sustaining natural resources · 2017-11-14 · sustaining natural resources · in global contexts...

Sustaining Natural Resources · in Global Contexts

Bill Bourgeois A Jaime Pinkham A Michael Soule A Ross S. Whaley

The 1996 Plum Creek Lectures Nick Baker, Editor

School of Forestry The University of Montana-Missoula

December 1997

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School of Forestry • ~ The University of Montana-Missoula

The School of Forestry at The University

of Montana-Missoula is a comprehensive

natura[ resource education and research in

stitution offering Bachelor's, Master's and

Doctoral programs in forest and r~nge re

source management, wildlife biology, natu

ral resource recreation, and natural resource

conservation. The St::hool's Montana Forest

and Conservation Experiment Station, insti

tutes, and centers administer its research

anti outreach programs.

Comprehensive information about the

School and its programs is available at our

WEBsite: http:/ /www.forestry.umt.edu J,,

© 1997

School of Forestry The University of Montana-Missoula

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Partnerships in Forestry Research and Education The University of Montana School of Forestry has developed productive partnerships

in research and education with the forestry industry, conservation organizations, and

public agencies. This lecture series and the associated Plum Creek Fellowship are the

product of such a partnership.

The Plum Creek Fellowship The Plum Creek Fellowship provides a 12-month stipend and tuition for a doctoral

candidate in the School of Forestry at The University of Montana-Missoula. A gift from

the Plum Creek Timber Company established the UM Foundation endowment which

supports the Fellowship.

The Fellow assists the Plum Creek Lecture Committee in developing and hosting the

Plum Creek Lectures.

Plum Creek Timber Company Plum Creek Timber Company, the largest private forest landowner in Montana (1.5

million acres), strives to manage its lands according to environmental principles based

on sound science, and to balance economic returns with protection for the environment.

The company views support for the UM School of Forestry as a sound investment.

The School's research develops science-based solutions to forest management chal

lenges, and the School's graduates provide the forest products industry with the trained

professionals it needs to maintain productive, healthy forests.

Plum Creek is committed to supporting sound scientific forestry education, and to

developing strong partnerships with the communities in which it operates.

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Acknowledgments

A gift from the Plum Creek Timber Company, managed as an endowment in The University of Montana

Foundation, funded these lectures and the associated Plum Creek Doctoral Fellowship.

1996 Lecture Series Speakers Bill Bourgeois, Vice President, Forest Policy, Lignum Limited

Jaime Pinkham, President, Intertribal Timber Council

Michael Soule, Professor Emeritus, University of California-Santa Cruz

Ross S. Whaley, President, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Co-founder, The Society of Conservation Biology

1996 Plum Creek Lecture Committee School of Forestry:

Donald F. Potts, Professor of Watershed Management and Associate Dean

Kelsey Milner, Associate Professor ofForest Management

L. Scott Mills, Assista.nt Professor of Wildlife Population Ecology

Daniel H. Pletscher, Professor of Wildlife Biology

Plum Creek:

Denny Sigars, Clearwater Unit Manager

Lecture Series and Publication Staff Don Potts, Associate Dean, School of Forestry ........ Lecture and Fellowship Coordinator

Dean Coble ........................................................................................... ................... Plum Creek Fellow

Nick Baker, Station Editor ........................................ Editorial Supervision, Publication Design

Nancy Shuck, Assistant to the Dean ................. Lecture Series Logistics and Coordination

Barb Anderson, Support Staff ..................................................................................... Transcription

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The Lectures

Bill Bourgeois Vice President, Forest Policy, Lignum Limited

Sustainable Forest Management: An Industry Perspective

Jaime Pinkham President, Intertribal Timber Council

Conserving Nature and Sustaining Communities

Michael Soule Professor Emeritus, University of California-Santa Cruz

The Wildlands Project: Its Method and Agenda

Ross 5. Whaley President, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Sustaining Natural Resources in a Global Context

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Sustainable Forest Management: -An Industry Perspective

Bill Bourgeois Vice President, Forest Policy, Lignum Limited

Introduction Kelsey Milner, Champion Associate Professor of Forest Management Bill Bourgeois is Vice President of Forest Policy for Lignum Limited-a progressive,

innovative, medium-sized Canadian forest products company. In that position he advises on land use, First Nations, and forest management policy.

He has served both industry and government in his previous positions. He has been General Manager of the Woodlands Services Division of MacMillan Bloedel, an Associate of the Commission on Resources and the Environment, and a research scientist for the Canadian Department of Forestry and Fisheries.

Bill's training is in forest soils. His bachelor's and master's degrees in that discipline are from the University of British Columbia, his doctorate from the University of Washington-Seattle. He has served on the board of the British Columbia Heritage Rivers organization, as an industry advisor and member of the Canadian delegation negotiating an international treaty of biodiversity conservation, and as a member of the Vancouver Foundation Environmental Grants Committee.

His abilities and dedication have earned him the W Young Award for contributions to integrated forest management (presented jointly by the British Columbia Association of Foresters and the British Columbia Association of Biologists), and the Canadian Institute of Forestry Tree of Life Award.

Please join me in welcoming Bill Bourgeois.

I. Sustaimibility

Concept and Origin

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature OUCN) and the Bruntland Commission-sustainable development organizations-were among the first to promote the idea of considering environmental consequences when encouraging economic development and economic growth. They believed that the

Sustaining Natural Resources in Global Contexts I

Bill Bourgeois

economic sector down-played environmental concerns in promoting sustainable development.

They expressed their concern via an analogy to a three-legged stool, in which economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and social sustainability, were the legs supporting a sustainable society. Because a three-legged stool cannot stand securely unless it has three equal legs , it is necessary to balance the three sustainabilities. We must give equal emphasis to the three factors io order to meet today's needs while retaining options for future generations .

International Influences

In 1990 the IUCN published "Caring for the Earth" followed, shortly thereafter by the Bruntland Commission's "Our Common Future." The concepts presented led to United Nations-sponsored discussions on sustainability, which culminated in the Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change Treaties signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and the acceptance of a nonbinding document called "Agenda 21." These agreements were commitments to attaining a sustainable society, and influenced forest management worldwide.

Contribution of Forest Management

Forests cover the vast amount of the earth's surface. They have considerable influence on the ~nvironment, economic development, and community stability. Consequently, how we protect and manage our forests significantly influences our ability to achieve a sustainable society now and in the future. The contribution of forests to this goal is called Sustainable Forest Management (SFM).

II. Sustainable Forest Management

International Activities

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The Earth Summit and the international agreements it produced led to several sustainable forest management meetings and products . The UN Committee on Sustainable Development (UNCSD was formed to address Agenda 21) expanded that document's Forest Principles . The UNCSD held meetings in Helsinki, Finland; Montreal, Canada; and Santiago, Chile to define sustainable forest management, and to develop criteria and indieators to measure its implementation in the European, North American, and tropical forests.

The UNCSD also formed an International Panel on Forests (IPF) to further develop the Forest Principles, and to determine the need for a convention on forests. The IPF has, as of this date, met three times. A fourth meeting-scheduled for early spring 1997-willlikely result in recommendations to the UNCSD.

A group of former premiers, prime ministers and legislators have formed the World Commission on Forestry and Sustainable Development. They consult with interested groups around the world on international forest issues such as the state of forests, and the need for a forest convention. Their findings will be the basis for recommendations to the IPF and UNCSD.

Retailers, wholesalers, environmentalists and businesses acknowledge concerns about sustainable forest management and have formed the "Group of 95" in

The University of Montana School of Forestry 1996 Plum Creek Lecture Series

Sustainable Forest Management An Industry Perspective

Europe to promote sustainable practices through market pressures . The principle instrument is certification that forest industry products come from sustainably managed forests . Certified products will either be so labeled or their producer will be identified as a manufacturer that practices sustainable principles.

Canada is developing two certification systems. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) system, favored by the forest industry, is based on a management systems evaluation. The environmental community favors a system based on individual forest stand management performance, which is· being developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

As you can see, there is considerable international activity regarding sustainable forest management. Historically, this type of interest has been reflected in national , regional and local constraints, or standards of forest management.

SFM Components

Sustainable Forest Management is a concept: a goal we are not likely to completely attain. As we continue to learn more about management , the environment and social needs, and to adjust our practices accordingly, the definition of SFM will change. The important issue, however, is to clarify what forest managers are doing to meet the goal and to identify the components used to measure progress towards SFM.

Many people expect a forest manager to:

• Fuliy utilize and develop the potential of the forest resources, • Conserve biodiversity, • Provide jobs, • Involve the public, and • Meet or exceed the legal requirements of the province, state or country.

Resource management conditions, community structure, legal framework, and other factors will cause variations among management units, but the basic components will remain the same.

Measurement of Progress

We have been managing forest resources under a variety of principles, objectives, and knowledge bases supported by society. In spite of this , many people believe we are not fully practising sustainable forest management. We need not apologize for this situation. Instead, we should implement a program or system that can demonstrate our progress toward SFM.

In measuring progress , we should:

• Identify resource management objectives, • Identify measurement criteria and indicators to gauge progress toward the

objectives , • Identify operational standards, • Implement record-keeping systems that provide data on progress , • Institute a research program to improve our knowledge, and • Adopt adaptive forest managements policies .

Sustaining Natural Resources in Global Contexts 3

Bill Bourgeois

Independent Assessment The public often prefers that a third party conduct an evaluation of a

company's progress toward SFM, and that the company fully disclose the results . Failure to adopt this approach often produces a credibility gap and undermines public support for management policies.

Two common forms of evaluation are audits and certification. Audits use established standards to evaluate a company's performance in specific areas. Certification evaluates a company's forest management policies as a whole, using established standards, systems analysis, and progress benchmarks. It audit and certification results are not fully disclosed, public scepticism is likely.

Ill. Making SFM operatJonal It is nice to talk about sustainability, international influences and pressures, and

expectations for sustainable forest management. It, however, this information is not used in making operational decisions, it is just words. Here is what we are doing at Lignum to achieve SFM.

Lignum Conditions

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Lignum is a privately owned, medium-sized company in the British Columbia forest industry. The company operates one sawmill in the Central interior of the ·province and produces dimension lumber from nearby woodlands operations . The CEO and co-owner of the company is committed to both being a leader in the industry, and to meeting the needs of the communities dependent upon the company operations. The size and nature of the company, and the commitment of the CEO, facilitate establishment of a program of sustainable forest management.

In British Columbia, 95 percent of forest land is·owned by the provincial Crown. (In Canada, it is the responsibility of the provinces to manage natural resources.) On 75 percent of the Crown land base, companies awarded timber licences are required to plan and implement harvesting and regeneration, but they are not responsible for forest management through the next rotation. This type of tenure is referred to as volume-based.

The entire Province is presently under native land claims which presents a degree of long-term uncertainty of ownership.

British Columbia is currently identifying 12 percent of its land base for parks. This Protected Areas Strategy (PAS) program began in 1992 when approximately six percent of the land base was protected. To date approximately nine percent has been set aside for parks, most coming from the forest land base.

In 1994, Parliament enacted the Forest Practices Code Act-the most stringent forest practices code in the world. The forest industry and provincial Ministry of Forests are in the process of implementing this extensive legislation that includes 66 Guidebooks: (Stacked together they are more than one meter tall.)

Most lumber produced by Lignum is sold to United States customers, whoalong with the company's other customers-do not currently require SFM certification for lumber they purchase.


Sustainable Forest Management An Industry Perspective

1994 Operating Situation -Good Stewardship Program

Until1994, Lignum functioned like most companies operating on a volumebased tenure. The needs of the day for both the Government and the company drove forest management decisions. The company was considered a good operator and a sawmill innovator but was not viewed as an industry forest management leader.

In 1994, Lignum's CEO recognized that meeting the forest management demands of the public and Government would require changing the way the company conducted its business. In 1995 Lignum implemented its Good Stewardship Program (GSP). This internal forest management program is designed to meet sustainable forest management goals in Lignum operating areas.

Lignum SFM Activities

Practicing SFM requires a company maintain a forest stand in a defined area through its entire life cycle. Volume-based tenure does not encourage Lignum (or any other company) to manage a defined area or its stands after they become free growing. A two-year effort by the company has convinced provincial politicians to initiate a demonstration project that will show how SFM could be integrated with the volume-based tenure system. The resulting Innovative Resources Management Area (IRMA) agreement with the Minister of Forests requires Lignum to manage a defined area under the existing tenure system-but also provides a financial incentive to conduct area-based management practices: Any increase in Allowable Annual Cut (AAC) created by Lignum activities will be retained by the company.

Lignum now has the area, incentive and commitment to practice SFM.

To receive this recognition, Lignum produced a public affairs program aimed at policymakers and the general public. (This is not a public relations program!) Lignum talks to interest groups and tries to accommodate their concerns, negotiates with the Government to develop policies that meet the needs of both the Crown and the c<;>mpany, accommodates change, and takes a broad, non-industry view of the process.

