Ethnobotany Interrupted

Thanks to Bob Zybach for this piece from the Eugene Weekly. It talks about “what is “restoration” and what is the role of Native Americans and their traditional management techniques.
Here’s an excerpt. the original story is here.

A Human Dilemma

Current restoration objectives for the West Eugene Wetlands tend to center around creating habitat for threatened and endangered species, such as Fender’s blue butterfly. This often involves removing invasive plants like blackberry and ivy, and introducing native plants that are beneficial to species at risk.

For the most part, land managers and restoration ecologists — including those who oversee the Wetlands — tend to focus on restoring natural functions, not so much on returning a landscape to any particular previous state. Ecologists study the relationships between natural elements such as native species, soil quality and the ability of nutrients to flow through a system, and attempt to restore as many of these elements as possible to ensure biodiversity.

“What you’re restoring a landscape to is a really important question,” says Emily Steele, a restoration ecologist with the city of Eugene. “And you’ll hear a lot of different things from different people. We’re trying to get the habitat back to a state where it can be self sufficient and resilient, so that it will require less management from people.”

But restoring land using traditional Native American methods involves preserving culturally important native plants with the intention of using them — for basketry, food or canoes.

Zybach, who is an expert in Indian burning patterns in the Willamette Valley, says that because ecosystems in the Willamette Valley evolved alongside human activity, they function best when people are using them.“Restoration doesn’t mean a return to natural functions; it means a return to a previous condition,” he says. “Natural to people often means no humans. But if we’re not interrelating with the environment, something’s wrong. You have to have people tending the land.”

“When you restore a landscape, that would include cultural use,” says Lewis. “There’s an assumption that plants, animals and humans are separate, but in ecology we know that they’re interrelated. That traditional landscape is almost gone, and you want to preserve what’s endangered. It’s a cultural landscape; people were involved in it, therefore, you want people to come back in.”

20 thoughts on “Ethnobotany Interrupted”

  1. (Yikes! Was that a Sears pop-up ad searing my psyche? Whew, what next? Enviropreneurial invocations of “win-win” “solutions touting market based directives and deregulation for previously irreconcilable forest management conflicts?)

    Bob,
    Thank you for your insightful considerations of “cultural landscapes”, for they invoke a necessary practice of understanding arbitrary invocations of loosely used terms such as “restoration”. Asking the question, “Restoring what?” is most pertinent to the discussion.

    I reside in an area of the planet which contains among the largest extant remnants of the coastal temperate rainforest of the Northern Hemisphere and within which continuously resided Tlingits, Haida and Tsimshian cultures for over 10,000 years.

    Being a rainforest, there was little use for management “burning” practices (though it did occur on a limited scale). Instead, the indigenous cultures here found out how to rely upon red and yellow cedar without exterminating the species or the natural ecosystems within which cedar depended upon, and which predated their migratory arrival (according to the standard theories on migration).

    Recently, however, the dominant theory explaining how Asian migrants crossed the Bering Straits in order to populate the “New World”, has been thrown into serious question. It appears as if 10,000 year old remains of a twenty-something year old male found in “On your Knees” cave here demonstrates genetic traits of a South American origin.

    I raise this in the spirit of your invocations which beg us all to be open minded about what we should consider while pursuing what we want to return to. The difference between your example and my example is striking, in that very little was changed here despite continuous human existence.

    Thus, calling into question your conclusion, “But if we’re not interrelating with the environment, something’s wrong. You have to have people tending the land.”

    In fact, we do NOT have to have people tending the land in the Tongas National Forest, our nation’s largest forest, in order to interrelate with the environment. I know this because I am a beneficiary of natural processes — a commercial fisherman relying upon intact natural ecosystems providing resources coined as “fat of the land”.

    By any historical or prehistorical measure, humans have always been and continue to be natural beneficiaries of these natural landscapes — that is, until their management practices alter the ability of the landscapes to maintain dynamic equilibrium necessary to afford natural benefits to the managers.

    These benefits include far more than market-driven commodity values.

    Reply
  2. Of course, the site-specific issues of the Tongass differ greatly from the conditions on the Deschutes, the San Bernardino and the Sumter. Same for historical conditions. When forests are overstocked by an order of magnitude, “something” must be done to “restore” densities to “sustainable” levels for forest health, fire safety and habitat restoration. Pretending that bad outcomes from preservationism are “natural and beneficial” can easily be worse for our forests than site-specific scientific forest stewardship.

    Reply
  3. David: I am unfamiliar with the natural history of the Tongass, but I am betting that people have always used a lot of firewood there, and fiber products gathered from forest and grassland environments. Maybe trapped, hunted, and picked berries, too.

