LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT
Wilderness is Multiple Use
By Bill Schneider, 5-08-08
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Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer “multiple use” over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!
So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, “multiple use” have been lost in the Wilderness.
In the common vernacular, especially among those who favor commercial uses of public lands, “multiple use” means development instead of protection. What they really mean when then say, “muliple use” is “logging use” or “commercial use” or “motorized recreation use” or most appropriate, perhaps, “single use.” But in reality, congressionally mandated Wilderness, as designated under the provisos of the Wilderness Act of 1964, is much closer to being multiple use management than mining, logging and other commercial uses of public land.
The Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960 brought the words into common usage. Officially and ironically, the Act lists the five multiple uses as outdoor recreation (listed first, but no hidden message in that, right?), range (i.e. livestock grazing), timber, watershed, and “wildlife and fish purposes.”
(Actually, the five muliple uses are listed alphabetically, but the bill’s drafters had to abandon the common usage of “fish and wildlife” and go to “wildlife and fish” so it wouldn’t be listed first. There’s definitely a message behind that one.)
Legally, Wilderness allows all of these uses except timber. Any grazing allotments in place before designation remain active unless purchased or retired, and as a result, some designated Wilderness areas currently have livestock grazing within their boundaries. Even mining is legally allowed in Wilderness if the leases were in place before designation, although enviros commonly oppose any proposal to do so, and end up defeating or delaying most Wilderness mines.
The Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act is a long, complicated piece of legislation open to interpretation, but right on the first page, it prominently states: “Multiple use means the management of all the various renewable resources of the national forests so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people.”
I interpret that definition as our roadless lands could all be designated as Wilderness to “meet the needs of the American people"--and fit into the definition of “multiple use.” This law doesn’t list mining as one of the “multiple uses,” nor does mining meet the definition because gold, silver, copper, coal, et al are not renewable resources. So, let’s be clear on this one. Mining is single use.
Compare Wilderness, which allows four out of the five defined muliple uses and protects three of them (fish and wildlife, outdoor recreation and watershed) to a large mining development or mountainside being clear cut, both considered “multiple use” by its supporters. But where is the “multiple use”? Where is the fish and wildlife, outdoor recreation, livestock grazing or watershed protection? All are gone at least during active development if not long into the future in the case of mining. Ever see cows grazing on an active mining site? No hiking or even ATVing there. No wildlife or hunting or fish or fishing. And watershed protection? Ever see the water flowing out of an active mine--or sadly, many abandoned decades ago? Or taste it? Likewise, how many streams have been silted up for years in the wake of poorly planned timber cutting?
Timber development, incidentally, can be managed correctly to preserve watershed and wildlife values and still be good hunting or hiking land after the cutting stops if roads are retired, even opened to livestock grazing again, but how often does this really happen? Not enough, I’m sure.
The words, “multiple use” have been lowered to a political catch phrase. Ever hear a politician say he or she favors “muliple use” instead of Wilderness? Politicos should be honest and say they want commercial use of public lands and stop trying to fool us by using “muliple use” because it sounds so wide-reaching politically while hiding the true intent. If they really wanted more multiple use, they would support Wilderness designation.
The worshippers of “multiple use” pretend to represent a broad range of interests when they are, in reality, supporting special, single use or abuse of public land we all own. Contrarily, whether or not we choose to admit it, Wilderness supporters represent the majority of us, even those who never go there. We marvel at the scenery; drink the pure water; breath the invisible air; enjoy the wildlife; or just feel good about a small part of the country remaining untamed.
So, please stop the multiple misuses of the words.
Footnote: A reader sent in this comment, something I should have included in the column. The Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act explicitly addresses wilderness in the last sentence of Section 2 (16 USC 529) in these words: “The establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness are consistent with the purposes and provisions of this Act.”
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Comments
Oh come now. The vast majority of private lands are devoted to resource extraction. And in most instances, a small amount of conservation of resources would easily make up all the resources found on public lands. For instance, national forests only contribute a few percentages to our wood production. Same for livestock grazing on public lands.
And lands set aside as wilderness make up a fraction of the public lands. There is simply no reason to exploit these lands.
Since there is always a risk of ecological damage and degradation of public values like clean water, wildlife habitat, and so on from even from the best exploitation, it seems prudent to leave at least some of the public domain free from these practices, if for no other reason than to provide a comparison to the exploited lands.
Despite Cocons assertions, in most cases, the exploited lands are in worse ecological shape than wilderness lands, demonstrating that even if we have a long ways to go until we can exploit land without serious degradation. Work on that experiment on the private lands first, and when you can show me that exploitation is done without serious harm on the vast majority of private lands, than maybe we can talk. Until then I want to take the cautionary approach and leave a portion of our landscape off limits to resource exploitation.
