981

LOGGING AND GRAZING

CAN HELP PREVENT FOREST FIRES

By Carroll Cox

Last year, when forest fires charred more than seven million acres, double the annual average of 3.6 million acres, more timber burned in Idaho than has ever been logged in the history of the state. The scope of the 2000 fire season was so great and so prominent in the public eye that for a few months the voices of the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and all the other anti-logging, anti-cattle, species-saving saviors dimmed from a shout to a whisper. After all, who had the stomach to discuss the grisly fate of millions of crispy critters caught in fiery blazes which reserved no special preservation treatment for the endangered species and habitats in their path.

Discussion, you see, would possibly have called into question the sacred premise of the environmental saviors that forests can be saved only by removing all cattle and timber operations from them and setting the land aside for eternal rest wherein it can heal and restore itself to pristine pre-settlement grandeur. It was only after a proper period of post-blaze mourning that the anti-production crescendo began to swell again to its normal level.

It is true that drought and lightning have always played a role in forest fires and will continue to do so. Those natural forces are out of our hands. And today swelling numbers of careless people, and urban/wildland interface, the newly-coined phrase so dear to the hearts of those seeking a simple explanation for increasing forest devastation, are indeed potent contributing factors, and add to the impact of fires.

But the primary problem is a failure to recognize that "rest," rather than saving many western forests, condemns them to deterioration and slow death from insufficient nutrients and water, resulting in disease. Or.... rapid death from fire. At least 60 million acres and 23,000 communities nationwide are now considered at extreme risk from fire. In the case of the largely arid West, a different kind of forest grows, a forest adapted to exist on 15 or 25 inches of annual precipitation rather than the 50 or 60 inches received by forests in less brittle environments. The West, with its grassy plains and water-efficient forests developed over eons with millions of hoofed creatures, most of them now extinct, which provided the soil disturbance and fertilizing organics that activated and created the unique ecosystems of the area.

Unknown to modern nature novices with a one-forest-fits-all mentality, pre-settlement and early settlement conditions reflected that thriftiness and selectiveness of nature. Seven or twelve large, healthy trees nourished by sunlight and water conserved by filtering through grassy ground cover, grew on a typical acre of my part of Central Arizona where many acres now sprout 500 toothpick trees. Animal impact and occasional fast-burning fires eliminated excess tree and brush establishment in historic times, preventing the deadwood and brush buildup that fuels today's fires and sucks up limited moisture, thus degrading the watershed as well as the forests.

In my area and many others where millions of acres have been off limits to cattle and logging for decades, far from returning to a pristine state, aquifers have been depleted and springs dried up; once grassy hills and plains have disappeared under brush, junipers that suck up their weight in water daily and spindly pines a few inches apart. What is taking place is a process of desertification, which occurs when insufficient water and organic matter cause the displacement of grass and other desirable vegetation . Eastern and Northwestern climates, with more moisture to create organic matter, can in most cases support dense forests. Many western soils, with a typical organic content of three to four percent compared to an average 12 percent in the East, cannot.

Millions of acres that have already been locked away from human use in the West will never return to pre-settlement conditions under current politicized land-management policies. Deprived of the pre and early-settlement animal impacts that tilled, fertilized and thinned the moisture-limited environments, vast areas of land will only continue to deteriorate into further nutrient and water-starved sterility.

Some semblance of pre-settlement conditions will come only with the recognition that properly- managed (emphasis on "properly-managed") logging and grazing practices will not only benefit rural families, communities and the general economy, but undertaken in a way that mimics the natural processes of nature, will be the first steps in restoring health to many degraded and fire-prone western forests.

Cynicism prevents me from having faith that government land agencies and a public mostly disconnected from the realities of nature will change their ways out of sympathy for the massive human disruption that has resulted from their cruel and wrong-headed beliefs and behavior.

But sympathy for the malnourished parts of our land will eventually force them to the conclusion that the 'rest' they thought it needed is killing it.

Bring back the cattle and logging that have been all but banished from the land. They are not demons, but only tools whose use is determined by man. Man can use a hammer to knock someone in the head.

Or he can use it to build, to create and restore.

Let's hope the implementation of therapeutic cattle grazing and forestry doesn't take too long.

Our western lands are crying for them.

Back to front page *** Back to Carroll Cox Opinions