    Yes, things change over time, including human cultures, languages and genetics. We are a particularly mobile and widespread animal. To understand the prehistory of the Tongass requires a lot of archaeological and palynological research coupled with knowledgeable insight. I’d be interested in learning what has been done in these regards.

    I’m not sure I agree with — or even understand — the concept of a “dynamic equilibrium,” and not sure what we can do or have done to adversely affect this type of condition (or why that might be a bad thing to do), but I certainly do agree that “market driven commodity values” are only a side benefit of all the positive things we derive from the landscape.

    Reply
    • I found this on the web and thought it was really well done too:

      It underscores precisely, the end game tragedy and ultimate legacy of genocide by the US government. That genocide was perpetrated upon an indigenous culture which proved just how wrong anthropologists can be about their declarations of the supposed cultural limits of hunter-gatherer tribes.

      It also underscores precisely the dynamics of co-optation whereby natives of the Tongass chose to become corporatized and how that regional native corporation impoverished their own people with the worst examples of land management in the entire history of the place where the Tongass is now located.

      Lastly, it underscores how effective the use of corporate greenwashing can be for the uninformed, typical consumer of sophisticated messaging. This video was done by natives in contrast to Sharon’s example, which uses all the leveraging, and all the PR persuasion powers in the invocation of historical native traditions.

      That such corporate PR image making is so effective yet represents the height of hypocrisy and opportunism is enough to understand just how thorough genocidal campaigns can be.

      Reply
      • And it is the corporatized eco-groups who want a legacy of logger genocide, preferring “natural” destruction over beneficial projects that supply jobs and green building materials. Yep, those like the Sierra Club use their own greenwashing to say that dead forests and destructive wildfires should be embraced. The uninformed, typical consumer is expected to believe everything the eco-groups say and never question their motives. 25 million acres of dead forests is difficult to spin as desirable and “natural” but, they still pass the hat to fund endless litigation and “green spin”. I’ll bet the natives would like all the Sierra Clubbers to take a hike in the Amazon, instead of meddling in Indian affairs.

        Reply
  4. Sharon: Thanks for the link — it really is a nice curriculum, allowing students to learn important lessons in biology, ecology, botany, culture, local history, etc., by interacting with the local environment.

    I spent one summer in Alaska in the late ’60s, living with some local Tlingits in Juneau. They were unaware of much of what is being taught in this lesson plan.

    I’d be interested in learning how long the Tlingits have been in the area, and what types of people they followed — and whether past cultures used similar trading patterns ans similar methods of processing and subsisting on local resources.

    Reply
  5. Bob, as you point out, “Yes, things change over time, including human cultures, languages and genetics.”

    But I was also pointing out that well established theories are also known to change over time. Contrary to your assertion, (“Natural to people often means no humans. But if we’re not interrelating with the environment, something’s wrong.You have to have people tending the land.”) you do NOT have to have people tending the land.

    There are countless examples where huge benefits to humans are derived from “unmanaged” natural landscapes — with no one “tending” — and there’s nothing “wrong” with that.

    It has been my assertion for some time now, that America’s National Forest System (NFS) comprises so small a fraction of the nation’s timber supply, and has been so unsustainably exploited at such great cost to the taxpayers, that it makes far more sense to manage the NFS for carbon sink and sequestration priorities, habitat, watershed, etc. rather than mandated fiber production in the face of irreversible, catastrophic climate change.

    “dynamic equilibrium
    noun
    a state of balance between continuing processes.”

    That diversity and abundance of species within a given system will ultimately define the health of that system, any (anthropogenic /”management”) change to that system which reduces those preexisting, naturally occurring factors of diversity and/or abundance of species is likely reflecting an induced state of disequilibrium. My references were to coastal temperate rainforest systems but not limited to that.

    Diversity and abundance of species, of course, are not steady state factors even in unmanaged, dynamic systems. However, the presence of greater diversity of species generally allows for a greater capacity of resiliency and dynamic equilibrium to occur within the system.

    This, of course, is one of the main underpinning rationales of ESA, and likely behind Leopold’s observation that the first rule of “intelligent tinkering” is to “save all the pieces”.

    I’m continually struck by the prevailing management mentality which implicitly and explicitly makes claims around management’s prowess for managing systems, but those managed systems which are more often than not, suffering disequilibrium and unnatural disasters due to direct management actions and/or indirect anthropogenic causes such as climate change.

    I am also struck by the rank opportunism of free market environmentalism routinely featured on this blog which would rather focus on deregulation, and profiteering from treating symptoms of climate change rather than directly addressing the root causes.

