Pandas Aren't Facing Extinction Due to Evolution; They're Facing Extinction Due to Humans

Certainly, it's hard when anybody says, "just let the species die." Yet that's exactly what one British naturalist is saying about Pandas, declaring that it costs too much to keep them alive, and that they've worked themselves into an evolutionary "cul-de-sac." Even setting aside my primary disagreement based on the fact that for whatever reason, I really like pandas, I have to disagree with him for one very simple reason that this article highlights:

Giant pandas are confined to forest areas high in the mountains of southwestern China and have to consume large quantities of bamboo to survive.

They number around 1,600 and are threatened by agriculture, logging and China's increasing human population.

It seems to me that they aren't so much "doomed" due to the evolutionary path that they've taken. If left alone to their environment, they would have more than enough bamboo and land to continue surviving just fine. Unfortunately, deforestation, logging, and farming are destroying the panda's otherwise-supportive habitat. That's not an evolutionary cul-de-sac; it's one more example of humanity doing all it can to destroy other species, ecosystems, and the environment in the search of short-term profit.

Bush's Death Sentence To Spotted Owls Likely To Be Overturned

Not surprisingly, Obama's Interior Department is reconsidering Bush's order to open up northern spotted owl habitat in the Pacific Northwest to commercial logging. They are justifying this by pointing to political interference in scientific reports by Bush administration officials.

Certainly this is a good thing. Commercial logging is not the future of the Northwestern economy. Logging is so automated now that relatively few jobs would be created by easing spotted owl protections. Moreover, it could drive this very sensitive species significantly closer to extinction.

On the other hand, logging restrictions in the Northwest are really only a good thing if we don't simply replace that logging with trees from some other forest. We have to cut consumption to make environmental regulations effective. As it is, I can't help but wonder if we aren't engaging in a form of environmental imperialism, exporting our production needs to places where we can't see the damage, while benefiting from destroying land and people elsewhere.

Economic Transition and Environmentalism in the Pacific Northwest

William Yardley's piece in today's Times on the shift in the Pacific Northwest away from a logging economy and its effects on the timber industry is worth reading. As the much-in-demand expert on logging here at Alterdestiny, I figure I should probably comment on it. And I do have a few points to make:

1. These changes are the back side of a process that started decades ago. After World War II, the United States Forest Service decided to serve timber companies over all other users of the forest. Combined with the postwar housing crisis, there was little incentive to treat the forest as a sustainable resource, thus leading to massive overcutting. The decline of virgin forests coincided with the rise of environmentalism and with the development of ecology as a respected scientific field. In the 1980s, these scientists documented the decline of the northern spotted owl in the forests, widely believed to be an indicator species. At the same time, the Reagan administration ordered full speed ahead cutting in the forests, placing the future of the species in doubt. The environmental groups took the scientific information and sued the timber companies and federal government, eventually ending most logging in the National Forests.

The larger point here is that the changes Yardley describes have a long history. Ever since the late 1980s, timber towns have dealt with a new economic reality, one without limitless logging. Many of them have faded, suffering economic depression and declining population. There is nothing new about any of this and I'm surprised Yardley didn't reference this past except in passing.

2. Not surprisingly, the loggers are reacting in a variety of ways to these changes. In the 80s and 90s, there was widespread hostility toward environmentalists. Much of this was irrational hate and misplaced anger, but much was also a result of openly hostile and anti-humanist behavior by the environmental community. Those days are long gone though. And while many loggers long for the days of unregulated logging, others are seeing the economic opporutnities of a post-logging economy, where the trees make you money in ways other than cutting them down. This is interesting and I think touches on a very important issue deep within many loggers' souls--love of nature.

In my not soon to be forthcoming (2013 maybe?) book, "The Battle for the Body: Work and Environment in the Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry," I argue that loggers cared about nature and that their relationships with nature shaped their lives and especially their labor relations. But of course, while they might have loved nature, they had to eat and that meant cutting down trees. Loggers frequently expressed sorrow over their actions. But what were they to do?

Today, there's other alternatives. See this quote by Harold Jones, of Lowell, Oregon. This town, 10 minutes from where I grew up, has long been under total control of the timber industry. But today, Jones says:

“The only money I’ve ever made is cutting down trees,” Mr. Jones, 75, said just after coming in from thinning the stand of Douglas firs he has planted on 125 acres he owns here in Lowell. “So what I’ve tried to do in my retirement is to try to bring back and repay the Earth for a lot of the devastation I’ve caused it.”

Mr. Jones started logging in 1948 and has long rolled his eyes at “countercultural types” who protest timber sales. Yet in front of his property now are signs saying “Certified Family Forest.”

This is interesting. It's my contention that loggers, even as they love nature, do not fit into traditional environmentalist categories of "conservationist" or "preservationist." In fact, I think these categories are extremely limiting and should be tossed out, yet most environmental historians still use them. The problem with these terms is that they only describe people who are in the environmental movement in some way. What about the millions of people who aren't "environmentalists?" How do we characterize their relationship with nature? In Jones' case, here is a man who loves nature and who admits that he has caused great damage to the planet. But he had to eat. He's 75 and the only way he's ever made money is by cutting down trees. Now he sees a different way and is embracing it, even while he shows clear contempt for "environmentalists." This kind of feeling is common among loggers, many of whom, past and present, love nature while also being dismayed at the culture of environmentalists, with their dismissal of the need to work in nature and their embracing of the counterculture.

