Timber Wars Redux
A thinning project by the U.S. Forest Service about one-half mile off Highway 37, near Mac's Market. (Photo courtesy Jim Petersen)
Anusha Mathur’s Nov. 1 Flathead Beacon essay [The Yaak Valley is Ground Zero for Montana’s Environmental Future] was a jarring reminder that the timber wars of the 1980s are still with us.
The interchangeable anti-forestry narratives haven’t changed much since I first heard them in 1985: the old growth is almost gone, save charismatic megafauna, save endangered species, stop clearcutting, loggers are logging without laws and, more recently, climate change is real, climate deniers are wrong, the science is settled and where is the climate justice?
The Yaak Valley is one of many ground zeros is the long running and exceptionally well-funded political war to end all forms of science-based management on public forestlands in the United States.
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