Editor's Column
Guest Columns
Forest Facts
Some 1.5 billion trees are planted in the U.S. every year, about 5 trees for every American.
Annually, U.S. forestland owners plant about 6 trees for every tree harvested.
About one-third of America's original forest - some 300 million acres - have been converted to other uses, principally agriculture.
There are 26 million more acres of forestland in the Northeast than there were in 1900.
Today, forests blanket about one-third of the U.S. land base and about half the U.S. East.
U.S. annual growth rates have exceeded harvest rates since the 1940's.
Timber harvesting is forbidden on 50% of all National Forest lands in the U.S.
National Forests account for 20% of the nation's forestlands and 19% of its timberlands.
National Forests hold 46% of the nation's softwood timber inventory but only provide 6% of the annual harvest.
Since 1986, the harvest of timber from America's national forests has declined 70%.
In the West, 34% of all forestland and 54% of all timberlands are in national forests.
National forests in the Pacific Coast and Intermountain West regions hold 68% of the nation's softwood timber inventory, but provide less than 28% of annual harvest.
Forest density has increased 40% in the U.S. over the last 50 years.
Flying Finns
Home->Winter 2005/2006
The forest is in your hands, take care of it for the people,” those are the words of my grandfather, Alfred Nolan Colegrove, Sr. To him, the forest was everything from a provider of foods, an abundant supply of water, soil, fish, wildlife, plants for medicines and ceremonial baskets, plants to eat, wood for warmth, wood for tools and supplies, sacred places, to just about everything needed for their existence. “Taking care of it” also means protecting the resources that our ancestors provided for us, also to provide goods for today’s use, and to make sure that future generations are going to have the same choices that we have today, so that they will be able to carry on our traditions eternally.
During my grandfather’s time, history and traditions were handed down orally. Our people spoke only the native Hupa language, which was also only taught orally. This method of learning in today’s world would seem quite hard, since we are so used to being lectured to, or we are so accustomed to learn by reading or seeing it on T.V. However, to them, this was a way of life so it came naturally. Our language basically reflects elements of nature and how to live the ways that were given to us by the Creator and taught to us by our elders. Given that we had our own language, which was a separate and distinct dialect from other tribes, our ways of living to some may seem quite complex. In many ways the order and manner of how our people conducted their lives was very organized and advanced; however, one may also look at it as being so simple that it was brilliant. In fact, there was no pollution, no gang violence, no drugs or alcohol, no homelessness, no poverty; life was simply living religiously with nature. Our ceremonies and our prayers also reflect our connection to the natural world. Each one
of our ceremonies asks for blessings for our plants, our animals, our water and fish, our places, as well as our people’s health, along with balance and rejuvenation for the entire world.
Prior to the time when the influence of contact with outsiders was prevalent, we were basically stewards of the land, and from our beliefs we also had great respect and a unequivocal reverence for the land. Our religious beliefs about nature are founded on the concept that everything that occurs naturally has its place, its role, and its function in the world. For example, we believe that both plants and animals have a spirit, as well as our people. We also believe that certain places are sacred, some of them are as subtle as a mountain peak, others are places of prayer in the middle of the forest with the only noticeable feature is a small cleared area, while some of the main prayer areas are as majestic as Mt. Shasta. But of course, one major difference between European society and us is that we consider ourselves to be a part of nature and the things that we did historically in the forest were and are considered to be as natural as the sun or the rain.
We tended and managed the forest with many tools that were created from nature, but the most effective tool was controlled fire. Fire was used to maintain food sources, forest types, control insects, manipulate and cultivate plants for medicines and other cultural uses. The use of fire as a management tool was performed in a very controlled manner. For instance, it was only used at certain times of the year. Generally, the burning would be conducted after the initial rains in the fall. This was done to keep the intensity of the fires low.
