Wednesday, March 28, 2007
People who love (old growth) forests too much
From the RoundTable blog
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Dennis LaBare
LaBare is a retired environmental consultant from Pendleton County, W. Va. He was National Trout Unlimited's 1993 National Volunteer of the Year, taught ecology at Johns Hopkins University and is a volunteer forest/wildlife activist.
In a recent opinion piece ("A call to protect the forest," Feb. 25), Sherman Bamford, a paid environmental activist, presented an argument for the "preservation" of the George Washington National Forest that was nearly as amusing as it was deceptive. Perhaps Bamford missed the fact that by virtue of the national forest being a national forest, it is thereby preserved.
But a closer look reveals there are problems in the forest, and for nearly all of them we can thank Bamford's employer, Forest Watch, and his other affiliation, Sierra Club, along with the Virginia Wilderness Committee.
Their combined extremism represents the greatest threat to a landscape already protected by compliance with 26 federal acts and executive orders before anything happens on the forest. Even then, Forest Watch and the Sierra Club typically appeal twice and then sue.
Did you know that, thanks to Jimmy Carter's Equal Access to Justice Act, environmental groups like Bamford's Forest Watch can get their legal fees paid by you, the taxpayer? Nice little racket.
And what has all this "protection" wrought on the public's land? The best example of this is that only 4 percent of the forest is zero to 20 years old. That figure, according to Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, should approach 15 percent.
This scarce, regenerating young, thick growth -- the result of job-creating timber harvest and controlled burns conducted by Ph.D. biologists -- is home to 43 songbirds, the highly popular ruffed grouse and American woodcock, turkeys, even a salamander or two, among others.
In fact, there are more species of wildlife in decline dependent on young forest than there are that depend on mature forest, so often held up by these extremists as the Holy Grail.
You want a park? The Shenandoah is lovely.
So what can the average citizen do to protect the forest from these people? To begin, you should contact Forest Service Planner Dave Plunkett in Roanoke at (540) 265-5173 and demand a well-managed, accessible-to-all national forest that meets the needs of wildlife and rural economies. The national forest was intended to be multiple use. Let's protect it for that.
