Intermission - Moving your Canoe

Getting your 18 foot canoe from home to the river without having to lift it higher than your waist.

That's a 2 inch square metal tube that fits into the pickup trailer hitch.
It takes less that five minutes  to attach.
The canoe rests on a soft-inflated tube for a cushioned ride

A sheet of 1/2 inch plywood lays on the
pickup bed and the 2" square metal tube for a floor.

It's a "long" haul, but it is secure, no "high lifting"
and so far I haven't been stopped by the highway
patrol for being "over length."

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.

Forests and People - Warnings and Actions

Thinkers Warn Us

Aldo Loepold wrote A Sand County Almanac, a book of essays about forests, wildlife, nature and their relationship and importance to people.  Even if you never spend a night in a forest it is an important book to read - maybe it is especially important if you never spend a night in a forest.  The book was published in 1947, after Leopold’s death.  It struck a note with a lot of people, it challenges us to care for the natural world.   

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, came out in 1962, it was a best seller that had many talking about our natural world and the abuses we were piling on nature.  Maybe, for the first time in history, people began to internalize nature’s role, the “silent spring” was beginning to happen, (some) people listened. 

 The Land Acts

The Cuyahoga River in Ohio flows north and empties into Lake Erie where Cleveland is.  Cities along its way had been emptying their sewage into the river for more than a hundred years by 1969.  The river had caught fire several times, but when the river burned in 1969 Time magazine noticed and ran an article with pictures showing the river burning, intensely.  The writing describes in stark terms how polluted the river had become, it caught the attention of America.   

The James River, one of the most important rivers in Virginia, had been famous for its bass fishing and white water floating, then came pollution.  A stretch of the river east of Richmond was described as “dead,” no fish lived and the only birds in sight were turkey vultures that could live on the floating offal. (The James Estuary Case Study, Chapter 9) 

Our national symbol, the bald eagle was on the way to extinction along with a whole raft of other wild species.

Congress Acts

Thresholds are out there, when one is crossed things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but when a threshold is crossed, change happens.  The problem is, we don’t know what the thresholds look like or when they will be crossed.  As environmental concerns piled up, people were becoming concerned, with hindsight it looks like the first “Earth Day,” April 22, 1970, was  a threshold being crossed.   Congress was acting on the side of nature: The Wilderness Act had passed in 1964, The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968, The National Environmental Policy Act was signed January 1, 1970, DDT was banned in 1972, The Clean Water Amendments passed in 1972, The Endangered Species Act in 1973, The National Forest Management Act in 1976, The Clean Air Amendments in 1977. These laws were aimed at restoring some of what we had taken from nature.  There are scores of other laws passed relating to the natural environment, but these are the most far reaching.

All of these are important, but a couple had big impacts on forests.  The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) both require public involvement in forest management decisions and that is different from the past, and important.  

The National Environmental Policy Act does some big things, it set up the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a government agency that has far reaching powers in reviewing projects and their effect on the environment. The law sets up the machinery for the government to clean-up places that are dangerously polluted, usually by past industrial practices, they are “superfund sites.”  The other thing NEPA does is require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be prepared for any sizable project that impacts land, water or air and has federal money in it.  An EIS examines all the environmental impacts a project will create and presents alternatives to the proposed action, including a “no action” alternative.  A Draft EIS must be presented to the public for review and comment and their comments must be addressed as part of the Final Environmental Impact Statement.  It is a complex process to determine the possible effects of a project and how to mitigate the adverse effects.  Project EISs have been the subject of numerous lawsuits aimed at stopping or delaying proposed projects.  Typical projects that require Environmental Impact Statements on federal lands include:  highways, timber harvests, roads, pipelines, recreation developments, ski areas, fences, water systems, grazing systems — you get the idea, about anything that will impact anything.  An EIS is also required for strategic plans or programs such as a National Forest’s forest plan.  Environmental Impact Statements, make us think, they make us look at all sides of a proposed project or plan, they make the decisions transparent, and they are expensive, but cheaper than the pollution we thoughtlessly created before NEPA.

The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) requires each National Forest develop a “forest plan” describing how the forest will be managed.  Maps and detailed descriptions show the public what management activities will take place and where they can happen over the coming years. Typical management activities include, constructing and maintaining recreation facilities, road construction and maintenance, timber sale preparation, range improvements, stream rehabilitation, wildlife habitat and fisheries improvements and more.  A forest plan requires a budget to accomplish its projects, but Congress may or may not fund the Forest Service to do the work in the forest plans.  All kinds of environmentally beneficial projects may be in a plan, but if the annual budget Congress passes doesn’t have money to carry out the plan, the projects can’t be done.  Congress has not shown much commitment to funding based on forest plans.  It makes for complications out there in the forest.