Robert Marshall
http://www.wilderness.org/AboutUs/Marshall_Bio.cfm
I always find it fascinating that there are people- and some of them are people whom I otherwise respect- that cannot recognize the value of landscapes as the creator made them, and who cannot recognize any benefit in nature apart from what can be extracted it from it to serve the material needs of mankind. There is a kind of blindness there, married now with politics, a marriage carefully cultivated by industrial interests whose profits will be served best if all lands are unquestionably open to the tyranny of their own needs.
This blindness was one of the principle weaknesses of Communism - a system that allegedly places man's material wants at the center of every decision. One way to understand tyranny, as Marshall points out, is a land (and a worldview) devoted only to man, each section owned and controlled, where every value beyond production of a selected resource is excluded and denied. This condition describes the majority of our landscape now. To argue that we must press on, to dominate and change the last spaces where this condition does not prevail, is, one) to ignore the laws of commodities, that as a commodity becomes more scarce it becomes more valuable) and two) to ignore any possibility of spiritual value, and possibility that there is something of any value beyond, say, thirty pieces of silver. I am amazed, always, that many of those who say they despise wilderness also claim to be some kind of advocates for "free markets" or "individual freedom," when actually what they are arguing for is the destruction of the last free places on earth, or the prohibition of the legal creation of any more, even as they must certainly know the situation in other parts of the world, China, India, Mexico, where natural areas are being destroyed and converted at a terrific rate.
That is a blindness. It is not something that should be held against them, any more than you would hold it against a person who could not read, or held unsubstantiated prejudices against other races or religions. On the other hand, policies enacted out of blindness must be resisted, because they take away the rights and opportunities of other human beings, those alive now, and those yet to be born, to experience those places, to know and feel what the planet is like when not yoked to our material needs. What does that "takings" that loss, mean to humanity? It is difficult to quantify.
Most of the truly important spiritual well springs are difficult to quantify. Perhaps, if wilderness is allowed by the indifferent to be destroyed by the blind, its value will become more clear in its absence. I don't want the knowledge at that price.
Most Americans can see the value of wilderness, wildlife, fish, undammed waters, these archetypal elements of beauty and spirituality, these original manifestations of the hand and artwork of the creator. That is why we still have these things, and why citizens have fought, at tremendous personal cost, to preserve them, and to have their political representatives enact laws to protect them. Most Americans understand that there are resources that cannot be quantified by their worth in dollars.
Wilderness is a quintessential and unique American value, and we need as much of it as we can get. The Wilderness Act, and the attempts by citizens to establish large areas of wilderness in our country, is part of the ongoing effort of the American experiment in balancing liberty and private profit- we have wilderness, that is, public lands not yoked to man's need for resources, and we have the vast areas, public and private of our nation that are devoted to profit-making enterprises.
Those who despise wilderness and argue against it, while believing that they argue for some private notion of "freedom," actually argue for the opposite. Bob Marshall said it best: they argue for tyranny.
Hal
precious land from destruction. Keep getting the truth out.
Wilderness has its place -- but so do the evil industrial interests so many who frequent this site love to hate. My point is simply that we have the knowledge and wherewithal to balance both interests, even on non-wilderness lands, and that by doing so we can have the best of both worlds -- places to which we can escape, as well as the wealth, prosperity and material wellbeing that permits us to enjoy wilderness as a respite, rather than as a way of life. But for some of the neo-Druids who post here, any effort to actively and scientifically manage the forests, or balance these interests, is sacrilige. These people and their button-down mindsets are today as much of a problem as the dreaded "industrial interests." I for one am growing weary of the hypocricy. It's a cliche, I know, but get real, people. We'll never achieve a reasonable solution unless we're reasonable people.
Where is this so called balance you speak so highly of?
There is NO balance between wilderness and extractive activities. If there were a "balance" that you speak so highly of: 50% of public lands would be wilderness and 50% would be used for "industrial interests"......that's balance!! 50-50
The idea that we can "balance" competing interests is not supported by the fact. Indeed, the entire history of human exploitation of what is now the US is that we haven't learned how to do this well at all.
And to assert that we have the knowledge to do this astounds me. Most of us can't even figure out to make a computer, much less, manage ecosystems which are infinitely more complex.
Mining may be a single use, but it is a single use by many. Everyone griping here uses mined products, and furthermore uses those products out of a perceived necessity that makes one's use somehow acceptable...maybe Geo justifies his use by saying he's applying the products he consumes in a "good cause."