    I applaud your openness to sensible, time-tested management approaches employed by native Americans and regret the USFS failed to pick up on their example such as controlled burns decades ago.

    Reply
    • David: Your assertion that the NFS provides only a “small fraction of the nation’s timber supply” is based on politics, not biology. In Oregon alone, one of the world’s great timber growing areas, federal forests hold more than 75% of the State’s timber-sized trees — most of which are rotting in place or are threatened by wildfire because of overcrowding, bugs, and disease. A real mess, and a pretty unstable “carbon sink.” Most of the western United States is in a similar shape.

      When you say: “There are countless examples where huge benefits to humans are derived from “unmanaged” natural landscapes,” it means we have differing definitions for the word “natural” — and probably for the words “countless,” “benefits,” and “unmanaged” as well. Obviously, we have a wide difference in personal values and in word definitions.

      I also strongly disagree with your assertion that “it makes far more sense to manage the NFS for carbon sink and sequestration priorities.” I wrote a paper on this very topic for an EPA-sponsored gathering of international forest and climate scientists nearly 20 years ago, and in the intervening years my conviction has become even stronger — if managing forests for carbon sequestration ever becomes a national “priority,” then we are probably doomed as a nation. No one is rich enough or dumb enough to think that such a foolish waste of critical resources can ever be “sustainable” (using your definition, I think) over time. If I ever become committed to carbon sequestration (won’t happen), I’m going to look toward the ocean first and the soil next, before I’d ever consider committing trees to such a fool’s errand.

      No, you do NOT need to have “people tending the land.” The artificial Wilderness designations of the past several decades are a good example. I’m just saying that when we abrogate on this responsibility (I am devoutly agnostic, so don’t read too much into this statement), we are doing ourselves and the plants and animals that share our environments a real disservice. Current Wilderness conditions are a good example, where hundreds of thousands of acres have burned in wildfires or been killed by bugs during the past 25 years, and almost everything has been left to rot in place or reburn with even more destructiveness.

      We have entirely different way of looking at things, my friend, and I doubt that is going to change (or even can be changed) to any great degree.

      Reply
  6. David- here are a couple of thoughts on what you said:

    This, of course, is one of the main underpinning rationales of ESA, and likely behind Leopold’s observation that the first rule of “intelligent tinkering” is to “save all the pieces”.

    Nature doesn’t operate that way, or we would be cohabiting with T Rex’s. Nature is all about versatility. As an evolutionary biologist, I know that the genetic combinations of 100 years ago are not all here today for any species.. they are gone. Evolution has moved on. Knowing what to keep, and how hard to work to keep it, are key challenges for humans on this ever-changing planet.

    I’m continually struck by the prevailing management mentality which implicitly and explicitly makes claims around management’s prowess for managing systems, but those managed systems which are more often than not, suffering disequilibrium and unnatural disasters due to direct management actions and/or indirect anthropogenic causes such as climate change.

    “Systems” “equilibrium” and “natural” are all human concepts. I am not saying that management is perfect (people aren’t perfect). I can look at dry land farming on the plains and say “nothing disastrous has happened since the Dust Bowl.”

    I am also struck by the rank opportunism of free market environmentalism routinely featured on this blog which would rather focus on deregulation, and profiteering from treating symptoms of climate change rather than directly addressing the root causes.

    I can’t speak for all the posters and commenters on this blog, but I don’t consider myself a “free market environmentalist”. I would like to directly address the root cause of climate change which I think is “people around the world don’t have low carbon sources of energy that are cheap”.

    To me this is a technology development and adoption problem, and I see governments potentially playing an important role. I don’t know if that makes me free market or not. PS You and I agree on not being fans of cap’n’trade.

    Reply
    • Sharon,
      Your credentials as evolutionary biologist notwithstanding, I continue to be surprised by some of your statements around species at risk primarily due to anthropogenic factors. My reference to ESA was: ” the presence of greater diversity of species generally allows for a greater capacity of resiliency and dynamic equilibrium to occur within the system.” Your response to this was,

      “Nature doesn’t operate that way, or we would be cohabiting with T Rex’s…As an evolutionary biologist, I know that the genetic combinations of 100 years ago are not all here today for any species.. they are gone.”

      I contend you are not only condescending, but off the mark, and many other evolutionary biologists would likely agree.

      Aside from the fact that T. Rex disappeared in the last mass extinction event 65 million years ago, I get it, that unique genetic combinations within a given species are in constant flux. They have to be, in order to adapt and survive.That doesn’t negate the importance of the entire species or the acquired unique traits which confer survival advantages within a given biome or watershed. Your statements reveal an attitude of extremist rationalizations devoid of conscience, accountability, and appreciation for cause and effect — an attitude no doubt, most useful to those power holders busily planning our new century for us.