Intermission, -- Cool Thoughts for a Summer Day

*Intermission*

My Top Ten Wildlife Experiences, #8

The Ptarmigan

February 1970

Montezuma Basin, Dillon Ranger District

Arapaho National Forest

“In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift seen under warm light.  Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness, its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale and of heavenly color, the reflected light intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light”. (Ruskin, in Van Dyke’s The Mountain)

Eddie skiing the "Little  Professor" avalanche 

That is what lay out ahead of me on that February morning ~ Montezuma Basin, three or four square miles of folding sloping mountain basin above 12,500 feet, above timberline, leading up to 14,000 foot Gray’s and Torry’s  Peaks.  Not a track, not a blemish, not a sign of a breathing being in the entire basin.  And I could see it all as I got out of the Forest Service rig and put on my skis.   The sky was set to provide one of those no-cloud Colorado days, so when the sun cleared the Continental Divide, a couple miles east, the day would warm.  I’d been waiting for this kind of day to make this trip.  This basin was just beginning to get some recreation use in the winter, a few crosscountry skiers, an occasional train of two or three snowmobiles.  I was there to look at the avalanche hazard and see if the Forest Service (I) should put up some warning signs and, if so, where.  I had been doing that on Shrine Pass west of Vail Pass and on Loveland Pass.

But, I was really there to absorb the undisturbed winter beauty of Montezuma Basin and the grand peaks that defined its boundaries ~ the Pacific side.

It was a good snow year, the 1960’s had been a good snow decade, the snow droughts would come later in the ‘70s.

Vegetation in these alpine basins is in miniature.  There are little clumps of spruce trees, no individual gets more than four feet high because of the high winds and severe growing conditions (soil and temperature), they’re called krumholdts.  There are willows on ridges that are one inch high.  Willows along the streams get a few feet tall.  What the grasses, sedges, forbs and browse plants lack in stature they more than make up  in pure beauty.

But, on this February day all that was covered.  Only the waves of wind and mountain-shaped snow were ahead of me.  The route I choose was up a broad little draw that curved gracefully through the basin, always gaining elevation, ending at the base of the steep saddle between peaks on the Continental Divide.

By midmorning I’d tracked a few miles and had time to absorb the aloneness of my situation and the untouched beauty of this place.  My skis were sinking six or eight inches into the new light snow so there was no “gliding”, I was just going along slowly striding, breaking trail.  Hypnotized by nothing.

Then ~ from right between the tips of my skis a ptarmigan exploded out of the flawless snow chucking a fluttering straight up about six feet to its cruising elevation  and made a bee line up the drainage.

I had never been as surprised by anything in my life.  Almost all events have some hint, some clue, some lead-in indicating a change is coming.  This ptarmigan didn’t give me anything!  Neither did the snow.

After I’d settled down from my fright, it began to sink in that change, sometimes, can happen with no advanced warning, so, somehow, always consider sudden change as a possibility and prepare.

What a surprise, what a delight, WHAT A DAY!

Jerry Covault

Forests & People -

Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960

The public often accepts that private companies logging their own lands can set their own policies and practices.  That seems to be in our economic DNA, never mind that it may abuse the forest.  Public forests are a different story, people have a stake in public forests and they want a say in how they are taken care of.   After World War II, increased demand for wood put pressure on the National Forests to increase timber harvesting dramatically.  At the same time there was a rising demand for outdoor recreation and wilderness.  Automobiles were getting more reliable, roads to get to the forests and mountains were improving and military surplus four-wheel-drive jeeps that could go off-road became available.  People wanted forest areas dedicated to camping, fishing, hunting, hiking, motorbiking, skiing, snowmobiling and other outdoor recreation.  It was becoming evident that there was not enough forest land for every interest group to have it all their way.  Conflict over management of National Forests was coming from every direction.  