As for timber, there's a lot of benefits that emanate. Good forestry creates jobs, of course, but it also brings a lot of other pluses to the table...as does farming, mining, manufacturing.
A productive forest generates game, aesthetics (you'd be amazed), water, housing, recreational amenities et cetera ad nauseam. Talk to anyone in Maine about the recreational resource provided by privately owned, managed forests. Heck, go talk to an Indian about WHY they burn their ground so deliberately and systematically.
And when you drag down to wilderness, it meets only a very small need out of the many, primarily the avocational "need" for a relative few to perpetuate an anachronistic illusion that they are not a product part and parcel of modern humanity...never mind that many of these few have pretty modern jobs and make modern paychecks and use the most modern mined and processed products from modern technology they can find at REI to do their "thing."
In that respect, as the exclusive use for a rather elite, narrow demographic (hey, Bob Marshall's dadster was a rich lawyah), wilderness is in fact a single-use PART of the larger multiple-use schema.
– Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), during the April 22, 2008 floor debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on H.R. 5151 (Wild Monongahela Act).
Don't ya just love it when someone in a position of real power acts on a belief that "...isn't something rational....but something religious, over which rational discussion is impossible"? 2.64% of the contiguous U.S. is designated Wilderness. That the multiple users and/or abusers can even make their ludicrous arguments with straight faces and expect to be taken seriously is amazing.
Hal, we are NOT dealing with landscapes "as the Creator made them." The historical record shows that the vegetative and faunal makeup of the "pristine" pre-Columbian America's were profoundly influenced by Indians before the white guys showed up and killed them off.
"As the Indians left them" is far more accurate, and intellectually far more honest. Patterns set through thousands of years of burn programs were so set upon the landscape that guess what, even with a hundred year gap between the great kill-offs and white settlement, they were still evident.
Never mind that wilderness was first packaged as a human amenity and this eco-justification that came later is only an outgrowth of deep ecology, which in turn is an ideology that borders on the religious.
There are two points. The first is that wilderness is not some landscape frozen in time. What wilderness protects is ecological processes. Forests may burn. Forests may grow back. Animals may come and go. The important thing is that these things are occurring with a minimum of direct human manipulation.
And this is not that different from 500 years ago despite your assertions. You suggest that because Indians set some fires, hunted game, etc. somehow the landscape was largely a human manipulated landscape--as if every last acre was somehow under human control and manipulation.
For one thing the majority of our forests (upper elevation forests) do not burn under normal situations. Ynless it's extremely dry, they don't burn even if you try to set them on fire. And it was the same 500 years ago as well. You can't get forests of fir, lodgepole pine, etc. to burn in most years even if you wanted to. Indians were no better at burning the woods than us or lightning. Yes some local areas and lower elevation grasslands and forests like ponderosa pine were affected by human ignitiions, but even at the lower elevations, there is sufficient lightning to account for much of the acreage burned. In other words, Indian burning was "compensatory" in many places. A certain amount of grassland or forest is going to burn every hundred years or whatever time scale you want to use--and whether burned because someone set it on fire or lightning started the fire doesn't much matter--you're going to get about the same amount of acreage burned. This is the same ideas that hunters like to tell non-hunters about hunting--that a certain number of elk or deer are going to die anyway and hunters are just being compensatory.
Secondly, the same is true about Indian hunting influences. Have you ever packed an elk or caribou on your back out of the mountains--I have. I once hauled an elk 12 miles off the Bitterroot Divide and I am not apt to do it again. And I carried two caribou eight miles across spongy tundra--some of the hardest work I've ever done. So imagine trying to carry a bison, moose, etc? I can tell you that one is not going to roam miles and miles from your village to hunt because you have no reasonable way to get the meat back to your brood prior to the advent of horses. Most hunting was confined to waterways and/or close to villages. IN concentrative circles out from the village, hunting pressure was reduced more and more to the point where hunting by humans had little impact. Not unlike what we see in our situation today where the farther you get from a road, the less hunter impact.
Plus intertribal warfare produced large areas where virtually no hunting occurred. The "dark and bloody ground" that Daniel Boone visited in Kentucky was not a reference to blood from hunters, but the blood of humans. Kentucky was a no "man" land where neither the Cherokee or Shawnee occupied because they were continuously at war with each other. Game was abundant there. Ditto for the Upper Missouri in Montana at the time of Lewis and Clark where Blackfeet fought with other tribes over the region to the extent that no tribe claimed exclusive use. Wildlife was particularly abundant along the Upper Missouri as a consequence.