As mentioned previously, Lignum's customers do not require certification at this time. The company participates in both the CSA and FSC processes, however, to ensure that the GSP practices meet developing needs and to comment on the practicality of the standards being drafted.

Progress to Date

The following points identify the progress Lignum has made towards SFM:

• The IRMA agreement is in final draft form. ·• Lignum's final decision-making phase includes enhanced public involvement.

We will create a multi-sector internal advisory group to advise on the implementation of IRMA.

• Lignum is developing cooperative management agreements with local outdoor recreation groups and government Ministries.

• Forest inventories are upgrading stand and area data. • A new, long-term growth-and-yield program will improve production projec

tions.


Next Steps

Bil l Bourgeois

• A final decision on habitat conservation vs. a traditional planning model is imminent.

• Intensive silviculture programs are in place. • Lignum has initiated cooperative research in biodiversity and ecosystem

management. • Jobs creation potential for alternative forest products is being evaluated and

an initiative examining mushroom production is under way. • More than 90 percent of graduates of a new work-force reeducation program

that trains assistant forest technicians have found jobs in their communities . • Lignum has published the first public report on its environment and forest

management activities .

The next steps include:

• Implementation of IRMA. • Expanding on the Good Stewardship Program. • Continuation of the public affairs program. • Finalization and expansion of cooperative management agreements. • Continuing the development of the certification processes. • Recording and reporting our progress.

Questions from the audience

Are you saying that as a private company, you have made a conscious decision to not pursue additional economic growth?

Yes.

Our owners have made a decision that they are not going to get any bigger, but will do what they do extremely well. That helps in what we are trying to accomplish . This was not easy for me at first because in my pre-Lignum experience it was build, build, build. The goal was to grow bigger.

Now I am in a company that says, "Forget that. Use your building experience to build a better company, rather than a bigger one." I have found a lot of personal satisfaction in thinking this way.

How are other timber companies approaching SFM?

Some of the other major companies are taking a partial approach . A few are involved in things like the CSA process. (Our involvement in the FFC process is unusual.) Others are involved in the IRMA experiments , and another 12-15 companies are interested in IRMA participation. But Lignum is unique in participating in bringing all the of the pieces together.

I am a little confused. Are other companies logging in the same drainage, the same landscape, that Lignum is working in?

Under volume-based tenure that is possible.

How about under IRMA?

No. Under IRMA, only one company will work in a given landscape. That is part

6 The University of Montana School of Forestry 1996 Plum Creek Lecture Series


of the strategy. You cannot implement a plan, and then have somebody kind of parachute in. You are developing 100-year plans , in some cases.

It works like this. Here is an area, with an allowable cut that it can generate. We want that allowable cut, but if others are allowed to cut in the area, it will reduce our share. So we agree to manage the area in return for the allowable cut, and they agree that it is ours exclusively.

You have talked about SFM in a developed country. What about third world countries, like Pakistan? I don't think SFM would even be considered in a country with population growth concerns, starving populations, or unstable governments. They have much more important issues.

There's no question. That is one of the biggest problems the United Nations has in dealing with issues of that kind of thing and sovereignty. I get to decide what happens in my country. The UN cannot come in and tell me what to do, especially after I have developed my resources, and they are now telling me I cannot mine them.

The only experience I have had with issues of this kind was at the biodiversity convention. International policymakers shy away from the population growth issue. They will not touch it, although they know they must come to grips with it. I have made a decision that it is beyond my control , and try not to worry about it. There are people with the knowledge, position, and ability to do that. I want to work on and worry about my little corner of the Big Problem and that is SFM.

Isn't a goodly amount of the forest in British Columbia old growth that, once cut, will never be the same? You will never grow trees like those again.

That's true. People realize that and they have made some progress in protecting old growth forests by instituting things like the 12 percent protected area and landscape unit plans.

In any landscape unit plan there is a certain percentage of the landscape unit that has to stay in old growth characteristics . Managing the landscape or the region is where forestry is heading, and there are special management areas that have other objectives than timber production. But where industrial forestry is being practiced, unless we leave the land alone for 300 or 500 years, old growth forests will not be replaced in coastal areas. In the interior it is probably more; in the Douglas fir area it is probably 250 years; and in the lodgepole pine, probably 120 because there we have insect and fire to turn it over.

Does IRMA contain protection of old growth forests?

There will be protection of some portion of old growth built into it, because if you look at the habitat conversation planning concept, there must always be some areas with old growth characteristics. You have to have a certain percentage of your landscape in that characteristic, but it may move around within the area. There will not be a line drawn around it to keep it forever old growth. That concept is incorporated into the AAC.

You say you have 12% old growth before you start your management plan. I am not talking secondary, I am talking real old growth Then you say that sometime down the road you are


Bill Bourgeois

going to grow another forest of 300 to 500 year-old trees, and then you will grow another forest of 300 to 500 year-old trees. Did I hear you correctly?

No. In the land allocation process that we have-take the entire Caribou region, for example-12 percent has been set aside as a park. That will be old growth and will not be touched by commercial forestry. The other 88% will be manipulated in some form by timber production. Within that 88 percent, however, there will be roughly 10 percent that will always have old growth characteristics-but it won't always be the same 10 percent. It will move around.

If you are on the coast, then you are going to have 350 year old stands some_place. Those characteristics will stay there on roughly 10% of the land base, in addition to the 12 percent you have already taken out for parks.

Where did you come up with I2 percent and 10 percent?

Political studies. The 12 percent came from the Bruntland Commission. The Bruntland Commission said, "We think that world wide four percent is protected right now. We think that three times that should be protected." Now how in the world they came to that, I don't know. Canada and British Columbia agreed to protect 12 percent. That's where 12 percent came from.

And the 10 percent?

About the same.

Is the I2 percent is forested lands?

Not necessarily.

In the United States the wilderness areas include a whole lot of outlying areas where there are no tre.es anyway. We call it Rock and Ice.

We have a lot of that too, that we had protected before this program came into place. A large chunk of the land base in parks was rock and ice, so as new parks are created there is a strong push to stay away from rock and ice and get down into lower elevations and untouched waters_heds. The proponents of the 12 percent are really pushing very hard for those kinds of areas.

How much might timber harvest be reduced by a habitat conservation scenario over a major portion of your IRMA?

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With our current AAC, with the sera! stage, and the habitat conservation using the same year's tables, we will be OK. It will be a significant amount, mainly because of the constraints that go along with it-or don't go along with it. For example, in order to have green-up adjacency, you can't get to the next area, and we have a limitation on clear cuts of 60 hectares. You can't harvest the next area until trees in the cut area are 20 feet high.

Our trees don't grow very fast. In the Caribou that's a long time. And so the restriction on 60 hectares automatically restricts availability there big-time. We are growing more trees, but can't get to them. Habitat conservation actually eliminates many of those constraints, because removing timber creates new habitats . But limiting cuts to 60 hectares (40 hectares on the coast) is not good for Lignum



nor for habitat conservation. Public pressure, not science, created the 60-hectare limit. Our "biologist" is the government. I want leave areas, too, but I want them bigger. Larger areas will help the biologist as well.

Who does the inventory on !RMAs?

Right , now on the new tenure that we are talking about, we do.

Isn't that a large investment?

You bet it is . You bet this inventory is an investment-but we are fortunate in having Forestry Resources of British Columbia (FRBC) paying part of the cost. So we are in a nice situation that works to our advantage.

Are you going to use the new BC inventory procedures?

We are required to. All the standards for all the inventories will be provincial standards . We have chosen to not fight the government on those inventory standards and principles . In a previous life we fought those guys all the time on it. We never won. The guys who reported to me told me the new inventory procedures were wrong-and I believe them-but Lignum has chosen not to fight those procedures. If the province needs it done this .way, right or wrong, that's what we will do. They are paying for it. If we were paying for it that would be different story.

There is no question that we get more hard data using those procedures. You are not allowed to project what is up there. You actually have to go out and measure it. But when we have measured the stuff, our projections have been accurate. Our tables are based on our historical data, and they will give you decent estimates of growth .

What is the time commitment your company has to make to a given plot land to gain an IRMA exclusive right to the timber? Do you have to say we are going to take care of land and work on it for x years, and commit to that regardless of whether or not you increase yield and increase your profit?

That's right.

How long is Lignum's commitment on the IRMA you have been describing?

The agreement is not finalized but will be in the 10 to 15 year range. We know that what we are talking about here needs longer commitments , and we would welcome that. The government, however, is unwilling to enter into a longer agreement.

The commitment that we have, the license that we operate under, our current (unfinalized) contract is for 15 years, and it is renewable, ideally, in perpetuity. As long as government continues to renew that license every 15 years we're committed. But we have to perform. If we designate a cut and they approve it, and then we don't do the work, or the data over a longer term shows that we were wrong, we lose it. That's part of the agreement. You can't cut it , say you're sorry and leave town.

So Lignum would like longer commitments: We would like it in perpetuity. Having a tenure in perpetuity raises the value of the company, even if we wanted to


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Bill Bourgeois

sell it now. So there is an incentive there. We are gambling that AAC increases. Even if it stays where it is, we will still benefit through being known as good operator, which could mean our cutting permits are put through First Nations and everybody else faster. I can't measure Jhat and say that's worth x number of dollars to us, but we know that it is worth it. So even if we don't get the cutwhich we will-there is a corporate benefit in doing all this stuff any way.

Missoula, Montana, October 2, 1996



Jaime Pinkham President, Intertribal Timber Council

Introduction Perry Brown, Dean, School of Forestry Jaime Pinkham is an elected member of the Nez Perce Tribal Council, president of

the Board of Directors of the Intertribal Timber Council, and former manager of the Department of Natural Resources of the Nez Perce Tribe. In the latter position, he was responsible for tribal forestry, and the tribe's wildlife, cultural resource, agriculture and range management programs.

Jaime is a graduate of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Prior to joining the Nez Perce natural resources department he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs with responsibilities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, western Montana and southeast Alaska, and for the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

Jaime is chair emeritus of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, performs with the Nez Perce Nation Drum, is a member of the Oregon State University Board of Visitors for Minority Affairs, serves as a University of Idaho affiliate faculty

member, and is member of the Governing Board of the Wilderness Society. He has traveled widely, speaking on Native American natural resource and trade issues.

It is a pleasure to welcome Jaime Pinkham as this evening's Plum Creek lecturer.

A friend , an Oneida Indian from Wisconsin , said , "Earth, our Mother, performs Her duty well and to the best of Her ability. We honor Her and care for Her with the best of our ability and we become one. We are

blessed because the Creator did not place us above the Earth but placed us within the Earth's community to share and live in harmony with all." These words reflect that our natural resources and our community are inseparable.

I am not "traditional" in an Indian sense of the word; I do not use the word lightly. It requires great learning and energy to meet the obligation and commitment that is attached to it.

It is important to remember that culture and traditions vary across this land and my words do not represent all tribes . We are as diverse as Spain and France on the European continent.


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Jaime Pinkham

We vary in our contemporary forms of government. The Nez Perce have federal recognition through treaty while others are recognized by executive order with no rights extending beyond the borders of their reservation. In addition, some tribes are recognized only by the state while some have no formal recognition at all.

Governing bodies can be called executive committees , tribal councils, business committees. My governing body, the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, has its powers outlined in a tribal constitution. Tribal councils deal with the same diverse, complex issues that state and national legislatures encounter. They assume roles in both a private and a public sector.

Long before written history, the Nez Perce had exclusive use and occupancy on more than 13 million acres. We also traveled to the plains to hunt buffalo and we fished for salmon on the Columbia River.

As non-Indians settling in the west sought to occupy our lands, the US Government relied upon European doctrines of discovery to establish relations with !~dian peoples.

We did not recognize legal title to land-the only one who could own land was the one who created it. Yet, European theory asserted the aborigines were true owners , retaining rights to the land.

Tribal nations were entities possessing inherent sovereign powers to the same ~xtent as nations like France and Spain. Therefore, the "discoverers" needed to follow a legal process to acquire Indian holdings . The results of this process were the treaties.

Treaties are acknowledged in the US Constitution under the Commerce Clause granting Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, including Indians , and the Supremacy Clause stating that all treaties made under the authority of the US "shall be the supreme law of the land."

Treaties only exist between sovereigns and the fact treaties were made recognized our status as a sovereign. Our treaty was a treaty of peace and not based on conquest.

Ourfirst treaty in 1855 ceded 5.5 million acres of land to the US leaving a reservation of 8 million acres. In this treaty we reserved our rights to hunt , gather and pasture livestock on open and uncl~imed land and to take fish at all usual and accustomed places outside the reservation .

Our treaty was not a grant of rights to us but a grant of rights from the Tribe to the US to provide for settlement by the immigrants . The US Supreme Court has continually upheld that the tribe's rights were reserved noting that the US Government was powerless to grant any rights it did not posses, nor was the treaty an exchange of rights for land. Subsequent treaties and agreements continued to recognize these rights.