When conflicts go national and involve a public asset, like the National Forests, it becomes Congress’ job to deal with it, usually by passing a law.  “What do we want from our National Forests?” had become a national issue.   The Forest Service began to urge Congress to give the agency a clear mandate for managing the National Forest. To get a mandate, the Forest Service drafted a proposed bill and lobbied Congress to pass it.  The growing public concern pushed Congress to passed the draft bill and call it the “Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960.”  It says, the National Forests “shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed and wildlife and fish purposes.”  The Act emphasizes sustained yield of these products (Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, pg 631).  This was what the Forest Service wanted, a statement of what the National Forests should produce written in law. This is a big deal.  It is significant that outdoor recreation was listed first among the products from the forests, but all the products are important and should receive appropriate management considering the forest conditions and opportunities.  All these “crops” were required to be managed to sustain their production into the future.

This law is important to the Forest Service because it kept the authority to manage the National Forests with the Forest Service.

I Want M!ne !

In the history of the world there has probably never been more discussion, controversy and acrimony over forests than in the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s in America.  The arguments were emotional and intense, the economies of the lumber industry, grazing industry and other commercial forest users were at stake on one hand and preserving the forests and all that goes with forests was at stake on the other side.  There wasn’t much veracity in the extreme arguments from either side, the positions were so hard set there was little room in the middle for reasonable discussion.   A very serious side effect is, good science has been lost, or compromised, as a part of the decision making in the heated economic, political and legal arguments.   The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act turned out to be not specific enough to give strong management direction.  Environmentalists, Wilderness advocates, recreationists , the timber industry, grazing industry and anyone else having any financial or emotional interest in forests were using their influences with Congress and the public to demand what they wanted from the National Forests.   Arguments were, too often, reduced to one-line sound-bites for public consumption, natural resource issues are far too complex for that.  The tools were lobbying for new laws, control over Forest Service budgets and legal challenges to forest policies, management and projects. The Forest Service was being whip-lashed from every direction and good science was too complex to have a place in the policy making.

Earlier, leaders in American forest thinking had come from the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart, Bob Marshall had forward looking visions of the value of forests and how they could be managed to meet people’s needs in the present and in the future.  They thought, they wrote, they spoke, they worked, they led, they communicated with the public and and they formed sound direction for our nation’s forests.   After the World War II, it seems there was little leadership from the Forest Servicer or other government agencies concerning our forests.  Politics, new laws, annual budgets, lawsuits and judges’ actions became the way of making forest decisions and policy.  Science was being left out of the discussion, it was lost in the minutia of litigation details and the Forest Service was too compromised to get forest science into the decision-making arena.

Congress was lobbied by conflicting forest interest groups to pass laws favoring the lobbyists particular interest.  Congress responded, as it often does, by passing laws the lobbyists wanted.  Many of these laws are short sighted, short purposed, and conflict with previous laws and direction.  But Congress always has an out for laws that are conflicting or become a problem because they were passed for political purposes.  When it comes time to develop the budget, Congress simply doesn’t allocate money to implement the law they previously passed.  That makes it become the agencies’ problem.  If the lobbying group that wanted the law complains that nothing is being done on the ground, the congressperson  can, and does, blame the agency.   Not a shining example of leadership.

The universities and the Society of American Foresters have had little appetite for entering the public fray.  They continue publishing new science findings, but seldom speak up for science having a voice in managing forest resources.

Forests & People - Environment and Logging, 1960's Pictures

Environmental Concerns 

As the National Forests were required to supply more of the nation’s wood the public became more and more concerned about the impacts of logging on public lands.  The more of it they saw, the less they liked it. 

Clearcut in Oregon Coast Range, early 1960's

Getting wood out of mountain forests is not a pretty business.  Unlike farming with the big machines moving in a straight line across a flat landscape harvesting wheat or corn, harvesting mature trees is more like violence and chaos.  Towering trees are cut, crashing down, tops and limbs are smashed and scattered, the logs are skidded (drug) by tractors, or cables suspended from tree spars or metal towers, to a central landing.  There the logs are loaded onto trucks, hauled down narrow, mountain logging roads to highways and on to sawmills.  It’s a big, rollicking, stay-outta-my-way business.

Glen getting ready to "top" a spar tree.

After logging, a wooded area is scared by skid trail, stumps, limbs and tree tops (slash) scattered helter-skelter and a maze of roads. The beauty of the area is lost and, unlike harvesting wheat or corn, it will take years before beauty is reestablished by new trees.   The forest’s beauty will come back, young trees, vigorous, colorful and growing toward maturity will do it, but it takes a good chunk of a person’s lifetime to happen, so it’s a hard thing to accept - and wait for.

