New West Network

My Page: Matthew Koehler

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Well, finally ... Sen. Tester and a few strange bedfellows have floated a logging bill that everyone who works, has worked, or hopes to work, for one of four struggling lumber mills or one bankrupt cardboard box maker can wholeheartedly endorse.

Letters to the papers from such folks, including owners and employees of the mills and their "environmental partners," express boundless joy we've all agreed to this federal welfare proposal to bail them out before they perish by the Invisible Hand of the Market. [more]

More than 70 years ago Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of modern ecological principles had the following to say about Wilderness:

“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink, but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area useable for recreation, or for science, or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum…

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right… A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Unfortunately, these foundational ecological principles have either been forgotten or ignored by Senator Tester and those who support his ill-advised and destructive S. 1470, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009. This dangerous anti-conservation measure is misguided both for the immediate damage it would do, and for the damaging precedents it would set for the future. [more]

A few days ago, the Missoulian ran an article titled, "Battered and Boarded: Recession rattles timber industry to its core." It's interesting to note that all the economic reality contained in this article has been systematically ignored by Senator Jon Tester, his staff and those three or four conservation groups who actually support Tester's Mandated Logging Bill. [more]

On Monday, Governor Brian Schweitzer emerged from a closed-door meeting at Smurfit-Stone's Frenchtown mill, looked right into a video camera and declared, “If we can harvest 15,000 acres of the 2 million acres of dead and dying [trees] that we've got on federal land in Montana we can keep this mill open.” [more]

GUEST COMMENTARY

The first time I walked through this piece of the Lolo National Forest, smoke was still rising from the deep duff layer of the old-growth spruce-fir forest. It was a crisp, blue-bird October day five years ago and I was leading a team of University of Montana students on a monitoring trip to get a first-hand lesson in fire ecology.

It was the height of President Bush’s effort to pass his Orwellian Healthy Forest Initiative and roll-back many of our nation’s landmark environmental laws, all of which seems like a long-forgotten bad dream given our recent election. [more]

Today, Market Watch has an article concerning Home Depot's 31% drop and Lowe's 24% drop in third-quarter profits. Interesting enough, neither Home Depot nor Lowe's – two of the biggest lumber retailers in America – blame their 3rd quarter profit drops on environmentalists or a lack of public lands logging, which is what Montana's logging industry lobbyists and many mill owners continue to do. [more]

An excellent article from Helena's George Ochesnki.

Ochenski writes, "Does giving away the state's old growth timber at bargain basement prices in a severely depressed lumber market make sense? Conservationists say 'no,' but Montana's Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) and some Land Board members say it's part of a necessary effort to maintain the state's timber industry in tough economic times. The role of the state - and the disposition of state trust land resources to bolster private timber companies -- is a debate which is likely to heat up significantly in the coming months." [more]

The Interior Department's inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, perhaps summed it up best when he called it “A culture of ethical failure.” [more]

From September 6th in Terra Haute, Indiana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmn25rvQRo [more]