Lowbagger Letters

Logging the Bitterroot to Health?
As recently reported, the Bitterroot National Forest plans to implement Montana's first "Healthy Forest" Restoration Act project along the East Fork of the Bitterroot River. The Forest Service's proposal calls for industrial logging in nearly 4,000 acres of diverse, old-growth forests. Having visited some of these areas myself and attended the recent field tour, I have some serious concerns about logging these forests to improve their health.

The Forest Service claims that the project will address bark beetle infestation and the risk of wildfire to the East Fork community. Beetles are part of a natural process that helps maintain diversity and balance in a healthy forest.  Beetles play an important role as natural thinning agents and food for the many woodpeckers we observed in these forests. Dead trees contribute to soil stability and nutrients.

As for wildfire protection, focusing fuel reduction efforts around communities has been proven to be far more effective than logging big trees in the backcountry. This is precisely what the Community Protection alternative would address far more effectively, and without compromising critical elk and bighorn sheep habitat.

Some Bitterroot National Forest officials seem to have a one size fits all approach to forest management, using industrial logging as the management tool of choice for all perceived needs. Would you visit a doctor whose only tool was amputation? Even a beetle infested forest is healthier than the nearby clearcuts and terraces we saw on the landscape.

This project is an old-growth logging sale in search of a justification.  Why don't we just call it what it is, and debate the merits of industrial logging on another 4,000 acres of intact, native old-growth forests on public lands? Healthy Forests? Sounds more like Leave No Old-Growth Forest Behind.

Hello Editors,
I am glad to see an article about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker on your web site. It made methink of this comic that says it all when you think of the typical American response to a wonderful event of this type...
Salle Engelhardt

Honoring Mothers, Human and Wild

In 1905 Anna Jarvis swore upon her mother’s grave that she would dedicate her life to establishing a day to honor all mothers living and dead.  President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressional Joint Resolution in 1914 and Mother’s Day was born.

But Anna subsequently despaired over the increasing commercialization of the day, feeling it should be “a day of sentiment, not profit.”   She opposed even greeting cards as “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.”

This Mother’s Day, I plan to avoid the commercial morass.  I’ll still send a gift card for groceries – after all, my mom is a disabled widow living on social security.  But I also plan to honor her by supporting persecuted mothers of another species.

Pregnant bison cows spend the frigid Yellowstone winter as all bison do, with perseverance and quiet patience, their massive heads sweeping deep snow aside to reveal frozen grass.  When early spring creeps toward lower-elevation lands around the park, the migratory instinct in these shaggy beasts calls them forth.  They frequently exit the park near West Yellowstone, making their way to Horse Butte Peninsula, for generations now their traditional birthing ground on national forest land belonging to all Americans.  Here, on sunny slopes, they find new grass, tender and nutritious, to nourish their winter-weary bodies and the growing calves within.  As winter recedes in Yellowstone, the new families return to the park.

But Montana – the Last Best Place – is not the best place for bison, and too often, it’s simply the last place.  Recently, a pregnant mom, her yearling, and a calf were repeatedly hazed into high tension wire and barbed wire fencing by Montana Department of Livestock personnel – sadists on ATVs, horseback, and snowmobiles, hell-bent on confining America’s last wild bison to Yellowstone’s arbitrary boundary.  Those they don’t haze back to the park are captured; many are slaughtered.  “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam” – but it had better not be in Montana’s cattle empire.

The mom and two little ones, terrified and bleeding, sought refuge in the park.  But at the end of April, DOL decided to really show those bison who’s the boss.  A helicopter joined the arsenal on Horse Butte, where many pregnant cows, some nearly in labor, peacefully grazed.  Flying low, joined by ATVs and horse riders on the ground, the chopper (paid for with our federal tax dollars) forced the creatures to flee in terror.  Big-bellied moms-to-be were chased relentlessly.  The emotional and physical stress must take an immense toll on their pregnant bodies.

Bloated with entitlement and greed, DOL tolerates no wild bison in Montana, whether on public or private land, whether cattle are present or not.  The National Park Service, the Forest Service, and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks are partners in this crime against native wildlife and wild motherhood.

This Mother’s Day, I’m opting out of the commercial frenzy.  Since I have no control over the tax dollars that fund bison persecution on my public land, I’ll counteract it with a tax-deductible contribution – in my mother’s honor – to Buffalo Field Campaign.  They’ll send her a nice card (sorry, Anna!) informing her of the donation, then they’ll get back to work.  The hardy volunteers at BFC spend every day – including the most frigid – standing with the wild bison, documenting the atrocities committed against them, and informing the world.  To learn about the ongoing slaughter (including hazing video), visit their website at www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.

The link above takes one to a Lowbagging webpastry depicting a pivotal Earth First! event: the addition of tree-occupation-as-blockade to the panoply of earth defender tactics. Download audio recordings of Earth First!er Mike Jakubal  in May 1985 climbing his way up a Douglas fir, aided & abetted by Mike Roselle, Marcy Willow, Ron Huber and others as he carries out the very first EF! treeclimbing action. Another of Ron Huber cursing loggers from his tree platform in the second EF! tree occupation action, and the banshee howling of two chainsaws killing trees of the Millenium Grove aerial village that had been vacated by their sitters--gone on a beer run! 

Drawings, court records, photos, action logs, fliers, press releases of various degrees of intelligibility and plausibility,  press clippings and other archeological debris from that fateful spring & summer of 1985, when Nagasaki Johnson trod the West, trailing civil disobedience actions, safety meetings, confused judges and furious Freddies in his wake.