Both the Green Mountain National Forest and the White Mountain National Forest are currently updating their 15-year management plans. Wilderness advocates are pushing for more congressionally-designated Wilderness, making more acreage off limits to any motorized access or commercial activities, including timber sales.
From the perspective of wildlife, Wilderness is not necessarily a good procedure. According to New England Wildlife: Habitat, Natural History, and Distribution by Richard M. DeGraaf and Mariko Yamasaki, “Given current trends in increasing age and extent of forests, commercial forestry has the best potential for maintaining habitat for early-successional forest birds, as well as for white-tailed deer.” In addition, “It will take active vegetation management to maintain the diversity of wildlife in New England into the future.” In the mature forest of Wilderness, little sunlight reaches the forest floor, resulting in decreased vegetation for early successional wildlife. Skillful forest management, on the other hand, can create a wildlife-friendly ecosystem.
Another reason to question the benefits of Wilderness designation is its economic impact. Currently, the world’s population is estimated to be 6 billion; by 2050, this estimate is expected to reach 9 billion. Around one-third of the world’s population, largely in the Third World, depends on wood for fuel. Obviously, the demand for lumber, paper, furniture, and other wood products is going to increase. Already, America is a net importer of wood. Vermont and New Hampshire, being among the most heavily forested states, should be exporters of wood products, not importers.
The local importing of wood products also has a detrimental global impact. In 2002, Harvard University published The Illusion of Preservation – A Global Environmental Argument for the Local Production of Natural Resources by Berlik, Kittredge, and Foster. In their summary, they make the following statements: “Thus, although citizens of affluent countries may imagine that preservationist domestic policies are conserving resources and protecting nature, heavy consumption rates necessitate resource extraction elsewhere and oftentimes under weak environmental oversight.” And, “Mainstream environmentalist ideology must embrace multiple uses of the forest including harvesting – and local citizens must consider the use of resources in their own backyard while maintaining a keen awareness of the global environment.” Sohngen, Mendelsohn, and Sedjo produced a study that “predicts the loss of 2.5 acres of forest in Asia, South America, Africa, and the former Soviet Union for every 50 acres set aside and protected in North America and Europe.”
Here, in one of the best hardwood-growing regions in the world, don’t we have a moral obligation, through effective forest management, to provide for our own wood needs? If handled properly, environmental objectives and timber production can together offer the most effective solution to this local and global issue.
The existing national forest plans for both the White and the Green called for harvesting about half of the annual growth on the lands where harvesting is allowed, but local and national environmental extremists filing lawsuits have drastically reduced even that harvest. The Sierra Club is promoting the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, which would place the entire 191 million acres of all the National Forests off-limits to commercial timber harvesting. The Wilderness Society advocates adding 100 million acres.
An argument is made that, because land has been added to the national forests since the late 1980s (when the current plans were formulated), more Wilderness should be designated. Rather, shouldn’t the inventory of that land determine what is suitable for timber, recreation, or wilderness? With less than half of both forests suitable for timber harvesting, it would be far better to manage timber according to soils, aspect, steepness of slope, timber type, and elevation, creating the opportunity for a mosaic of openings, selective thinnings, and uncut areas. This creates a diverse habitat for many more wildlife species and doesn’t remove productive timberlands from the states’ economies (as would Wilderness designation). With over half of these two national forests inventoried as unsuitable for timber harvesting and the remaining available only for recreation and unofficial wilderness, artificial political boundaries for Wilderness are unnecessary and actually impede the possibility of proper forest management.
In addition, the spread of foreign pests, such as the Asian longhorned beetle and emerald ash borer and the hemlock woolly adelgid at our borders, along with the influx of several invasive exotic plant species, adds complexity to the issue of Wilderness designation. What if the Asian longhorned beetle or emerald ash borer hits these national forests? The hemlock woolly adelgid has already reached our borders. These invasive pests need to be dealt with effectively, and in dealing with them, the Forest Service should not be handcuffed by Wilderness designation.
There’s been lots of public input in this planning process, much of it opposing Wilderness designation. Would it not be wiser at this point to let the Forest Service’s skilled professionals, who have listened to the testimony and are experts in their fields, create the forest management plan rather than have it be merely a political designation from Washington determined by organized pressure groups?