The tending of the forest with the use of fire produced annual crops which provided the daily necessities of the people; but what also occurred, by conducting low intensity burns annually for hundreds of years, was that the condition of the forest was healthy and in balance. Healthy and in balance in this context means that under this type of regime the forest maintained a certain structure for millennia, and the forest was able to supply adequate amounts of goods to sustain the needs of a people. By using controlled fire annually, the forest was productive and resilient to catastrophic wildfires. The forests ability to withstand wildfire and still maintain many late successional, seral stage structural components, in today’s world would render these types of forests quite healthy. When wildfires did occur in these areas the intensities were not the same as the controlled fires, but the wildfire intensities were much less than the stand replacing fires that we see throughout the west today.
Today, a hundred years later, the forest has changed significantly as a result of the BIA’s assumption of land management for the Hupa people in the early 1900s. The BIA changed the way of life for my grandfather and his people, but it wasn’t without a fight. When my grandfather and his people finally negotiated what is now known today as the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation (HVIR), they had been prohibited from speaking their language, they had to be secretive about prac-ticing their religion, and were also forced to become farmers of non-native crops. But perhaps the most atrocious act was to the land, when the BIA began mimicking the USFS and viewing all fires as bad, and extinguished them with a fury. Not only did they put out all fires, they made it a criminal offensive if Indians set fires. So, now it became a crime for Indians to manage the forest the way that they were taught and were supposed to do.
In the early 1940s, the BIA introduced commercial timber management and the enticing revenue that is associated with timber harvest. This led to thousands of forested acres being converted from oldgrowth Douglas-fir with mixed hardwoods to brush fields. Over the course of time, the forest alterations of what was once a healthy, functioning natural forest, has become overstocked, less healthy, produces less goods for the people and certainly the forest has become more vulnerable to catastrophic fires.
Which brings me to the challenge that we face today, “How do you find that balance in today’s world and honor the words of my grandfather?” The balance in which I refer to is: how do we meet the new goals of the tribe for revenue generation, while still managing the forest to meet the cultural needs of the people. Our world that we live in today obviously has evolved to something much less than the world of my grandfather. Today, we have grown accustomed to revenue from the sale of timber and our needs for social life have evolved similarly to that of contemporary western society. This has put a tremendous amount of pressure on the Tribe to harvest timber to meet the needs of the tribal government. In fact, timber revenue for the last 40 years has been the life blood of the annual tribal budgets.
The HVIR has around 92,000 acres, of which nearly 80,000 acres are commercial forest land. The BIA managed and administered the forest began timber harvest heavily in the 1950s–1980s; typically AAC’s would yield nearly 50–60 million board feet per year. Over this period they harvested and converted nearly 35,000 acres of our lands to commercial forest with little to no regard for cultural resources.
Asserting our Tribal sovereignty is the only mechanism that is allowing us to return to the type of management that we want for the land. The Tribe has Compacted under P.L. 103-413, ‘Title IV’ Tribal Self-Governance Act (basically a contract) with the U.S. Government, which allows us to govern forest management for ourselves. This was one of the first steps in trying to find the balance of competing demands. When the tribe assumed the responsibility for managing our own forest, we were able to craft our own goals for managing the forest within the BIA’s P.L. 101-630, National Forest Resources Management Act. Within the framework of this Act and the myriad of requirements within NEPA, we were able to design standards and guidelines, management requirements, which help turn back the hands of time to meet the needs of the people. This certainly wasn’t easy or painless.
When the tribe began the arduous task of developing our own FMP the Reservation landscape was a mosaic of patches of old growth forest, young cut over stands from 0– 40 years of age and natural young growth conifer or hardwood stands. Several key factors combined to drive the decision making process of the Tribal Council as follows: 1) Scoping efforts resulted in the Tribal Membership ranking protection of Tribal Culture as the number one priority, followed by fish, water, employment, economics, plants and wildlife, 2) The Tribal economy is based on timber, and 3) Unemployment is extremely high and jobs related to timber management and harvesting are very important to Tribal members. Alternatives proposed during the process ranged from heavy industrial forestry, which would maximize short-term profits, to maximum cultural protection which would provide substantially reduced income and jobs while heavily protecting fish, water, wildlife and plants. The alternative selected and implemented was a moderate intensity alternative which has significant protections for cultural resources, fish, wildlife and plants while producing moderate income and jobs.