      The referenced statement seems to deny at once, the significance of geologic timescales, the destabilizing consequences of species extinction and the significance of the present rates of extinction. Speaking of which, I believe you were also in denial of the present mass extinction event I invoked in the past, and described in Wikinews a few years ago thusly:

      “Largest mass extinction in 65 million years underway, scientists say”

      Wednesday, March 8, 2006
      (excerpt)
      “Environmental scientists say they have concrete evidence that the planet is undergoing the “largest mass extinction in 65 million years”. Leading environmental scientist Professor Norman Myers says the Earth is experiencing its “Sixth Extinction.”
      Scientists forecast that up to five million species will be lost this century. “We are well into the opening phase of a mass extinction of species. There are about 10 million species on earth. If we carry on as we are, we could lose half of all those 10 million species,” Myers said. If we do not do more, Myers says, the planet will continue to lose around 50 species per day compared to the natural extinction rate of one species every five years. He projected this rate in the late 1980s to much criticism, but the figure is now widely accepted by scientists.

      “http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Largest_mass_extinction_in_65_million_years_underway,_scientists_say

      Equally illuminating are your expressions of omniscient self-confidence invoking all the powers conferred by an attitude of dominion.

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Sharon, I can’t help but get a little nervous when someone with your credentials and position advocates National Forest Planning in the wake of colossal national forest mismanagement– but stubbornly defends an outlier position among your scientific peers — a position which routinely explains away and minimizes, cause, effect, and the significance and origins of mismanagement (“people are not perfect”), to say nothing of your earlier responses to the threat of anthropogenic, irreversible, catastrophic climate change.

      I express this concern because with your blithe statement, “Knowing what to keep, and how hard to work to keep it, are key challenges for humans on this ever-changing planet.”, your words paint a very disturbing picture of someone useful to the forces which (have and will) profit from, and help perpetrate, our planetary predicament.

      Such attitudes of dominion, willfully serving to rationalize the unraveling of ecosystems helps explain how we perpetually find ourselves at the mercy of mindsets behind power structures which find ways to profit from “resource management” and the catastrophes which ensue, while simultaneously looting the public coffers through taxpayer subsidies.

      That’s quite a feat, actually.

      And of course, there’s a salary with benefits to anyone subscribing to, and useful to, the power structure profiting from devolution cloaked in the rubric of “management” and “collaboration” in this New (improved!) Century of Forest Planning.

      Which leads me to my criticism of Free Market Environmentalism. You claim, ” I don’t consider myself a “free market environmentalist”. (btw, any objective reader of my paragraph you misconstrue would have a very different interpretation than yours. My statement did not include “all the posters and commenters on this blog”, as you claim. Your predilections for distortion endure.)

      Most Americans don’t consider themselves neoliberals nor neoconservatives either, (most of which have no idea what a neoliberal or neoconservative is anyway) — but nonetheless, they’re voting for politicians who are imposing neoliberal and neoconservative agendas on their constituencies and the rest of the planet.

      In parallel fashion, the green “collaborators” you work with, (such as The Nature Conservancy) and corporatized “grassroots” environmental nonprofit organizations whose feckless boards have never heard of FME, are nonetheless collaborating to implement FME agendas. They do this on the basis of quid pro quo terms accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants while fulfilling FME-styled deliverables tied to “philanthropic” restricted grant funding. And these “restricted” grants arise, often, from the same multi-national corporate foundations invested in outcomes which perpetrate and perpetuate ongoing environmental disasters.

      My point here Sharon, is we can make all sorts of statements of what we are or are not, what we believe and what we intend, especially in this Orwellian age of doublethink filled with all this free market doublespeak, but it still conjures what Ralph Waldo Emerson captured so concisely :

      “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

      Reply
      • David,

        My response was not to your statement, but to Leopold’s “intelligent tinkerer” keeping all the pieces. Leopold used powerful analogies to make his point, but I don’t think we should mix up human interpretation of the Nature for the way She actually operates. You and I might agree that humans will never be able to totally understand something so complex and dynamic. If I were a better writer, I might say something like “we stand at the edges of the sea of knowledge, like a child playing in the sand. Sure our game is entertaining and we are learning something, but we really don’t have a clue about the ocean, and if we think we do, we are suffering from a bad case of hubris.” Only if I were a better writer, it would be more quotable. I think what you and I might disagree about is what to do, given our colossal ignorance.

        You said “That doesn’t negate the importance of the entire species or the acquired unique traits which confer survival advantages within a given biome or watershed.”

