JB: A thoughtful response. How do you come to know so much about all this, Andy?
AK: I started my professional conservation career during the Ford Administration, so simply lasting this long allows one to accumulate some knowledge, experience, suggestions and (hopefully) wisdom. I received far more than my allotted 15 minutes of fame/infamy during the Pacific Northwest ancient forest wars (I was with Oregon Wild, the organization that brought you the northern spotted owl, ca. 1990s). I grew up in timber country and went to school with the children of millworkers and loggers and also had family friends that owned lumber mills and logging companies. Because I was known personally by some big players in Big Timber, I was particularly loathed for having the temerity to suggest that we should stop clearcutting two square miles of Oregon ancient forest (this was just the federal public lands). This enmity resulted in a dozen publicists working for me, not on my payroll but on that of Big Timber.The result was was I had a bully pulpit and was the subject of much scorn by those who who feared the northern spotted owl.
Their fear wasn't about so much about the the ecological and economic canary in the coal mine that was the spotted owl, but about change; change that had come, was happening and still to come. Change that was not favorable to those with a business- or wage- model based on driving species to extinction. The timber industry in the Pacific Northwest wasn't up against an owl, but an ocean. We logged our way across the continent as it was settled and the virgin forest was running out. Log exports to Asia, lumber imports from Canada, automation of both logging and milling and other global and local economic factors were the real causes of this unwelcome change befalling the timber industry and its workers. The political crisis that was provoked by an ecological crisis didn't lend itself to the most rational and equitable transition. In the mid 1990s, I turned more of my attention to the annual clearcutting by bovine bulldozers of the very short ecosystems better known as open forests, deserts and grasslands. It is said that generals always prepare to fight the last war. I didn't want another war of just litigation and confrontation but wanted to apply the advice of that great environmentalist Sun Tzu (ca. 500 BCE) who advised that when an enemy is cornered to give them a path of escape. Otherwise your opponent has no choice but to try to fight you to the death. While the public lands grazing industry has been mostly cornered by imported beef, automation (aka feedlots), changing dietary preferences, economies of scale and other factors far more than any government regulations designed to protect the environment (as much as I might have wished), they are nonetheless feeling cornered. I'm happy that they get a golden saddle to equitably and peaceably leave the public lands. (The same should be done for coal miners [and oil and gas workers].) We are not so rich that we must destroy wild nature, or so rich that we can afford to. While America is rich enough to not leave the losers of our changing economy behind, the question is whether we as a society are compassionate enough to not do so.
JB: That is, indeed, the $64,000 question, Andy. I understand the situation and the context a lot better than I did before we talked. Thanks so much!
***
Andy Kerr, Czar, The Larch Company:
Dedicated to the conservation and restoration of nature, The Larch Company is a non-membership for-profit organization that represents species that cannot talk and humans not yet born. A deciduous conifer, the western larch has a contrary nature.
For more on Andy's views and suggestions about livestock grazing on the public lands, go here
Andy's recent piece for The Oregonian, "The Folly of Giving Federal Land 'Back' to Harney County"
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
