Andy Kerr - Maine Woods

By Andy Kerr

Word has reached Oregon about big changes in the Maine Woods. Forest management here is also changing. Oregonians are deciding that forests are more important for recreation, fish and wildlife habitat, and watershed protection, than for logging.

Our timber industry is a shadow of its former self. Oregon's economy prospers, nonetheless.

Oregonians are finding that we cannot have our forest and clearcut it too.

Both Oregon's and Maine's forests are in crisis. The Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is a combination of their ideograms for "danger" and "opportunity." Oregon's simply came a little earlier.

When an old guard loses power, it responds by doing what it always has done, only harder and louder. Politicians always respond by giving subsidies to a dying industries in vain attempts to prop them up.

The "working forest" system of Maine no longer works. The tragedy would be for politicians to try to fix it.

Beware of politically expedient half-measures comparable to rearranging Titanic deck chairs. When the old guard is still in the driver's seat it invariably drives by watching the rear view mirror.

The "working forest" can't be fixed because:

• We have a global economy.

Less private timber will be owned by people who care about land. Absentee corporations are only interested in maximizing profits. Market pressures demand maximum profits that demand maximum timber exploitation. Public recreation, fish and wildlife habitat or watershed protection are coincidental public values, which don't help—and increasingly harm—the corporate bottom line.

• Massive modernization—necessary to remain competitive—is sweeping both woods and mills. Computers, robots and lasers replace people. Even if the same amount of timber is cut, far fewer jobs result. Jobs are a cost, not a benefit, on a corporate balance sheet.

• Fiber is fungible.

Technologic improvements allow paper and construction products to be made out of recycled fibers, non-tree fibers or cheaper tree fibers from elsewhere on the globe.

• Money grows faster than trees.

A saving account will yield a better return than growing trees and with no risk of being burned or eaten by insects. The corporations still buying timberland are practicing last-buffalo-hunt economics: mine timber today, though it doesn't pay to grow tomorrow.

• Forests are more valuable for development, than for wood.

A depleted forest is not very valuable for growing timber, but can be quite valuable for second homes. When development pressures hit, all possible government subsidies can't adequately armor an obsolete industry to successfully compete.

The working forest can't be fixed, but it can be replaced because:

• Forests are more valuable for watershed, habitat and recreation, than for wood or development.

The benefits to society of conserving forests are greater than their continued exploitation. The question is how to get the beneficiaries to pay for the benefits; especially when they have been getting them (albeit at a reduced level) for free.

• Forests are cheap.

Especially if you buy in bulk. The best way to protect forests from development is public ownership. Should the public buy just development rights, which allow continued heavy logging? Should it acquire conservation easements so more protection is given to public values? Given that conservation easements can often cost most of the full market value, shouldn't the public just buy the land outright to achieve maximum public benefits and return on its investment?

Where to get the money?

• Look to redirecting existing government subsidies to the timber industry.

• Consider a transfer tax on the sales of both rural timberland and urban lands.

• Advocate for a federal tax to discourage carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere to reduce global warming and to use the revenues to convert private timberlands into public forestlands. The single best way of sequestering atmospheric carbon is in long-lived forests.

Two of Maine's greatest conservation successes are Baxter State Park and Acadia National Park. Does anyone today say these were bad ideas?

The working forest served a purpose, but let's not forget that public values from industrial timberland were never first rate. They were always secondary and therefore second rate. Public values are better protected in older forests—older than industrial owners can tolerate. They are best provided by unlogged forests.

The intersection of Bowater at Main in Freeport was built extra wide to allow the huge ship masts cut from Maine's woods to make the turn to the docks. Today, any log in Maine could roll down Bowater at no risk to shoppers on sidewalks.

The Maine Woods should no longer be mainly for wood.

Andy Kerr lives Oregon's Wallowa Valley. He was a key player in making the northern spotted owl a national issue. He now writes and consults on forest issues.