The Watchdog of the Forest

I'd like to start this piece by clarifying a few things from the article in last week's Nuvo about the deforestation of the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana. First of all, I don't live in a house adjacent to the National Forest. It's a one-room log cabin with an outhouse, although it often feels like home. A three-hour journey separates the cabin from my house in the city.

Secondly, I was identified as a Vietnam veteran. I am actually a Vietnam ERA veteran, meaning that my disabling injury was in a combat training exercise before reaching the real show. This is an important distinction.

The most important clarification is regarding the whole forest story. It started out as a plea for help to save the beautiful Hoosier National Forest, which is supposed to be held in trust for generations to come. I'm not sure the call for help was loud enough.

Although I personally feel sickened by the forest service's actions, I can somewhat understand the reasoning in trying to return the forest to its natural hardwoods, to wipe out the "non-native" species. When you reach the deep forest, you can see and feel the difference of a forest made entirely of giant hardwoods. The air even feels different. But what I cannot understand is why they would choose to do this timber harvest at a time when there are mothers and babies all over the forest. Removing the existing canopy makes quite an impact. Couldn't another time have been chosen that would be less damaging to the total environment? Couldn't another method have been used?

Moving to the present, Sunday night, June 16. I spend time deep in the forest as a watchdog might spend time under your porch. I don't want to be seen, for as you know, people act differently when they are aware of the presence of others. I am moving slowly into a cold camp (that means no fire) to ensure that I'll be on site to document the next step the out-of-state contractors take to continue the devastation in the forest. The heat and bugs are a separate war for me, both being relentless. I didn't know I'd fallen asleep until I was awakened by a coyote yelping at the stars and another one answered. The hoo hoo hooooowah of the horned owl echoed across the holler as many times as he desired. Not in unison, but from various areas of the forest, several more answered. They require large growth trees to survive, and it is diminishing as you sit there reading.

As I lay awake with the symphony of the roaring silence in a constant crescendo, anxiety and anticipation consume me as I cannot erase the man made sounds, or control the continued devastation of Harding Flats and German Ridge in Perry County, Indiana. I know this is the tip of the iceberg, because of the erroneous, felonious justification of the project. Remember boys and girls, the Forest Service's original idea was to rid the area of the non-native offending pines, to return the forest to its original hardwood state.

There are a few problems with their idea. Number one, the premise that only the non-hardwoods would be taken has already been proven false. The pictures reveal large hardwoods, already felled and lying on the ground. The pines were planted to stop the erosion of the soil in the last logging project, but now they're planting culverts and directing the runoff toward an existing county road that already washes out several times a year.

Number two, the plan states that money obtained will be used to purchase more land for the Hoosier National Forest. If that happens, it will also be under the same control of those now logging this section of the National Forest, so what use to buy more? More roads, more destruction, more trash, more crime.

While it is probably true that money will be added to the forest budget, it is also true that the opened access, complete with roads, will bring the need for a new federal officer to patrol and control the newly created access. A call to a federal ranger who patrols the forest in Perry County revealed that he was not even informed that there was a new road going through that section of the forest. The few officers I'm familiar with excel in the field, but are presently spread thin. If signage is planned for the new roads, like all the other signs in that part of the county, the poachers, hooligans and other criminal elements attracted to a new playing ground will use them for target practice. Old roads are often used for trash disposal, mobile meth labs, off-season poaching and who knows what else.

Number three, the added money will also be needed to control the invasive species like briars and vining plant parasites, always the first to take over freshly logged woodland. When you open up deep forest to the sunlight, many species die, and some really choking, snaggled undergrowth will smother everything in its path like a wet blanket.
There is currently a plan to begin the use of herbicides to control those invasive species, in and around the National Forest. What's that gonna cost? I'm not really concerned about the dollars, but the impact. Irreversible damage from dirt to sky. God help us.

The pictures show another side of the planned restoration. Old practice was to use a couple of old tires and a few gallons of diesel fuel to ignite the whole mess. Once the tires are torched they are hot enough to burn green wood and debris, even stumps. I've been involved in this method and you may as well burn a truck. Now the newly ripped road is littered with tires from large equipment brought in for a funeral pyre of trees and branches and lizards and frogs and insects of all types and sizes. Is this an approved method within the USDA's National Forest Service’s definition of a controlled burn? It's putrification of the best air in the state. It is just plain wrong to bring this foulness to such a pristine, natural, protected spot.

I begin to doubt the morals of human beings who execute this violation against such a place. They should be required to spend time in the place I've previously mentioned, without implements of destruction, and just listen. That deep forest place, so silent that it roars. This should be required of all politicians, so called planning experts, and anyone with a final say in forest business before they ever, ever speak of changing life or leaf of any species.

As a novice writer, my mind wonders if a difference can really be made? This is about the injustice of the act, and the complacency of my brothers and sisters and cousins and friends and enemies and strangers and on and on and never justified. We hear hours of newscasts from people concerned with global warming and the worst meteorological events since recorded time. What do you think is causing all of that? And what are YOU doing to stop it? We all talk a good game, but we all talk a good game. Oh yes, we all talk a good game.

It is time to act. Our eco system will never recover. Not even. Not ever. We can't reverse the damage already done in our lifetime. Those trees are 78 years old. How old will you be in 78 years? How old will your children be in 78 years? Trees that are planted now will not reach the majesty of those cut down until our grandchildren are old. But maybe, just maybe, if enough people care enough, or are moved enough to take action, maybe we can salvage something for our great-grandchildren, so they can know the beauty of the silent roar. We are beyond the wake-up call…. please help.

Call, write or e-mail the governor's office. Call, write or e-mail your state senators. Call, write or e-mail the forestry service. Together we can make it happen. Otherwise, the roar of the exhaust puking out the excess power of the Japanese-made tracked vehicles, complemented by that big Stihl chainsaw, backed up by that dreaded crack and snap, crack and snap, crack, crack, snap, THUD, is all that is left.

More later,

The Watchdog of the Forest


Contacts

Mitch Daniels, Governor
Office of the Governor
Statehouse
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2797
317-232-4567
http://www.in.gov/gov, “Ask Mitch”

Senators
Senator Evan Bayh
131 Russell
Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5623
bayh.senate.gov/contact/email

Senator Richard Lugar
306 Hart
Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-4814
senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov

USDA Forest Service, National Office
1400 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20250-0003
1-800-832-1355

USDA Forest Service, Eastern Region R-9
626 E. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414-297-3600

Hoosier National Forest Supervisor’s Office
811 Constitution Avenue
Bedford, IN 47421
1-866-302-4173

Al Gore
2100 West End Ave., Suite 620
Nashville, TN 37203