The planning process began in July of 1991 and the plan was adopted in April 1994. A great deal of effort was expended on the scoping process and several tools were used to elicit Tribal member responses such as, public meetings, newsletters, questionnaires and an informative video tape which described each alternative. In addition, the planning process included an Interdisciplinary team of 13 natural resource professionals, a policy committee appointed by the Tribal Council and a cultural committee. Under the Tribal Plan many different land classifications were developed which dictate the level of timber management intensity from no harvest (30.0%), and partial harvest (20.3%) to high intensity (44.3%) and areas dedicated to urban development and fee land (5.5%). This represents a major change from the days of BIA management where 100% of the forested landbase was subject to intensive management. In addition, within intensively managed lands, including clearcuts, at least five large diameter green trees (>20 inches dbh) per acre on average are retained after logging. Past clearcutting left no large diameter trees standing and very little large down wood on the ground.
The tribe had to look hard at who we are as a people and simultaneously try to meet the economic needs of the government. As you can imagine, there are multiple viewpoints to just about every circumstance, and we certainly experienced many painstaking battles in the process of developing our own plan for the forest. Over the course of about four years we slowly developed what we now call the Forest Management Plan (FMP). We called upon my grandfather, other tribal elders and ceremonial leaders in this process for advice to help guide us with their wisdom and their compassion for the land. During this process, we actually began to incorporate the tribal culture back into the management of the forest. We were able to craft a plan that met the needs of a whole host of tribal values. Those needs of the culture such as plants for medicines, plants for cultural use, protection of habitat for cultural animal species, protection of streams for domestic use and fish habitat, and areas for ceremonial use, were all incorporated directly into almost all of the alternatives which were developed for the tribe to select.
Much to my amazement, upon reviewing what “meeting the cultural needs” meant in terms of taking land out of production for timber management, the tribe approved an FMP with a reduced harvest and income. For our Tribe, this was a historical and colossal action that was made for the HVIR forest.
What really separates our FMP from others is that the Tribe placed cultural values first and foremost, and the AAC was basically a secondary outcome but not the driving factor. Although we now have an AAC of ten MMBF of old-growth conifer, we are managing that volume outside or in conjunction with areas that are also producing cultural products. Which brings me back to those words of my grandfather and shouldering the responsibility of taking care of the forest for our people, because it is my responsibility as Forest Manager to implement the Tribes’ FMP.
As Forest Manager, it is both a challenge which bears rewards as well as the heat from some of our own people, who can be some of the toughest critics. I consider my responsibility and my job a privilege which I am proud to be a part of. As the grandson of a tribal elder and ceremonial leader, it means the world to me to “take care of the forest for our people.”
The Forest is in Your Hands
 (Top) These men are resting between songs of the ancient Jump Dance. The Baskets in their hands are called “Notwich” in Hoopa, and are made from hazel, beargrass, maidenhair fern, and willow root. (Above) Redwood Dugout Canoes used for transportation along the Trinity River. |
During my grandfather’s time, history and traditions were handed down orally. Our people spoke only the native Hupa language, which was also only taught orally. This method of learning in today’s world would seem quite hard, since we are so used to being lectured to, or we are so accustomed to learn by reading or seeing it on T.V. However, to them, this was a way of life so it came naturally. Our language basically reflects elements of nature and how to live the ways that were given to us by the Creator and taught to us by our elders. Given that we had our own language, which was a separate and distinct dialect from other tribes, our ways of living to some may seem quite complex. In many ways the order and manner of how our people conducted their lives was very organized and advanced; however, one may also look at it as being so simple that it was brilliant. In fact, there was no pollution, no gang violence, no drugs or alcohol, no homelessness, no poverty; life was simply living religiously with nature. Our ceremonies and our prayers also reflect our connection to the natural world. Each one
of our ceremonies asks for blessings for our plants, our animals, our water and fish, our places, as well as our people’s health, along with balance and rejuvenation for the entire world.