        I didn’t say that I think we should blow off species. But “species”, again, is a complex and hotly debated human concept imposed on the disorderly world. Here is a book I once read on the topic:
        The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species that describes some of the debates. There are probably some newer books on this topic.

        I certainly didn’t intend to be condescending. I’m sure that plenty of people disagree with me, of all persuasions, and that’s OK.
        You said:
        “rationalizations devoid of conscience, accountability, and appreciation for cause and effect — an attitude no doubt, most useful to those power holders busily planning our new century for us.”
        Just so you know, some people might be offended if you said their statements were “devoid of conscience.” Fortunately, I am not. As you probably know, if you read this blog regularly, my other time-consuming hobby is an organization devoted to things of a spiritual nature. Since second grade or so, conscience, examination of, development of, conscience versus hierarchy, is well-trodden ground for me. You might be interested in when and why my conscience leads me to different conclusions than you have about the same moral question- perhaps that’s an area we could explore in future discussions.

        You quoted:
        ““Environmental scientists say they have concrete evidence that the planet is undergoing the “largest mass extinction in 65 million years”. Leading environmental scientist Professor Norman Myers says the Earth is experiencing its “Sixth Extinction.”
        Scientists forecast that up to five million species will be lost this century.”

        Forecasts, in my opinion, are, by definition, not “concrete evidence.”

        I am not so trusting of people estimating extinctions. You might take a look at a chapter in Aynsley Kellow’s book (you can probably get it on interlibrary loan)

        http://www.amazon.com/Science-Public-Policy-Corruption-Environmental/dp/1847204708/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322439647&sr=1-3
        I know you probably won’t like the book, but Chapter 2 will help you understand why some people question the estimates.

        Thank you for the quote from Emerson.. I always thought Steven Covey said it, so I learned something. It is one of my favorites.

        Reply
  7. Bob,
    Thanks for this dialogue. You’ve stated, the national forests contribution to the nation’s timber supply “is based on politics, not biology.” I agree completely.

    Then again, I wasn’t invoking biology. I was invoking the political forces which engineered the Soviet style fiscal and ecological mess of our NFS, starting with the war boom, post-war boom followed by the cold war (baby) boom era. The NFS was so mismanaged, and “unsustainably exploited at such great cost to the taxpayers”, that it resulted in quick succession, NEPA, NFMA CWA, etc.– some of the nation’s most inspired environmental legislation.

    And was passed into law from mostly Republican Administrations.

    I contend that it makes “far more sense to manage the NFS for carbon…” because when one manages for sequestering carbon, a panoply of benefits arises from maintaining the biological functions of forests at the same time, including making soil derived from “rotting trees.” It is my understanding that the huge pools of sequestered carbon contained in soils is in large part, derived from those rotting trees.

    It’s interesting you bring up the publicly owned national forests of Oregon because some contain the highest volumes of sequestered carbon per hectare of all the forests making up the NFS. It has also been found that old growth forests, (contrary to earlier assumptions based on a single study in the 60’s), continue to function quite well as carbon sinks.

    ( see, “Old Growth Forests Are Valuable Carbon Sinks”)
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910133934.htm

    “ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis published in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually “carbon sinks” – they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries.”

    As for your hopes that our oceans can be counted on as a sink for our increasing GHG emissions, that looks particularly grim. There is much evidence indicating the opposite: our oceans are becoming oversaturated with CO2 and their absorption capacities are showing signs of slowing.

    Just to the west of those Oregon old growth forests, and elsewhere, massive near shore dead zones are being studied and are known to be growing in number and size.

    (see ” Oceanography: Dead in the water” http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100811/full/466812a.html

    “The changes in Oregon may be related to a broader pattern around the globe, in which subsurface patches of permanent hypoxia seem to be growing in size and losing yet more oxygen, for unknown reasons. And whether or not global warming is responsible for the changes to date, ocean models forecast that in the coming decades increasing water temperatures and changes in circulation will drive oxygen concentrations down even further.

    “What we have been experiencing is a perfect storm — where weather, climate and currents can come together to crash an ecosystem,” says Chan.”

    The ocean waters feeding the Western Washington oyster farms have pH levels which won’t support oysters in the wild. Puget Sound is also becoming acidified.

    see, “Shellfish at risk: Puget Sound becoming acidified”
    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012338264_acidification13m.html

    “The waters of Puget Sound and Hood Canal are becoming more acidified as a result of rising carbon dioxide from industries, power plants and vehicles. Scientists from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn that the shifting water chemistry could damage the region’s shellfish industry.”

    “The waters in Puget Sound’s main basin are acidifying as fast as those along the Washington Coast, where wild oysters have not reproduced since 2005.

