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October 10, 2006
Bringing Down Ash Mountain
In high school and college, I was an obscenely idealistic environmentalist. It was the 1990's, when it was popular to lament the gaping ozone hole above Antarctica, the leveling of the Amazon rainforest, and Alaska's toxic oil spills. I was supremely caught up in this movement. I read and re-read those passionate, heart-wrenching Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, and Rainforest Coalition publications about environmental degredation in our country and internationally. I attended large public events in the winter in Minnesota for the sole purpose of handing out PETA's anti-fur literature to women wearing fur coats. I took a picture of myself hugging a tree, framed it, and placed in conspicuously on my father's desk at work (My dad worked as a salesman for a large paper corporation. Incidentally and ironically, he recently revealed to me that he kept the picture on his desk until he retired and chuckled with his customers about it over and over. My dad used humor to make big sales, so I'm sure my picture somehow contributed to North American logging.). As a study abroad student in western England, I took a bus to the Wales coast one weekend to participate in a protest regarding the poor clean-up job that Exxon did after a small oil spill off the coast. I boycotted McDonald's because they grazed their cows on clearcut rainforest land in South America. I refused to wear animal products, like leather shoes (Try finding running shoes in the 1990's that didn't have leather uppers.). Once, when my mom put chicken on the dinner table, I presented her with a book about poor conditions at chicken farms. You might think I'm kidding, but I lived and breathed for feeling passionate about causes like these.
These days, I think I've calmed down just a little. I no longer try to push my own beliefs onto others, like trying to offend nice women in warm jackets at professional hockey games. I now believe that we are all entitled to our own ideas and beliefs. However, I still consider myself having strong personal environmental values and beliefs. The issue of logging on Ash Mountain is something I've been thinking a lot about.
Ash Mountain, located in the Gallatin National Forest, is perched just outside the northern border of Yellowstone National Park and just west of the Absoroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Years and years ago, portions of it were logged, so the mountain is laced with now-decrepit logging roads turned jeep trails that switchback and wind all over the mountain. Thus, Ash Mountain is one of my personal running playgrounds. For example, I did my long run up there last weekend, and ran all over that mountain. Logging is, again, occurring up there even as I write this.
The logging history of Ash Mountain is way, way complex and now a part of wive's-tale-local-speak that we relative newcomers to the area only learn about in hushed bits and pieces. Apparently, it's an old and new history that still continues to divide the locals, and talking about it often incites long-winded and not neccessarily polite debates. I do think the story is important because we're considering lands that are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecoystem (a collaboration of millions of acres of federal and state-owned lands in and around the Yellowstone National Park area), nearby Yellowstone National Park, habitiat to some pretty crucial animals like grizzly bears and wolves, and very near to many people's homes and land. I'll explain the little that I know.
Everyone knows that our national forests get logged, right? These days, national forest employees designate certain areas of national forests that may be logged according to protocols established on a federal level (Perhaps you saw the national news headlines during George W. Bush's first term regarding the passage of federal legislation that loosened regulations on national forest logging? The result of this legislation was that more roads could be built in national forests for better logging access, more national forest lands could be logged, and private corporations could use less envrionmentally-friendly logging techniques.). These areas are loosely refered to as timber tracts. Logging on these timber tracts is then contracted out by the forest service to the highest bidding private logging companies. When a company wins a timber tract bid, it's then loosely called a timber sale.
Ash Mountain is currently being logged from a timber sale dating back to 1999 called the Darroch-Eagle Timber Sale. The Darroch and Eagle creeks/drainages, which are adjacent to Ash Mountain, are the namesakes for this sale. Local and national environmental defense organizations spent 5 years, from 1999-2004, unsuccessfully protesting this timber sale through several lawsuits. These organizations argued that the area encompassing the Darroch-Eagle Timber Sale was too sensitive for logging. That is, they argued that the area was important grizzly bear and wolf habitat, and that logging this particular area would produce dangerous amonts of erosion. In 2004, it was finally ruled in the federal court system that the timber sale would be allowed. Resultingly, the tract was contracted out and logging began there this summer.
The logging company that's doing this sale has been up high on the logging roads since August. I've seen the logging trucks coming through town with big timber loads destined for the railroad line 60 miles away. I've seen the signs posting their legal rights to logging the area. I've seen the tracks of their bulldozers and 18-wheelers on the logging roads. Up until this weekend, I haden't yet witnessed the logging first-hand.