Unfortunately, in the early 1860s gold was discovered on our reservation. Miners and settlers ignored the treaty. The government was preoccupied by the Civil War with no military available to enforce the treaty. Instead, the government sought a new treaty. In 1863 our second treaty reduced our reservation to its current 750,000-acre size.



In the late 1800s states were carved out of the Washington and Oregon Territories . In present day terms our treaty area covers southeast Washington, northeast Oregon, and north-central Idaho.

Indian people faced many federal policies designed to assimilate them. One of the most disastrous was the allotment or Dawes Act. The act sought to sever Indian people from their cultural ties and break apart tribal communities by making Indians individual land owners . Underpinning this was Congress ' continued desire to gain further access to Indian land for the settlers .

Our reservation was "allotted" to individuals and 32,000 acres set aside for the Tribe to be held in common. The remainder of the land was deemed surplus to our needs so our reservation was open to homesteading.

We were not farmers and the concept of land ownership was foreign to us, so over time the allotted land base dwindled as land passed into non-Indian ownership. More land was lost as the state confiscated land for tax delinquency.

Today we are left with a total land ownership of 110,000 acres comprising both allotted and tribal ownership. Indian ownership of land within our own reservation amounts to about 12 percent. We are a minority landowner and population within our own reservation.

We once had a "subsistence economy," meaning we cared for ourselves by taking only what we needed from nature. With our exploitation, our natural resources also suffered from years of misuse by logging, mining and agriculture interests. We were in economic ruin even before we recognized this new form of wealth measured in financial terms. Indirectly, by our dependency on nature, we were affected by various policies to develop the west for non-lf1dian settlement. When you make life difficult for the river, you make life difficult for the fish. When you make life difficult for the fish, you make life difficult for Indian people.

We fought federal policies designed to force change upon us: pressures of assimilation, challenges of Indian relocation programs, disasters of tribal termination, and the stress of Indian boarding schools. Our spiritual well-being became increasingly stressed by new struggles: substance abuse, unemployment, poor education and inadequate health care.

Our concept of subsistence expanded to include more than mere survival. Subsistence came to mean political, social, economic and cultural survival as well. Many things we needed for subsistence were no longer free . We had to fight for tribal sovereignty, to save the sacred trust with the government, to rebuild our communities , to educate our young, and to provide health care for our people. No longer could we just be occupants upon the land. We found it necessary to exploit our natural resources to meet our emerging needs .

Some say the American Indian was the first natural resource manager. From my Nez Perce perspective, I am not sure this is entirely true. We didn't manage nature. Nature offered physical and spiritual sustenance, and our activities reflected our relationship with the natural cycles turning upon the land and waters.

We responded to nature and the change in seasons . We didn't make the salmon run, we didn't make the foods and medicines grow, contrary to myth we didn't make the skies bring rain . Nature was our caretaker, looking out for our well-being,


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Jaime Pinkham

and assuring our survival. We put our livelihood into the hands of our Creator, and our Mother, the Earth. Nature managed us: We lived by nature's laws.

But a new humanity came. As Daniel Quinn said in his book "'shmael, "life went from a Ieaver society to a taker society-takers being those wanting to possess more than they dare leave behind. "Takers" felt wiser than nature, more capable of ruling the world. They gained freedom by living outside the laws of nature and breaking the bonds of residing within its hands .

Today, nature remains our provider, our caretaker, however we have become the managers. It is our turn to give back, to care for and heal the land. While many readily concede the power that nature holds-whether it be flood, wildfire, hurricane or earthquake-to be worthy of the task of caretaker we also need to concede to nature's own wisdom.

I recently accepted an appointment to The Wilderness Society Governing Council, and just returned from my first meeting. A tradition, going back to the days of one of the Society's founders, Bob Marshall (who was a forester, and in his career was the chief forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs), is the "talking circle" where council members share an experience or a perspective relative to wilderness or our mission.

I am humbled and honored to be on the Council. I enjoy the breadth of backgrounds and perspectives and it was evident during the talking circle where words were shared relative to nature's "wild" condition. From my perspective, there is nothing wild about nature because we speak of nature in terms reflecting home and community. Nature is a place to learn, a place to worship and find sanctuary, a place providing nourishment to our body and spirit, and it is a place to heal. There is nothing wild about a place like this.

A friend said the Creator intended this to be a spiritual world not the scientific and technological world which appears to dominate us today. Vice Presiden_t Gore must have heard him. Mr. Gore said where science thrives on the unknown, politics is often paralyzed by it. In his book, "Earth in the Balance," he recognized that debates over the environment have moved beyond scientific debates to include moral debates. He asked, when giving dominion over the earth did God choose an appropriate technology?

I don't believe the Creator intended anyone to have dominion over nature, but the Vice President answered by saying:

" ... there is little doubt that the way we currently relate to the environment is wildly inappropriate. But in order to change, we must address some fundamental questions about our purpose in life ... These questions go beyond any discussion of whether the human species is an appropriate technology; these questions are not for the mind or body but the spirit."

Indian people talk of our spirit yet it appears to some that we live a contradiction by using science and technology. While western science may be foreign to Indian people, science and technology is not contrary to our beliefs.

In his essay, ''Traditional Technology," Vine Deloria wrote that western science will credit Indian people for originating an idea but dismisses our contributions



saying that we couldn't have understood the significance of our knowledge. Deloria stated that western science has a reductionist mentality; it forces out the secrets of nature by dividing, subdividing it to find all its properties . It asks only two questions in its quest to examine the world: 1) how does it work, and 2) if it''s good, how do we use it?

However, some Indian people see the plants and animals as the old people believing we were the last, therefore youngest creatures put on earth. We are given some abilities but not all the wisdom and strength to survive in this world. So we must learn from our elders, the plants and animals.

"Traditional technology" says we take our cue about the world from the experience and evidence the world offers us. And, because of our relationship with the natural world, Indian people asked a third question: "what does it mean?"- not to quantify it but to seek its cultural relevance to better understand its meaning in our life.

In 1877, in discussions preceding our war with the US Army, a Nez Perce leader said, "The Earth is part of my body ... I belong to the land out of which I came. The Earth is my mother."

These words reflect the enduring relationship between our people and the land . They did not simply indicate an opinion, but rather point to a way of life. Today, the commitment to nature remains and you will see us support this commitment by applying contemporary science and sophisticated technology. We've always adopted the best tools and methods to accomplish tasks, whether for hunting, fishing or battle. Today, we continue to demonstrate that quality.

For example, GIS provides the means to integrate information from a range of topics and address complicated management issues. We have always understood the spiritual relationships of nature and this technology helps us organize data into biological and physical relationships.

Let me pause for a word of caution. It is about how we use science. Science is analytical yet there are real life limits as the issues become socially, politically, and culturally sensitive. Scientific analysis and bureaucratic oppression don 't always lend themselves to resolution of resource management conflicts .

In the 1970s the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act was passed enabling Tribes to "contract" from the federal government the programs they administered as a trustee for Indian people.

We have contracted various natural resource programs including forestry, wildlife, cultural resource, water, fisheries, range and agriculture. In the case of wildlife and cultural resources, a management program did not exist until we ~reated them.

We must manage for all these values. For example, our latest labor statistics reflect an unemployment rate of 64%. Some communities feel they have a dilemma when they break into double digits . Also, 78% of the work force earns less than $7,000 per year. This means wildlife, fish and the plants that make up our traditional foods and medicines continue to be a mainstay of human sustenance.

Our tribal government is secured by the foundations of our inherent powers


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Jaime Pirkham

and reserved rights. We are distinct political communities yet considered domestic , dependant nations. We are different from states as states had powers conveyed to them. Tribes , as I stated earlier, had full, inherent powers to begin with .

The US signed a solemn pledge to protect our rights , creating a trust relationship between us and the federal government. This relationship gives the government a special duty to manage the resources on the ceded lands in a manner which fulfills their treaty obligations . It also gives us the legal rigbt to be participants in the management of the resources upon those lands.

President Clinton and his two predecessors issued Indian policies which further recognized this duty. In 1994 the President issued an Executive Memorandum outlining the principles of a government-to-government relationship with tribes. In 1988 the Forest Service issued a policy recognizing their government-togovernment and trust responsibility to Indian tribes.

Therefore, the terms of our relationship with the US government, including agencies like the Forest Service, is not as a neighbor nor a special interest group . It is expressly outlined by treaty and subsequently affirmed by Presidents past and present, and the Forest Service itself.

Our treaties are with the US government and not just one agency, therefore, all federal agencies have a trust responsibility to our Tribe. Many people feel we are only under the Bureau of Indian Affairs but in terms of natural resources we work as co-managers of treaty resources with the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Defense (Army Corps of Engineers), Commerce (National Marine Fisheries Service) and the Environmental Protection Agency.

We are actively involved in overseeing management of lands in our treaty area for restoration of species such as salmon, elk and gray wolves and their habitat. We want them to regain their rightful place in the community. In addition, we work with other agencies to protect sacred sites and sources of traditional foods and medicines from harmful pesticides , grazing and logging practices.

The Nez Perce Tribe and the recovery of endangered or threatened species has created a mirror, and our taking a leadership role in the recovery effort has added new dimensions.

The trailblazers cleared a path out west to tame the frontier and bring order to the wilderness. Obstacles and threats to settlement needed to be eliminated. The gray wolf, and the Nez Perce, were both seen as obstacles and subsequently, we were both dispossessed . Our history resembled one another and today the reflection of our journey remains . Through our leadership role in the reintroduction of the gray wolf in Idaho, we, along with the wolf, continue our recovery, to once again be occupants upon lands that we were removed from, to regain our rightful place spiritually, socially and politically.

Fish, water, wildlife, and plants are seen as biological resources, measured for their physical and economic properties . They are managed by biologists , foresters, hydrologists , etc. We see them as another kind of resource: a "cultural" resource. For us , cultural resources are not just artifacts or historic sites.

Concerns over species protection, water quality, biodiversity, old growth, and log export are not issues limited to federal , state and private landowners. However,



we are unique in that our lands are held in trust by the US government, different from purely federal lands in that equitable title is held by the tribes. Our reservations are reserved as our permanent homelands for the sole and exclusive benefit of Indian people.

We find ourselves fighting to maintain stability in our proprietary and regulatory abilities in the face of national legislation restricting the use of our resources . While these issues may be worthwhile national policy, it diminishes our already limited opportunities without compensation or consent.

We have been working hard to elevate the status of our programs. Five years ago we were successful in getting the National indian Forest Resource Management Act signed into law. Congress passed a similar bill for agriculture and we are currently working on the passage of another bill for fish and wildlife.

An independent assessment of Indian forest lands was commissioned with the passage of the forestry act. A seven member assessment team included the likes of Jerry Franklin, Norm Johnson and John Gordon. One of their findings was that Indian forestry is seriously underfunded: For every dollar spent on coordinated management on national forests, Indian forests get 35 cents. On the positive side, they stated that Indian forestry has the potential to serve as a model of sustainability, because these are our permanent homelands where we live intimately with the environmental and economic consequences of our actions. Healing, caring for the land and our communities are our missions in life. Indeed, these are challenging times for us.

The world was once thought of as "empty" and unused . At the same time it was a "full" world with abundant resources. Nature, some thought, was forgiving. Today we see a different kind of fullness, as the landscape nears its capacity of our noxious consequences, and we see emptiness in our diminished resources. Across the world, many tried to preempt nature's wisdom thinking they had the capability to continue reaping the benefits of nature's resources. Eyes were closed to the consequences they did not expect or care about.

We have nothing except greed and arrogance to apologize for. We used the best science and technology available, yet today we are students of some hard lessons that are proof of our vanity. The legacy of our actions are still being uncovered as we try to fully understand our past actions.

A couple years ago I spoke at a conference in Seattle on the topic "Watersheds As a Cultural Mirror"- a good topic as many people scramble to reframe their views of the natural world. As we learned to exploit ourselves and one another we lost sight of living within nature's limits. Looking into the mirror we've become frustrated with the image we reflect.

On my flight to Seattle I sat next to a man reading Thomas Moore's book "Care of the Soul." I was browsing through the book "Spiritual Politics" so we began comparing notes. Eventually I told him about myself and where I was going. We started to talk about nature's will and how at times she leaves us feeling vulnerable: flooding in the Midwest, an earthquake in Los Angeles, wildfire in the west-including the Colorado fire that claimed 14 firefighters. We are confronted by a fearful nature at times . We are at her mercy, yet we find the will to rebuild.

SustiTining Natural Resources in Global Contexts 17

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Jaime Pinkham

As it turned out my seatmate is a minister, and our chat switched to recent events: the anguish surrounding two children missing in South Carolina, a plane crashing into the White House, a football hero playing out a tragic courtroom drama. We are confronted by another fear. Held by the grips of a society where humanity, at times, appears to be out of balance. We ask, "What will it take to rebuild?"

The minister said when society tends to breed unhappiness, we respond most heroically to moral issues. The dilemma of our environment is moral. As a reflection of our community, it is rooted in a deeper issue. We cannot just examine how we reframe the scientific or technological debates. We also need to evaluate our relationship with our community. Healing the land goes hand-in-hand with learning to care for ourselves and one another.

