Economic
Prosperity & Environmentalism -
a former forester's perspective
By Glenn Wiggins,
Mayor of Port Angeles, WA
August 2002
Having worked in the woods for 44 years now,
you begin to think you might understand a few
things. You also become an
historian. Environmental concerns were
an issue when I began as a young forester, yet
there was no way of forecasting how the
movement would progress.
In
retrospect, the growth of concrete cities, the
crowding of our people on freeways combined
with the allure of escape into natural
wildness promoted in the media, particularly
on television, has set the stage for what has
occurred.
The
emotional nature of this subject is the
underlying energy that drives it. The
courts, of course, have been effectively
utilized in furthering the aspirations of
environmental organizations. You
couldn’t plan a course of action that has
been more effective if you tried.
In
the case of timber in the Northwest, the
results have been extreme. Harvesting of
timber on the national forests is almost
non-existent. People’s livelihoods,
connected for generations to these trees have
been destroyed along with the value of their
homes and equipment. I still recall a
slackline yarder, valued at $600,000 to log
long spans and avoid mid-slope roads, that was
sold for $25,000, still in perfect
condition. The collapse of the Forest
Service, an agency that had been serving the
public, paying its way, and maintaining its
facilities, is nearly complete. These
losses, along with the loss of jobs and the
uprooting of families, are nearly
immeasurable.
Through the Endangered Species Act and other
legislation, the movement has moved beyond
timber to nearly all activities that create
economic progress. Timber provides a
blueprint of what can occur elsewhere in other
industries now beset by environmental
regulators.
I
never expected one outcome; i.e., that those
implementing environmental regulations would
find gainful employment by doing so.
Even as a consulting forester, I have found
work in this arena. Not all of this
benefits the environment in a measurable
way.
As
Americans and leaders of the world, we must
become very smart very soon. The
economic engine that is American built leads
the economies of the world. If we allow
extreme environmentalism to decide our
prosperity or lack thereof as we have in
timber, I am pessimistic about the
outcome.
In
balancing environmental issues and economic
realities, we have not made intelligent
decisions in the timber business during the
last 40+ years. Time will decide whether
lessons learned there have any effect on the
nation’s overall economic potential.