SOS Forests

The Burden of the Generalist

Foresters are generalists. Forest management requires stewardship of myriad resources, and the job of the forester is to consider them all, balance them all, and care for them all.

Some people think foresters are solely concerned with timber production. Nothing could be further from the truth. Foresters are responsible for producing forest products for the benefit of the economy, but we are also responsible for wildlife habitat for thousands of creatures; riparian zones, aquatic habitat, hydrology, and water quality and quantity; recreational uses and scenery; soils and soil productivity; heritage and historical cultural resources; fire control, management and prescribed burning; public health and safety; roads and engineering; education, outreach, and public involvement; laws and regulations; bookkeeping and accounting; biology, mathematics, statistics, and probably some more categories I missed.

Foresters need to understand and be well-versed in all the specialties because we oversee the work of wildlife biologists, loggers, campground hosts, and all the other specialized technicians involved in forest management activities. Foresters are similar to general contractors in some respects.

All the various resources and resource values must be considered, measured, accounted for, and managed for in a balanced way. Maximizing the output of any single resource generally diminishes the output of all the others. Hence an optimal mix must be provided for.

Many special interests and factions tug and pull at foresters to produce their favored resource to the exclusion of all others. Some factions want spotted owls and nothing else. Some want timber production and nothing else. Some want elk, or salmon, or hang gliding, or mountain biking, or mushrooms, or human-excluded wilderness, or what have you.

There is a faction with advocates for every resource. They can be notoriously closed minded. SOSF commenter and forester Ken P. noted a conversation he had with the Director of Idaho Conservation League who said that he’d rather see National Forests burn to the ground than one load of logs harvested.

How’s that for “conservation”?

That kind of bellicose all-or-nothing attitude is not uncommon. When I started blogging, a fellow who called himself “GreenInk” wrote to me saying that he would rather set off bombs in school rooms than see a single clearcut. He actually put plans for constructing “incendiary devices” on his website. I don’t know what happened to GreenInk. I think the FBI might have nabbed him. I hope so.

There are factions in SoCal that worship “old-growth” tick brush. They don’t care one whit if the cities in SoCal burn to the ground in catastrophic chaparral fires. Human life is secondary to preserving 50-year-old tick brush.

There are factions that advocate burning old-growth trees in order to “recycle” the forest. They would like to see 1,500-year-old giant sequoias killed in forest fires to make room for seedlings.

All these tuggers and pullers have to be dealt with by foresters. We can’t ignore them nor can we acquiesce to their demands. As generalists, foresters have to consider all resources and resource values. That includes the “value” of destroying resources in conflagrations.

We have been blogging about the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) lately. The WFLC is a faction of government functionaries whose special interest is Let It Burn. They value holocaust destruction of all forest resources, primarily because that’s what funds their bureaucracy. The more fire, the more funding.

The WFLC is a particularly onerous faction because they are powerful and very well funded, to the tune of $billions per year. The “fire community” has circumvented the law and displaced foresters as the primary forest management decisionmakers in government forests. They do not balance resource demands — the fire community incinerates any and all resources without prejudice toward any one or the other. They favor Let It Burn on private land, too, including right down Main Street in communities that are within 30 miles of the Federal Estate.

In that regard the WFLC is no different than the Idaho Conservation League or GreenInk the would-be Unabomber Jr. They all have that crazed look in their eyes typical of criminally insane murderers and arsonists.

As generalists, we foresters have to deal with all factions, including the criminally insane. It’s not an easy job, but it’s the one we signed up for. Forests cannot be properly cared for with good stewardship unless all factions and their often outrageous demands are considered, addressed, and if necessary, quashed.

As you might imagine, it can be a frustrating job, especially when powerful bureaucracies are taken over by arsonists, and forests are subsequently incinerated in hundred-thousand-acre chunks. All the work of dozens of foresters over decades can be destroyed in a matter of hours by firestorms of biblical proportions, while the crazies cheer on the destruction.

Forestry used to be a honored profession. Society used to value and appreciate the work of foresters. Now society, large factions of it anyway, disrespects those would would care for our forests in a rational, balanced, professional manner.

A large portion of society is made up of hysterical nutwads who crave apocalyptic catastrophe for one reason or another. They may make money from catastrophe, or are inflamed with hatreds and welcome tragedies of biblical proportion, or are confused, disoriented, and drugged into stupors by the mass media, or who knows what or why.

Through it all foresters hang tough. We have seen the enemy and shrugged them off. Nobody said it was going to be easy. We remain dedicated to good stewardship, balanced resource production and values, and professional forest management for the greater good.

We live in interesting times. Society seems poised to implode, again, in another outburst of mass insanity and inhumanity. But foresters take the long view. We study forest history deep into the past, and plan for forest perpetuation far into the future. We look at the big picture, and remain true to our profession and common sense stewardship.

That’s what generalists do. We are big picture adepts. And that’s how good forestry must be done.