The spotted owl in the context of, well, owls in general

The current issue (May 25th, 2017) of the New York Review of Books contains a review of two books on owls, penned by reviewer Robert O. Paxton (I didn’t know, BTW, that he was an “owlologist” – try saying that fast 25 times! – or an “owlophile”).  Anyhow, there wasn’t much on the spotted owl and the timber controversy of the U.S. Northwest therein.  But I thought I’d pass along what there was, FYI:

“Efforts to protect one species of North American owl became an issue in the 1992 presidential election. President George H.W. Bush warned that if environmentalists like vice-presidential candidate Al Gore got their way, “we’ll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American.” The owl in question was the spotted owl, a midsized forest owl of the Pacific Northwest that disappears when old-growth forest is cut. Efforts to preserve old-growth forest for the bird infuriated workers in the declining lumber industry. They sported bumper stickers that read “shoot an owl, save a logger.” The issue has now subsided, mostly because the loggers, having lost the “spotted owl war,” found other work or other homes.

“Today the few spotted owls that remain in the United States (they are nearly gone from Canada) have a new enemy. The closely related but more aggressive barred owl, abundant in the eastern United States, is expanding into the Pacific Northwest, where it pushes out the slightly smaller spotted owl. The US Forest Service has been discreetly culling barred owls in that region. Even so, the spotted owl could become the first North American owl to go extinct.”

Wilderness and Roadless, the King’s Forests

Robin Stanley has published a commentary on wilderness and roadless area designations over on the Not Without a Fight! blog, FYI.  Ron Roizen

New Forest old map

William the Conquer kicked the peasants off his land so he could have a private hunting reserve for himself and his guests.  Unlike William the Conquer, our government has only kicked the handicapped, the poor, the children and the elderly off of the government land and instead has reserved it for the wealthy and the healthy.

continue reading at NWAF! blog

VIDEO: Counties in Crisis – final cut

Subscribers here, I thought, might be interested to know that the documentary video titled, “Counties in Crisis – final cut,” is now available at YouTube, here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-7vAAUaPio.   Incidentally, the full text of the video’s script is also available at the Not Without a Fight! blog, here:  https://countieswithnationalforests.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/the-script-counties-in-crisis/.  Thanks!  Ron Roizen

VIDEO: Robert H. Nelson talk in Wallace, Idaho

Nelson-talk-picReaders of NCFP may be interested in the video of the talk presented by Robert H. Nelson to the “Not Without a Fight!” Coalition’s conference held in Wallace on September 24th.

Here’s are the introductory comments I offered on the video at the NWAF! blog:

Editor’s note: The NWAF! blog will be posting some of the presentations offered at our “September Conference” over the coming days and weeks. We begin with Robert H. Nelson’s keynote talk, which was titled “The ecosystem management disaster.” Nelson’s presentation reviewed four (let’s call them) “governing images” guiding Congress’s public lands policies over the history of the American West, all destined for failure. He also offered a brief account of his “Charter Forests” model for reforming forest management in the U.S. If a personal word may be permitted, it was very edifying and a great pleasure to see this distinguished scholar move so fluidly and lucidly through this uniquely American historical story. The video runs just under 70 minutes. Enjoy!
— Ron

 

A Footnote to “How Long Has This Been Going On?”

 

William the Conqueror
William the Conqueror

On May 3, a couple of days ago, I posted a little article at our “Not Without a Fight!” blog on the interpretation of King William Rufus’s death by medieval English historians and, thereafter, by generations of the British people. Rufus was the third son of William I or William the Conqueror, he who famously defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Rufus, who succeeded his father on the throne with the latter’s death in 1087, died in mysterious circumstances in 1100 in a place called the “New Forest.” This “New Forest” was a huge area declared by fiat as a hunting preserve for William the Conqueror and his noble friends in 1079.  It was very unpopular, according to medieval English historians anyway, among English commoners and especially those displaced by the King’s bold edict.  These same historians were fond of attributing Rufus’s death, as well as the deaths of two other members of William I’s family, to divine retribution for the King’s destruction of locals’ homes, livelihoods, villages, and churches with the New Forest’s creation.

More recent historical study — beginning, oddly enough, with a commentary on this history by Voltaire in 1753 – has questioned whether William I’s New Forest was as disruptive to local communities as medieval historians claimed. Despite more than a little evidence that undermines the old, medieval account, that account seems to have survived quite well in the popular mind or English folklore.

Now, you might be wondering why I would have bothered to recount this story on a blog site devoted to the looming economic and social crisis faced by U.S. counties with considerable acreages of national forest. Well, it all began a couple of weeks ago when our old TV gave out. We bought a new TV and its remote came with a Netflix button, for streaming videos from that source. One of the shows I began watching via this new source was David Starkey’s brilliant, 17-installment series on the history of the British monarchy. As it happens, the series’ third program briefly touched on the story of the New Forest’s creation, King Rufus’s untimely accidental death, and the place of these events in British historical memory. My immediate reaction was: “I can use this!”

How?

One side of the three-sided "Rufus Stone."
One side of the three-sided “Rufus Stone.”

