Flying Finns
Death watch in eastern Oregon
In this issue we write about environmental and economic collapse in eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains, a region known by many as the "Iron
Triangle," so-named because its three national forests-the Willowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur-form the shape of a triangle.
We first visited this once beautiful region in 1991, gathering material for an Evergreen expose titled, "Grey Ghosts in the Blue Mountains." It was the first of eight editions describing both the problem and the solution to the West's wildfire-forest health crisis. "Ring of Fire," our cover story herein, is No. 9. At its core, Dave Skinner's fine essay is a story of lost hope and betrayal of tiny towns in a remote part of America that did everything their government asked them to do-and got nothing in return.
When we visited LaGrande, eastern Oregon's commercial center, in the spring of 1991 we found hope blossoming everywhere we looked. The community, the Forest Service and local environmentalists were all talking together about how much good a long-term, landscape level thinning program would do in the region's beleaguered forests, then being pummeled by a two-fisted tussock moth-spruce budworm infestation.
But by the mid-1990s, misery had replaced hope. Beltway environmental groups refused to bless the effort, no doubt fearing that a shift from litigation to collaboration would erode their power base. God forbid that a forest management decision should be made by people who actually know something about forests and have a vested interest in the outcome.
No one who has watched this tragedy unfold is surprised by what they see now: declining communities and forests that are in much worse shape today than they were 15 hope-filled years ago. So much for saving the planet; at least the constitutional right to appeal the Forest Service's every attempt to find reason has been preserved.
The environmental component of the eastern Oregon forest health crisis is easily seen and, dare we say, pretty straightforward. Put simply, there are too many trees of the wrong species crowded together in diseased and dying thickets to make survival possible, much less health. Stressed by inadequate moisture and soil nutrients, these forests are literally collapsing on them-selves. Minus a long term thinning program designed to reduce stand density, they are succumbing to insects, diseases and wildfire. This fact was known 15 years ago, it was known 50 years ago, and it is known today.
The economic component of this crisis is equally straightforward. This region's wood processing facilities have always been heavily dependent on the now long-gone federal timber sale program. In fact, a strong case can be made for the fact that the companies that migrated to this region a century ago did so at the open invitation of the federal government, which then saw forest management as central to developing the region's
economy and improving its forests.
But over the last 20 or so years economics has become less and less important where federal forestry is concerned. Since the federal timber sale
program imploded in the early 1990s half of eastern Oregon's wood processors have gone out of business. Many living in unaffected urban environs cheered their demise in a misplaced belief that timber harvesting, which they opposed, would stop once the mills were gone. And indeed the harvesting has stopped, but the insect and disease infestations that have wracked these forests for years continue to prepare
them for inevitable wildfire. Short of a thinning program designed to restart long dormant ecological processes, total collapse is inevitable.
St. Theresa of Jesus is widely credited for having said, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers," a biblical wisdom that resurfaced in actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's marvelous portrayal of Truman Capote in the film Capote, which chronicles his narcissistic relationship with convicted killer Perry Smith. Despite outwardly befriending Smith, Capote is said to have secretly yearned for his April 1965 execution so he could write the final chapter of In Cold Blood, his 1966 best seller.
I suspect some environmentalists now regret their wishes come true, just as a guilt-ridden Capote did following Smith's hanging, which he witnessed. Make no mistake: eastern Oregon's timber industry is now on death watch. And as its execution draws near, the public's options for rescuing the Blue Mountains from their own death chamber also die, because minus the myriad product markets that techno- logically advanced loggers and sawmillers provide, desperately needed thinning is not feasible-and publicly reviled wildfire is inevitable.
To see what will happen next in eastern Oregon, look at what is already happening in northern Arizona and New Mexico. Federal forests in both states have been devastated by catastrophic wildfire in recent years. But because there is no wood processing infrastructure left in the Southwest, neither state possesses the structural nor financial means to mediate their forest health problems. And until the Congress decides to stop paying environmental groups to sue the socks off the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, there is zero chance that new infrastructure investments will be made in the region, despite quite valiant Forest Service efforts to recruit wood processing businesses.
Many environmentalists know this, and are worrying aloud on their own websites about the loss of credibility they are suffering as urban support for thinning in at risk forests tops 80% nationally. While we applaud their more conciliatory voices, environmentalists have no way of controlling their own radical fringes. The same holds true of the Forest Service's seeming inability to motivate some of its troops: to wit, the refusal to harvest trees more than 21 inches in diameter in eastern Oregon for ecological purposes, despite written authorization from Regional Forester,
Linda Goodman.
Essayist Dave Skinner says it all in his last sentence. "Time's up folks: choose now and choose wisely, or your grandkids will regret it for a long time to come."
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."