    And in parts of Hood Canal, home to much of the region’s shellfish industry, water-chemistry problems are significantly worse than the rest of Puget Sound.”

    Research data collected since early 2000 from Tatoosh Is. off the Washington coast demonstrates ocean acidification is already arrived in some locales well ahead of the predictions of climate scientists. We’re talking about threats to the whole foundation of the oceanic food chain here.

    (see, “Ocean off North Olympic Peninsula 10 times more acidic than thought”
    http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20081130/news/311309992

    “”The increase in acidity we saw during our study was about the same magnitude as we expect over the course of the next century,” said study co-author Timothy Wootton, a marine biologist from the University of Chicago.”

    If managing our national forests to maximize carbon sequestration is a “fool’s errand”, surely it is even more foolish to expect our over saturated oceans to successfully take up our increasing carbon emissions– without also encountering disastrous consequences.

    Reply
    • David:

      Here is an example (a little extreme — maybe) of managing forest lands for carbon:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html

      Yes, Global Warming and carbon credits are being used as rationale for forcibly removing 20,000+ indigenous people from their homes and lands and replacing them with planted trees.

      Healthy forests and local uses of those forests involves far more than simple economics or “science-based” policies. Forests without people are usually dysfunctional in many ways: bugs, wildfire frequencies and extents, disease, impassable brush fields, and poor grazing for ungulates, as examples.

      Replacing people for purposes of carbon sequestration in the belief that everyone will eventually benefit from the altered weather patterns that are made possible by this practice, just seems wrong. And yet, if managing our forests for carbon credits is the best way to save humanity, then the sacrifice of a few more thousand native peoples is probably worth it.

      Reply
      • Bob, you hit the nail on the head with this tiny example of Free Market Environmentalism and it is not an extreme example at all. It is routine FME, run of the mill, means and methods.

        That is precisely the problem when multinational neoliberals co-opt the environmental movement and turn “saving the earth” into a neocolonial exercise bent on profiteering off of underexploited natural resources of “emerging economies” in “third world” “developing countries.”

        The FME formula is now well established on many continents and in several countries: First, establish NGO outposts to develop green credentials. Second, “collaborate” with government leaders to talk about their impossible debt to the IMF and World Bank. Third, sign the papers for “Debt for Nature” swaps. (The Nature Conservancy is famous for administering these worldwide) Fourth, have the government abrogate longstanding treaties, then order the military to forcibly remove indigenous tribes so they can get on with the task of conservation and carbon sequestration by razing old growth and “reforest” with palm oil, jatropha, etc. monoculture biofuel plantations. (There’s much more to this, such as biopiracy, and leveraging indigenous resources to fulfill free trade agreements but I’ll hold it back for now)

        Then sit back, and rake in the proceeds of “conservation”:
        There’s money in “forest offsets”
        There’s handsome subsidies in “renewable biofuels”
        There’s promised potential in “carbon credits”, etc. etc.
        (all from someone else’s ancestral home, their blood, their sweat and their tears– perfect! Just make sure you get a smiling brownskin to pose for the cover of the Annual Report. It’ll simply melt the shareholder’s hearts.)

        And its amazing how little money is required to corrupt government officials especially with the leveraging assets of the CIA and US Military hovering in the background.

        And the final outcome of these schemes? The carbon credits and forest offsets allow US based corporations to continue polluting here and elsewhere as they always have been, claim “green” credentials, and inflate their portfolios with derivative assets traded on the Chicago Stock Exchange on privatized ownership of thin air itself.

        Never mind that they will not achieve stated claims to save the planet. Anyone dumb enough to sign up as a member of Conservation International, or the Nature Conservancy, etc. who can’t see through this scam, is just a deserving chump.
        There’s a sucker for “green” causes born every minute.

        So of course, there is a better way than shipping biomass pellet fuel derived from old growth forests thousands of miles to first world countries and calling that renewable energy that’s going to save the planet.

        And of course managing forests for carbon doesn’t have to be outsourced to, and in the name of, “The Wrong Kind of Green” and their multinational funders. But it’s going to take a critical mass of people here (who are now being bludgeoned in the streets before our very eyes) to demand their government extinguish these collaborative “partnerships” with our legislators and their funders. The same rapacious corporate predators reinvesting their profits in front groups like CI and TNC, are of course, funding reelections of our supposed representatives.

        Reply
  8. David: Some quick responses here. If your 1996 videographers had flown over the Kalmiopsis, Mt. Jefferson, or Three Sisters wilderness areas after the devastating wildfires that occurred in those areas, it would have looked far worse than the Alaskan clearcutting. And produced far (far) fewer jobs and useful products. If they were implying that large-scale crop management is bad, then a flyover of Nebraska would have been more terrifying to them. I don’t know about the reforestation success on those islands (spruce is usually pretty easy), but the roads looked good and erosion seemed negligible.