We are familiar with the term sustainable forests, now broadened to include sustainable communities. What about sustainable leadership?

At a tribal leaders forum a tribal chairman asked, "What sustains Indian leadership?" A compelling question in any community. He said he needs only to look at the

. statistics, because the figures on alcohol abuse include his brother, the figures on diabetes include his mother, the figures on poverty contains his uncle's family, and now his niece is represented in the figures on suicide. Those statistics are his people-real people with real needs. He is sustained by the healing that needs to take place. And, we also see the children dancing, the elders teaching, tradition regaining il: foothold in the community, and success in managing our own affairs . We see beauty and want to sustain it.

We need to be more than natural resource managers. We are good at creating a "concerned" community (that is, the media is good at it), but we need to also become a "responsive" community.

My formal education comes from my family and community. I supplemented this education at Oregon State University, where !learned to be a forester, a steward of the land. But my grandfather taught me to honor nature for her wisdom and gifts . Nature, he said, is entrusted to us: to use wisely, to respect, to conserve, and to protect. I was also taught by my grandmother-a compassionate and forgiving woman-that our communities are also entrusted to us: to respect, to conserve, and to protect.

In late 19891 was considering going home to work for the Tribe. The Tribal Chairman stopped by my office in Portland, Oregon and tossed that day's Lewiston

J ..

Tribune on my desk. He asked, "Are you willing to deal with this?" The front page reported that LSD was making a comeback in the reservation area. As a forester, I might have thought, "What's the connection?" But !learned the connection is real. What lie~anted to know was, could I, as tribal natural resource manager, help him to inspire our community to work to eliminate the conditions that cause this dilemma?

So our success has values rooted deep in our community. We seek the remedies our communities need as the world experiences great change, and there is stress politically, environmentally, socially, and culturally.

No doubt these are demanding times for us where we fight too many battles on too many fronts. Billy Frank, a Nisqually, says we must be peacemakers when we can


Conserving Nature and Sustain ing Communities

and warriors when we must. We made war and peace in canoes, on horseback, and on foot, meeting on the great prairies, along the shores of the rivers, or by a treaty rock.

Today we seek peace or war by flying over this land at 30,000 feet, sometimes traveling the information highway, at other times meeting in the marbled halls of institutions in Washington, DC and state capitals. Indeed times have changed, but has the passion?

We hop on a treadmill that takes its toll, physically and emotionally testing our individual balance in life. Mentally we strive to make the right choice; from the heart, we seek courage to make difficult decisions and sacrifices. We have learned that finding justice doesn't always make us popular. At times the difficulty isn't in making tough decisions but in withstanding the consequences .

I fear cultural bankruptcy. We cannot just offer lip-service to our history. Our culture must be more than background music in our lives. We must take care of our past, care for what we learned, and not be afraid to apply our culture in facing the challenges confronting us . We must reaffirm our commitment to nature and acknowledge the vital spiritual connection that exists between us and the land that supports us .

Preserving the spiritual strength we derive from nature gives us reason to celebrate. We celebrate our past with its ageless traditions. We celebrate each season and its bounty. And we celebrate the gifts and wisdom we derive from the Earth, our Mother. We will continue to celebrate our very survival, the victories and sacrifices of our people throughout time. This sustains us to move forward.

Our wisdom is the product of a long past stretching be yond human memory. We must combine this wisdom with new-found science to guide the care of our Iand-a land affixed with our signature as it becomes our legacy to our grandchildren. We must seek solutions to our problems so our grandchildren will have reason to celebrate during their lifetime. We must pay tribute to our past, we must honor nature and we must teach our children the importance of both.

We can share ideals about nature which are forged in our culture. I'm not saying a pipe ceremony will patch the hole in the ozone layer. I am saying listen to the world : it is calling for cultural diversity- it is calling for help. We need rich, diverse ideals and values which survived the test of time and can help us all prosper.

Freedom has allowed this nation to comprise a multitude of ethnic, religious and natural heritages-including those found in commerce and in the lives of the "pioneers" who settled and "built" this country from their timber, farming and mining communities. Yet, freedom, with all its splendor, has left us vulnerable.

Some heritages are in conflict with others. Some were built at the expense of other cultures (as Indian people know all too well), and , some are held to be politically sacred. Legal entanglements and political mischief are inflicted on one another (the Endangered Species Act-the emergency call to preserve fish and wildlife-is a good example) .

Slowly, ai: times too slowly, we are trying to reconcile the differences that fragment us. Many heritages and only one Mother Earth- the one earth upon which we prove ourselves to our Creator.


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Jaime Pinkham

We have been known to see things from a "holistic" point of view. Being holistic is not only about nature; it includes the various arenas we must survive in. Then, before we can become competent resource managers we need to be competent in regards to our community: its social, political and cultural needs.

In our educational and professional journeys we must be mindful that we cannot travel separate from our community. Our personal rewards go beyond plaques and high paying jobs. Greater rewards come from what we contrjbute to building cohesive communities: pride in education, the good healthof all ages, and strong, caring families that will carry our traditions into the future.

From time to time, many have heard our frustrations in being overlooked or excluded from consultation, coordination and co-management. We have been striving to strengthen our government-to-government relations. We have a right to be at the table and when you hear our frustrations you will also hear what we have to offer. Here is what you get when tribes come to the table: the best technical and scientific expertise of Indian country, our perspectives which can contribute to wise management, and a passionate devotion to sustaining and renewing the environment for future generat ions.

Science, technology, and leadership come and go. They change. But the everlasting promise for the future lies elsewhere: It is in our spirit to overcome challenges. We hold a promise for the future and we meet this promise each time we step forward to take the adventure these challenges present.

Many times I have heard that our children are our most precious resource. I have also heard that our elders, too, are a precious resource. So let me ask you: where does it leave us, we who are in the middle generation? It leaves us with a duty. We are responsible for acting upon the vision of our elders, we are caretakers, maintaining in trust our communities and the environment that sustain this nation, and we are trailblazers who must prepare for the health and education of those who follow.

We need to be a healing generation that works to protect and revitalize our communities and our environment.

The Nez Perce are here to stay. We will not sell our land during wavering economic times, nor will we relocate our operations elsewhere. Our ancestorsour culture-are committed to the land upon which we live.

You may hear some Indian people talk of the Seventh Generation, the generation we focus on in our efforts to preserve and prepare the world. Measured by time it is far from our reach, but measured by our actions today it is well within our grasp. Our greatest honor is not in celebrating among ourselves today, but in the future when our grandchildren will pause, look back and say, "Our elders, our grandmothers and grandfathers, did it right." Our grandchildren will enjoy the successes of our lifetime in their future.

So you gathered to learn, to embrace a mission with technical, political, economic or scientific outcomes. Yet, keep in mind, the most sophisticated technology, the latest scientific wizardry and all the environmental laws of the land amount to very little without the spirit of people like you. I hope your deeds renders a joyous, worthy life for the Seventh Generation.


Conserving Nature and Sustain ing Communities

We walk a tightrope, striking a balance between environment and economy. We search for new science, new technology, and the leadership to care for and heal the resources we depend upon.

In open celebration, or in the privacy of our own spirit we seek the resolve to ' make a difference and the courage to create change.

I have been taught that:

The two most sacred celebrations in the Universe are the birth of a child and the final celebration we all experience: the change from this world to the next. In between we haue minor celebrations: graduation, our first job, a promotion, election to tribal council, a wedding, a divorce, defeat in tribal elections. They offer lessons where some are gentler than others- harsh and kind lessons to help us try to find meaning and purpose in life.

In Nez Perce we do not offer our own testimony to the Creator. Our testimony on our final journey is delivered by song and prayer by those who remain in this world.

Each of us passionately pursues the horizon beholding to our promise. Together, we dare to take the adventure, to court worthy ambitions, and to give in service so that our endeavors will justify our generation when our history is told.

Questions from the Audience

What is your view on ecosystem management?

Ecosystem management-it is about time you guys caught on.

From a nation-to-nation point of view, our attempt at ecosystem management has a philosophy for reestablishing the contact between the social system and the ecosystem. The idea is to go beyond the scientific side to the community side. We have been struggling with the Eastside Ecosystem Project on the Columbia Basin and the Snake River drainages, trying to expand the focus beyond the biologic and scientific to include cultural values and cultural integrity, too.

This morning I was in Clarkston, Washington speaking at a conference on risk assessment regarding the nuclear industry's impact on Indian communities . I was asked to talk about the value of risk assessment. I didn't have any answers, but I asked the professionals (who should have the answers) a lot of questions about dealing with risk assessments. I guess ther~ is a relationship between risk assessment and restoring cultural integrity.

How do we know that we haven't achieved cultural stability, or that we are back o.n track with this natural course of cultural evolution? It is a tough question focusing on the Indian people's natural relationship with the land. But we have (as I mentioned earlier) all these other pressures that affect our culture and way of life: stresses of the boarding schools (which still linger and have been compared to the Vietnam War's post-traumatic stress syndrome) , inadequate health care, and poor education to name a few. So how can we bring all those issues to bear, so that each one's link to cultural survival is examined , rather than focusing solely on nature and its value in rebuilding our communities.


Jaime Pinkham

People want to know more ab..out the world and are looking for a signpost to help them make good environmental decisions. What signpost do you use on your reservation to guide management planning? Do you rely on inventory and other traditional forestry tools?

The tribes helped set what those guideposts, those mileposts should be. A critical element in developing our reservations' 10 year forest management plan was a value survey of our tribal communities . The reservation-wide survey asked what values are important, and the nature of our dependence upon our r~sources. Should we focus on the forestry side of things? How important are labor and income impacts? How do our forestry and agriculture practices affect our traditional food and medicine resources, our fish, and our wildlife? To me the milepost that is hardest to measure-but is most important- is harmony within our community.

Harmony assures us that the community feels that they are being protected. It 's not one of those things you can assign a number to. It is intangible, and requires establishing a mood, a feeling of cohesiveness in a community. That is the only way I can describe it. It is not scientific.

I would like to ask you a personal question. What inspired you, as a Native American, to study forestry in college?

A woman.

This is one of my favorite stories. The summer between my junior and senior -years in high school I worked for a Forest Service youth conservation program that brought people from all over the state to work at this camp, including this just fabulous , gorgeous woman from Seattle. Well, we fell in love, and when we were seniors she told me she was going to Peninsula College in Port Andrews , Washington , and that I should, too.

So I checked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Education Department, and they said Peninsula College will give you a full ride scholarship if you study forestry, fisheries, or nursing. I chose forestry, so the reason I got into forestry was because of a beautiful woman, and a full ride at Peninsula College.

People have assumed my affinity for the land is a genetic thing. One article about me said I chose a natural resource career was because of my heritage, because Native Americans have this affinity for nature. I guess that makes my younger brother a mutant because he studied mathematics . I tell him he must be genetically altered or something because he didn't go into natural resources.

Do you encourage Native American kids to consider higher education ? When I visited reservations speaking about careers in natural resources, I asked who planned on going on to college. Not a single person responded. They seemed to fee l that higher education was not an option.

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One specific thing I'm doing is strongly supporting the American Indians Sciences and Engineering Society (AISES)-a professional organization that encourages Native American students to pursue engineering and science professions. We have 120 chapters in the United States and Canada. I was chairman of the board of directors for four years

AISES trains science teachers, because part of getting kids interested is making



sure they have good teachers. We help educators fine tune teaching skills that work in Indian communities. The Intertribal Timber Council has educational programs, too. I am on the road quite a bit speaking at universities and conferences on the importance of Indian education.

I want to emphasize, though, that it is important not to think that the only good Indian is an educated Indian. I am very proud of the fact that-! have cousins, brothers, and sisters who did not choose to get a higher education. They chose to do something at least as important to our community: They stayed at home to care for my grandparents, my elders, my aunts and uncles ,

That was a sacrifice they made that certainly does not diminish their worth . I have a lot of reverence and respect for them. They speak the language better than I do, they sing the songs better than I do, and I have a lot of respect for them. But the important thing is that we work together. We share our knowledge with each other and we are all better educated because we have different kinds of knowledge to share.

We have been making some significant strides in Indian education, and have had some wonderful support nationally. John McCain put his neck on the line as a Republican and asked for something like 55 million to be restored to the education budget. So we have some champions not just within the Indian communities, but in the broader community as well.

Do you see any fundamental change occurring relative to natural resource management with the changes going on in the Bureau of Indian Affairs that encourage returning control of programs to the tribes?

I talked about the Indian self-determination act of the 1970s. People ridicule Richard Nixon, but he signed a landmark bill for Indian country that promotes tribal control of their own destiny, and an increase in self-government. Based on that, some tribes have taken over the management of their programs from the federal government, and have been very successful. Other tribes that feel they are getting good management through the Bureau of Indian Affairs have been reluctant to do it. If it works, why fix it?

