Montana Greens to Loggers: Come Back!by
Vin Suprynowicz For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation’s natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West’s “public” lands. And they didn’t seem to much care which tactic did the job. If threatening huge “permit processing fees” or massive levies for “environmental cleanup” could shut down the mines and idle the miners that once gave America her needed lead, nickel, silver, and other minerals and metals, victory was declared. Cattlemen? Just brand them “welfare ranchers” and “despoilers of the land” – ignoring the fact that there always seemed to be more deer, birds, and other wild species on ranched arid lands than on the adjoining unused desert acreage. If sawmills could be shut down and whole towns thrown out of work to supposedly “protect” the spotted owl or some other “threatened or endangered” fish or creature – or even some small local populace of an animal species found in abundance elsewhere – that effort was “good to go.” There have even been efforts to get investors to stop buying the stocks of firms that “rape the earth,” peddled under any number of “ecologically sensitive” monikers. In Missoula, Montana, the environmental extremists appear to have pretty much won that battle. The Plum Creek Timber Company still owns 8 million acres of mostly forested land nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana. But they don’t cut trees on a lot of that land now. Instead, the former logging company has turned into “a real estate investment trust,” The Washington Post reports. And what do real estate investment trusts do with forested land, if it’s no longer judged politically or economically rewarding to cut those trees for lumber? Plum Creek’s lawyers approached Mark Rey, head of the U.S. Forest Service, for “clarification” of the firm’s rights to cross public land. In a series of private negotiations, Mr. Rey says the law required him to acknowledge the firm’s right of access across Forest Service land – even to pave some of the old logging roads running into areas controlled by Plum Creek. But Mr. Rey says Forest Service lawyers managed to extract promises from Plum Creek that “fire wise” measures would be taken to reduce the danger of summer wildfires as they proceed with their new plans for the land – building forest homes for rich people. Are the environmentalists happy that they’ve finally convinced the loggers to do something else with those lands? What do you think? Critics including some local officials were “stunned and outraged” at a deal “struck behind closed doors,” The Post reports. Although Plum Creek has sold off only 3,000 acres in the past five years and plans to sell less than that in the next five, the local Jacobins have dubbed the planned homes “McMansions,” pointing out most new houses in the area are now second, third, or even fourth homes for wealthy newcomers who have transformed the local economy – the Post breathlessly reporting 40 percent of the income in Missoula County is now “unearned,” a term apparently favored by the anti-capitalists to describe investment returns. (For the record, I can think of only three kinds of income that are “unearned”: money you find on the sidewalk, money that’s been stolen, and redistributed tax money. OK, that’s only two kinds.) “Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we’re kind of missing the loggers,” Ray Rasker – executive director of Headwaters Economics, a non-profit research outfit that studies land management in the West – told The Post. “A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that’s going to be that way forever,” Mr. Rasker now laments. Those darned human beings. Isn’t there ANY way to get rid of them? “We have 40 years of Forest Service history that has been reversed in the last three months,” squawks Pat O’Herren, an official in Missoula County, which is threatening to sue the Forest Service for failing to call for environmental assessments and public hearings to help decide what the private landowners shall be allowed to do with their own lands. “For us, this is kind of an arterial bleed,” whines Melanie Parker, executive director of Northwest Connections, an environmental group in Swan Valley, 60 miles northeast of Missoula. Rich people building fancy houses in the woods. Oh, the humanity! Some environmental groups are responding ethically – not lobbying politicians to block Plum Creek from using its land in any legal permitted manner, but instead ponying up market rates to buy what they see as the most desirable parcels. Since 2000, the Nature Conservancy has paid Plum Creek – presumably a willing seller – market rates to secure 280,000 acres in the area. Others, of course, want the taxpayers to fund their anti-human whims. Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus “forced into the farm bill, which survived President Bush’s veto,” $250 million in tax dollars to back bonds to buy more Plum Creek lands that might otherwise be developed.
“Environmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside,” reports Karl Vick of The Post. Imagine that. July 17, 2008 Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow. Copyright © 2008 Vin Suprynowicz
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