Prior to the time when the influence of contact with outsiders was prevalent, we were basically stewards of the land, and from our beliefs we also had great respect and a unequivocal reverence for the land. Our religious beliefs about nature are founded on the concept that everything that occurs naturally has its place, its role, and its function in the world. For example, we believe that both plants and animals have a spirit, as well as our people. We also believe that certain places are sacred, some of them are as subtle as a mountain peak, others are places of prayer in the middle of the forest with the only noticeable feature is a small cleared area, while some of the main prayer areas are as majestic as Mt. Shasta. But of course, one major difference between European society and us is that we consider ourselves to be a part of nature and the things that we did historically in the forest were and are considered to be as natural as the sun or the rain.
We tended and managed the forest with many tools that were created from nature, but the most effective tool was controlled fire. Fire was used to maintain food sources, forest types, control insects, manipulate and cultivate plants for medicines and other cultural uses. The use of fire as a management tool was performed in a very controlled manner. For instance, it was only used at certain times of the year. Generally, the burning would be conducted after the initial rains in the fall. This was done to keep the intensity of the fires low.
The tending of the forest with the use of fire produced annual crops which provided the daily necessities of the people; but what also occurred, by conducting low intensity burns annually for hundreds of years, was that the condition of the forest was healthy and in balance. Healthy and in balance in this context means that under this type of regime the forest maintained a certain structure for millennia, and the forest was able to supply adequate amounts of goods to sustain the needs of a people. By using controlled fire annually, the forest was productive and resilient to catastrophic wildfires. The forests ability to withstand wildfire and still maintain many late successional, seral stage structural components, in today’s world would render these types of forests quite healthy. When wildfires did occur in these areas the intensities were not the same as the controlled fires, but the wildfire intensities were much less than the stand replacing fires that we see throughout the west today.
Today, a hundred years later, the forest has changed significantly as a result of the BIA’s assumption of land management for the Hupa people in the early 1900s. The BIA changed the way of life for my grandfather and his people, but it wasn’t without a fight. When my grandfather and his people finally negotiated what is now known today as the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation (HVIR), they had been prohibited from speaking their language, they had to be secretive about prac-ticing their religion, and were also forced to become farmers of non-native crops. But perhaps the most atrocious act was to the land, when the BIA began mimicking the USFS and viewing all fires as bad, and extinguished them with a fury. Not only did they put out all fires, they made it a criminal offensive if Indians set fires. So, now it became a crime for Indians to manage the forest the way that they were taught and were supposed to do.
In the early 1940s, the BIA introduced commercial timber management and the enticing revenue that is associated with timber harvest. This led to thousands of forested acres being converted from oldgrowth Douglas-fir with mixed hardwoods to brush fields. Over the course of time, the forest alterations of what was once a healthy, functioning natural forest, has become overstocked, less healthy, produces less goods for the people and certainly the forest has become more vulnerable to catastrophic fires.
Which brings me to the challenge that we face today, “How do you find that balance in today’s world and honor the words of my grandfather?” The balance in which I refer to is: how do we meet the new goals of the tribe for revenue generation, while still managing the forest to meet the cultural needs of the people. Our world that we live in today obviously has evolved to something much less than the world of my grandfather. Today, we have grown accustomed to revenue from the sale of timber and our needs for social life have evolved similarly to that of contemporary western society. This has put a tremendous amount of pressure on the Tribe to harvest timber to meet the needs of the tribal government. In fact, timber revenue for the last 40 years has been the life blood of the annual tribal budgets.
The HVIR has around 92,000 acres, of which nearly 80,000 acres are commercial forest land. The BIA managed and administered the forest began timber harvest heavily in the 1950s–1980s; typically AAC’s would yield nearly 50–60 million board feet per year. Over this period they harvested and converted nearly 35,000 acres of our lands to commercial forest with little to no regard for cultural resources.