    The first “dead zone” documented in Oregon took place in 1849 and was reported by eye witnesses on the front page of the Oregon City newspaper at that time. Before automobiles and even trains. I provided copies of that article to Jane Lubchenko via grad students and it was never even acknowledged. I’ve referenced it several times since in public blogs and still no acknowledgement — the effort seems to be to link these “dead zones” (which are typically followed by record setting crab harvests and seal invasions) to fossil fuels and Global Warming and the 1849 date doesn’t fit the model.

    Whether old-growth continue sequestering carbon or not is irrelevant. So what? I still think managing a forest for one of the most common elements on the planet is a goofy waste of time. Just my personal opinion, based on personal values and 60 years of observations.

    I think your ocean chemistry claims need some review. I don’t think they hold water, despite the links. Plus, I never said I’d use oceans to sequester carbon — only that I’d look there first before hitting on the trees. I agree that it is just as foolish to manage oceans for carbon sequestration as to manage forests for the same reason.

    Rotting trees typically do not “build up soil” to any great degree over time. The Kalmiopsis, for example, is largely rock surfaced — despite being forested for millions of years, since the time of the dinosaurs. How deep is the soil in the Tongass? When the Biscuit Fire burned the Kalmiopsis for the second time in 15 years (thanks to all the rotting tree fuels that were left in place to leak CO2 into the atmosphere every day), even more soil was lost due to sterilization, immolation, and displacement (dirty smoke clouds). This fact was documented by soil scientists who had put plots in place before the fire, and remeasured them following the fire.

    Too, I’ve enjoyed the discussion and it has been helpful in clearly identifying our differences in viewpoints.

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  9. Bob,
    The difference between wildfires and native corporate logging is that the former is a natural disaster and obviously unintentional — beyond our control. The latter, a quite unnatural disaster, but completely intentional — and all about corporate control. This context matters in a comparison such as yours.

    You stated the fire damage “… would have looked far worse than the Alaskan clearcutting. And produced far (far) fewer jobs and useful products.” These are (respectively) arbitrary and illusory measures of comparison. I suspect an honest accounting of carbon and economics of native corporate logging would reveal the usual deficits associated with NFS timber programs.

    You are correct, reforestation in a rainforest is easy, except there’s a wait of two to four centuries to get the forest back to stand structure and function of old growth. Then there is the expense of silviculture treatments, road maintenance, and what to base local employment on.

    You stated the native corporate clear cuts were merely “large-scale crop management”, but unfortunately, forests here have functions which go far beyond corporate crops. Forests are necessary to maintain the dominant economic driver of our region, wild salmon runs. Most salmon runs adjacent to native corporate clear cuts were decimated. Elsewhere on the southern Tongass, where NFS “managed” watersheds are most prevalent, wild pink salmon runs have been decimated, several sockeye and chum salmon runs are also not doing well, and a larger component of hatchery fish are making up the commercial catch to the further detriment of wild runs.

    You stated, ” the roads looked good and erosion seemed negligible”. First, remember these clear cuts were fresh when the video was shot, and the video only covered a fraction of the actual devastation across Southeast — over time, culverts get blocked, V-notches channel debris torrents, root systems die off and fail in their role of stabilizing slopes, and our post glacial landscapes, infamous for oversteepened slopes often containing coarse grained unstable soils dominated by granodiorite slide into salmon streams. Combine that with our often severe weather patterns in the fall, and consider Doug Swanston’s calculation that clear cuts multiply the likelihood of landslides by a factor of 5 (Swanston, et al.) and your cursory armchair assessment of the video falls quite short of bitter realities.

    Again, our differing values emerge in stark contrast here. It appears you have no values for accounting the intrinsic commonwealth embodied by, nor any acknowledgement of ecosystem services provided by, our old growth forests. As the Science Daily article points out, (as do many, many more), those services play an essential role in mitigating our increasing GHG emissions — hardly the scenario of mountainsides filled with rotting trees you conjure for us. Those rotting trees are fundamental to habitat for all sorts of old growth dependent species and the maintenance of old growth characteristics, because as the trees crash to the ground, they create canopy gaps allowing light where a wide variety of plants and forbs critical to many old growth dependent species proliferate.

    Ironically though, your assumption of the jobs provided by native corporate logging is the farthest off the mark and at the center of native village unemployment rates in southeast Alaska which have been variously reported between 23% and 65%, depending on which village. It is quite likely there were more jobs attributed to fire fighting and administrative management of these burn areas than the brief boom of native corporate timber harvest in southeast Alaska.