So it varies from tribe to tribe, however, we have seen ongoing pressure to transfer more control to the local field level. At one time it was estimated that only three cents of every dollar the Bureau of Indian Affairs handled got to the tribal level. We were trying to force those dollars out of the top-heavy administration down to the field level. Unfortunately, when we started doing that Congress was trying to streamline government, and implemented a policy that all the salary savings went to reduce the deficit rather than coming to the Indian tribes at the !ield level. There has been a strong movement toward contracting those tribal programs.

There have been tremendous changes because the tribes have a more intimate relationship with their communities than a distant bureaucracy can .. They are not bound by your levels of red tape, policy manuals, and so forth. We are able to respond faster to market forces, able to respond better to our communities, than an unwieldy federal bureaucracy. Look at the conflict between the foresters and some tribal communities, things like FACA, that placed barriers in the way of local


Jaime Pinkham

management. I think as the tribes took those programs over a lot of those barriers were removed. The bottom line is that there is more tribal involvement, or community involvement in those decision-making processes .

You mentioned earlier that the tribal people were partners with the land rather than managers of the land. How about the Indian practice of burning for habitat, and similar practices? Isn 't that land management?

I would consider that management. We did some under burning. We also harvested roots and berries, animals and fish-that is also a kind of management, of population control.

But look at the movement of Indian people. When the berries were ripe, we moved to the mountains . When the salmon were running, we moved to the rivers . When the snows came we moved to the lower elevations. So who was managing who in the long term? That is the context . Certainly the tribes did do some forms of management. When the Nez Perce got their first horse herds, we did a lot of burning to maintain pasture, for example. But in a broader philosophical sense I think nature managed us.

Could you elaborate on Indian forestry, and what it did for the tribes?

Indian country didn't have an Organic Act, like the Forest Service and the BLM did, so we needed to try to bring the fragmented pieces in the Bureau of Indian Affairs manuals, orders, and so forth into one comprehensive set of guidelines that would help tribes develop Indian forestry policies.

The Indian Intertribal Timber Council was pretty active in the drafting of the legislation. We worked hard with members of Congress and congressional staff to frame that bill. That legislation established many things, including budgets that would capture funds that had traditionally been lost back to the treasury. We fought hard for that assessment on forest lands . We fought hard for an educational component to be put into the legislation. We got that bill passed five years ago, and it has become a model for other natural resource Indian legislation . The agricultural bill was a mirror to that, calling for education and an assessment of Indian agricultural practices. The fish and wildlife bill which we are still struggling to get through Congress is based on that original bill, too.

Are the tribes involved in international conferences like the one in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 that produced a treaty on global climate change and on biodiversity?

I didn't attend the Environmental Summit in Rio, but there were representatives from Indian country who did participate.

The US refused to sign the treaties. Did the tribes that were represented sign them?

I'm not aware of any Indian nations that signed that treaty.




References: Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1991. Indian Education in America. Boulder, CO: American Indian Science and Engineer

ing Publishing.

Gore, Senator AI. 1993. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. New York: Penguin Books.

McLaughlin , Corrine and Gordon Davidson. 1994. Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out. New York: Ballantine Books.

Meyers , Renee. 1993. Technology Serving Tradition. Cultural Survival Quarterly. Spring, 1993.

Quinn, Daniel. 1993. Ishmael. New York: Bantam/Turner Book.

Family: Diana K. Pinkham (wife); Alvin A. and Elizabeth J. Pinkham (parents); Alexius M. and Elsie Cree Pinkham

(grandparents); Albert "Uncle Sandy" Pinkham and Allen V. Pinkham, Sr. (uncles).

Community: Horace Axtell (Nez Perce); Norbert Hill, Jr. (Oneida); Bernard Ice (Lakota); Phil Lane, Sr. (Yankton Sioux);

Billy Frank, Jr. (Nisqually); Truman Picard (Colville) .



Michael Soule Professor Emeritus, University of California-Santa Cruz Co-founder, The Society of Conservation Biology

Introduction L. Scott Mills, Assistant Professor of Wildlife Population Ecology It is my profound honor to introduce tonight's speaker, Dr. Michael Soule. Dr. Soule grew up in the Chaparral Country of Southern California where he watched

Southern California go from fairly continuous tracts of chaparral to a fragmented, paved area. That experience had a profound effect on his career..

Dr. Soule conducted his Ph.D. research at Stanford University under Paul Erlich. During the course of his career he was a professor at UC-San Diego and at the University of Michigan. In 1988 he began to build the environmental studies program at the University of California-Santa Cruz. He retired this spring and I think colleagues across the country would agree that he succeeded in building an excellent program, and still builds significantly on his scientific work.

Dr. Soule is best known as a pioneer in conservation biology. In 1978 he co-organized the field 's first international conference. In I985 he helped to form the Society of Conservation Biology, and served as its first president. He has produced more than /00 scientific publications, and many books including three or four texts on conservation biology.

Please welcome Dr. Michael Soule.

T here are many reasons to protect creation, to protect life on earth. There are obviously utilitarian or instrumental values in nature. We rely on nature for

. food and fiber and many other commodities . There is also the intrinsic value of nature. One could give a lecture on the differences between intrinsic and utilitar-ian values, a subject I know many forestry students are forced to absorb during their ethics class .

Here are my views, then, about the importance of our public lands and all of the nature that is included in those lands in North America and the world. I have come to the conclusion that the major function of the US Forest Service and the National


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Michael Soule

Park Service is to protect, is to preserve the American spirit from the rot of urban consumerism.

If that seems like an extraordinary statement, remember that the historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that wilderness-or I should say the frontier, that unbroken line beyond which there is nothing but space into which to settle and make your life-was the crucible of the American character.

What is the American character? Well it is hard to say, when everybocly you live with is American. I have spent some time overseas, which gave me some perspective on what it is . It includes an exceptional level of individual initiative, and organizational ability, which you don't appreciate until you've lived in another culture. It includes the idea that we can do anything, including put people on the moon, and also includes creativity, the ideas of equality, of self-determination, and the democratic institutions for which this nation is famous. In addition, there is our optimism, the idea that things will change for the better if we work hard. The frontier gave people the feeling for 150 years that there is always hope, that they could always go and settle and start again, and not be enslaved, or forced to work for somebody else.

In 1890 the US Census Bureau declared the end of the American frontier, a defining moment for this country. It was also a defining decade. It was the decade in which the bison were massacred. It was the decade in which market hunters

·exterminated the passenger pigeon. It was the decade in which the Carolina parakeet, -our only native parrot, was hunted to extinction (Or virtual extinction. The last one died in a zoo around 1910.). It is also the decade when many other animals were nearly driven to extinction, particularly many ungulates and forbearers .

Even so, there was still the wilderness that reminded us of the frontier, though in a fragmented way. These islands of wilderness had many of the qualities of experience that our ancestors were able to derive from the frontier. What is wilderness? My friend David Johns who was the first executive director of the Wildlands Project, studied the etymology of the word wilderness and discovered that it means "self-ruled land," land that rules itself.

But it has also been defined in other ways, by many other terms and adjectives such as bigness, untrammeled spaces, and large sometimes ferocious animals. Wilderness is challenging, wilderness means the absence of permanent occupation. It is also the experience of solitude and the heightened awareness that comes with long periods of solitude. In more tangible terms wilderness is salmon, it is goshawks , it is grizzly bears, and wolves.

Now we are about to experience the end of wilderness. Not only is the frontier gone, but wilderness is becoming increasingly endangered too. The thing that symbolizes and causes the termination of wilderness, the one thing that is most important in the death of wilderness, is access. Motorized access . It is the automobile, the ATV, the outboard motor, the snowmobile, the helicopter landing pad or the airplane landing strip-these things are causing and defining the end of wilderness. Or, as Doug Peacock says, the beginning of "syphilization." Roads are daggers thrust into the guts of wildlands.

Wilderness everywhere is being destroyed by access . We think of access as a



positive attribute, but if you love the wild it is not a positive attribute. Along with the disappearance of wilderness comes extinction of species , and disappearance of ecosystems. Let me show a few slides now about extinction to remind us of some of the major events .

First of all, most of the world species live in tropical rainforests, though temperate zones have a lot of species, too. World forests and the tropics once comprised about 12 percent of earth's land surface. They now are down to about six percent. Most of that has been lost since the end of the Second Woild War. At the rate at which rain forests are being cut, and because they contain the majority of plant and animal species , it is thought that there will be a mass extinction of species . It is beginning now, and it will be over in about 40 years when all that remains of the rich tropical rainforest will be isolated national parks and other reserves .

Our natural habitats are vanishing in other places, too. I happen to come from California, which is a much-beleaguered but beautiful state where two-thirds of the old growth forest is already gone, and the rest is going quite quickly. Ninety percent of redwood forests are already gone, 90 percent of the coastal sage scrub has disappeared under pavement and housing developments , 90 percent of the wetlands, mostly in the central valley, are being converted to farmland , and 90 to 95 percent of the riparian areas of the state have been converted to other uses .

California is always ahead of every other state in many ways, both good and bad , and certainly, in the loss of habitat. California is now in the end game. As you know, the rules change in the end game, but developers, of course, don't want to admit the rules need to be changed and that is why there is much conflict about multi-species conservation plans and the Endangered Species Act in California.

Since about the year 1600, when Europeans began to explore and colonize much of the world, several hundred species of vertebrates have gone extinct. One of the first of these was the dodo, a large turkey-sized bird found on the Mauritius Islands . Shortly thereafter in about the year 1700 the 1 0-foot-tall , 1,1 00-pound elephant bird went extinct in Madagascar for the same reasons as the dodo: They were flightless birds that couldn't escape the sailors who were looking for fresh meat to take back aboard their ships.

Throughout the Pacific Islands dozens of species of snails have gone extinct because of habitat destruction, because of the introduction of animals like pigs , and other reasons. In Hawaii itself dozen of species have been driven to extinction by habitat destruction, first by the Polynesians who colonized the islands (I think around the year 400) and later by European colonization. More than half the native birds are extinct.

In New Zealand, the giant moas, another group of flightless birds, went extinct between 1500 to 1850. Some of these were 13 feet tall. They were eliminated when the Polynesians discovered that they were also a rich source of protein.

The tsunami of extinction is now flooding the continents. In North America there are thousands of species on the verge of extinction, particularly in states that have many endemic species-primarily California, Texas, and Florida.

Northern states contain fewer local endemic species . Montana isn't in bad shape because Montana doesn't have a very large human population, and because,


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Michael Soule

like most northern states , it doesn't have many endemic species.

"So what?" some people say. Many spokespersons for property rights and Wise Use movements around the country say, "Extinction is a normal, natural process, so what is all the shouting about?" These sentiments are also echoed by Rush Limbaugh.

I will tell you what all the shouting is about. In 40 years the rate of extinction of species is expected by Stuart Pimm, Ed Wilson and other to be about 7S'per day. That includes plants, insects and larger animals. Now, this is a high rate. Is it an abnormal rate? The answer is yes . The normal rate of extinction for vertebratesanimals with backbones-is about one species per million years.

There have been hundreds-of extinctions, as I have said, since the year 1600. Of these we think that maybe one or two might have been natural extinctions: The rest have all been caused by human beings. So, one point is that the current rate of extinction is abnormally high , and it has been caused almost exclusively by human activities . Now, is this a reason to get upset? Is this a reason to rant and rave and shout? Well, I think so.

Let me suggest a simile. The normal rate of human mortality of older white males may be about 50 older white males per 1,000 every year. If that rate increases by the same order of magnitude that the extinction rate has inc.reased , or

. even much less-say a factor of 20, rather than 500-that would mean 1,000 older white males would die every year out of every 1,000. There wouldn't be any of us left before long. So is that something to get upset about? Damn right-if you are an older white male. (fhe same thing applies to every other age group, by the way.)

So the point is that rates are important. Yes , extinction is a natural process. Yes , 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct. But if you increase the rate by a factor of 500, soon there won't be any species left.

Now our conservative critics will say, "Well, so what? There have been major extinction episodes in the past and the earth has recovered." Yes, the earth has recovered. We don 't have dinosaurs any more but we still have a few large animals left. But remember that it took about 10 million years for the process of recovery to be almost complete . Ten million years Is a long time to go without a lot of species.

In addition to that, the conditions required for the recovery of species diversity on a planet are such that we are precluding it from happening now. Humans now exploit approximately half the solar energy that i·s made available by photosynthesis either directly by agriculture, or indirectly through livestock which consume photosynthetic products and convert them into meat that we consume. Humans are basically occupying virtually all the arable land on the planet now. And that · means, for technical reasons, that there is no space left on which the speciation of large animals can occur. Evolution is essentially over for large animals until we release the space back to nature that is required for speciation to continue. So not only is the extinction rate going up, but the possible means of recovery through speciation is virtually precluded.

One of main causes of this, as you know, is the human population explosion.

