Letter: Consider genuine long-term benefits for ALL life forms in public forest management
I wish to address some of the points made in recent letters from The Four Rivers Forestry Committee, a local group of individuals connected with loggers and timber buyers who call for responsible timber management on both public and private lands in the forested regions of Southern Indiana.
For most of my life, I have advocated and worked with others in this region for the nurturing of all life forms and local communities in rural Southern Indiana, including preservation of our public forests. I am a woods walker and a student of nature as well as a scholar, and I have also taught critical thinking skills for over thirty years. I am well versed in the differences of opinions between the public agencies who consider well-managed forests to be sustainable over time and many other scientists who find this to be “greenwashing”.
I view forests differently than do the agencies whose focus is mainly on extraction as well as other human-centered uses. They believe that we are the apex species and multiple use by following “best management practices” is the only way to a better future.
However, many others, including quite a few scientists, consider forests to be complex systems within the sacred and non-computable natural world of which we are only a small part. We look at these natural forces which construct and shape our world with awe and respect as managers and master teachers much greater and wiser than we can imagine and still have so much to teach us if we don’t destroy them with our feeble attempts to control them.
Though in the past I have walked often in many older forests in all seasons, these days, I walk more frequently in town on a managed trail, where I listen to the voices of the trees, the creatures, the plants there—though they often speak with silent voices and in other languages. I see changes over the seasons, as well as over the years, and watch the forces of the wind and water and of the trees themselves as they alter the landscape in ways large and small. I see the ways in which they undo the best-intentioned human management efforts as roots buckle pavements, and small plants and trees spring up in cracks, reshaping the place in myriad ways. I feel awe in the presence of such places and gratitude that I am part of something far more complex, unfathomable, and older and wiser than I am.
Even in the cultivated places, I recognize that if we didn’t take out the tree seedlings or cut back the multiflora rose and wintercreeper, they would take over our homes in the same way that they have consumed the remnants of abandoned buildings and invaded wooded areas over many millennia. That is a matter of scale and worked well only when there were far fewer people and no price tags on anything. Change is part of a natural process, though under the current Forest Service guidelines, the prescribed changes are not organic or beneficial to all parts of the system, and consequences of our meddling include ever more pronounced ill-health and increasing loss of diversity. In addition, the human-centered practices those guidelines promote cannot leave the forest any closer to reclaiming the ancient priceless wealth they once fostered, which is still vitally needed.
To attempt management or to preserve? I see this in much broader terms than do the agencies. One possibility many forest scientists suggest is to set aside the lands which are already populated with remnant aging forests—priceless collectives of ancient wisdom and biodiversity which can only be studied as complex systems—holding them in trust for future generations. This would free agencies to advise landowners on how to manage the planting of trees on smaller tracts where older forests no longer exist, taking a chance when focusing on a few select species, which is a wild card at best in these rapidly changing times. Results would depend on the willingness of human beings to live much more simply and more in tune with the rest of the natural world so that we don’t repeat the rapacious mistakes of the past.
Because rural Southern Indiana is my home, my place, I speak out of love for all life forms in this miraculous interconnected web of life—”this whole experiment in green”—which is not doing well under our clumsy attempts to control it. I speak for the next generations who will be living here after we are dust. I firmly believe that we must humbly consider genuine long-term benefits for ALL life forms who live here and upon whom we depend for our existence. We need to remember that only collectively can life on the planet exist—and that includes us. Undoubtedly, we need to learn to better manage our own species, our own individual values and to learn to control our most negative impulses before we delve into assuming that we can manage the vast complex web of nature.
This doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. People can recreate in cultivated parks as well as well-managed woodlots, and we clearly need more of them. But I stand with many forest dwellers, advocates such as Andy Mahler and Steven Stewart, as well as countless esteemed scientists in a belief that the few remaining forests of any age, nearly all of which are publicly owned, should be considered priceless heritage sites and held in trust for the next generations. Doing so will also bring the greatest benefits to those alive today, even if few humans ever set foot in them. These ancient remnant forests from the past are a constant reminder of all we can never comprehend or control, and they are an inspiration to guide us in the process of trying to live in ever greater harmony and humility by focusing on the everyday miracles that bind us together.
Sincerely,
Jeanne Melchior, Jasper
