I applaud President Biden for issuing an Executive Order that commits the United States to a “30 by 30” goal, which commits to conserving 30% of the nation’s lands and waters in a “natural state” by 2030. Deja vu. Five years ago, Edward O. Wilson, Harvard Professor Emeritus wrote Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. In it, he offered a solution to the ongoing destruction of our planet’s life systems: “Do no further harm,” and, “The solution to the ‘Sixth Extinction’ is to increase the area of inviolable natural reserves to half the surface of the Earth or greater.”
In a Science Advances article in 2015, Caballos et al wrote about human-induced species losses: Their analyses reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.
Meanwhile, in Gallatin County, Montana, timber sales proceed apace, where the Custer-Gallatin Forest plans to log some of the few remaining local patches of old growth forest near Bozeman, including one on the Kirk Hill Loop trail, another near Fairy Lake, and one around Brackett Creek. The Forest Service also intends to log old growth forest adjacent to Yellowstone National Park.
Old-growth forests store twice as much carbon as forests managed on a 100 year rotation, and forests managed on a 50 year rotation store about 38% as much as old growth. The most valuable use of those forests is as carbon sinks, not as two-by-fours.
In spite of knowing full well that harvesting old-growth timber is counterproductive to climate change mitigation, the Forest Service is continuing to act out the old paradigm of “get out the cut.” Let’s just hope the new administration is able to short-circuit some of the destruction.
Norman A. Bishop
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 4/13/21