March 20, 2013
Almost two weeks ago, my colleague Sarah Matsumoto and I wrote a letter to one of the largest landowners in America, Red Emmerson.
As two workaday environmentalists, united in our devotion to forests and the service to the planet they provide, we made a simple request.
We would like Mr. Emmerson to be clear about his company's clear cutting. We would like him to let consumers who visit his company's website—and there are people who do such things before they buy wood to build a new house or remodel a kitchen—get a clear picture of his company's clear cutting practices.
Emmerson, a timber titan whose own story suggests the protagonist is not your average Joe, got his start in California logging mills as a teenager in the late 1940s. He joined forces with his father, a mill builder, and grew Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) into one of the largest and most powerful lumber companies in America.
As the company's name suggests, a big chunk of the family owned business's holdings are in the Sierra Nevada. Unfortunately, the awe-inspiring part of the story stops there.
Here's why: Much of the company's nearly two million acres are destined to be clear cut. That is, they have already been or will be totally wiped clean of trees, shrubs and other living plants, then doused with pesticides before replanting with seedlings that will require decades to mature.
If you fly over parts of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges today—or watch a Google Maps-assisted flyover produced by the Sierra Club—you can see what clear cutting means. It creates a checkerboard of bald spots across the forested mountains. At ground level, it dramatically changes habitat, microclimates and ecosystem services. Clear cutting eliminates breeding and living space for most animals, makes cool places hotter, and reduces the essential water-storing services of the bare land left behind.
When author Cheryl Strayed stumbled across a clear cut during her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (recounted in Wild, one of my favorite books of 2012), it unsettled her. "I felt sad and angry about it, but in a way that included the complicated truce of my own complicity," she writes. "I used tables and chairs and toilet paper, too, after all."
So do we consumers of wood products have to accept clear cutting as a necessary evil? No, not at all.
There are better ways to do forestry. Most logging companies in California are moving away from clear cutting, and some do almost no clear cutting. They employ more selective ways to harvest timber. These ways preserve more trees and do less damage to the habitat and the forest's ability to recover quickly and keep providing ecosystem services.
SPI uses a range of harvest methods, but harvest plans filed with the state suggest it is leading the pack among those who continue to rely heavily on the outdated practice of clear cutting. How much clear cutting does the company do? That's the question we think SPI should clearly answer for consumers.
That's why Sarah and I wrote the letter. On the SPI website, the company implies that it practices sustainable forestry. There's nothing sustainable about clear cutting—it doesn’t sustain forests and it doesn't sustain jobs.
Clear cutting is to forestry what clubbing baby seals is to the fur trade: an ugly, archaic practice so unnecessary that it is almost hard to believe it continues.
So SPI needs to be clear about clear cutting. We want it to disclose on its home page the number of acres the company clear cuts. Let consumers consider whether Mr. Emmerson’s SPI is really practicing sustainable forestry. Then consumers can vote with their pocketbooks.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Phillips
Director
Sierra Club California is the Sacramento-based legislative and regulatory advocacy arm of the 13 California chapters of the Sierra Club.
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