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Letter
from Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen to
Governor George W. Bush
Thomas
M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.
27 Melrose Drive
Montgomery, TX 77356
(409) 597-4560
Email: tomdol@earthlink.net
March
16, 2000
The
Honorable George W. Bush
Bush for President
P.O. Box 1902
Austin, TX 78767-1902
Dear
Governor Bush:
I
am a professor of forest science at Texas A&M University. This letter
offers a way to resolve one of the most serious and contentious domestic
issues that will confront your administration when you become President.
That is, the future of 191 million acres of national forests.
I
am cofounder of the Society for Ecological Restoration and a former
California State Park Commissioner (appointed by Governor Reagan).
Most recently, I have served on forest science panels for the US House
of Representatives and the US Senate. I have twenty-five years of
research, teaching, and professional experience in forestry. My work
emphasizes the restoration and sustainable management of America's
native forests. This includes national forests. The book I just published
with John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (copyright January 2000; 594 pages) titled
America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery
provides a benchmark for using ancient forests as models for sustainable
management that serves both aesthetic and utilitarian needs.
The
national forests are in chaos. Environmentalists, timber interests,
recreation interests, and nearly everyone else that uses the national
forests are constantly at war with one another. Therefore, foresters
cannot manage because someone challenges each decision in court. As
a result, employment in the timber industry has plummeted, rural forest
communities are desperate, and our country has become a net importer
of wood. Even more alarming, the size, severity, and destructiveness
of wildfires, disease, and insect infestations increased sharply due
to neglect and mismanagement. If that were not enough, misguided attempts
at preservation, such as the huge forest reserves in the Pacific Northwest,
are rapidly destroying our native forests. Now the US Forest Service
wants to create reserves in California's Sierra Nevada. Forests cannot
be preserved because they are living things that continually change.
They must be managed.
The
problem is that the old idea of multiple-use is no longer acceptable,
and today's idea of making everything a reserve is not effective or
sustainable. Likewise, "ecosystem management," as promoted by the
US Forest Service, is ineffective because it is an empty phrase that
justifies anything. It also makes forests more important than the
needs of people. We must find a way to restore a new relationship
between people and forests that fits our needs just as the old ways
fit the needs of an earlier time. That requires a new idea that works,
not a new slogan. I am convinced that such a new idea is restoration
management.
Restoration
management can resolve these forest issues in a manner acceptable
to most if not all of the parties in conflict. It can do so because
it uses the ecological history of our native forests as the basis
for management. The native forests that European explorers found covered
45% of North America. They were more diverse and they contained more
wildlife, in greater numbers and variety, than any forests since the
end of the Ice Age. They also were inherently sustainable. In short,
ancient forests are excellent models for future forests.
Even
more remarkable, and relevant, these native forests resulted from
at least 12,000 years of human use. Native American burning and subsistence
practices had a profound influence on the development of America's
forests. Native peoples were as much a part of America's native forests
as the trees. The forests and the people who lived there formed an
inseparable whole that developed together over millennia. That means
that today's forests must also be managed or they will become less
diverse, less sustainable, more prone to dangerous fires and disease,
and less attractive then they have already become. In other words,
we must manage if we are going to sustain our forests.
Today's
professional forester uses advanced scientific tools to increase the
sustainable yield of wood, water, wildlife, and other resources from
forests to meet the needs of a world population that is growing at
the rate of one billion people each eleven years. At the same time,
modern foresters study native forests, and with the aid of science
they use that knowledge to restore and manage whole ecosystems for
ecological, scenic, historical, cultural, as well as material benefits.
In short, professional foresters are highly educated, skillful, and
responsible agents of society.
The best hope for America's forests rests on learning from the past
and ensuring that professional foresters have the authority and freedom
from unreasonable oversight they need to apply what they know. The
deterioration of our national forests demonstrates that active management
is essential. Prescribed fires can be used in some cases, but high
costs, safety concerns, and air pollution restrictions will probably
prevent widespread and frequent burning. Science-based timber harvesting
is the safest and most effective tool for managing forests. It can
be used with near surgical precision, and it has the added advantage
of creating jobs, producing wood, and generating revenue to pay for
management.
I
sincerely hope that when you become President you will call upon my
forestry colleagues and me to help you stop the forest wars, bring
peace and prosperity to forest-dependent communities, and restore
health and diversity to our forests. The best place to start is in
our national forests. It can be done and we know how to do it. We
need a President who will champion both our forests and our people.
Time is short. You may be the last President with a chance to succeed.
I hope you will accept the challenge.
Respectfully,
Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.
Professor
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