Good forestry practices set money aside from the sale of logs to take care of the land and get a new forest growing.   Slash (the limbs and tree tops) is burned, or cut in small pieces and scattering so decomposition will return the nutrients to the soil.  This reduces the possibility of future fires by reducing the fuels.  Good logging operations construct water bars on skid trails and little used roads to prevent soil erosion, they spread grass seed on roads and skid trails and they replant small trees or leave strong mature trees to reseed the logged area naturally.  Well-designed tree harvesting practices leave areas along streams untouched to protect the water and keep it cool for

Glen, on the way up.

fish.  Even where these good procedures are done, it is several years until a logged area will be judged beautiful by most of us. 

It’s the ugliness that is offensive, not the science, the harvesting procedures, the water bars, new grass or planted trees.  The problem is, it takes decades for tree seedlings to become a forest and in today’s world, we want results — fast! 

Harvesting trees generally breaks down into two methods, clearcutting and partial cutting.  Cearcutting, cutting all the trees on an area, is the ugliest.  However, there are a couple reasons for using this method of timber harvesting:  (1)  Some species of trees need full sunlight to reestablish and grow, these species need either a fire or clearcutting to perpetuate themselves.  Lodgepole pine in the Rocky Mountains and Douglas fir on the west coast are examples. (2) On mountainsides too steep for tractors, logging systems that use cables suspended high above the ground  and can lift logs and pull them up steep slopes to a landing without scaring the soil are necessary.  These cable logging systems normally operate in clearcuts.  

Topping it.

So, what’s so bad about clearcuts, especially if they just imitate a fire in nature?  Again, the problem is how clearcuts look, they can get too big to fit the landscape, they can extend to a straight property lines that looks unnatural on a mountainside, and the roads.  Roads and straight lines are not natural in a forest and on a mountain, they look terrible.  These ill effects can be mitigated with good forestry practices, for example:  make clearcuts  less than 40 acres; have cutting boundaries follow natural land features, ridges, creeks, etc.; minimize roads and rehabilitate them when logging is done; burn the slash, and replant trees.  These practices reestablish a healthy forest, create good wildlife habitat, and are not so visually invasive on the landscape.  Even with good harvesting plans and practices, the name “clearcutting” has the stigma of being bad and it has stuck because harvesting a pretty stand of trees results in a period of ugliness. 

Partial cutting is a silvicultural system that removes only selected trees and leaves many standing, it can be used with tree species that have intermediate tolerance to shade because the small trees can become established and grow in the partial shade. The problem is, this kind of logging can’t be done on steep ground, the tractors would cause severe soil erosion and it is too dangerous to operate the track or wheel skidding machines on steep ground.   It is also more expensive to partial cut an area because it takes significantly more time.  The tree fallers have to be careful not to hit standing trees with the one they are falling and the big machines dragging logs from the woods have to be careful not to damage the trees left standing, in other words, the logging takes skill and care, but where partial cutting can be used the result can soon be a more attractive forest than existed before the logging. 

The spar, a cable goes out from the
pulley (block) at the top and
skids logs to the landing.
The block is 5 feet in diameter.

Securing the load with "binders."

Newly logged clearcut, 1963,  today it is a stand of
healthy growing Douglas fir trees.

Heading down the road.

Down there's the road

Logs are dumped in the river and made into rafts.

Log rafts being pulled down river to the mill.

Forest management: old growth on the left
new growth to the right,
new cutting unit in front of the pickup

Forests & People - WW II

War

Then came World War II.  The young men went to fight, die and ultimately win in Europe and the Pacific.   War has always taken vast amounts of wood for its tools and fuels.  WW II was no exception, even though, by then ships were made of steel rather than trees (although mine sweepers were made of wood).  Wood was needed for rifle stocks, ship piers, factory buildings, bridges, barracks, and thousands of other common things.  War requires more of everything.

After the War was won, America took on the job of rebuilding Europe and Japan.  Again, a lot of wood was needed, the country was turning to the National Forests to meet the need for wood.  Management objectives for the National Forests turned from custodial to production.

Not all of the increased need for wood was for overseas use, the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen came home to their sweethearts, they were anxious to marry, start a family and have a home.  President Eisenhower made it a policy that every family should be able to afford an appropriate house.  Subdivisions were invented.  Suburbs became  the way to build the American dream.  Wood flowed from forests into houses.  It was a prosperous time, wood from private and public forests was a key ingredient in economic and infrastructure growth.

And, the Cold War was in full swing requiring a full military alert through the Korean War and after.  The act of military alertness requires wood, so the logs kept rolling from the forests.