Page 29 - Flathead Beacon // 11.9.16

UNCOMMON GROUND MIKE JOPEK QUIT STRESSING US OUT
GUEST COLUMN GEORGE WUERTHNER
THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL Association recently released a survey indicating that 2016 presi- dential elections pose a signi cant source of stress for most adults nationwide.
The APA indicated that adults born from the 1980s to mid 1990s are even more stressed about elections than Baby Boomers like myself. Up to 59 percent of women who are born as Millennials say that this election is a very or somewhat signi cant source of stress.
Half of Baby Boomers felt signi cant election stress. Forty- ve percent of people born after, into Generation X, felt stressed about elections.
Most everyone is thankful that this election is over. What a horrendous cam- paign season – it’ll take a bit to recover. Maybe you as the candidate won. Con- gratulations. There are signi cant chal- lenges facing our county, state and nation. It’s soon time to govern.
As a candidate, the election was never about you. Your name was on the yard signs, on the ballot, on all those mailers and commercials that ooded the mail- boxes and TVs. It feels very personal, but it wasn’t about you.
We voters elected you to represent us. Yes, all of us.
Soon the candidate-elect’s job is to
represent even those amongst us who are their most stringent policy critics. Appar- ently the best bills enacted into law can withstand strong critique. Those bills likely took bipartisan courage to enact into law.
When you as our candidate-elect head to Helena or Washington, D.C. to be sworn into o ce, don’t forget about us. We voters sent you there to do our work. You represent us: to balance our budget, conserve our way of life, keep us safe, and generally make life better.
We did not send our candidate-elects to the Legislature or Congress to do nothing. Get some work done, be bipar- tisan, and cooperate. We voters invested our taxes and pay your salary, health
insurance, travel, lodging, meals, and state or federal retirements. We deserve some results.
A decade ago, as a freshman state lawmaker, one big lesson upon arriving at the capitol was guring out that not everything my party promoted was nec- essarily good in the district I was sent to represent.
It takes tremendous courage to cross your party leadership on the big stu . One can nd the woodshed with the future of their pending legislation on the rocks.
In my time, Republicans like Rep. Harry Klock bluntly told his leadership on the oor of the House that if they con- tinued to withhold his veteran’s bill in committee, he would rip his desk o the Chamber oor and plant it onto our side of the aisle. That bill passed.
In a subsequent Legislature, Repub- lican Rep. Walter McNutt boldly told his colleagues on that same House oor to quit scaring our constituents and quit letting us look like a bunch of bu oons.
We’ve endured enough stress this elec- tion cycle. Give us a break over the hol- idays and gure out a game plan for the upcoming January legislatures. Then while in Helena or Washington D.C., work together like citizens and neighbors.
There’s plenty of work ahead in Helena to assure that current double-digit prop- erty valuations don’t translate into dou- ble-digit property tax increases for Flat- head Valley homeowner. People living in their homes have been waiting a long time for some Legislature to x it.
There’s plenty to do in D.C. to assure that the proposed double-digit health insurance premium hikes don’t force people to go without healthcare. Can we just put together a plan and x it.
Many candidates say they will x it during a campaign. Real political cour- age comes once serving, as it’s time to govern. Hopefully our state and national lawmakers will help lower our political stress levels by doing some real work and governing.
IWILDFIRES
WANT TO RESPOND TO MISINFOR-
that larger wild res are being fueled by a reduction in logging.
A further problem with thinning as a means of reducing wild res is that one can’t predict where a blaze will occur. Thinned stands grow back quickly due to reduce competition. So even if thin- ning were e ective at stopping large res burning under extreme re weather (which evidence suggests logging does not) the probability that any thinned stand will encounter a re during its short-lived e ective period is extremely rare.
Another assumption widely held by many promoting more logging is that our forests are “unhealthy” and in need of “restoration.” You don’t restore a for- est by logging. Logging impoverishes forest ecosystems. It causes excessive erosion, fragments wildlife habitat, removes biomass, diminishes carbon storage, and spreads weeds, among other factors that degrades our forests.
Healthy forest ecosystems need periodic large inputs of dead trees. The major factors creating episodic inputs of dead trees are the natural ecological processes vili ed by timber advocates like bark beetles, wild re, and disease.
Snags and down logs are used by numerous plants and animals for shel- ter, and sources of food. Some two- thirds of all wildlife species depend on dead wood/down wood at some point in their lives. Logs that fall into streams are essential for healthy functioning aquatic ecosystems and increase sheries.
While some carbon is lost during wild res, the bulk of carbon remains on site in dead wood. Wood charred by re is more resistant to rot thus is a long- term storage for carbon and nutrients.
By contrast, logging removes car- bon from the on-site storage, and in the processing of logs creates much smaller particles of wood that is either burned as slash or rots and releases a lot of car- bon. Plus, logging has an additive loss of carbon by disturbing the soil, which releases even more carbon.
In short, the underlying assumptions of nearly all logging/thinning propo- nents is misleading. Anyone who under- stands the ecological importance of high severity res for healthy forest ecosys- tem is grateful to the Alliance for Wild Rockies for halting money-losing and scienti cally suspect timber sales.
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT
“WE DID NOT SEND OUR CANDIDATE- ELECTS TO THE LEGISLATURE OR CONGRESS TO DO NOTHING.”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
mation about wild re by Nick Smith’s
editorial on the proposed East Reser- voir Project which appeared in the Nov. 2 Flathead Beacon (“Federal Forest Management is Broken”). In that piece, Smith promotes many misconceptions about wild re.
I do not expect Smith to be an expert on wild re. Most people engaged in col- laboratives, including the timber indus- try, conservation groups, and even within the Forest Service ranks are not up to date on the latest re science. And what we are learning about wild re and forest health are counter-intuitive to many common assumptions about wild- re and forest health.
First, the idea that fuels drive large wild re is erroneous. Large wild res are driven by rare extreme climate/weather conditions. To get a large re, you need drought, combined with high tempera- tures, low humidity and most impor- tantly high winds. If you do not have these ingredients you may not even get an ignition, and certainly won’t get rapid re spread.
Why is that important? Because the underlying assumption of logging advo- cates is that we need to reduce fuels to halt large res, when in fact there is plenty of anecdotal as well as scienti c evidence that logging/thinning is not e ective under such extreme weather conditions.
The only res that are of concern are those burning under extreme re con- ditions, however, these res account for less than 1 percent of all res that are ignited annually. So the very res that logging advocates seek to halt through thinning the forest are the very ones that logging doesn’t really a ect. We have many examples in Montana where large res burned through industrial timberlands that were full of clearcuts and thinned stands.
Furthermore, there are studies that demonstrate that active forest manage- ment, especially thinning/logging, can even enhance re spread.
A study published just this month in Ecosphere, reviewed wild re on 23 million acres of public lands in the past three decades. The scientists found for- ests protected from logging burn less severely than logged forests. This is exactly the opposite conclusion from the assertion made by Smith who suggested
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and author of numerous books including “Wild re: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.”
NOVEMBER 9, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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