In the raging debates over our American forests and national lands, we can easily detect genuine confusion both on the federal government’s part and among the general public. There is honestly so much information spilling out about the fate of our national forests and public lands that one wonders if confusion is the true goal. (See 4.1.1.)
I believe the public gets a deliberately scattershot series of messages from the U.S. Forest Service at the direction of the current administration (particularly the Department of Agriculture). First of all, why is the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture and not the Department of the Interior, where it belongs? Just how much “forest thinning” and outright logging does this administration want? This issue matters particularly in the 11 westernmost states of the USA where the feds own about 47% of the land.
The omnibus legislation touted as the president’s “big and beautiful” bill at first would have radically altered the protections for 58.5 million acres of this vast area, but we can admire the five GOP House representatives who first stepped up against the bill’s original proposal. Reps. Ryan Zinke (well-known in Santa Barbara), Mike Simpson, Dan Newhouse, Cliff Bentz and California’s David Valadao stiffly wrote that “we cannot accept the sale of federal lands that Senator [Mike] Lee seeks.”
Because their opposition would kill the megabill once it returns to the House, that plan was pulled out. These five men effectively kiboshed passage of the megabill in the House at about the same time as the Senate parliamentarian blocked Lee’s proposal to sell off millions of acres of public lands. All of us who love the wilderness celebrated parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s decision.
However, as this administration often does, it pivoted quickly, and on the same day, June 23, shifted to having the Department of Agriculture roll back the 2001 Roadless Rule for millions of acres of public land. It included more than 600,000 acres in our own Los Padres National Forest, which includes pristine areas and several threatened and endangered species.
Let’s emphasize that once roads are approved, development and logging will certainly follow, often termed or disguised as “thinning.” Read the full original statement here.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called the Roadless Rule “overly restrictive” and said her decision would allow “responsible timber production” and “economic development” that would help with fire prevention. This is about logging and privatization, folks, and yet I can see that in specific areas it may help prevent rapidly spreading wildfires.
I am perusing much of this material, and it’s indeed highly confusing for the normal American reader and hiker who treasures our forests, rivers and mountains.
There is misdirection and circumvention along with a patina of apparently sincere wishes to protect humans and human structures. Of course all of us desire better protection from raging wildfires, and we all want better health for our national forests. I personally know Santa Barbarans who lost family members in the disastrous 2017 Thomas Fire, for example, and I agree that responsible mitigation and fire protection are critical. The devil is in the details here.
Let’s back up and assume a more global and philosophical outlook. Here’s a key question: Will we as the apex human species consider our national forests as a treasure to be protected for future generations? Or, will we choose to see them as a valuable resource to develop and from which we can materially profit?
Back in 1967, UCSB professor Rod Nash’s prescient book, “Wilderness and the American Mind,” explored this question as it celebrated the importance of “wilderness.” One of the key provisions of the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act was to create pristine zones like our beloved San Rafael Wilderness where no roads are ever allowed. (There are five such specially protected areas near Santa Barbara amounting to about 500,000 acres of Los Padres’ 1.9 million acres.) The original proponent was famed naturalist Aldo Leopold, and he not only envisioned no roads but was against any human trails in these tracts at all. (4.1.1.)
Perhaps we can see an earlier microcosm of the federal government’s deliberately scattershot approach right here at Pine Mountain (and Reyes Peak) behind Ojai. At one time, in 2022, the Forest Service had a similar vegetation removal and “thinning the forest” plan it termed the Ecological Restoration Project that would have impacted about 235,000 acres in Los Padres.
After a massive reaction by the public — I wrote against this one, and Los Padres ForestWatch led a campaign against it — the Forest Service happily took heed and reduced the area to 91,000 acres, cleverly renaming it the Wildfire Risk Reduction Project. This is a form of progress — but also concedes that the other 144,000 acres had never needed such “grooming.”
Amid this chaotic mass of complex details, the U.S. Forest Service still wants to perform “mechanical thinning” (aka chopping down) trees and clearing away “ladder fuels” chaparral. It envisions this “mechanical thinning” of trees with diameters of up to 23 inches (measured at 6 feet above the ground). This would decimate the sky forest areas in Pine Mountain at Reyes Peak, for example.
In early June, I hiked in this area with wild Pete, and we made some rough measuring: Removing mature trees with a diameter of up to 23 inches would decimate the area.
How could we better defend human habitations and structures from devastating wildfires? One obvious solution is to stop building homes right at the edge of the wilderness-urban interface. Another vital tactic would be to require “hardening” the homes that have already been built right near this dangerous interface. A third philosophical outlook is to see ourselves, the dominant humans, as the interlopers and “invaders” of these pristine forest areas.
Every fire professional will tell you that when a large wildfire such as the Thomas, the Palisade or the Eaton blows up, no fire protection is possible in such a conflagration, and immediate flight is the only option — a genuine tragedy. All of the helicopters and firefighting resources cannot stop such blazes, and at best they can guide them to some extent. Chopping down or massive thinning of the forest to allow more “economic development” (homes) simply places more structures and humans in danger.
The idea of “privatization” measures such as selling off public forested lands has not been the exclusive preserve of the GOP. Former President Jimmy Carter and other Democrats were full cry “privatization” purveyors, too. Secretary Rollins was at least honest in noting that the reasons for ending the Roadless Rule were “timber production” and “economic development.” Didn’t silent Calvin Coolidge, our president in 1925, famously state that the “business of America is business”?
That was 100 years ago, in 1925 — the same year as our disastrous Santa Barbara earthquake. The U.S. population then was 115 million. Today, it’s 310 million.
The spiritual and aesthetic value of our national forests and parks vastly outweighs chopping down more and more of our heritage for timber. There are many ways to mitigate forest fires, such as controlled burning, yet these fires are ecologically necessary and will never be fully controlled. Any fire professional will admit that.
Thus, following this administration’s direction, which at times feels like a sort of bait and switch maneuver, Secretary Rollins dutifully stresses that her Agriculture Department wants “fire prevention and responsible timber production.” Readers can ask just what “responsible timber production” means and decide which motive is paramount. This hugely important land use controversy will not go away, and we will have to confront it again and again.
Forest lovers know that forests should be viewed as sentient and caring societies, and not as a profitable — and not easily renewable — resource.
[Note: The above was written during the long process of passing the president’s megabill. Happily, the controversial plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands — disliked by many GOP and Democratic Party members — did not make it into law via this omnibus bill. This was not the first, and will certainly not be the last, effort to privatize or transfer our Western states’ public lands. Proof is that Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the author of the selling idea, has not given up on his radical plan, and on X he has written that, “President Trump promised to put underutilized federal land to work for American families … and I look forward to helping him achieve that” (cited in the Los Angeles Times, July 4, p. A-8, and on X (formerly Twitter).]
4.1.1.
Lead photograph from Dan McCaslin, “Trails Into Tomorrow” (2021), Figure 11-4. On the 58.5 million-acre proposal see also this news release. More details in two important ForestWatch articles here in Noozhawk: Ben Pitterlee’s “Ending Roadless Rule Imperils Los Padres Forest,” and a few days earlier, Bryant Baker’s article.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposals have been confusing, to say the least, with at least three differing plans that do feel like a bait and switch tactic. Some of his Utah constituents have become enraged; click here.
Rod Nash, “Wilderness and the American Mind,” (Yale), fifth edition, 2014.
Aldo Leopold, “A Sand County Almanac” (1949), and other books.
The full Coolidge quote: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering.”