Walk 132: Wally Herger World

Every day I walk through a burned area.

Last summer we had a huge wildfire which led to Joni and I being evacuated for three weeks. The fire took four of ten homes on our ridge. This year, the forest is coming back. Other areas weren't quite so lucky, as the fire was a "crowning" fire that devastated the wilderness. To make matters worse, everyday logging trucks roll on our little, one lane county road (with 200 foot drops) menacing both logging truck driver and homesteader. This "salvage logging" after a fire is even more grotesque than the normal logging operations. Why? Few environmental protections exist for the logging of "burned areas". Some suggest that timber companies start fires so that such operations can begin.

The other day I called our County Supervisor to complain about the legions of logging trucks on our single lane, itsy bitsy, precipitous, drop-off road.

The Supervisor laughed and asked: "How long have you lived here?"

I told him two years. The County Supervisor then went on to tell me that "city people" have different expectations of county roads, and that, in fact, the logging trucks had more of a right to be there than I did. I felt like I was talking to the County Sheriff from James Bond's "Live and Let Die".

Of course, the County Supervisor was able to call the logging company, and the logging company did give me a call (Columbia Helicopter). They will review logging truck safety in our area. I haven't seen a loggin truck since I made the call. This was an incident of "armchair monkey wrenching".

Joni (my spouse, the felon Treesitter) wrote this letter to Congressman Wally Herger today, after receiving an e-mail from him complaining about Enviro law suits, lumber plants closing (always the Enviro's fault, and not the slow economy and the wood glut!) which have stopped logging operations within parts of our District. Wally is simply horrid on forestry issues, although his Democratic opponent in the last election wasn't much better.

Joni wrote:

Dear Congressman Herger;

I am familiar with the Quincy Library Group legislation, and in fact participated in similar joint efforts to forge consensus between conservationists, timber companies and other interested parties in Colorado, on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison (GMUG) National Forest. I, too am disappointed to learn of the closure of the mill in Quincy. However, if proposed timber sales have been held up in court, it is likely these proposals were not in the best interests of endangered species or some other legal protection of our forest habitats and watersheds.

Until timber sales are legally developed, lawsuits will be filed to prevent them. I have seen the underhanded efforts by the Bush administration in the past 8 years to tear down protections for wildlife and critical habitat. I have no doubt that the lawsuits filed to prevent proposed timber sales were bona fide efforts to ensure protections for threatened and endangered species and critical habitat.

As for the relative importance of the timber industry in Northern California, I would need to see the analysis to believe this is truly a 'vital' part of our economy here in the Sierra Nevada. In some regions that get more rainfall and where more commercially desirable tree species are common, this may be true, but hard to believe for Butte County.

While there is no 'recipe' for forest management that will work everywhere, research supports protection of roadless areas as necessary to conservation of many threatened and endangered forest-dependent species. In roadless areas, a policy of controlled burning is better than a thinning program, due to less habitat fragmentation and soil disturbance.

In areas with existing roads, a program of thinning should not end up looking like the 'moonscape' of devastation we now see in the burned-over areas in Butte County after last summer's fires - horrendous and criminal, while in uncut areas evidence of recovery are everywhere: burnt trees sprouting green leaves from trunk and large limbs, green growing out of the ground everywhere...Many of our forest ecosystems evolved with fire, thus a policy of careful use of controlled fire could be advantageous, particularly on steep terrain, where logging is terribly destructive to soils and watersheds.

The roads left behind by logging operations create long-lasting fragmentation of forest habitat, as these roads continue to bring in hunters and others that adversely impact habitat and sensitive species for many years. The timber industries are facing a diminished resource, due to poor planning in the past. Continued plundering of the few remaining pristine forest fragments is not the answer.

As for those people who choose to live in forested areas, the burden to utilize fire-safe landscaping and fire-resistant building methods is on their shoulders. Expecting billions of tax dollars be spent, and lives lost, to protect homes and buildings in forested areas every year is absurdity on the highest level. Build defensively. Thin where roads exist. Then let the forests burn as nature intended, and enjoy the wildflowers in the fires' wake.