The University of Montana School of Forestry I 996 Plum Creek Lecture Series


The major causes of the disappearance of nature (or extinction) are human population growth, technological innovation, and the globalization of commerce. I don't have time to go into all of these but let me just point out that the invention of the chain saw has probably done more to destroy tropical rainforests and other · habitats than anything beside the bulldozer. And the rate at which technology has advanced in commercial fishing is also quickly destroying many, many habitats in the oceans.

Globalization of commerce means that land is being coiwerted from forests and other habitats all over the tropics to produce commodities which we consume every day. We get fresh flowers, fresh fish and shrimp, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruit all winter long because habitats are being converted worldwide to produce those commodities so we can enjoy these fresh luxuries. How many of us are willing to give up eating fresh fruit and vegetables in the winter to save habitats in the tropics? That is a hard choice. It is a sacrifice. It is one of those life-style changes which we talk about glibly in our classes but to which very few of us are actually willing to commit.

The more direct causes of habitat destruction and extinction of species are the evil quintet of extinction: 1) habitat or ecosystem loss or fragmentation, 2) pollution (which you know about in the Clark Fork here), 3) over-exploitation of habitats such as over-fishing, 4) the introduction of exotic pathogens and species from all over the world that are invading habitats and causing massive disruption of ecosystems, and 5) global climate change. The major cause right now is habitat destruction and fragmentation. In 10 or 20 years the introduction of exotic species could move to the number one spot.

""I:"here are many kinds of habitat destruction. Here is a partial list: farming, industrial forestry, commercial fishing, livestock grazing, mining, deforestation, water projects, road construction, aquaculture in coastal ecosystems-particularly in the tropics where mangrove forests and swamps and coastal estuaries are being converted into shrimp ponds so that we and the Japanese and the Europeans can eat cheap shrimp all year long. And these coastal habitats, which are essential nursery grounds for fisheries and which contain many endangered species, are all being sacrificed to maintain our high standard of living and consumption. Also, recreational development including golf courses, ski resorts and other resorts is a major factor. Bungalow blight or, as we say in the west, ranchette pox, is also a major kind of-habitat destruction. Don't we all wish we could have a summer cabin in the mountains next to a beautiful stream or lake? When we all get our dream, there will no habitat left for grizzly bears or wolves or mountain lions. And because the animals that once lived there will be attracted to our garbage, or to our dogs as food, they will have to be shot as a threat to our life-style. It is all so depressing, isn't it? A student asked me today how I deal with that. It is a serious problem. I used to give lectures like this one to undergraduates in Santa Cruz and found out that students were quitting environmental studies in droves because they were so depressed by lectures of this type.

Regarding roads: As I said, the absence of roads is the defining criterion for wilderness or for wildlands and waters. I was asked by the Canadian Forest Service to work with a group of foresters and ecologists to come up with indicators of


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Michael Soule

biological diversity and the health of biological diversity in Canadian forests. We concluded that if you could pick only one indicator of the health of Canadian forests it would have to be roads- that is , their absence.

There are many examples of habitat destruction: coastal habitat destruction in San Francisco Bay by the salt extraction industry, urban destruction of coastal sage scrub habitat in San Diego, habitat destruction in the Amazon Basin to grow cheap beef for McDonalds and Burger King. Roads cause many problem~ for wildlands besides access. Along each road there is a belt, an edge, in which the forest or the habitat gets drier because of the winds that can blow much more easily along the roads, drying out the nearby habitat. This increases the frequency of blowdowns. Weeds move along the verges of roads and highways entering natural habitats, causing a lot of problems. Invasive exotic species also enter along roads.

Logging roads sometimes fail during rainstorms, causing the siltation of the streams nearby. If those streams are important for the spawning of salmon, it is a major cause of the decrease and decline of salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. Roads also lead to a much higher incidence of poaching, because most poachers don't move out of sight of their pickup truck.

Roads also lead to much higher rates of predation on birds' nests . It is obvious that lots of predators use the edges along roads to forage and to enter forest and

· other habitats to prey on bird nests. Among these predators are jays and crows, raccoons· and foxes, and house cats in more urbanized areas.

Noise pollution along highways also prevents many birds from breeding. (This is some recent work in Europe.) And as I said, erosion and siltation affect water quality and the quality of spawning grounds for many fish in rivers and streams. Roads also lead to the direct mortality of animals: You all have seen a lot of roadkill deer. Roads act as major barriers to the movement of wildlife, and many animals are struck attempting to cross freeways.

So there is no escaping it: It is humanity that is causing the extinction crisis. Why? In economics its called enlightened self interest. In the field of evolution its called natural selection for fitness maximization. So if you look at it from the pointof-view of economics, or Darwinian biology, its all comes to the same conclusion: All species have evolved to maximize their reproduction. In humans that means maximizing the accumulation of status in resources, unless we are enlightened. I only know one or two enlightened people. I am not one of them. This is what is happening to the world, as a result of mushrooming numbers of human beings.

What are we going to do about it? Well, the field of conservation biology has come up with some principles that help us design systems of natural areas that can do much to mitigate the consequences of our massive hegemony of the land and the waters of the world. One of the major scientific principles is the species relationship which many of you already discovered in your classes. The idea elaborated by McCarthy and Wilson in the early 1960s that the number of species in a given area of land or water reaches some maximum equilibrium number as a function of the size of the area. As the area increases the number of species that can be contained also increases. But if we reduce the area of land available to critters, then the species number must also fall. So that, for example, if a patch on


The Wild lands Project: Its Method and Agenda

the mainland were cut off from contact with all the surrounding plants and animals, then the number of species would fall. Much of early-day conservation biology was based on this particular insight.

Habitat destruction leads to habitat fragmentation. In Southern California we have studied a lot of the birds, rodents and the plants in these habitats. Here is a species area curve for the number of chaparral-requiring birds in about 35 patches of these habitats. You see a nice species area curve: The bigger the patch of habitat, the more species there are.

But it is a little more complicated than that. We also could figure out, using old aerial photographs, how long each of these patches had been isolated. And not even taking into account the area, you can see that patches isolated for only 10 years by development still have five or six species of native chaparral-requiring birds. But over time patches lose their species for several reasons. Back in the old days of conservation biology, Hal Salwasser was one of the first to recognize the significance of this and asked a group of us to come together with Forest Service biologists to come up with a better understanding of the facts affecting the viability of species in isolated patches. That led to a minor revolution in conservation biology in the early 1980s.

One of the things that we discovered in these California remnants of coastal sage scrub and chaparral was that those patches which were still being visited by coyotes had more surviving native birds in them than the patches without coyotes. That caused us to scratch our heads for awhile until we suddenly realized why that was: Coyotes love to eat cats. Cats do more damage to bird populations than any native predator. The reason is that they are subsidized. Cats are recreational hunters, well fed ones . They hunt in massive numbers every day for a little sport in the canyons and can destroy an entire population of spotted towhees, wren tits, Benwick's wrens or quail in a year or less.

The number of native plant species also goes down over time, and the number of species of exotic plants obviously increases over time. Here we see some ice plant, which is native to South Africa, invading the coastal dunes of central California between Monterey and Santa Cruz. And here on the island of Hawaii we see South African grasses invading the forest. These grasses are extremely fire-conductive. The first fire destroys all the understory and kills most of the trees. The second fire kills the rest of the trees, and in a few years the native forest, on which the native birds are dependent, is converted to an exotic grassland. Exotic animals are also causing habitat destruction throughout the world.

Recommendations: In general, bigger areas are better than small ones . Large undivided areas are generally, but not always, better than subdivided small areas . T.he presence of large so-called "keystone carnivores" generally benefits wild areas . Internal fragmentation provides access for cats and foxes and raccoons and possums and skunks to almost every patch, every part of this area. So we must also guard against internal fragmentation of remaining remnants by corridors and roads. Corridors linking protected areas or remnants visually are also important in maintaining the integrity of these areas and providing for minimum viable populations of threatened species.


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Michael Sou le

Now these are just recommendations and it is dangerous to begin to think that after hearing a lecture like this, that one is a certified conservation biologist because factors differ where context is important, and it is always a good idea to ask somebody like Scott Mills to come and advise you on problems of this kind.

Let me now say a few words about how these ideas are being applied and get back to the idea of wilderness that I began with. It is a century since the closing of the American frontier. Several years ago some people were beginning to, realize that not only had we lost the frontier, but we were also on the verge of losing the rest of the wilderness, too. And if we think (getting back to the idea I started with) that those qualities of the American character that were defined and created in the crucible of the frontier could still be created in a somewhat diminished way by wilderness, it is a serious matter losing lynx, and fisher, jaguar, grizzly, wolves and wolverines and many other species with them. We realized that the National Parks- even our largest ones like Yellowstone-are too small to maintain viable populations of the larger carnivores such as grizzly bear and wolves. And we realized through the work of Bill Nemark and others that our largest National Parks were losing species before our eyes, and that the loss was a function, just as island biogeography says, of the size of the areas.

We also realized that our wilderness areas were becoming increasingly isolated by development, so that the movement of animals among them was becoming increasing difficult. So, the fabric of lands and clean waters that once was America the beautiful was coming unraveled and needed help. It must be restored. It had to be rewoven, and this reweaving of the wilderness of north America requires a new kind of organization, a new kind of relationship, a marriage if you will between science and advocacy, a kind of Manhattan Project for the land .

So we-mainly Reed Noss, Dave Foreman, George Wuerthner, Mitch Freeman and a lot of other people and !-decided to form a new organization based on the idea that good science is necessary to maintain wilderness values, those values of life, of biodiversity, of creation that we wanted to protect, and that most Americans want to protect. We realized that it was necessary to go about the business of conservation in a different way. We have fallen into the pattern in north America of being reactive to problems rather than proactive in the conservation movement. A developer proposed a development project, and the local chapter of the Sierra Club or some other group would form to fight this development. After two or three years of struggle there would be a compromise, and the developer would get 50% and the community would get what was left. Five years later another developer would come in and want to develop what was left. And little by little we would lose what was remaining of our precious natural values.

This pattern was repeated over and over again and the initiative was always with the developer. We decided to develop a new way of doing business, a new vision that would inspire people with hope and show everyone that it was possible to reweave the American landscape. So we set out to create this compelling vision of a future America on a continental scale, from the Yukon to the Panama Canal. Instead of going about it in the traditional way of conservation organizations, which is to set up the organization inside the beltway and lobby Congress to spend money to protect wildlands, we decided to work with grass roots conservation



organizations throughout the continent, and to facilitate the drafting of wildland reserve plans for their regions which could be put together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle until the entire continent had reserve plans which were sciencebased and peer-reviewed and economically sound as well, if possible. That would create a network of wildlands throughout the continent developed by a network of grassroots activities throughout the continent. We called these projects Wildland Proposals and the organization is The Wildlands Project.

The Wildlands Project is a huge organization. We have a· staff of five people: We have an executive director, we have an office manager, we have a community relations person, we have Dave Foreman going around giving talks to encourage groups around the country to organize, and we are now hiring an ecologist. Our job is not to write these plans from the top down . Our job is to provide our cooperating groups around the country with the technical support, the fund-raising support, and the organizational support they need to develop local, regional wildlands proposals which are then eventually published, and which we believe will set the agenda for what is right for North America over the next 20 or 30 years. We see this as a long term project.

Now I have gotten into trouble for saying this before but I will say it again: Clearcuts of old growth forest are an anathema to conservationists . Once conservationists have lost a battle and old growth forest is clearcut they feel that their job is over because there is nothing else to do. In the wildlands project we have a longer time scale. We look at a clearcut and say in 50 years that could be good habitat, or that could be a good corridor for the movement of wildlife from one core area to another. So our approach is affirmative, positive, very long term, and huge in space.

One of our tasks is to ensure that the natural dynamic of disturbance continues in core areas that are large enough to contain these processes, and to maintain the mosaic of natural habitats that is necessary to protect all the species in an area. Our systems will guard against global warming, too. Wildlife corridors are necessary to facilitate the movement of birds and small mammals.

One of the first proposals of this type was a concept map that Reed Noss did for Florida. About 15 years ago when it was produced, it was thought to be entirely unrealistic. After all, Florida was growing at an amazing rate. But the citizens of Florida voted a $3 billion bond issue to buy habitat to develop a system of protected areas including corridors.

In this part of the country the Alliance for the Wild Rockies originally produced a wildlands proposal. Now, many groups from the Yellowstone to the Yukon are using GIS, and the principles of conservation biology to produce a robust scientifically defensible reserve design that will protect wildlands throughout the region.

The Wildlands Project needs your help, it needs your knowledge. We need to begin the work now, but this is a long-term process involving many generations of people. We are confident that Americans and Canadians and Mexicans have the generosity of spirit and the greatness of heart to accomplish what needs to be done, and to protect these values for all of us and for our future generations.

Thank you very much .


Michael Soule

Questions:

You mentioned ecological depression, but you never discussed the cure.

We get depressed because we constantfy read, so I don't read most of the newsletters I get in the mail. I don't watch television either. That is the first step. The second step is to accept the idea that we are involved in a multigenerational project to save life on earth and that none of us alone can do it and we <;:ertainly can't do it in our lifetime. It is going to take a long time, but also remember that 100 years is one-ten thousandth of one one-hundredth of the lifetime of most species. It's not important evolutionarily. Our job is to save what we can and protect the habitat for all those species that we can save.

