Growing Old Growth Together
Towards a Shared Vision of Our Forests
Frederick Livingston plants seeds. Grounded in sustainable agriculture and experiential education, he hopes to grow community, peace, and avocados. He studied Environmental Science at Huxley College of the Environment in Washington State and Environmental Peacebuilding at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica. He currently lives and works in beautiful Mendocino.
As a recent newcomer to Mendocino, I have taken heart from the strong community response against the current timber harvest plan in Caspar. When I visit the mama tree or talk to activists, I hear the same convictions of people the world over who are digging their roots into the land that sustains them. When I ask these activated people what comes after the blockades and the tree sits, I have heard calls for a moratorium on logging. Beyond this immediate goal, however, I am still searching for a long-term vision of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest that is shared among the many stakeholders in this controversy.
In my search for understanding, I have observed deep rifts of anger and suspicion between many residents who consider this forest a part of their home and the government agencies that manage our public lands. On one side, I have heard activists express distrust of Calfire, wishing to avoid engaging with them directly for fear of getting “bogged down in bureaucracy”. I have also heard Calfire employees express confusion as to why public hearings are so poorly attended, when people seem willing to show up suddenly and make demands right before a cut. I have heard community members dismiss the tree sitters as hippies whose only message seems to be “save the trees, man.” Several groups have described attempts to reach out, but a general sense of frustration prevails.
These battle lines run down deep faults throughout the West Coast. Without the countless people who have uprooted their lives defending the last stands of wilderness in the country, I believe we would have no old growth to protect today. But this debate between environmentalists, loggers, politicians, and the rest of us will not resolve soon. The trees tagged for harvest in Caspar have many centuries ahead of them before they reach the full complexity and richness of a true old growth ecosystem. In the meantime, we must consider how our actions fit into this sweep of time and what kind of ancestors we will become. Whether we hand our children a more fractured or connected world depends on our ability to broaden our perspective to include humanity and the planet as a whole.
One of my concerns with the moratorium on logging as I have heard it expressed is how we will address the demand side of the timber industry if we propose a reduction in supply. Many wealthy countries across the world have succeeded in reversing deforestation within their borders, but these gains have come largely at the expense of poorer neighboring countries from which more timber is imported. Countries like Japan and Costa Rica, for example, likely would have experienced devastating localized climate change had they not recognized and reversed deforestation before crisis arrived. Now these countries simply source their timber from neighbors with weaker forest protections, such as Indonesia or Nicaragua, respectively. To avoid repeating this pattern in Mendocino county, we must be prepared to ensure that the timber harvest plans are not simply moved to communities less prepared to resist them. This perspective should not constrain local efforts, but rather connect them to a struggle for planetary survival that knows no national boundaries.
One way to avoid displacing our deforestation is by reducing demand. Because housing construction represents two thirds of total timber consumption in the United States (McKeever, 2011), our largest impact will come from building smaller homes, sharing more living space, or using non-timber materials such as cob. If this seems restrictive, it may be worth remembering that what we in the US call “tiny houses” are known simply as a “houses” in most of the world. Other important paths to reduce consumption include reclaiming slash or scrap wood for furniture and firewood, building with poles from thinned young trees instead of boards from older trees (Forest Reciprocity Group), buying locally to reduce shipping, using less paper, and so forth.
Even with dramatic personal sacrifice, however, we may find a certain amount of timber consumption unavoidable. For all the pain caused by logging, wood remains one of the few materials that can, at least in theory, be truly renewable, biodegradable and carbon neutral. Our ability to realize this potential relies largely on the rate at which trees are planted and how they are harvested. Planting trees for your grandchild’s house, for example, is a world away in both spirit and ecological footprint from industrial logging.
Part of the controversy I have observed around the Caspar harvest, and logging in general, is the ambiguity of terms such as “harvest” or “forest management”. These terms are used to describe indigenous practices of cutting boards without killing a tree (Kimmerer, 2013), clear cutting, and anything in between these extremes. In this way, both Calfire and environmental activists are able to point to sound science while claiming “harvests” have positive or negative impacts on forest health or wildfire risk.
