Scott Swanson
Editor:
Kirk Johnson’s Nov. 16 story on how the spotted owl fallout has affected Sweet Home, Ore., one of many rural communities in the Northwest in which livelihoods have been snatched away by environmentalists’ lawsuits and resulting legislation to stop logging in publicly owned forests, is quite incisive and accurate – to a point.
Mr. Johnson has done a eommendable job of describing how efforts to protect the habitat that scientists, 25 years ago, believed was necessary for the survival of the spotted owl, impacted hard-working, productive communities. As he notes, though Sweet Home is privileged to have hundreds of thousands of well-managed privately owned timberlands nearby, in which logging has continued – the local industry (and jobs) are a mere shadow of what they once were. Poverty and associated ills have made strong inroads.
Though once a longtime urban resident myself, my own roots are in a southern Oregon town similar to Sweet Home that, when I was growing up, had half a dozen working mills that produced lumber from nearby national forests. None exist today.
As publisher of Sweet Home’s weekly newspaper for nearly a decade, I’ve had the opportunity to also observe the poverty and other societal effects produced by the precipitous decline of the logging industry. Mr. Johnson chronicled them well after numerous visits to our community.
But there’s plenty more to the complex situation we find ourselves in.
What Mr. Johnson doesn’t mention is how spotted owl protection efforts have impacted the forest itself. Most foresters in Oregon or Washington will tell you that they are severely overgrown. They are not allowed to burn naturally, as they did when Native Americans lived in these parts, creating open spaces and distributing seeds for new growth.
These are millions of acres of massive conifers growing mere feet apart, their branches interweaving in a sap-rich canopy that often extends 100 feet or more into the air. Allowing them to burn naturally following the lighting storms we often get in the mountains during our dry summers would be like setting off an atomic bomb now.
One has only to gaze at the aftermath of some of the recent massive forest fires in the West – the Okanogan, Wash. Carlton Complex Fire (250,000 acres); the Biscuit fire (half a million acres); the Whiskey Complex Fire (17,000 acres), the Douglas Complex fire (50,000 acres), the B&B Complex Fire (50,000 acres) – to get the picture. You see a few news photos. We see scorched landscapes – for decades.
Our Willamette National Forest, located in western Oregon stretching south about 50 miles from Portland, is commonly regarded as one of the best spots on earth to raise the Douglas firs that provide much of the construction lumber you build your homes and offices with. Forest fires could be horrendous because these trees grow so well. Thankfully, we haven’t had a catastrophic fire yet outside Sweet Home, but it could, and probably will, happen.
Wildlife officials and hunters will tell you that there are very few deer or elk left in the Willamette National Forest. There are few mountain meadows, which is what happens when forests are clear-cut or burned. That’s where these animals find food and when it’s not sufficient, they move somewhere else – to private forestland that is being logged. There are plenty of clear-cuts in various stages of reforestation and that’s where the deer and elk congregate.
It’s a pity, though, that they cannot inhabit the national forest, because it should belong to them too. But the effort to manage the forest to ensure the survival of one species has dramatically impacted others, because it isn’t natural.
I might add that a funny thing about the spotted owl is that, despite the stentorian assertions by environmentalists and their scientific supporters about what is necessary to ensure its survival, local woodsmen know and have demonstrated for years that spotted owls can live in much younger forests than their advocates asserted back in the days of the lawsuits. But science shows little interest now. The die’s been cast.
Another facet of Sweet Home that Mr. Johnson doesn’t really address is the grit evident in this community.
Yes, it has taken quite a while to find a new direction. Loggers, in general, are very good at rising at 3 a.m. in the morning, as the article describes, and spending long hours in harsh conditions doing things that, quite frankly, would far exceed the capabilities of a lot of city residents.
They haven’t been as adept at defending themselves in the public arena, where smart, slick-talking environmental activists swayed judicial and public opinion to create the scenario we now find ourselves in. Responding to what’s happened, many smart, innovative loggers have adapted their practices in the woods. They just haven’t talked about it in on the news.
Sweet Home is still a salt-of-the-earth community, populated by families with rawhide in their spines and purpose on their faces. These are people who, when they needed a community center to house senior services and a Boys and Girls Club, built it with their own hands. When a falling tree destroyed a disabled man’s trailer, strangers gathered to build him a brand new home. These are people who, looking for solutions, founded a country music festival to generate income for economic development. Last summer that festival celebrated its 22nd year and drew 17,500 people per day for three days – in a town of 9,000.
Yes, it may have taken us a while to wrap our thinking around the idea of using the forest for other purposes than what it has been in these parts. But when the people of this town decide to do something, particularly within the structure provided by the Sweet Home Project, progress will happen.
These people are not quitters.
Scott Swanson
Publisher, The New Era