3. Finally, a word needs to be said about consumption. I am glad logging has declined in my home state. It's a beautiful place. Clearcuts are horrid scars upon the land, designed to maximize profit for large corporations. This kind of logging well-served neither nature nor working-class people. But while the environmental community did good things by ending the ravages of logging upon the land, they said little about consumption. Recycling was always mentioned but that's limited and really is about reuse rather than outright declines in consumption patterns. Restriction without less consumption simply means that the logging in Oregon moved to other places--Indonesia, Brazil, Canada, Alabama, Alaska, New Zealand, etc. Those forests are still getting destroyed by logging. Why? Because we demand two-ply toilet paper, endless supplies of printer paper, etc., etc. I love my Oregon forests. But I love all forests in the world just as much. I don't want to destroy virgin boreal forest in Canada or rain forest in Brazil for my consumer demands. Yet we don't talk much about this 900 lb. gorilla. And that I think needs to be the next frontier in environmental communities--the fight against consumption.

An Eventful Week in Brazil: Argentine Agreements, Challenging China, and a Major Court Ruling in Indigenous Rights

Brazil and Argentina met this week to re-affirm their economic and political relations. The meeting itself sounded innocuous enough - standard diplomatic promises to "iron out" some minor trade issues over things like import licenses on shoes and textiles (exciting!), as well as Brazil signing a deal with Argentina to help with the recent nationalization of Aerolineas Argentinas.

While that all seems minor enough, the language on China coming out of a business leaders' meeting between reps from both countries during Presidents Kirchner's visit was far more interesting. It's no secret to anybody that China has become a growing power in trade with Latin America. However, not all that trade is good, even for Latin America, as it has also been flooded with inexpensive products that undercut national economies in South and Central America, and reps from that meeting between the two countries didn't pull punches in mentioning China's role in the hemisphere, either commenting:

“The objective now is to fight against the common evil, Chinese products which are sold at dumping prices[...] With bilateral differences back on the right track, we must address the outside enemy."

That's some pretty tough talk there for an issue that hasn't really come up yet. Of course the Argentine and Brazilian business leaders who met have their own interests to defend, and Chinese products no doubt cut into their market somewhat. Nonetheless, even if criticisms of Chinese products undercutting local companies in South America seems fair enough, referring to China as "the outside enemy" raises eyebrows a bit. If this had come from Kirchner's or Lula's mouth, it would be even more shocking and newsworthy, but even as it stands right now, it does hint at future issues facing Latin American economies as they try to increase relations with China without having their own national companies and economies being undermined by cheaper Chinese products.

Also in Brazil, the Supreme Court refused to split up an indigenous reserve half the size of Belgium in the Amazon. White farmers had insisted it was too much land for the twenty-thousand indigenous inhabitants, while logging, mining, and agricultural companies had said the reservation's existence (required in the 1988 constitution) was "an obstacle to growth."

This is a major victory for indigenous rights and the environment in Brazil, and I have absolutely no sympathy for either the farmers nor the corporations. The damage farmers, miners, loggers, and agribusiness have caused in the Amazon is already irreparable, and the cycle probably won't end without measures like the court's ruling. While indigenous people will still obviously need to cultivate the land in ways they seem fit, and while I hate essentialist notions of indigenous peoples as being "in harmony" with the earth, I think it's a fair bet that they will manage the forest in the reserve better than logging and mining companies do - hell, by simply not clearing hundreds of acres a month, they'd be managing the environment better than the corporations. It's also a huge victory for re-affirming indigenous rights in Brazil, which often go unheeded in a society that considers itself a wide spectrum of racial mixture, but which often leaves indigenous peoples out of the equation in the present even while acknowledging their past.

The ruling won't just make all of the entanglements and problems go away. Violence will persist, and even some indigenous peoples don't like the ruling and feel it perpetuates racist stereotypes by trying to keep the indigenous communities "cut off from modernity." Nonetheless, the importance of this legal precedent cannot and should not be ignored, either. The Constitution of 1988 said that indigenous peoples were to get their traditional lands back, and when the businesses and farmers, miners and loggers, pushed and pushed, trying to effectively undo the constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution stands, and the reserves cannot be split up. And that alone is a major step for indigenous rights in Brazil. We can only hope it leads to real gains for the communities, the environment, and Brazil overall.

Timber Industry Lies

I really hate the timber industry. Hate is the right word. Having watched them screw over the Pacific Northwest when I was growing up, I have nothing but contempt for timber executives. For them, literally cutting down every tree on the face of the earth would be OK. They say they are a conservationist industry that replants the trees they cut down. But this mostly isn't true. They opposed replanting when it was first talked about in the U.S. in the first years of the 20th century, and while they acceded to it because they had to, they continue to do very little replanting in the developing world today.

Matthew Koehler rips into Montana Wood Products Association spokesperson Ellen Simpson for saying, " "Those of us in the timber community are struggling to stay afloat with the housing slump, poor market conditions, and lack of fiber supply."

Koehler then goes on to show that the biggest challenge facing timber companies these days is a lack of demand. But Simpson and other timber executives simply want the national forests opened to logging at the most rapid pace possible. They absolutely could not care less about the forests. They don't care about jobs either. Logging does create jobs but they are unconcerned about long-term employment. Most of logging is automated now anyway.

I've Hit the Big Time Now!

My review of the republication of Agnes Larson's 1949 book The White Pine Industry in Minnesota is up at H-SHGAPE (Society for the Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era). It is even more exciting than it sounds.

Don't overload their bandwidth desperately trying to access this.

Historical Image of the Day

Edna Bay, Alaska, 1956.