http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...on/15468844.htm
Op-ed San Jose Mercury News
Sept. 9, 2006
Environmental activists' suits damage wildlife in the long term
By Thomas M. Bonnicksen
Environmental groups are unwittingly destroying forests and killing wildlife with lawsuits. Ironically, they are doing so while claiming to save them.
Activists again are filing lawsuits to stop forest management, and the government pays them to do it. They craft settlements that pay them handsomely with taxpayer money so that they can live well and file the next lawsuit. No wonder they are inflexible.
The latest example is using the California spotted owl and Pacific fisher in arguments supporting a lawsuit to stop restoration thinning in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn't listed either species as threatened or endangered.
These activists claim that spotted owls nest in dense forests, so no management should be allowed anywhere the owl might one day live. But they neglect to mention that owls also nest and thrive in managed forests. They ignore the fact that owls have to eat, and their prey live mainly in young forests.
Like the owl, the Pacific fisher (a rarely-seen animal related to the marten and otter) prefers patchy forests, where patches of young, middle-aged and old forest spread across the landscape like squares on a checkerboard. In fact, science shows that fishers prosper in managed forests that mimic this patchiness.
Not only that, according to recent data from a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley, there are probably at least 896 fishers in the Sequoia National Monument, which, according to one study, is nearly three times the density needed to maintain the population.
Unfortunately, legal action has blocked commonsense thinning to restore forests to their natural diversity and resistance to catastrophic wildfire. Already, many of California's public forests have grown dangerously overcrowded, with 10 to 20 times more trees than is natural. The Giant Sequoia National Monument is near the top of the crowded forest list. It already burned once, and it is certain to burn again.
In 2002, the McNally fire blackened 151,000 acres in and around the Sequoia National Monument, coming within one mile of the Packsaddle Grove of giant sequoias. Without active management, it is only a matter of time before another major wildfire hits, possibly destroying all 38 sequoia groves in the monument.
Rather than protecting forests and wildlife with lawsuits, activists are condemning them to destruction.
Massive wildfires move so fast that flames can overtake animals like deer, bears and fishers before they escape. Streams boil and fish die. Ash fills burrows and suffocates ground dwellers. Smoke inhalation kills most animals before the flames reach them.
In New Mexico's Los Alamos Fire, 90 percent of the Mexican spotted owl's habitat was lost. Between 1999 and 2002, the U.S. Forest Service identified 11 California spotted owl-nesting sites as lost to wildfire. In 2002, the Biscuit Fire destroyed tens of thousands of acres of spotted owl habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California, including 49 known nesting sites.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cites wildfire as the primary threat to spotted owls. The Pacific fisher is also at risk because of catastrophic wildfire. The forest thinning that activists have blocked is legal and necessary, and approved by the Clinton administration with environmentalist support.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, recently introduced the Giant Sequoia National Monument Transition Act to allow the approved thinning operations to proceed and protect the sequoia groves, nearby communities, and the spotted owl and Pacific fisher from catastrophic wildfire.
Sanity must prevail. We must work together -- the public and private sectors and even professional activists.
Lawsuits are not the answer to our forests' problems. Active forest management is the only way to protect lives and property, and conserve the forests and wildlife we cherish.
THOMAS M. BONNICKSEN, the author of ``America's Ancient Forests'' (John Wiley, 2000), is a Texas A&M University professor emeritus of forest science and a University of California-Davis visiting professor, and serves on the advisory board of the Forest Foundation. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.