There is already a place that’s sacred to my family, where I am already bound by that sacred tie that’s formed when the flesh and blood of your ancestors becomes part of the living soil. It’s a place I’ve known my whole life, a place where I’ve come to have some small knowledge of its moods and sounds and speech. It’s that place we call the Allegheny National Forest. I have a relationship with that place. My grandmother owns a cabin there, not far from Marienville, and we have gone to that place every other weekend, every summer, for as long as I’ve lived in Pittsburgh. From that, I’ve learned to appreciate that forest. When the Tribe of Anthropik has completed its preparations and finally goes feral, I believe it’s those woods where we’ll make our home. I’ve already begun to think of it as home. I was delighted in recent months to help my mother begin planning a permacultural forest garden there, and that has turned my attention more forcefully to the local issues affecting that special, sacred place. It had long been a hum in my awareness, but only now has it come into full focus that the place that I would make my home, others would make a battlefield—so it is high time I enter that fray.

The old growth forest that once stood there was mostly Eastern hemlock and American beech, with white pine growing in the river valleys, and oak on the slopes. Large trees, fallen logs, and a multi-storey forest canopy created a wide, open habitat for rich biodiversity. Deer herds were kept to about 10 deer per square mile by the predation of wolves and cougars. This was not a “pristine” environment, though; such a forest was created as much by its Homo sapiens inhabitants as any other species, and the impact of the Onödowága’ (better known to us as the Seneca) should not be underestimated.¹ Mostly using fire, the Onödowága’ cleared the lower storey of the forest, keeping it open and clear. The Seneca were part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy; after suffering as much as any other native group from the introduction of European germs and the spreading socio-ecological wave that preceded the settlers in the form of trade goods, guns, horses, and invasive species, the Onödowága’ were not always friendly towards the invaders. Gaiänt’wakê, better known to Americans as “Cornplanter,” was a particularly famous Seneca chief who joined the British against the colonists during the Revolution, mostly due to the colonists’ hostility towards the natives. All the same, he tried to keep the Seneca neutral during the wars that followed the Revolution in which the new nation took its revenge on the natives, and in return was promised the lands west of the Allegheny River “forever.” He died of old age in what is now the Allegheny National Forest in 1836. The grant given to him and his descendants was flooded by the construction of the Kinzua Dam in 1965. The Society of Friends sued to honor the treaty and stop the dam’s construction, but to no avail. Johnny Cash wrote a song about it, called “As Long As the Grass Shall Grow,” and the Onödowága’ were removed to the Allegheny Reservation in New York. It had been the last reservation in Pennsylvania.

Of course, by that time, the Allegheny National Forest was already a very different place. When the first European settlers began to arrive in this area in the 1800s, they cut trees for cabins and barns, but ultimately had little impact on the woods. In the late 1850s, tanneries began to use tannin from hemlock, and these provided a great deal of the leather used by the Union in the Civil War, but it was only in the 1900s that the wood chemical industry truly destroyed the forest with mass harvesting for charcoal, wood alcohol, acetic acid, acetate of lime and other products. Though some small pockets of old growth still survive—as at Tionesta or Heart’s Content—nearly the whole of the Allegheny Plateau was utterly deforested in this rapacious onslaught.

If that was not enough, this place had been the birthplace of the oil industry. Drake’s Well in Titusville was the first oil well. “Bradford and Warren, both towns bordering the forest, have refineries. It’s the birthplace of the petroleum industry. Bradford was, in essence, the first Saudi Arabia. It used to have a chandelier store, I understand.”²

The turning point for the Allegheny Forest was the Weeks Act, passed in 1911, leading to the establishment of the Allegheny National Forest. At that point, it had been so utterly debased that many had taken to calling it the “Allegheny Brush Heap.” When the National Forest was established in 1923, efforts were undertaken to restore the forest. The shade-tolerant, long-lived hemlock and beech were gone; the new, second-growth forest is young, and composed of very different species. The species of trees planted were not the same that had made up the old forest—instead, the new forest is made up of black cherry, red maple, black birch and sugar maple. Any second-growth forest is inherently weaker than the rich biodiversity of an old-growth forest, but Allegheny seems to suffer from a particular deficit. Environmentalists have called it more a “tree farm” than a forest, because its trees are all the same age, and new species were introduced: species that are particularly useful for the timber industry.

This forest is a dream come true for people in the timber industry, too. For them it is not just new, it is new and improved. Unlike the northern hardwoods of beech, hemlock, and white pine that used to populate the region, it is composed primarily of lucrative hardwoods like black cherry that fetch higher values on the market. Black cherry probably only made up about one percent of the trees in the forest one hundred years ago; today it accounts for twenty-five percent. The new forest is so different that a new term, “Allegheny hardwood,” was coined to describe it. By the time the environmental controversy was heating up, wood from the Allegheny was selling at unheard of prices and bringing in significant revenue for the surrounding communities.