Asserting our Tribal sovereignty is the only mechanism that is allowing us to return to the type of management that we want for the land. The Tribe has Compacted under P.L. 103-413, ‘Title IV’ Tribal Self-Governance Act (basically a contract) with the U.S. Government, which allows us to govern forest management for ourselves. This was one of the first steps in trying to find the balance of competing demands. When the tribe assumed the responsibility for managing our own forest, we were able to craft our own goals for managing the forest within the BIA’s P.L. 101-630, National Forest Resources Management Act. Within the framework of this Act and the myriad of requirements within NEPA, we were able to design standards and guidelines, management requirements, which help turn back the hands of time to meet the needs of the people. This certainly wasn’t easy or painless.
 (Top) Traditional home of the Hoopa people called a “Xonta.” It is made from Port Orford Cedar planks, which are fitted like a puzzle and contain no nails. (Above) The Trinity River flows from one end of the HVIR to the other. The fish that inhibit the Trinity are an important food source to the Hoopa people. The Tribal FMP contains many provisions for protecting the quality of this river. |
The planning process began in July of 1991 and the plan was adopted in April 1994. A great deal of effort was expended on the scoping process and several tools were used to elicit Tribal member responses such as, public meetings, newsletters, questionnaires and an informative video tape which described each alternative. In addition, the planning process included an Interdisciplinary team of 13 natural resource professionals, a policy committee appointed by the Tribal Council and a cultural committee. Under the Tribal Plan many different land classifications were developed which dictate the level of timber management intensity from no harvest (30.0%), and partial harvest (20.3%) to high intensity (44.3%) and areas dedicated to urban development and fee land (5.5%). This represents a major change from the days of BIA management where 100% of the forested landbase was subject to intensive management. In addition, within intensively managed lands, including clearcuts, at least five large diameter green trees (>20 inches dbh) per acre on average are retained after logging. Past clearcutting left no large diameter trees standing and very little large down wood on the ground.
The tribe had to look hard at who we are as a people and simultaneously try to meet the economic needs of the government. As you can imagine, there are multiple viewpoints to just about every circumstance, and we certainly experienced many painstaking battles in the process of developing our own plan for the forest. Over the course of about four years we slowly developed what we now call the Forest Management Plan (FMP). We called upon my grandfather, other tribal elders and ceremonial leaders in this process for advice to help guide us with their wisdom and their compassion for the land. During this process, we actually began to incorporate the tribal culture back into the management of the forest. We were able to craft a plan that met the needs of a whole host of tribal values. Those needs of the culture such as plants for medicines, plants for cultural use, protection of habitat for cultural animal species, protection of streams for domestic use and fish habitat, and areas for ceremonial use, were all incorporated directly into almost all of the alternatives which were developed for the tribe to select.
Much to my amazement, upon reviewing what “meeting the cultural needs” meant in terms of taking land out of production for timber management, the tribe approved an FMP with a reduced harvest and income. For our Tribe, this was a historical and colossal action that was made for the HVIR forest.
What really separates our FMP from others is that the Tribe placed cultural values first and foremost, and the AAC was basically a secondary outcome but not the driving factor. Although we now have an AAC of ten MMBF of old-growth conifer, we are managing that volume outside or in conjunction with areas that are also producing cultural products. Which brings me back to those words of my grandfather and shouldering the responsibility of taking care of the forest for our people, because it is my responsibility as Forest Manager to implement the Tribes’ FMP.
As Forest Manager, it is both a challenge which bears rewards as well as the heat from some of our own people, who can be some of the toughest critics. I consider my responsibility and my job a privilege which I am proud to be a part of. As the grandson of a tribal elder and ceremonial leader, it means the world to me to “take care of the forest for our people.”
"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."
P.O. Box 1290, Bigfork, MT. 59911 • Tel: (406) 837-0966 • Fax: (406) 258-0815 • Email:
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."