Forests & People - Complicated!

It Is Complicated

When a new law relating to forests is passed it usually doesn’t include details necessary to implement it on the ground.  That job falls to the affected government agency to write the “regulations” outlining the details that make the law happen.  “The devil is in the details” and the regulations are the details, they will benefit some interests and hurt others.  Some of those who believe the regulations hurt them will likely take the government agency to court to see if a judge will decide if the regulation meets what the law says or not.  Sometimes a judge will say the agency is right, sometimes the judge says the agency is wrong.  Do that hundreds of times by hundreds of different judges, precedents get set and the whole thing of policy and laws  gets very complicated, contradictory and confused.  That’s why forest policy often doesn’t make common sense, but, that’s the system.  

There is another complication, just because Congress passes a bill about what to do in the forest and it is signed into law doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.  Congress made it - Congress can unmake it, or change it.  Most forest laws have some congress person pushing for amendments to change it almost continually.  This happens because some lobby group doesn’t like what’s happening and those lobbyists make campaign contributions intending that the money is going to help things go their way.  Sometimes, the Executive branch thinks a forest law should be changed and we’re off on a different track.  Often changes are needed to make a law or regulation work better.  So it goes, it’s our system.

Bald eagle on a Marias River cottonwood,
protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The Fish and the Owl

The Tennessee Valley Authority is an agency that involves the federal government in building dams on the Tennessee River system.  One of their projects was to build a dam on the Little Tennessee River called the Tellico Dam.  Construction began in the late 1960’s, a time when a lot of people were beginning to think we had built enough dams, they were everywhere for every kind of purpose.  But, once government programs such as dam building get going they are hard to stop, Congressmen, and Congresswomen, like them for their constituents good will and votes.  The Tellico Dam was mostly done when the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973 and guess what!  Some scientists found a small fish in the river below the dam that was on the Endangered Species List - the snail darter, in spite of the name it’s a fish, about three inches long.  If the dam would have an effect on the river downstream - duh - the snail darters might not make it through the change -they’d all die.  Dam(n) construction stopped.  Millions of dollars had already been spent on construction.  Some said, “We can’t have wasted all that money, finish the dam.”  Others said, “No, the law says endangered species must be protected, no matter what.”  Law suits went back and forth all the way to the Supreme Court.  The high court said, “The law says what it means, stop construction on the dam.”   This debate had a profound effect, the era of ramped dam building was over, there would be a few more dams built, but darn few.

The Endangered Species Act was powerful, but so is Congress.   As we’ve seen, what Congress does, it can undo, and it did, - undo.  Congress passed a law that said, finish the Tillico Dam, put it in operation and never mind the snail darter.  They did.  Later, more snail darters were found in lots of places.

The spotted owl is a small bird that lives in the old growth coastal rain forests of the Northwest.  The Douglas fir, spruce, hemlock, cedar forests are the backbone of western Oregon’s, Washington’s  and northern California’s logging and lumber economies, and that also is where the spotted owl makes its living.  There had been a growing opposition to logging the old growth forests of the Northwest for several years.  Many people felt deeply these forests were just too magnificent to be logged -- and logging is ugly, but the logging kept on.  Then, spotted owl advocacy groups petitioned to have the owl put on the Endangered Species List to protect it.  The way to protect it is to prevent disturbance to the places it lives, the old growth rain forest.  In 1996 the spotted owl advocates succeeded, the spotted owl went on the law’s Endangered Species List. 

The effects were devastating to the forest industries from northern California to Canada.  Timber harvesting in these coastal forests and inland was greatly reduced affecting, logging, sawmills, trucking and a whole lot of businesses that serve the people and machines in forest industries.  The basis for the economy of this huge area of American logging and saw-milling, was greatly reduced. 

These are two cases that show how powerful the Endangered Species Act is.  Some see it as a huge commitment by people to save the animals we share the planet with, others see it as a huge economic blow and waste of money for a few animals that makes no difference to people anyhow.  (?)  I suppose you could say, the in-favor-of-animals opinion is for the very long-term wellbeing of Earth and the pro-economy opinion is for the short-term view of people’s welfare.   The point is, the Endangered Species Act is there, and congress people are always trying to change it, but they haven’t been able to damage it much yet.