No mention of climate change in The State of The Union address. President Fubar or President Fugly, told me he goes by both names.
Eighty minutes he droned on. You would think he could’ve squeezed in a nod at Mother Nature. But she’s only good to grab by her you-know-what. From August 2, 1989. – JDW
I’ve come to a clear-cut conclusion. This “old growth” controversy needs YOU.
The discussion is too important to be left to the politicians and environmentalists.
Personally, I hate the noise. The lumber barons shouting at the Audubon Society, loggers threatening the existence of little birds. Much ado about plenty, most of it apparently selfish, misguided, and solely fueled by economic considerations. Votes and dollars once again stoking the flames. And the smoke obscuring the truth.
We are all passengers on the same boat, folks. And I want to hear from the silent; I want to hear from the trees.
If any man has the woods as his constituency, it’s Lou Gold, Ghandi of the Forest.
Lou Gold spends every summer on top of Bald Mountain, a 3800-foot glitch on the topography that is the border of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.
He loves his mountain.
In 1983, when he came to Oregon, it didn’t take long for this cabinetmaker and former college professor of urban politics to get involved.
He threw himself in front of some logging equipment and found himself thrown into jail. Released on probation, on condition he stay out of the woods for a year. Cruel and unusual punishment?
Gold headed straight into the trees. “I’ve always been sort of ornery,” he says.
Lou went to experience Bald Mountain. “I decided I’d stay as long as the food lasted,” Gold recalls, having taken only a week’s worth of vittles. “Then, hikers would come by, give me some of their provisions.”
Gold learned that the U.S. Forest Service serves best those who would destroy the forest. Essentially, the agency acts as a timber broker and the world’s foremost builder of roads.
“Our national forests have 343,000 miles of roads,” Lou relates. “The entire interstate highway system has only 44,000.” 343,000. That’s fourteen times around the Earth’s equator. And they’re calling for 50,000 miles more per decade for the next half century. Imagine the destruction.”
These forest roads, they’re built for logging. No other reason. “I understand what makes big institutions tick,” says Gold. “I understand the Forest Service budget is a function of preparing timber plans. That’s their incentive. It’s not just good guys and bad guys. It’s people doing a job. This is the flow they made.”
Understanding the problem doesn’t make the solution swallow any easier. “It is unfortunate, but we have to choose between the forest and the Forest Service. And we have to choose between the forest and the Forest Service. And we have to choose between the forest and the forest industry,” says Gold, in a tone that suggests he truly wishes there were another choice.
“What is absolutely rational and necessary for the agency and the modern mill is no longer rational for the forest and the Earth. Not for us, not for our children, not for their children.”
All this controversy about spotted owls and jobs, politicos and preservationists, tends to overlook a couple of central points, according to Lou Gold.
This forest we’re fighting for is the largest intact ecosystem along the West Coast. Everything else has been carved up, chopped down, destroyed forever. Forever, as in Never Again.
“It’s not just another pretty place,” explains Gold. “It’s not just a question of big trees.”
Secondly, these trees some people believe would look better chopped and sliced and even diced than standing up. As they’ve done since Mr. and Mrs. Washington conceived George. These trees are essentially the gene pool for every species from Mexico to Canada. This forest enjoys the greatest concentration of genetic diversity in existence. Glaciers killed all the other great forests. Ours – YOURS – is the sole survivor. Over fourteen-hundred (1400) species make their home here.
“Globally, since 1950,” declares Gold, “we have cut down half of all trees on this planet.”
Some countries are responding to the obvious need for conservation, others are not. “Indonesia has banned all log exports,” Gold notes. “Thailand stopped all logging of natural forests, because they only have eighteen percent left. The United States of America has less than ten percent remaining, and we’re going full-tilt boogie. Costa Rica has about five percent set aside, less than one percent in national parks. The point,” Gold continues, “Oregon should do at least as well as these Third World countries.”
But what if we stopped logging old growth trees? Wouldn’t Oregon soon be joining the Third World?
No, answers Gold emphatically. “Mechanization has been the primary cause of lost jobs. If you want to say environmentalism is costing jobs, you’d have to show a lower cut.” He pauses. “But the cut is higher. There was something like a thirteen percent reduction of the industry work force in the last decade, yet the volume of timber logged was up ten percent.”
Old growth is NOT a renewable resource. You can’t compromise the logging of a three-hundred-year-old tree. Cut it down and it’s done. Dead. Gone. History.
There are no easy answers. We need those trees for our own survival. We need them like we need the air we breathe. Lou Gold knows this.
Some years ago, atop Bald Mountain, Lou Gold built a prayer circle. He was hesitant at first, wondering if it was proper for a white man to do this. He asked his friend, Ed Littlecrow, if he was doing the right thing.
“The green trees, the spotted owl, the silver salmon and human beings all live on this earth,” Littlecrow said. “Our home is being destroyed. Today we are all Indians.”
It’s time we did the right thing by this planet.
It’s the only home we’ve got.
Some years later, Lou Gold speaking truth in a sweet t-shirt.