December 6, 2002
LANSING STATE JOURNAL
EDITORIAL RESPONSE
Article appearing 11-28-02; Today’s focus: FOREST MANAGEMENT
PROPOSAL FOR U.S. FORESTS COULD LEAVE WILDLIFE UNPROTECTED;
by John Heilprin
The article by AP John Heilprin was effective in identifying the classic differences between forest managers and environmentalists. Over the past 30 years the timber management mission of the US Forest Service has steadily diminished in the face of pressure from the environmentalists and lack of resolve by USFS leadership. The feds claim it cost more to market timber than the price they receive for the resource. That is due [in part] by the ‘red tape’ referred to by Sally Collins in Heilprin’s piece. The Bush administration should be applauded for its position to support the overturning of President Clinton’s executive orders regarding limits on road building and logging.
While environmentalist continue to expound the woes of failing to ‘preserve wildlife’, some of us in natural resource management remember the basic axiom that all new wealth is created from the processing of natural resources. The phrase, “if you can’t grow it, you must mine it”, is more than a trite cliché. The economic policy of the US government has been dominated for too many decades by the theory of “credit money” instead of creating “real wealth” from the utilization of renewable and non-renewable resources. President Lincoln provided leadership [and wisdom] at the outbreak of the Civil War when asked for a decision on the purchase of French steel to build northern railroads. Lincoln replied to the effect, “I don’t know anything about steel and I don’t know anything about railroads, but it seems if we make our own steel we’ll end up with the railroads and our money”. That decision helped to preserve the Union.
The issue of USFS policy on national forest land has direct influence on the economy in Michigan. We have one national forest in the Lower Peninsula and two in the Upper Peninsula. The Huron-Manistee in the Lower Peninsula is in the process of revising its forest plan that will include over 270,000 acres as designated old growth. Old growth areas are removed from the primary timber management units in the forests and will be added to the ‘other’ set asides, that in effect, set aside the opportunity to create new wealth from the utilization of a renewable resource. There are those that believe resource management decisions should be removed from the socio-economic arena and focus only on the science of the ecosystem.
Michigan’s state government has also demonstrated the ability to ignore the opportunity to create new wealth through the management of the state forest system. It is ironic that as Governor Engler prepares to leave office, the state is faced with serious budget issues. Back in 1989, then Governor James Blanchard had identified the forest industry as a top growth potential industry for the state. The forest inventory completed in 1993 indicated that commercial forest land in Michigan has expended to 19.3 million acres. The forest [trees] continued to grow and it is a known fact that Michigan grows twice as much wood as it utilizes. Yet, Michigan is an importer of wood products! Let’s review the situation. Over the past 12 years, the state has lost jobs to other regions, faces tax increases to balance the inflated budget, has stagnated the forest management department of the DNR while wood grows at twice the rate we use, but we have to import wood to meet our need! To paraphrase President Lincoln, “it seems if we were to use our own wood, we would have all that we need plus have our own money”.
Governor elect Granholm is currently forming working groups to address a wide spectrum of issues facing the state as she prepares to take office. It is the great hope that one of those groups will access the decadent policy of forest management in this state and seize the opportunity to let Michigan lift itself by its own economic bootstraps over the next decade. Within the time allowed by term limits, Michigan can reverse its economic woes and prove to the nation that the largest state forest system east of the Mississippi can be the model of ‘true’ natural resource stewardship.
LYNNWOOD C. STEPHENS
Registered Forester #317
Dba Professional FOREST CARE
P.O Box 614
East Jordan, MI 49727
stephenspfc@torchlake.com