I don't wish to turn this essay into a driveling-whining-pity-the-little-squirrels-who-can't-find-their-acorns-bow-to-the-hippy-dippy-save-the-world-environmentalists-can't-you-hear-the-snowy-owls-screaming essay by any means, so I'll simply write about what I saw. The logging roads/jeep tracks were widened enough to support the passage of heavy machinery, so trees on each side of the road were cut/bulldozed and the roads were re-graded. They logged in selective patches (Generally, logging happens in 3 ways: 1) forest thinning where select types and numbers of trees are logged from a forest; 2) patch logging where small patches of forest are clear cut to top soil; and 3) clear cutting where large forest areas are clear cut to top soil. You may presume that these logging types are listed in descening order of environmenal friendliness and ascending order of cost to execute. Also, generally, true clear cutting doesn't happen anymore on federal lands in the United States, although it still happens on private US lands and internationally.) that seemed to be about 100-200 yards in diameter. I don't know how the patches were picked, but the outer perimeters were marked earlier in the summer by the forest service with flagging and spray paint on tree trunks. The trees are down in all of the patches that I saw, so I'm not positive of the actual process. It seems that the trees were felled with chainsaws from their bases. Then chainsaws were used to remove all the branches and cut the trunks in uniform lengths. It's probably at this point that the big 18-wheelers came up and the tree trunks were loaded en masse. Once they are gone, the rest of what's left is considered garbage to the logging company. The leftover branches and tree stumps were seemingly bulldozed to top soil with huge brush piles of this garbage remaining in the middle of the patch. This is the point at which I ran on Ash Mountain last Sunday and observed the leveled patches and remaining brush piles.
How do I feel about this? How do you feel about this? Me, I'm not so sure. First off, I'm not expert enough to know all the details and make a personal judgement. I know that forests need to be cared for in order to stay healthy, and that logging isn't neccessarily harmful. I don't know how the logging on Ash Mountain compares to the standards of treating a forest well. I know that large predators like grizzly bears and wolves need healthy territories to survive. I don't know what this patch logging will do their territories. I know that too much erosion is bad. I don't know if erosion from the Darroch-Eagle Timber Sale logging will be bad.
One thing that I do know, though, is that last Sunday up high on Ash Mountain, up one of the widened logging roads, on the wet, soft road bed, I saw small tracks that could only have been left by a youngish black bear. His or her tracks appeared on the road where a small creek crossed the road. Then the tracks ascended the road for about a quarter mile. After that, the tracks emptied off the road, right into one of the leveled, logged patches. I couldn't help but wonder what that bear thought of Ash Mountain, whether he or she cared that we humans are bringing down the mountain.
Just in case you are interested in reading about this issue more officially than on some random girl's blog, you may get more information here, here, here, or here.
Posted by Meghan at October 10, 2006 7:47 PM
Comments
how interesting! Thanks for writing about this. Isn't it interesting that the articles barely even mention forest health or the wisdom of logging the particular area; it's ALL. ABOUT. MONEY.
Disgusting, if you ask me. I am open to discussion when the discussion is dealing with environmental issues and facts about long term forest health, wildlife habitat, careful ecology practices, etc. But it comes down to politics and money, instead. *sigh*.
I'm with you, open to learning more before passing judgment. But I can't help my initial reaction, which is sadness and disgust with the entire process of politics.
Posted by: anne at October 11, 2006 9:44 AM
There's money in them thar hills. There's trees up thar. The tree's go into the trucks, the trucks go to the railroad, the railroad goes to the plant, the plant makes lumber, the lumber goes in the 5,000-square feet McMansion to bear the load of a roof that sits over 10 spare rooms that hold vast amounts of cool stuff. The people that live in the McMansion like all their stuff. As long as they got their stuff, they don't think about that wood in their brand new walls. They call themselves 'green' and buy the state-sanction cutsy owl picture license plate for their mega-SUV-hummerthingamabobber, thinking that their extra donation to the 'environment' will fight to keep all the trees up thar on Ash Mountain--the very trees that bear the weight of the roof that sits over their hypocrisy. (Rant complete.)
Posted by: duncan at October 11, 2006 10:05 AM
Very informative thanks for bringing this subject to light...it's very easy to turn a blind eye when things happen behind closed doors and you don't personally see or feel the effect..I really appreciative you describing the scene at Ash Mountain! I really don't know too much about logging but up in Maine they plant new trees after they have logged in certain sections..not sure if this is actually working but the last time I was up there I did see evidence that this was happening. I think you may have just started the save ash mountain campaign I certainly will support you!
By the way I like your step 2 plan…I just completed my 1st 50k last month and am looking forward to many more…I wish you great success at the GV50k….happy tails
Posted by: Ryan at October 12, 2006 8:40 PM
I’m back again =) I enjoyed reading thru your blog! You capture the essence of running!! I recently did the same switch from tracking miles to logging my runs by time...it’s all about time on your feet when training for Ultra’s….looking forward to following your progress!
Let’s see if I can spell that correctly this time HAPPY TRAILS..lol
Posted by: Ryan at October 13, 2006 8:27 AM