We have to think in the proper time scale. Aldo Leopold spoke of thinking like a mountain, adopting a time scale that is relevant to the process. If you are trying to stop a freight train you don't think about seconds. You think about minutes. If you are trying to end a process of extinction that is taking 100 to 200 years to unfold , you have to realize that stopping that process will take a generation or more. So just accept the idea that you can't do it all in your lifetime.

The architects and masons who built the European cathedrals in the Middle Ages realized that the process would take 200 years , yet they started anyway. They weren't attached to finishing it in their lifetime, and that is the way we have to look at some of these problems. We can't be attached to completion. Just participating in this wonderful project of saving life on earth should be sufficient reward .

Moreover, working with other people on a project like the Wildlands Project is very inspiring. The people you meet, the fund-raisers , the media people, the biologists , the advocacy people, the activists, are all doing their part in building our cathedral.

Another reason for depression is the belief that our institutions and policies are formidable. We forget that they are always changing. For example, in the 1970s a law was passed in the United States, the Endangered Species Act , which was the most revolutionary law in terms of change in values that (I think) has ever been passed. It certainly is at least as remarkable as the Civil Rights Act and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which granted women suffrage. The ESA was the first instance of a major nation granting legal status to other species, or protecting the rights to survival to other species.

Things change. Sometimes there are long periods when nothing seems to be happening, but then the Berlin Wall comes down. So the struggle has to go on for a long time, and sometimes it is like beating your head against the wall, but eventually, if you are patient , the pendulum swings back, and all-of-a-sudden there is remarkable progress.

What can we do about the human population explosion?

36

Along with the increases in human population-which is a serious problem for every aspect of the environment-there is also the worldwide trend of human migration from the countryside to cities. Even in our own country, large areas of the Midwest and the far west are becoming depopulated because farmers and


The Wildlands Project Its Method and Agenda

ranchers can no longer support themselves in agriculture. So there are constantly opportunities to buy land and obtain necessary parcels to link together mountain ranges in the west. So even though the number of people is increasing, episodic opportunities arise.

Most people are gravitating towards the cities , which in a way is unfortunate. On the positive side, however, most of people who donate money to conservation organizations live in big cities. The key, I think, is long termplanning to develop proposals that are inherently right.

Regarding the American character, one has to take into account the Euro-Christian and capitalist mind-sets, the orientation toward self-gratification, and tendencies in America that are negative. How do you handle this?

As you suggest I didn't discuss those negative aspects of the American character which are part of the cause of the current crisis . We are seeing now bizarre extremist interpretations of independence and liberty. We see the religious adherence to the values of capitalism and the free market which are myths but nevertheless seem to dominate our lives. Every time we turn on the television we see nothing but "Consume! Consume!" So there is a dark side to the American character as well. That is something we have to live with.

You talked about preservation. What about habitat restoration?

There are lands in this country which are now derelict, available, and inexpensive. People have suggested returning bison to derelict prairie land in Oklahoma, Nebraska and other states as a way of restoring habit, and at the same time providing economic benefit for neighboring communities. I think.ecological restoration will replace conservation biology in 20 or 30 years because all the land it is possible to conserve and protect as wildlands will have been protected. Our job then will be to restore other lands that have been cut over, over-farmed, overgrazed , and overexploited.

I suspect that you know a great deal that you have not shared with us which would probably be more interesting that what you have shared. I would like to ask you what is it you see in the decades to come, and in particular with respect to the destruction of the cleansing mechanisms which cleanse the atmosphere of the man-made pollutants. So what is going to be happening? What do you see happening over the next 100 to 200 years?

Obviously I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know all the problems that will occur. Right now the latest scare is the endocrine disrupters that are causing feminization of male animals-and possibly human males as wellthroughout the world. These are chemicals like PCBs and DOE and other c~mpounds which are in our environment. There is always something new to worry about, but we can't possibly predict. If you ask an economist to tell you what the Dow-Jones is going to do tomorrow, he can't tell you. If an economist who is a student of the limited behavior of just one species can't make a prediction for tomorrow about something as simple as the Dow-Jones average, then how can an ecologist who works with hundreds of species and their complex nonlinear interactions possibly predict what is going to happen as the climate warms , or as the ozone thins, or as we put endocrine disrupters into the environment?


Michael Soule

How do you feel about using captive propagation to save endangered species which- if they recover-would have little suitable habitat?

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I was on the condor recovery team. You are correct to a degree that there is limited habitat left , but there is some. The difficult thing about reintroducing many endangered species is they have lost their culture while they have been in captive propagation and they don't know how to kill things, they don't know how to escape predators , and they don't know how to breed in some cases.

For example, when golden lion tamarins (a small monkey) were first released into the forests of Brazil, they would watch as a snake slowly crawled toward them-all the while thinking, "Well isn't that an interesting phenomenon?" The people reintroducing them forgot to train them to avoid snakes. Gradually we are learning from bad experiences like that. Condors are very curious and are fascinated by human antics, so they fly down and land near humans to see what the hell they are doing. So there are numerous problems. Most can be overcome, but your question is a good one. We are finding it increasingly difficult to reintroduce species that have lost their culture in captivity. But captive propagation is a necessary backup strategy. Without it we would lose much of the megafauna over the next 100 years.

Missoula, Montana October 16, 1996



Ross S. Whaley President, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Introduction Perry J Brown, Dean, School of Forestry This afternoon I want to introduce a visionary natural resources leader who inspires

and leads his profession. Ross Whaley is a forest economist, educated at the University of Michigan and

Colorado State University. But he is much more than a forest economist, and his talents were recognized very early in his career. In the mid-1960s he came to Utah State University as a young assistant professor who had briefly been a Forest Service researcher. He was soon head of the department of forest science.

By the early 1970s he was associate dean of the College of Forestry and Natural Resources at Colorado State University. He then moved east to become head of the department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning-a strange spot for a forest economist-at the University Massachusetts. Eventually, that school appointed him dean of the College of Food and Natural Resources.

Next, the USDA Forest Service selected Ross as the director of Forest Economics Research in Washington, DC In 1984 he became president of the State University of New York, College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry at Syracuse, his current position. Ross has also filled several important positions in professional organizations, including the presidency of the Society of American Foresters.

Please join me in welcoming to Missoula my good friend and colleague Ross Whaley, who will discuss sustaining natural resources in a global context.

I t is an honor to speak at the Plum Creek Lecture series, to meet students, and to chat with faculty. A missed connection in Salt Lake City eliminated the chance of a relaxed conversation with colleagues , and a change in the lecture schedule

obliterated a time for a good give and take with graduate students . The lecture seems to be what is left. Let us hope that it is a good one or all that will be left will be the honor of the invitation and that will be fleeting, I am sure.


Ross S. Whaley

When I am asked to speak, it is usually about the future, and I am often introduced as a futurist. I'm not. Rather, I think of myself as someone very much grounded in the present, who reads backwards for an understanding of history, and tries to think forward . The more I examine what is influencing the way we manage our natural resources, the more convinced I am that it is things beyond our borders. Much of what impacts Missoula occurs elsewhere in Montana. Much influencing Montana originates in Washington, D. C. And much of what is influencing the United States comes from beyond our borders. That is why my comments this afternoon will focus on the global context in which we find ourselves as resource managers.

As I talk about changes which we see around us and which we can anticipate continuing on into the future , I want to build on two propositions which I mentioned to the IUFRO Congress last year and add two more which are more personal opinion and are particularly directed to the forestry fraternity and forestry educators . These latter two are based more on opinion than experience and, therefore, are more controversial and subject to debate.

The four propositions are:

• The Period from 1990 to 95 brought about a change in global attitudes about forests and forestry unprecedented in the past half century. .

• Signals abound that over the next few decades forestry will be practiced under social and economic conditions which are significantly different than today.

• Foresters can play a critical but limited leadership role in shaping future policies for forest lands if we understand what it means to be a forester.

• Forestry education is quite good at preparing students for the next decade, but may need some fine tuning to prepare students for the one after that. Isn't that what we should be doing?

Proposition I

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Global attitudes about forests changed in the period from 1990 to 1995.

While there have always been changes in the expectations for our forestseconomic development at one time, materials for a war effort the next, pressures for maintaining aesthetic opportunities or biological integrity during another period-the past half decade has coalesced these divergent interests into a more inclusive process with more comprehensive emerging policies than ever before in the history of forestry. This more complex, more comprehensive approach is subsumed, perhaps poorly, under the term sustainability. It is comprehensive in several ways not heretofore seen in forest policy development:

a. it has both domestic and international dimensions; b. it considers both short-run needs and long-run potential; c. it calls for simultaneous consideration of economic, environmental and com

munity improvement objectives; d. it involves a policy ·development and implementation framework which brings

people together in a negotiating setting rather than a winner-take-all adversarial setting.

Some might argue that this attention to sustainability is another political fad which will pass as fast as it arrived. I do not think so.



There is considerable evidence that this is likely to be more than a short-lived , international, political ploy to obfuscate serious land use conflicts:

• Consider the large number of heads of state at the United Nations Conference on Economic Development (UNCED) conference in 1992.

• Consider the seriousness with which many countries or groups of countries have taken the follow-up responsibilities to UNCED as witnessed by such activities as the "Helsinki process" and "Montreal process" aimed at developing internationally agreed upon Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Forestry, or the attention to the same concerns by the tropical countries.

• In the US, there has been a re-evaluation of the role of government-owned forest lands, and the forest products industry is making major changes in the way it manages forests.

This is only a partial list of activities which suggest a change in attitudes about forests and forestry by both government and private enterprise.

Even with these changes, some people are convinced that we have reached the carrying capacity of the globe, and that further economic development is inherently not sustainable. They believe that economic growth and the technological advances which have occurred are primarily responsible for global warming, acid rain, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, polluted water, and conclude that it is necessary to stop economic growth, curtail technological change, and reduce consumption in North America, Western Europe and Japan to achieve sustainability. When proposed by the academic community, this view is often referred to as "a steady state economy." While this concept is attractive, it is an abstraction which eludes attainment. The most realistic alternative is a commitment to sustainable development-even though this may not be ultimately attainable if world population approaches ten or eleven billion people. The concept of sustainable development is easily understood, even if implementation is difficult and ultimate success unattainable . It is, in its simplest form, "economic activities thoughtfully and intelligently managed in such a way that they do not destroy or significantly impoverish the natural support systems on which they or other economic activities depend" (conversation with Jack Manno) .

I conclude that the concept of sustainable development is here to stay, whether called by that name or something else. This leads me to :

Proposition II Signals abound that over the next two decades forestry will have to be practiCed under social and economic conditions which are significantly different than today.

· While there are dozens of forces which will ultimately and irrevocably reshape the societies in which we live, I would like to mention the five which I think will have more impact on the forestry enterprise than any of the others . In examining future trends , I have chosen to look forward approximately two to three decades .


Population

Ross S. Wha ley

It is unnecessary for me to dwell on population growth to this audience which is more aware than most of the potential impacts of demographic change on forest products demand, and pressures on resource extraction of all kinds .

Though global population growth rates have declined over the past two decades, world population increases by about 90 million people each year-the equivalent of adding another Canada every four months, another US every twoand-one-half years, another India every nine years, or another China every 12 years. In the next 25 years, more than one-third of the population growth will be in five countries: China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia. The obvious point is that the pressures on resourc~s will increase substantially, and will be distributed quite unevenly.

In 30 years, even the population of the US, growing at less than one percent annually, will increase by the number of people currently in New York, California, Florida, and Northern New England.

Another influence on forest products demand is the increased urbanization of the world's population. In 1990, 13 cities worldwide had populations exceeding 10 million. Within the next 15 years it is estimated that there will be 26 . By 2025, 60 percent of the world's population will likely dwell in urban areas.

Even more significant for forest products demand is that the total world economy is growing faster than the population. While population doubled between 1950 and 1990, the global economy increased five-fold. World Bank estimates indicate that within the next 30 years average per capita income worldwide could reach the level of the richest one-fifth of the world in 1990.

Economists and demographers will certainly differ in their estimates of economic and population growth. But, on average, world markets will grow, economies will grow, and the conflicts over economic growth and maintaining the highest quality living environment will increase.

International Trade

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Though some countries or sectors within countries will be strong advocates for expanded international trade and others will be protectionists , there is an irreversible trend toward expanding trade. Governments prone toward protectionist policies will ultimately be thwarted by the increasingly powerful trans-national corporations which benefit from free trade. Of the top 100 economies in the world, half are countries and half are corporations. Mitsubishi is bigger than Indonesia. Ford is bigger than Turkey. Wal-Mart is bigger than Poland. The top 200 companies account for 28 percent of global economic activity.

