Rick Bass: Ancient forest in Yaak Valley needs protection
(This piece originally appeared in the Missoulian on March 19, 2021.)
Amidst the Biden administration’s untangling of malfeasance from the Trump years, the climate change crisis permeates much. Global warming is identified as one of the greatest threats to national security.
There is no single key to passing safely into a burning future, but in the Yaak Valley, a mysterious forest offers us hope. Comprised of 300-year-old spruce and subalpine fir, giant cedar and hemlock, and 600-year-old larch, the ancient forest in the Kootenai National Forest’s (KNF) timber project called “Black Ram” contains vast sections that have never burned. Beneath the shadows of the overstory, frost chills the thick carcasses of fallen giants of the past. The faint outlines of long-ago skeletons lie covered with mosses, ferns and lichens. Lynx, wolves, and grizzly bears pad its velvet carpet of rot.
Logging on public lands accounts for 3 percent of the nation’s supply, yet accounts for a $2 billion annual loss to the U.S. Treasury.
But because of a remnant directive from the Trump administration to bypass Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) and increase logging by 40%, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is building roads into the ancient forest to effectively clearcut nearly 1,000 acres. (“Regeneration harvest” is the new lingo). The agency is planning or already proceeding into 315,000 contiguous acres on the KNF without any EISs. (The Biden administration released a directive calling for the science of climate change to be applied to such major projects in the Department of Interior, but has not yet issued similar direction for major projects on national forests).
The ancient forest — what the KNF calls “Unit 72” — guards the U.S. headwaters of the Yaak River. It’s an inland rainforest, self-regulating, feeding on itself through a phenomenon known as gap creation. When an occasional giant crashes down through the multi-layered canopy, it brings a blaze of light and new life into the soft forest floor.
And here’s where hope leaps brightest: Intrigued by this ecosystem’s ability to repel wildfire, a consortium of environmental groups have proposed the forest be designated to serve as the nation’s first Climate Refuge: a sanctuary to which climate refugees can retreat as ecosystems to the south falter.
The old forest in the Yaak sequesters significantly more carbon than do drier pine forests. This carbon refuge would be a place to hold maximum carbon on-site, and study the effects of global warming and various species’ adaptations.
Black Ram is one of a great number of destructive remnants from an administration that nurtured not science, but arrogance.
Logging on public lands accounts for 3 percent of the nation’s supply, yet accounts for a $2 billion annual loss to the U.S. Treasury. The KNF would better meet the needs of the land and people by thinning around homes. Black Ram would also trammel habitat designated for grizzly bear recovery. The Yaak’s grizzly subpopulation — numbering perhaps fewer than 20 — is the most endangered in the state, cut off from all others.
Black Ram is one of a great number of destructive remnants from an administration that nurtured not science, but arrogance. The USFS claims bulldozing the ancient forest will create “resilience” and seeks to erase the forest before it can be studied. In a twist only Kurt Vonnegut could appreciate, the agency plans to plant pine seedlings it acknowledges won’t survive.
Transparency, science, and illumination are elements by which democracy survives its many storms. A decision on Black Ram is due any day. The Biden administration should review climate change and its effects on endangered species in this travesty of a timber sale, hidden far back in the wilderness. This forest has survived nearly a millennium. It is we who should learn resilience. The discoveries of science, as well as humility, await.
Rick Bass is a board member of Save the Yellowstone Grizzly and the Yaak Valley Forest Council. His new book is Fortunate Son: Selected Essays from the Lone Star State (High Road Books).