    This is directly attributable to the fact native corporations shipped virtually all their timber overseas as unprocessed round logs, completely bypassing opportunities for sustainable, year round, value added processing jobs for villagers. Any honest accounting of these native corporate practices would reveal an extended era of impoverishment of their own people. Several anthropologists and ethnographers have documented the resulting native tribal and villager plights. Kirk Dombrowski’s “Against Culture: Development Politics and Religion in Indian Alaska” offers a concise history of ANCSA and the impacts resulting from the establishment of native corporations here.

    These impacts include poverty of the spirit and what it means to be native when 10,000 year old subsistence traditions of living off the land in remote corners of native Alaska are eliminated by native corporate logging. All the usual barometers of cultural dysfunction exploded in the aftermath of timber liquidation: Drug abuse and alcoholism, poverty, domestic abuse, suicide, decimated village populations migrating to urban areas for employment, etc. etc.

    The links I provided were only brief examples representative of scores of peer reviewed research papers and articles. I suspect you aren’t really looking for answers and are unlikely to be swayed by supporting facts to my arguments but appreciate your candor and perspective derived from a bygone era unfettered with the quintessential ethical question of humanity:

    “Can we now muster a collective resolve (as we achieved so successfully to fight and prevail in simultaneous theaters of WWII) to fight the corporate machine’s control over our system of government, and our energy and natural resource policies, so that we stem our GHG emissions and leave a planet our children and grandchildren may inhabit that isn’t hellish for them and their children?

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  10. And, yes, we continue to see David using the past to block future beneficial treatments and interventions. While you might be able to say that wildfires in Alaska are “natural disasters” but, that disregards facts that allow “global warming” and preservationism to impact forests and increase burning conditions. How can one say that fires burning catastrophically in the 33,000 square miles of dead and dying forests is “natural”???

    Sure, it is easy to be against clearcutting and poor forest management but, that simply ISN’T happening where *I* live!! Unfortunately, preservationism is still a fad in the courts, ignoring complex, cutting-edge science. Sadly, it’s not looking like the new Planning Rule will pass, due to the uncertainty of management practices among the dilettante meddlers, from both extremes. America simply isn’t progressive and open-minded enough to accept scientific forest management. More education is needed.

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  11. David:

    I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful response to my posting. Yes, we obviously have different perspectives, although I believe mine have been largely formed over decades of active research and personal “OTJ” education in the woods, rather than “derived from a bygone era unfettered with the quintessential ethical question of humanity,” as you assert.

    Some real differences:

    1) “Mustering our collective resolve” (and using WW II as an example) to “stem our GHG emissions” in order to leave a planet that “isn’t hellish” for our progeny and descendents is — to my way of thinking — silly and wrong-headed. Sorry, just can’t take it seriously, and consider the draconian actions demanded by some to “fight the corporate machine” to be goofy and misdirected. We have better and more important things to do with our time is my thought.

    2) The “hellish” future predicted for the clearcuts shown in the video clip would be more convincing if it were actually illustrated with photos or field measurements. After all, it’s been 15 years since these videos were taken and certainly many of the problems you describe must have taken place by now. Similar claims had been made for the clearcuts of the Pacific Northwest (my backyard) in the 1980s and 1990s, but most of them seem to have been hyperbolic and inaccurate, given current conditions and the intervening years.

    3) Your appreciation of “ecosystem services” and their potential value to others (including the unborn) is much (much) greater than my own. I think most such assertions are based upon artificial measures of far less consequence than many of their measurers would like to have us believe. I could give some examples, but you have already listed several.

    4) Likewise, your assertions regarding old-growth. First, I don’t think 200- to 400-year old stands are necessarily a desirable or inevitable condition (I think many, many forested areas rarely achieve these ages, for lots of different reasons), and second, I am not sure the “benefits” of this type of condition are intrinsically better or greater than other common forest conditions — including those immediately following a stand replacement event; whether it is considered a “natural” occurrence or not.

    So, that’s enough. We both get the idea. Your condescending observations regarding the source of my perspective are somewhat irritating (besides being dead wrong), but sweeping generalizations and cherry-picked literature used to prop up a particular viewpoint are just part of the game — one we both seem to enjoy to some degree, so there is probably one more area in which we can agree.

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    • David: One more point. I believe that wildfires are also “unnatural disasters” (as you describe logging), and that they can be “controlled.” I think the Indians did that very thing throughout large parts of North and South America for thousands of years, and I think we can, too. The key is “fuel management.” Stop eating so much and you’ll start losing weight.

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