservation conservationists, those who wished with a religious fervor to preserve forests, amongst other landscapes, as pristine wild parks, free of the dirty destructive hands of human beings.  Despite their significantly different visions, throughout the early twentieth centuries these two sides collaborated and were the driving force behind many of the early environmental policies.  One example being state governments taking control of already clear cut areas and re-planting them with new trees, which was the genesis of the state owned forest lands in many western states.

The supply of old growth timber on private land largely sustained the logging industry in the western United States into the 1940’s.  However, as available supplies began to run low, the U.S. government found itself in a bit of a quandary.  Being right in the middle of a freaking war to end fascism, they needed wood, so against the objections of conservationists, they began opening the national forests up to logging.  This policy continued after the war ended.  Countless Americans were moving into the suburbs, sparking a boom in new home construction, and exports were needed to help rebuild Europe and stave off the spread of communism.  The war also had an effect on how logging was carried out.  Throughout the early twentieth century, logs were cut in increasingly distant forests and either floated on rivers or hauled by rail to large mills in major urban centers.  After the war, factories built to supply trucks for the war effort shifted to the civilian market, largely replacing trains to move goods across the country.  As a result, it made more sense to build smaller mills in more rural areas, and the entire industry shifted out of cities to smaller towns along the edges of national forests in a relatively short period time, creating a new economic boom for these areas.

It goes without saying that conservationists were not all that happy with the opening of the national forests to logging.  However, the U.S. government split the old coalition by requiring such logging to be better managed to help guarantee the long-term viability of the industry.  While clear cutting was still the normal method of harvesting timber, it was not done over as large of areas.  Reforestation policies were put in place as well.  With the resource conservationists placated, the preservation conservationists found themselves without the political clout to really offer much resistance to the new policies.

The opening up of national forests for logging, though controversial, did have one extra benefit in that letting in loggers created a patchwork of newly created prairies, which served to help reduce the severity of fires.  New roads to facilitate logging also opened better access to areas to fight fires.  The acres burned by wildfires in the national forests dropped significantly in the late 1940’s, stabilizing at lower levels in the early 1950’s.  The Forest Service shifted from an organization mostly focused on fighting fires, to one mostly focused on replanting trees in clear cuts.  However, they kept to their policy of putting out every fire they could as quickly as possible.

The Forest Through the Trees Part 1

In 1905, old Mr. Teeth and Testicles himself, President Teddy Roosevelt, founded the U.S. Forest Service, which as you can probably guess from the name had the duty of looking after our nation’s forests.  Now at the time, large logging conglomerates were cutting down millions of trees across the western U.S. all willy nilly to supply the world’s insatiable demand for lumber.  Thanks to miraculous advancements in modern medicine, the world’s population was growing exponentially, leading to never before seen demand for lumber to build new houses and other random stuff made out of wood, which this being the start of the twentieth century was a whole lot of different shit.  As a result, whole forests were cut down, leading many to start worrying that perhaps we were consuming trees faster than new trees could be grown, which was decidedly a bad thing, both in respects to the survival of our species, as well as the ability of said species to enjoy beautiful tree filled vistas.  As a result of these concerns, the modern conservationist movement was born, of which Teddy Roosevelt, a man who would’ve humped nature if he could just find the right place to put it, was a prominent proponent.  In a relatively short period of time, Teddy locked away millions of acres of forest into public reserves, safe from the swinging axes of loggers, creating the national forest system.

Now at the time, forests in the western United States were probably at about their most natural state in over ten thousands years.  That’s right, I said over ten thousand years.  You see, in a natural state, Mother Nature allows forests to grow thicker and denser until she gets pissed off at them for whatever reason and unleashes a fusillade of lightening to start fires to burn those bitches to the ground.  This was basically what was happening at the beginning of the 20th century, though at times instead of lightening it involved some careless idiot.  Though people sometimes fought smaller wildfires, in general when it came to bigger fires basically the only option was to run away as fast as possible.  Now for pretty obvious reasons, the various Native Americans who first inhabited what became the western U.S. were not really down with Mother Nature just randomly burning shit up.  To counter this, many of them utilized small controlled burns to clear out underbrush and deadwood and open up prairies in the middle of forests.  This had the benefit of not only limiting the number and severity of wildfires, but also created spaces for natural root vegetables to grow and wildlife to gather, helping secure food supplies.  These practices went on for thousands of years, until renowned asshat Christopher Columbus showed up, bringing with him all sorts of diseases and a decidedly less than accommodating attitude towards other cultures.  As a result, after three hundred years of douchebaggery, the Native American population was mostly dead, with the scrappy few survivors forced to assimilate or live on reservations.

The downfall of the Native Americans led to western forests being allowed to return to a mostly natural state for most of the late nineteenth century, which led to increasingly severe fires over time.  This culminated in what became known as the Big Blowup of 1910, a massive fire that consumed over three million acres of forest in Montana and Idaho, completely over running several towns.  Not too happy with this turn of events, people collectively agreed that something needed to be done, though agreeing on what that might be proved more problematic.  Though many top scientists of the day pointed out that the Native Americans seemed to have some proven methods for improvement, a strange coalition of conservationists and loggers were against controlled burns.  The loggers viewed burning trees to be the same as burning money, and the conservationists argued that there wasn’t much use in saving the forests from loggers just for the government to burn them instead.  You can probably guess who won the debate.

Following the 1910 fire, the Forest Service adopted a policy of snuffing every fire as quickly as possible.  Networks of roads and watch towers were built throughout the national forest system, and an intricate system of fire suppression took hold, advancing quickly with the adoption of new technology throughout the early twentieth century.  Fire became a hated enemy, and the Forest Service began to see itself as ever vigilant guardians, the thin line between pristine wild lands and fiery destruction.  The epitome of the attitude of this era was the creation of a Forest Service mascot, Smokey the Bear, diligently teaching kids from a young age the simple lesson that when it came to forests, fire was bad, period.  Such was the zeal for fighting fires, seen as a heroic struggle against that bitch Mother Nature, that alternative ideas were actively suppressed and discredited by the leadership of the Forest Service.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be rather stupid.  The continual fighting of small fires led to the national forests becoming overgrown and full of easily burnable undergrowth and dead trees.  This situation was further exacerbated by the western U.S. being a climatic dry cycle during the early twentieth century.  Though countless small fires were put out, those that did grow larger were increasingly more severe and devastating.  Throughout the 1920’s, forest fires grew worse, to which the government responded by hiring more people, something made easier by the Great Depression and resulting New Deal, and buying more equipment.  It was an escalating conflict, with no end in sight.