Well, it struck me that the locking up of our national forests – by which I mean, in this case, the great decline in logging and forest management activity over the past two decades – has a very, very long history:  i.e., stretching all the way back to the creation William the Conqueror’s New Forest in 1079. That’s very nearly a thousand years ago. It also struck me also that the persistence of the divine punishment interpretation of Rufus’s death in the English historical memory represents a kind of long term – indeed, very long-term! – symbolic price William the Conquer had to pay for his love of hunting and his creation of the New Forest. That price, in turn, might strike a cautionary note for today’s officialdom and their green friends, where these folks are (or appear to be) happy with the prospect of shutting down the multi-use of our national forests.

So that was my thought process. Unfortunately, the blog post didn’t communicate all of that as well as it might have – indeed, or even as well as I’ve communicated it here.  Nevertheless I’d like to invite members of this list to have a look at this NWAF! post when and if they have a moment to spare for some very old history.

— Ron Roizen

A Modest Proposal: Why Not Canadianize Our National Forests?

Canadian timber

Jonathan Swift, it will be recalled, suggested, in his book titled A Modest Proposal, that the poor should sell their children to the rich, the latter making use of the little tots as food.  In a somewhat similar vein, if not quite so outlandishly, I’d like to ask this blog’s subscribers to comment on a simple proposal for the reform of the beleaguered U.S. national forest system:

Why not turn over U.S. national forests to Canadian management?

After all, over 90 percent of Canada’s vast forest lands – almost a billion acres in all — is owned by federal, provincial, or territorial governments.  Canadians, moreover, would seem to embrace a strong environmental consciousness.  And yet Canada manages to make good use of its forests for timber production and other economic uses.  According to a recent estimate, for example, the net value of Canada’s forest products exports – to the U.S., to Europe, and to China and Japan — amount to about $17 billion per year.  Somehow, in other words, the Canadians have managed to combine their environmental sensibility with a productive economic life for their forests.

So why then not simply turn over our national forests to Canadian management?  We would get a substantial portion of the revenues of course – after all, they’d remain our forests.  And, presumably, the Canadian rendering of environmental values would preserve the life and health of our forests.

So, what’s wrong with this modest proposal?

Thanks!

Ron

New Posts Over on the “Not Without a Fight!” Blog

hummingbird

NCFP’s readers may be interested in some of the new posts at the “Not Without a Fight!” blog, e.g.:

1.  Nelson’s November 21, 2013 Testimony to the House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation — Part 1

2.  Taking an Ax to Traditional Forest Management — The charter-school approach works for education, so why not apply it elsewhere?

3.  On Paradigm Change and Morris Sheppard’s Hummingbird

4.  Over-regulation as a Reason for the Timber Harvest Decline: Recalling Jack Ward Thomas’s Lament

— Ron Roizen

“Counties in Crisis”: A Draft Introductory Narrative

Note from Ron:  Earlier this month, I posted an article on Shoshone County, Idaho’s 2005 documentary, “Forests in Crisis” at the “Not Without a Fight!” blog — including a field for viewing the 27-minute film.  Yesterday, by way of continuing the same theme, I posted a possible draft intro to a new and updated version of the County’s film, now titled, “Counties in Crisis.”  Sharon generously invited me to cross-post the newer article to “A New Century of Forest Planning.”  Thank you, Sharon!

U.S. national forests and grasslands
U.S. national forests and grasslands

Scene One:  Setting Up The Problem

It’s a story that, for the most part, has fallen below the national news horizon.

America’s 155 national forests cover almost 190 million acres, the great majority in the West.  This great expanse of forested land falls across and affects more than 700 American counties, roughly a fifth of the nation’s total number of counties.  Some counties host only small patches of national forest while in others national forests may cover much or even most of their landscapes.

This presence has manifold consequences for local communities.  The Forest Service owns and governs these lands, thus limiting the inputs of local citizens and governments to an advisory role only.  For many years, national forests and local communities got on tolerably well.  The Forest Service’s multi-use philosophy made ample room for the needs and economies of local communities.  But this working relationship has broken down.  Now, local communities and counties have in effect become unhappy captives of Forest Service policies and limitations –- policies that no longer serve local needs and aspirations.

There are four basic local needs that define the relationship, and thus also the breakdown:

  1. The protection and enhancement of forest health;
  2. the protection and enhancement of local forest-related economic activity;
  3. the planning and execution of hazardous fuels reduction and forest thinning to reduce threat of catastrophic wildfire; and
  4. the provision of adequate support for the functioning or operation of local governments and schools.

In better times, each of these four domains helped serve the requirements of the others, all acting in concert to keep local communities and their surrounding forests healthy, productive, and in balance.  In bad times, however, the four domains act against one another, thus exacerbating the circumstances within each domain.  Without timber harvests, for example, the increase of fuel in the forest worsens the risk of catastrophic wildfire; by the same token, the absence of revenue from such harvests weakens county government and school resources and, as well, shortchanges Forest Service efforts to manage forest health.   (continue reading)