Even the concept of balance of trade becomes confounded by the fact that more than a third of global trade is intra-corporate (i.e., firm A in one country sells to firm B, a subsidiary, in another country). What does foreign made mean anyway? Is it where the product is manufactured? (Thus, a Honda made in Tennessee is domestic.) Is it where the parts come from, where the corporate headquarters is located, or where the stockholders live? The movement of resources and products in a global market emphasizes the need to devise ways to expand economically in


Susta ining Natura l Resources in a Globa l Context

a sustainable manner. But, at the same time, globalization of trade makes sustainable development more difficult to achieve because each country values sustainability differently.

A major result of increasing international trade and the redistribution of investment over more countries will be the emergence of a global middle class. The emergence of this middle class will both result from growing international trade and also be the cause for its further expansion. Unfortunate_ly, there will be some parts of the world which may not participate in this overall economic gain.

Changes in Manufacturing Processes

Markets will be larger, and, for a variety of products, unprecedented. In times past, mass production worked when the products coming off the end of the assembly line were essentially all the same. The resulting cost savings made it possible (in developed nations) for many people to have a car, a house, and an abundance of clothing- as long as the car, house and clothes were quite similar to those of their neighbors. The advent of the application of computers to both design and manufacturing processes has improved the efficiency of smaller manufacturing firms, and has allowed larger firms to increase the variety of products they produce. Heidi and Alvin Toffler describe this as "the demassifying of society." The impacts of this-decentralizing manufacturing, reducing capital intensity, and allowing manufacturing of specialized products in remote locations- is interesting in and of itself, and worthy of a more thorough discussion than I will give it here.

Today I want to emphasize that the forest products industry has lagged behind others in product diversity. In your and my countries, for example, almost all residential construction uses the same wood materials-boards nominally 2" thick, 4" wide and 8' long, and sheets of plywood or particle board 4' wide and 8' long. Other countries have their standard products, which though efficient to produce, may not keep pace with manufacturing changes demanded by society. As I will point out later, that will need to change in the not-too-distant future if wood products is to continue to play a major role in residential construction.

Changing Energy Demand

During the 1970s, when oil was approaching $50 per barrel on the international market, considerable attention was paid to improving energy conservation. Western Europe and Japan were leaders in improving energy efficiency in manufacturing and transportation. The rigor with which industrial nations approached energy conservation declined as oil prices approached $17 per barrel. The industrial nations of North American and Europe appear to be more sanguine about energy costs.

But what is on the horizon? The steady increase in oil consumption by the " ... emerging economies of Asia accounts for 70 percent of the new global demand for petroleum. At its current growth rate of five percent per year, the Asian Pacific region will outstrip North America in energy consumption by 1999. Meanwhile consumption in the US, Europe and Japan has crept back to its highest level since 1979" (Fortune, March 20, 1995). While energy consumption in the developed


Ross S. Wha ley

world might decline over the next 30 years , it will likely more than triple in the rest of the world. Energy costs (which triggered the two worst recessions since 1945) are prone to increase sharply when demand pinches supply.

Changing Attitudes about the Forest

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At the risk of stretching some social observations a bit, I would like to speculate on the cause of changing public attitudes about the forest which w_ill influence laws, policies, and, ultimately, the way we do business in the future . People are recognizing that the behaviors which we so valued because they were key to the American Dream (and the Canadian or European Dream) are not giving us the satisfaction we hoped for. Yes, we have multiple cars, a home (or two), a richer variety of food for a smaller portion of our salary than others in the world , and we can therefore spend more of our income on luxuries. But, we have also seen a deterioration of the family, an increase in violent crime (particularly among youth) , and an increase in personal debt as a result of our seemingly insatiable appetite for material things. There now appears to be a desire for nonmaterial things which will bring us the joy that material goods were unable to deliver. Concerns for the environment, which may have a very sound base in science, have been reinforced by a search for values which transcend those tied to economic growth, and have as their foundation things which appeal to the soul, please our aesthetic sense, and satisfy our need to feel altruistic (particularly when· we don't see any.personal sacrifice).

This trend is temporally finite. Concern for the forest for aesthetic, spiritual , and nostalgic reasons will continue ov~r the next decade or two and then I am confused as to what might happen next. When advances in computer visualization result in virtual reality being reality, what will society's attitude be toward nature? Will it be increased concern and attention because it is the last vestige of our tie with the real world, or, on the other hand, will it be a total disregard for the natural world because the nature that we see on the screen, hear through the speakers , feel through the gloves, and perhaps even smell is more satisfying than that supplied by God (no bugs or rainy days unless we program them)?

To summarize the second proposition, in two decades we will live in a world in which:

• the population is 45 percent larger and considerably more urbanized; • we will see the emergence of a global middle class with some unfortunate

pockets of poverty; • manufactured products will be more diverse, produced in smaller plants, and

traded internationally more aggressively than today; • energy supply will be a nagging problem; • people will continue to feel stronger and stronger about their forests as a tie

with nature and with the past; • and the apparent conflicts between economic growth and the environment will

increase.



Proposition Ill Foresters can play a critical but limited leadership role in shaping future policies for forest lands- if we understand what it means to be a forester.

A couple of years ago I was asked to speak to the New York Section of the Society of American Foresters on "Can Foresters Take the Lead?" "The lead in what," I asked . "The lead in some new conception of forestry," was the response. Well, if I am correct that there are influences out there in the world which are, and will continue to have, major impacts on forests, forest products, and forest management, then I guess I should have a view on the role of foresters in leading us through this change.

I would break the question into two parts. First, should we take the lead? If the answer to that is yes, then, can we take the lead? That is, do we have the stuff

First, should we take the lead? If we are talking about shaping citizens values regarding their forests, establishing a national vision of the over arching purpose for our forests, or determining national forest policy, I think the answer is probably "No." Our own values as to the purpose of our forests are probably more influenced by whether we are 25 years old or 55, who we work for, whether we are Easterners or Westerners, whether we are more influenced by an urban or a rural upbringing than by the fact that we have forestry degrees. Will foresters determine whether sustainability is the overarching element of a national attitude, or vision? No. Society at large will decide that-and I suggest that the decision has already been made by the forces of change mentioned in proposition II. We ignore them at the peril of becoming irrelevant.

But we should take the lead in determining how best to manage the land .to meet the national vision given to us if:

• we accept the challenge of using our training, our experience, our concern for the land to respond to changing national and societal values rather than resisting the change;

• we exert a leadership which is not exclusive. (I remember a discussion in which it was argued by some members of the Society of American Foresters that the group should lead in determining how sustainable forest health and long term forest productivity should be achieved in the US. I agreed heartily. Then someone asked whether we should involve other professions. How can that be answered any other way but of course?);

• we look beyond the boundaries of a single ownership. How do we have landscape level planning without the specter of big government imposing restrictions-which are perceived as anti economic growth and anti employmenton private lands;

• .we are honest about what we know and what we don 't know (e.g., with regard to ecosystem management we haven't even invented a language, never mind adequate measures .);

• we argue from the basis of our science rather than some conviction that webecause we are foresters-have particular rights to manage forests in our way;

• we refocus our research and education.


Ross S.Whaley

Can we take the lead? Of course. If past decades are an indicator, we will. In the short run, though, I'm nervous that we may be arguing over the wrong things .

Proposition IV

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Forestry education does an outstanding job of preparing students for the next decade, but may need some fine tuning to prepare students for the . one after that.

What do these changes have to do with forestry education? At the risk of getting into serious trouble with both my faculty and administrative colleagues, let me state that I think there may be some fundamental flaws that have crept into forestry education, or at least flaws compared to what forestry education should become. Much of this may stem from our need to keep our students abreast of the rapidly advancing developments in tools and techniques . I don't mean to suggest that contemporary tools and techniques are unimportant, but I think emphasis on them may have been at a cost which demands scrutiny and possibly course revisions . Let me give you some examples which I think are worth examining.

Have we become so preoccupied with computerized decision-making tools that we believe them, that we have illusions of precision when the real world simply is not that neat? Do we prefer to be precisely wrong rather than approximately right?

Have we become so preoccupied with quantitative, statistical measures that our personal ability to observe, describe and synthesize information has been dulled? I am always struck by the beauty of the authors' observations found in research papers which predate contemporary approaches to sample design , particularly in the fields of wildlife biology and entomology.

Have we become so preoccupied with maximizing net revenue (or rejecting maximizing net revenue) that we do not adequately consider the long run from a societal viewpoint (in a profession which has historically prided itself in taking the long view)? Learning to discount is not the equivalent of a long run view.

Have we become so preoccupied with a certain scale of viewing the world that we have the lost the ability to move among scales? For example, we look at the insect pest without considering the overall vigor of the stand. We look at timber without considering the larger ecological entity of which it is part. We look at the forest without considering that it may be an undervalued asset making the firm ripe for corporate raiders. We look at the firm without considering what it means to be a multinational conglomerate.

Is there any chance that we confuse sustained yield of a single product in a world where the future was assumed to be reasonably certain with sustainability of ecosystems and a future which is less certain and predictable?

I make these comments or raise the questions not as a self-appointed critic, or even as criticism, but as one struggling in his own domain, his own sphere of influence, to do what is right. Herman Daly once said ,"Right action in the world depends upon understanding how the world works, and knowing what is right." That is my quest .



Questions from the Audience

You sounded rather cynical about ecosystem management.

No, not at all. This is not terribly profound. I do not look at ecosystem management from the standpoint of a scientist. I don't have the skills to do that. I look at ecosystem management as a person who is periodically, in various ways, involved in policy issues. One of the problems that I have as a policy wonk dealing with ecosystem management is the lack of a vocabulary. When I think of sustained yield , there is a vocabulary that works for me. How do you measure something? Well there are board feet, cubic feet, and meters, so I have a measurement. I have a concept: non-declining even flow. Oh, I can understand that. I have a technique called financial maturity, I can understand that. Then I know what I can do on the ground is called harvest planning or harvest scheduling. So for all of its problems I can think of sustained yield in terms of vocabulary. Measures, concepts, statistical gimmicks and what I do in the ground. I have yet to discover the comparable vocabulary for ecosystem management that helps me embrace what that policy means. So I am not at all cynical in terms of that as a direction . I just think it has a lot of maturing that has to take place yet.

You talked about increasing populations, increasing energy resource demand, increasing economic development, and so on. What do you see for the future of not only the North American forests but the world?

Well, the obvious question-and I find it absolutely fascinating- amongst those economists who study that sort of thing you can go to the World Resources Institute, you can go to the Forest Service, you can go to any of a J!Umber of organizations and you look at their statistics and you come up with, "Oh my goodness! We have big problems." On the other hand you can go to equally credible organizations like Resources for the Future, and Jerry Tesco and we don't have any problems whatsoever. We can timber out the ying-yang. So it is really a difficult question. If you look at the productive capacity of soils worldwide, there is absolutely no problem. I mean the growth potential is simply there. If you look at that combined with the political, economic, and social structures to deliver it, then I think we've got interesting dilemmas.

What will ultimately happen, I think, is what has happened in the past: The rich will do very well and the poor will suffer. That to me is the biggest struggle of all, the differentiation between the poor and the rich. And while that has been a global concern of mine, it is increasingly becoming a domestic concern as well. Looking at the change in the US demographic structure and at the change in economic structure, I worry about our change from a country with a large middle class population, to a country with a smaller, elite, educated , computerized literate group, and a larger, less-educated , less-literate population. To me, that is the oneand perhaps only-bit of pessimism and cynicism that I see in the global , or domestic arena.


Ross S. Whaley

You talk about being able to understand context in global international terms all the way down to the forest stand level. Where do you draw the line in communicating more? There is a district ranger on a local ranger district here who was disappointed that the Eastside Interior Columbia Basin project wasn't able to determine cumulative effects on the steelhead population of cutting a tree on the district. Where do you draw the line.

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I hear two questions here. The first is, "How effective and useful is science in on-the-ground decision making?" In the academic community and in the policy arena we often forget that we march to different drummers, and that when we try to talk to each other we get in trouble.

In the academic/science community there is a continual search for truth. If a question cannot be answered precisely-but we think we could pin it down-we say, "If I just had a little more time, and a little more money, I could give you a better answer." I don't mean that as a put down-that is what the academic community should do in search of truth .

The policy arena demands an answer whether or not it is true. I do not mean to suggest that they want to operate on false premises. They are dealing with a calendar, and everybody is on their case for decisions on a schedule. So what is motivating the scientist is different from what motivates the policy person.

That brings us to the second part-that acrimony over differing policies makes it hard to work out solutions . The commodity/production side criticizes the environmental community for being stupid and ignoring the facts . The environmental side says the industrial community is stupid and only interested in the bottom line. Neither side understands why the other will not use good science to come to reasonable conclusions, and each uses good science when it is in its interest to do so. I am fascinated that both sides want the other side to adhere to good science, and while I don't know how to resolve these disputes , a start would be to realize that while we do disagree, that is the democratic process at work. As long as there is a reasonable amount of civility and a certain degree of honesty, the differences of opinion are OK.



sustaining natural resources · 2017-11-14 · sustaining natural resources · in global contexts...

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