Wither the Gordian Knot
By William Wade Keye
The following Forestkeeper essay was published in The Forestry Source, November, 2014:
The western Timber Wars are over. The ongoing struggle between utilitarian and preservationist values continues, as it always will – and should.
What I’m referring to is the historically bitter conflict over the fate of our national forests, intensifying in the 1970-80s, exploding in the 1990s, and finally settling into a sort of post-revolutionary phase this century.
The environmental movement “won” the Timber Wars a generation ago, razing “Temple Forestry” as it had existed during the post-World War II decades. Federal harvest levels plunged 80%. There was a very real question as to whether Gifford Pinchot’s progressive-era vision would be snuffed out entirely, to be replaced by a Zero Cut (no commercial logging) custodial regime, channeling John Muir and advocated by the Sierra Club.
Forestry withstood the assault. The profession kept changing and sought to accommodate the many challenges of today. Absolutists, eyes on a fixed prize, felt no similar need to innovate, adapt or grow.
The revolutionary aftermath lingers, but healing has taken root: Zero Cut is dead. There will be some threshold of active forest management on our shared federal estate. We will keep fighting about what that looks like, but it will be there. In fact, the level of management may turn out to be much more robust, twenty or thirty years from now, than what seems predictable today.
I am a California forester, a person whose entire career has been forged within the caldron of the Timber Wars. I am old enough to remember a world before the spotted owl listing. Lots of mills there were! From the inside, I saw the pillars crumble, the Temple walls torn down. I rushed into the breach and fought as hard as I could. Many did the same.
Eventually the purge wound down. The profession regrouped, but the “conspiracy of optimism” behind the postwar logging boom was gone forever.
They say that California is a trendsetter, for better or worse. Here is a trend, observed first-hand: preservation activists have lost clout. Unable to compromise, they have painted themselves into a corner. Majority Democrats are less fearful of their retribution and more interested in new ideas.
Essentially, it’s OK to try to fix things. The environmental community is split between Puritans and pragmatists, non-profits addicted to conflict and those open to solutions. Forestry interests have been able to align with solution-based conservationists to pass important state legislation. What this means for federal forestry is unclear, but it can’t bode well for pressure groups seeking to hold gains secured only by court orders and not more broadly earned within the political process.
Scarcity, real or perceived, always looms large over Temple Forestry. It drove our national forests into a frenzy of timber production and then spiked a furious backlash. When the Temple was razed a quarter century ago, wildfire wasn’t a big issue. Climate change was almost unheard of. The catalysts then were biodiversity, old growth and aesthetics – and to hell with jobs and the economy – it was booming anyway.
Now we have fire, carbon, water supply, real war, and recession. The drivers have shifted in favor of finding solutions that simply banning logging can’t provide. Western natural resource professionals, including foresters, are gaining social license. Permission to actually touch the people’s land, and not just from the fire lines.
The post-revolutionary healing process is slow, in fact, generational. A calming mycorrhizae, matted white and gently nuzzling into the past.
It could be argued that American forestry, with its sensational Timber Wars, helped lead the nation into the current abyss of gridlock and hyper-partisanship. With reconciliation gathering strength, perhaps forestry will return a touch of civility.
And why not? I wouldn’t rule it out, because the land is good and it is vast. Human affairs are cyclical and nothing stays the same. Aldo Leopold may have liked his blank spots, but he was no totalitarian.
— William Wade “Bill” Keye is a former Chair of the Northern California SAF. He blogs as The Forestkeeper at wwkeye.wordpress.com.
Additional Note: I am no longer actively contributing to this blog, having mined out my creative muse in 2014. However, I thought I would go ahead and add this published essay to the body of previously posted material. Enjoy! -BK
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