I could on but the idea that every last acre was occupied and "managed" by Indians is a huge exaggeration. And most of the areas that are designated wilderness today--the higher elevation landscapes of the West--are precisely the places least influenced by people. Even the Indians didn't live in these places. They might have wandered there now and again, but most of the year was spent in the lower valleys and foothill regions.
So these places are largely the way they were for thousands of years.
And a true representation of "representative ecosystems" would have to acknowledge that many ecosystems did in fact have heavy human influences, while the rock-and-ice country was left alone, for all the reasons you stated. Humping meat on foot sucketh.
Never mind that the game distributions on the Great Plains were influenced by the Blackfeet and various "war zones," but let's not forget the huge influence the HORSE, that exotic, had on the mobility of Indians. Anyone care to speculate the "nature" of the plains or the Nez Perce country pre-horse?
Get over this "nature" thing. You just conceded that human influence was least in areas that are now wilderness...while the REST of the landmass had a lot of human driver-factor...those darn Blackfeet, just like the Calapooya in the Willamette, DID shape the veggies and the meat.
Never mind how soggy the wet-side Tillamook tends to be, but IT certainly burnt.
Never mind the hard-release provisions of the 1984 Washington wilderness act.
Now, even though we've wandered away from Bill's fallacious premise, let's not change the subject away from your concession that a whacking lot of the landscape WAS in fact influenced by humanoids, leaving darn little "natural," a high proportion of which has been, um, er, "protected."
I would say that 2.49 percent of the landscape, set aside for the single use of the aesthetic and spiritual needs of an almost-exclusively-white-affluent-urban segment of the population -- which in turn is only two percent of the fairly-small overall segment of the U.S. population that actually utilizes public land for recreation -- is plenty.
Some people are adamently opposed to wilderness because it scares them! Scares them to death! Are you one of those people Skinner? You probably car camp and sleep in your tent with one hand on a pistol and the other on a flashlight just incase the big bad wilderness boogie man comes along.
hehehe!!!
You are something else!!
You are the chicken because you won't put a name behind your comments, just in case.
By the way, I went through MUSYA last night. It concerns renewable resources and specifically left minerals alone. It was "supplemental to, but not in derogation of" the Organic Act.
"Nothing herein" was intended to affect the administration of mineral resources, or non-USFS federal ground.
Congress declared a policy that NFs were "established for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes."
The Secy of Ag was authorized to deal with "renewable surface resources" and "products and services obtained therefrom" with "due consideration given to the relative values of the various resources in particular areas."
And Multiple Use is defined:
"The management of all the various renewable surface resources of the national forests so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions; that some land will be used for less than all of the resources; and harmonious and coordinated management of the various resources, each with the other, without impairment of the productivity of the land, with consideration being given to the relative values of the various resources, and not necessarily the combination of uses that will give the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit output.
(b) ‘‘Sustained yield of the several products and services’’
means the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-
level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable re-
sources of the national forests without impairment of the productivity of the land.
Seems to me the exclusion of mineral matters was a statement of intent by Congress to specifically avoid quibbling over the relative values of the surface estate. With the Commies slavering at the gates at that time, made sense not to block the production of defense minerals...still makes sense to me, especially now while watching prices for everything spiral into escape orbit.
As for the "products" -- they are intended to be produced in ways that don't trash the ground's long-term ability to produce, in the way Americans need, in a "judicious" manner.
I guess we should fight over what is judicious.
The agencies do have constituencies, customers, really. If you no longer offer a product I desire, I ain't gonna shop there no mo, and I ain't gonna care if you close.
The largest remaining constituency the USFS has is outdoor recreation. And the fact is, the vast majority of outdoor recreation use is not the REI "quiet use" claque.
NVUM data shows the OR product is campgrounds and road access, fully half being from the co-located county, doing the weekend with the camper and kids mini-vacation. Mostly of modest means on the income scale, as well.
At the same time, the budget is going up in smoke so there is none for recreation, at least not as it was back in the evil days when evil loggers traded trees for money and roads so that evil Americans had a recreation infrastructure that wouldn't burn up every summer.
So now we have recreation-access fees. As I will pronounce in my upcoming Beacon column, Potlatch is now charging for rec access. They've established that property right. So now what? If USFS is successful at fending off the anti-Rats, the other private forestry companies will jump on that bandwagon.
OR, maybe we could start practicing forestry on public ground again at a level that pays for itself and covers the cost of stone losers like free wilderness access.
Nah, that would make sense and cost us less in the long run. Nevah happen.
Wilderness should not be only for the use of professional recreationists, it should be for us all.
Of course no matter how idealistic we are we rarely develop forest or rangeland in the responsible fashion which we may intend. I note those wildlands so wondrerful when I was young growing up in the west which 50 years later are sad degraded remnants.