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TODAY Monday 27 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Who Owns the National Forests?

In 1992, in the public library of a little town in the Sierra Nevadas, old adversaries started talking. They wanted to see if they could fashion a consensus approach to questions of timbering in the Plumas, Lassen, and Tahoe national forests. Local government officials, local environmentalists, and local loggers participated. In time, they arrived at a common plan, approved last week by the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The name of the town is Quincy, and today the term Quincy Library Group denotes either admirable decentralization or dangerous abdication of national responsibility.

The history of the Quincy Library Group is told in an excellent article by Patrick Mazza in the August issue of Cascadia Times. Mazza reports that the five-year plan approved by the QLG calls for a doubling of logging levels. Gasp, say many national enviros. Not to worry, the local enviros reply. The increase in logging will come from the thinning of an unnaturally dense underbrush that has grown up over the years because of fire suppression and the exclusive targeting of big trees for timbering. "After 150 years of pounding," explains Mike Jackson, a Quincy green, "this is not a normal ecosystem. We've got 50 years worth of work to get back to a natural cycle." Some national enviros recognize that automatic fire suppression has indeed caused ironic tinderbox problems, but think that controlled burns are a better approach than "salvage logging."

Other elements of the QLG plan are more obviously environmentalist: no logging in roadless areas; no cutting of trees more than 30 inches in diameter; protection of streams and all salmon habitats. Jackson and his colleagues can get ticked off at the insinuation that they were taken to the cleaners.

Apart from questions of how much cutting is ecologically sustainable (see our own "Logging" versus "More Logging"), there are big issues of federalism here, and they can provoke heated reactions. Briefly, do the citizens of Quincy and environs have the right to determine logging policies for national forests near their home? Four weeks ago I was sitting at a table with a New Mexico environmentalist who thought it outrageous that I claimed as much influence as he had in decisions about United States property that happened to be in New Mexico. An insufferable New York polemicist owns a seat at any dispute-resolution table in Santa Fe, I argued, at least until the law changes. No, he replied. Decisions about land should not be taken by those who have never walked it. Horseshit, I suggested. A few more Irish guys at the table and things could have turned colorful.

Actually, there was an Irish guy at our table. Michael McCloskey, chairman of the Sierra Club, is the antithesis of barroom brawler, but he's stirred up a fuss by questioning the whole QLG approach. "Big business has a game-plan of pursuing this approach to get out of the clutches of the tough federal agencies. A lot of people on the left have been taken in because it is a touchy-feely approach that plays to those with romantic notions about localism and self-control. They forget they're disempowering most of the people who have a stake in the issue."

"We are in trouble," agrees Tim Hermach, head of the Native Forest Council. "Big trouble. This thing could make the Salvage Rider look like a Sunday picnic." Hermach is a zero-cut-on-national-lands guy, and he worries that zero-cut has zero chance if forest decisions are left to some nicey-nice mediation process. I think he's got a point. Could you sit at a table at the public library and tell your neighbor in the next chair that the ecosystem demands a shutdown of his family timber business? Not me, but I'm certainly devious enough to want some fed flak-catcher to say so.

The QLG five-year plan was approved by the Senate committee as an experimental pilot program. But its approach is philosophically in key with the Clinton Administration's conflict aversion and very popular with local politicians. It has momentum. Will the national enviro groups try to slow the train?

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Tom Turner, our resident media watcher, this week turns his gaze to High Country News. Normally not given to flattery, the scribe of "In Other News..." has little bad to say about a publication indispensable to any enviro living within the broad reach of the Mountain West.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

10/24: Meanwhile, Back at the Infirmary...
10/23: "Heading Down the Right Path"
10/22: Markets and Medium-Greens
10/21: The Silver Republic and the People's Republic
10/20: Duck!
10/17: The Energy Non-Crisis
10/16: Drillbit Diplomacy
10/15: We Love You, Hiroshi Okuda
10/14: Good Deals at Showroom and Pump
10/10: Clinton Waffles!
10/09: Can Therapy Help the Songbirds?

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.