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5CQUO>AWATXlH:Challacombe: THCCRCAT 

 River Forest in the 1890's was a tragedy. But 

 what are we to say about the devastation of the 

 TUle River Forest a century later — when we 

 thought we knew better? 



The shots that Martin Litton has from his 

 aerial overflights of the once magnificent TUle 

 River Forest — which the Forestry holds off limits 

 to the public — are gut-wrenching. The same 

 speechless, angry feeling would sweep over you 

 if you discovered your home and your family had 

 been violated by a drunken intruder. The life 

 support system necessary to the survival of those 

 priceless Sequoias has been stripped away. 



Long ago a similar fate was dealt the Giant 

 Boole Ttee in Converse Basin. The loggers then 

 had not the heart to cut it, believing it the larg- 

 est in the world. The photographs I have of this 

 monster show that decade by decade it has been 

 dying back because of its lack of ecosystem life 

 support. In 1904 the canopy of the Boole Ttee 

 was full and billowing. Today, its upper trunk 

 and branches are giant spars. It breaks your 

 heart to view the slow demise of this marvel. 

 The loggers tried to save their wonder tree. The 

 men who recently slashed the Tule River Forest, 

 however; have no such heart 



We decry loudly, and rightly, the loss of Ama- 

 zonian rainforest But at home we wring our 

 hands and make feeble moans when our forest 

 managers desecrate the treasures we hold in 

 trust for the worid. 



SPIN CONTROL 



The formulation of both the Park and Forest 

 reserve systems in the late 1890's was a 

 politically-motivated, poorly-conceived affair. 

 Imperfect in conception and with no guidelines, 

 they were nonetheless welcomed as first steps in 

 creating an alternative interface between man 

 and the natural world. The marching orders for 

 the Park Service, for instance, were delayed some 

 25 years until 1916. Outfitted in 1905 wide- 

 brimmed military hats, the Park Rangers became 

 in our eyes the protective conscience of con- 

 cerned America. Given by default this mantle of 

 noble purpose, their stewardship of the park 

 treasures, especially the Sequoias, has been next 

 to impossible to question. Yet, great trees are 

 dying and falling in the parks because of a 



MIRROR 



smoothly calculated indifference whose rubric is 

 'ecosystem disturbance." 



In the fledgling Forest Service, the first Chief 

 Forester had a difficult and subtle role to work 

 out It fell to Gifford Pinchot to artfully fashion a 

 double standard for his bureaucracy. The cutting 

 of the huge forests would go on — the economic 

 forces were thought too powerful to be denied. 

 But the destruction would be passed off as wise 

 use. Desertmaking became "sustained yield," 

 'grove enhancements" and "jobs creation." The 

 devastation would be retail and "regulated" 

 rather than wholesale and "out of control." 

 'Forest management" was spin control at its 

 finest 



Smokey the Bear growled, "Stop Forests Fires' 

 but failed to tell us the forests were being saved 

 for the chainsaw. "Sustained yield" and pictures 

 of seedhngs would screen the rapid clearcutting 

 of ancient forests. Even as we speak devastation- 

 style logging proceeds unabated across what 

 remains of those public and "private" forest lands 

 (many the residuals of the 1880's ripoff now 

 sanctified by time). And cosy deals are being 

 struck by which officials after retirement are 

 hired by those they formerly "regulated." 



All of these ongoing depredations — and how 

 Congress has devoted millions to crisscrossing 

 public forests with roads to which only private 

 logging trucks have main access and how many 

 of these public logs, unprocessed by local mills, 

 are shipped to Asia — has been thoroughly docu- 

 mented by others. You will have papers before 

 you now on how the logging industry has been 

 subsidized incongruously by federal tax dollars. 

 It was the rapacious appetite for this below-cost 

 "wood fiber" that made the Sequoia forests of the 

 Tble River vulnerable to chainsaws and bulldoz- 

 ers. 



You will also hear from the pragmatic forest 

 managers — for whom the Sequoia is like the 

 Navy, a 20-year hitch and early retirement 

 When challenged, they are quick to order after- 

 the-fact studies from a pliant academia which 

 will cover their actions. Flagged now as 'expert* 

 and 'scientific," they can position themselves 

 beyond public review. When the Paries and 

 Forests were initiated, resorts to belief-systems 



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