This leads to my second concern with the debate over the Caspar harvest plan. When hearing both Calfire and activists make assumptions that the other cannot be trusted to do what they say, I see the wheels of change breaking down. From a global perspective, I view the current environmental crisis as a macrocosm of our relationships to one another: the friction between ourselves warming the planet. I will admit I have much to learn about the complexities of the particular logging legacy in Mendocino County, but I do know that the JDSF will not be saved if we become alienated, bitter people. If we accept the damages wrought on our forests as symptoms of a violent culture, it is clear the means we use to achieve forest protection is just as important as our final goal. Although loggers and environmentalists sometimes seem to inhabit different planets, I have found through my work in environmental peacebuilding that even the most intractable battles untangle after taking enough steps outward to better see the gulf between us more accurately as a sea of shared humanity.
My vision for the future of JDSF is one in which the people of Mendocino County achieve timber sovereignty by growing all the lumber they require. When we do not rely on taking resources from another land, we are able to decide for ourselves how to manage our forest without fear of externalizing the cost of our consumption. One means to this end would be a three-zone approach in which land is divided between untouched old growth (and forests on their way, such as JDSF), mixed use forest (including housing, forest gardening, etc.) and timber plantations (on previously degraded lands, such as clear cuts or cattle pasture). This approach has been shown to produce significantly more lumber in the long run than logging an entire landscape, while retaining more biodiversity and ecosystem functions (Paquette & Messier, 2010).
Another, in many ways simpler, approach would be to acknowledge the State of California’s poor stewardship record and cede control to indigenous nations so that they may continue the land management practices they exercised before US invasion. While the State of California will certainly play a role in Jackson’s future, it is worth noting that community designation of a forest as “sacred” often protects trees more effectively than formal legal mechanisms (Bayrak & Marafa, 2016).
More immediately, Calfire’s mandate can be changed to remove their role as timber brokers, while retaining their role in wildfire prevention and research. This may seem like a distant goal, but it is worth remembering how the Forest Service’s original mandate to sell America’s timber has evolved over recent decades to include protecting the last stands of old growth. Supporting organizations advocating for this structural reform, such as Why Forests Matter, will help accelerate this change.
The reason we defend trees is so close to our bone it is sometimes hard to articulate. But if we are unable to share our inner worlds with one another we may never create the shared world we all hunger for. Examples from Oregon (Blue Mountain Forest Partners) to India (Mitra, 1993) demonstrate how communities are able to come together to heal their relationship to the forest, and in so doing realize they are really healing their relationships with each other. If we cannot imagine a world in which the Caspar forest becomes old growth, this battle will only etch pain and fear deeper into our marrow, ossify across generations to become known simply as “history”. This is where we stand now. It is up to us to choose the next step forward.
References
Blue Mountain Forest Partners. https://bluemountainsforestpartners.org/
Bayrak, M.M., L. M. Marafa. (2016). Ten years of REDD+: A critical review of the impact of REDD+ on forest-dependent communities. Sustainability, 8. doi:10.3390/su8070620
Mitra, Amit (1993). Chipko: an Unfinished Mission. Down to Earth.org https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/chipko-an-unfinished-mission-30883
Kimmerer, Robin Wall (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Press.
McKeever, David B.; Howard, James L. 2011. Solid wood timber products consumption in major end uses in the United States, 1950-2009 : a technical document supporting the Forest Service 2010 RPA assessment. General technical report FPL-GTR-199. Madison, WI : U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, 2011: 39 p.
Paquette, A., & Messier, C. (2010). The role of plantations in managing the world’s forests in the Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(1), 27–34. doi: 10.1890/080116
Forest Reciprocity Group. Small Pole Utilization. https://forestreciprocity.org/spu
Why Forests Matter. Our Programs. https://www.whyforestsmatter.org/our-programs-1
