It’s been a fabulous season of cold sport and endurance adventure in the wilds of The Central Cascades. From snow shoeing to hiking on foot along the back logging roads, the snow has invited me to track, ascend, discover, transcend, and descend in and out of the elevations. I’ve also had a chance to keep an eye on the edge space between industrial logging and public land that has been protected up until now. At the change of political ambition, from protect and value back to exploit and abuse for a few gluttonous multi-national business interests, none of which will be directly impacted by the ecological collapse to come. But they will feel the painful outcome none the less. There are more bills set to pass soon that will continue to erode protections on federal lands. These bills have amendments slipped in, like the one below:
This may seem a minor wording change, but it’s removing any mention of environmental protection wherever it can. Why? To strip any mention of a vision for restoration or long term respect for our environment- to “make libs cry”.
Spiderweb strands spoke around the steep slope clearcuts of recent logging operations in this active industrial timber farm. Colonial extraction continues, with ecological degredation in the long term, which has continued to deplete the land of nutrients and productive ability for the short term gain of board feet sales. The truth is, most trees cut in these tens of thousands of acres go to pulp mills and chippers rather than building lumber. Biomass energy scams are burning millions of these trees, whole forests, to power the “green” energy farce. Biomass energy also includes the burning of carcinogenic railroad ties, tires, and trash. These are some of the new “renewable” sources powering your “clean energy” electric cars and smart home tech. Nuclear is the other silent plan- I say silent because the tech industry expects to power it’s cyber currencies and AI revolution. But I’d like to bring us back to the trees in my greater backyard. They are being harvested, and will be for years to come, with more gusto as the EPA protections continue to roll back. We’ll see more steep slope cutting, access into our public lands to cut second generation growth, and even old growth if it’s outside the ever shrinking boundaries of wetland setbacks, recently abolished by the 2025 Trump Administration. Plans like the one shown below, part of The DNR Trust Lands Policy in Washington State.
Federally, the forests are about to go through a massacre of cutting, thanks to Biden dropping long term protection plans, and a new 2025 Project Trump Administration to drill drill drill and cut cut cut. All the setbacks protecting the slow restoration of our salmon streams and rivers, as well as the slow return of flood buffers and wetland protection will be ignored by the commercial industries already at work in our, OUR forests, the ones tax payers fund. Since private corporations are already not paying much if any tax, they are happy to waltz into public lands and devour them for private equity. This has been going on for a long time, but it’s going to amp up on a level yet unseen by most in these modern times. What does that look like? In a word, Devastation.
In a few months, the snow will melt out of higher elevations, inviting new perspective forests to be accessed. I’ll be continuing to keep a close watch on what happens in the few forests I gain access to myself each year. There has been a lot of work done to plan out the regrowth of forest buffers for our long term survival. Floods will keep coming, winds will get worse, and droughts will draw out longer and longer in the summer months. Watching all this change happen so fast, sometimes overwhelms, but here at EEC, we keep planting roots, planing for drought tolerance, and slowing water to encourage saturation rather than run off. It’s a small 10 acre project, but with more landowners turning to restoration every year, most of humanity is actually on board with restoring our forests to protect our clean air and water, as well as healthy soil for our food. What kind of crying will we see when the future generations are left with cancer ridden bodies and life cut short in a toxic environment? Fewer and fewer inquiring minds want to know.
This winter, I hiked into an area right at the edge of the tree farm, bordering DNR land around some alpine lakes where a few old growth trees grow on scree slopes where the timber wood would shatter on the rocks if felled, so they have been left, for now. There slopes, only a few hundred feet away, are actively logged, and this spot is prepped for cutting in the spring of 2025. I’ll share pictures of what this alpine forest of spruce dominate stands looks like now, and then again once it’s cut later this year. It’s always hard to fully comprehend how much biomass is whisked away in a single clearcut, but visually, it’s important to at least see in practice. Remember, most of this wood now goes to fabrication, not lumber. Because the industry no longer cares about diameter, they can cut younger trees, which makes it easier to cut sooner, thus getting more biomass faster. None of these active plots will ever be restored to old growth, which seems ok in a clearly demarcated commercial space, but the ecology surrounding and inside of this heavily manages area suffers the consequences of our mechanization and separation from our environment.
WAYS TO HELP:
-Contact your local and state reps to tell them you want our public land protected, not managed by corporate interests for private equity extraction.
-Join a public science initiative to track the health of your local environment.
-Follow local action groups that protect the environment, there are also well known national organizations, but local action is where you start learning about what’s directly affecting your back yard ecology first.
-Find out which First Nations People’s live in your area and if they are active publicly, many are. Join their mailing lists and find out what kind of restoration projects they might be working on.
-Volunteer- from mentoring young people to writing letters of action, non-profit and local civic clubs are usually in need of your time, talent, and passions. Help make a difference in your local community.
-Buy local, know your growers and what practices they use to produce your food.
EEC Forest Stewardship 