For most locals, the story of the Allegheny’s wealth-generating rebirth is an environmental triumph, a tale of using smart management to revitalize both nature and the economy. For environmentalists, it is a story of nature distorted and destroyed. They contend that rather than pursuing policies that would restore the forest to its natural state, the Forest Service has developed an artificial tree farm for the timber companies. They have a point: the Allegheny has been run under a system of even-aged management, which, as the name suggests, creates stands of trees that are all approximately the same age. This may or may not be the best approach for the forest, but it is undeniably convenient for the loggers who harvest its trees. Activists contend that despite some accommodations for creating wildlife habitat, even-aged management is essentially a way of allowing clear-cutting under a euphemistic name.³

The wolves that once kept the forest’s deer populations in check are now gone, and the deer herds have exploded—attracting the recent migrations of coyote into the forest. Elk have been reintroduced.⁴ This is another respect in which I feel a kinship with this land: here is a place that was once laid waste by civilization, that is now rewilding, creating a new, living community from all manner of new, introduced populations. The old living community had been home to the Seneca; I can almost hear this new community asking for a human community to join them who shares their experience, who, like them, are rewilding, and rediscovering their relationships and their communities after the trauma of civilization. The experience of the Allegheny Forest is the same experience as our own tribe.

But the same forces that destroyed it once are already hovering close by, ready to destroy it all over again. Allegheny hardwood is some of the most valued furniture wood in the world. Worse still, the ANF was not the birthplace of the oil industry without any reason: it sits atop more oil wells than all other national forests combined.

See, history is important. The Forest Service did not establish the Allegheny until 1923. At the time, it had been cut so heavily that the region was known as the Allegheny Brush Heap. So the government decided to make it a national forest. By buying the land.

But not the mineral rights.

That’s right. Unlike most other national forests, the government does not own the subsurface rights on the Allegheny. Because it didn;t want to pay for them. As such, the Forest Service is legally required give the owners of those subservice rights access to the minerals. You want to stop drilling? Buy the subsurface rights.

Have you seen the price of oil and gas recently? Better bring your checkbook.⁵

If the forces rallying to destroy the forest again are so overwhelming, it’s comforting to know that at the same time, the ANF is where, in many regards, the United States’ environmental movement is making its last stand. “The Allegheny, because of its prized hardwoods, especially the black cherry,
is the biggest timber moneymaker of any of our national forests,” explained Michael Kruse, a protester arrested in Pittsburgh’s Strip District for demonstrating against logging in the ANF. “If we can stop logging there, we can stop it everywhere.”⁶ Kruse is referring to the idea of a “Zero-Cut” policy.⁷ The ANF has become their central front.

It’s become a very heated debate. On 11 August 2002, ELF fire-bombed the U.S. Forest Service’s forestry sciences lab near Buckaloons. Fitting ELF’s record, no one was harmed (the bombing took place late at night), but it caused $700,000 in property damage. ELF took responsibility in an email which included a pronouncement that it may begin straying from its usual principles: “While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice.”

The Aug. 11 attack has only exacerbated the situation. Jim Kleissler, co-founder of the Clarion-based Allegheny Defense Project and one of the most effective critics of logging in the ANF since the mid-1990s, angered timber industry representatives in a Sept. 5 interview with the Times-Observer.

After condemning the attack and reiterating his organization’s commitment to nonviolence, he slipped in a dig at forest managers: “We condemn any kind of action that would destroy property, just as we condemn the Forest Service’s destruction of our public property [through timber harvesting and drilling].” Kleissler’s detractors fume that while he might not like how the Forest Service manages the forest, it seems a stretch to equate it with arson and violent threats.⁸

That is, of course, true; the destruction of the original, old-growth Allegheny National Forest, as well as the destruction wrought by modern drilling and logging, does not compare to the petty arson of self-styled but ultimately incompetent environmental vigilantes.

This strikes to the very core of the question of what forests are for—and thus, to the heart and soul of everything civilization is about, what Daniel Quinn called “the Taker culture.” Loggers and drillers have defended their right to consume the forest based on the economic welfare of those communities they employ; environmentalists have simply counter-argued that recreational purposes are as important, and that environmentalism is compatible with economic growth.⁹ Calvin Coolidge’s proclamation establishing the ANF cited: “the protection of the watersheds of navigable streams.” But the Forest Service establishes its overall mission as “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations,” clarifying its role to protect productivity as, “Helping States and communities to wisely use the forests to promote rural economic development and a quality rural environment.”¹⁰

First of all, the controversy exists because the logging/clearcutting takes place in National Forests—public lands, including designated Wilderness Areas, those which most people assumed are set aside to be protected. What is rarely acknowledged is that the Forest Service itself is the perpetrator of the giveaway of our taxpayer funded public lands, not only to logging, but mining, drilling, and grazing interests as well. Perhaps there is no other agency where the public image, in this case one of ecological stewardship, has contrasted so greatly with actual deeds.

The Forest Service was created to protect forests for lumber, not forests for forests’ sake. Their current guideline is The Multiple Use Act of 1960, which states: “the forest purposes shall be enhanced of recreation, timber, watershed, wildlife, fishing, and mining—based on the most judicious use of the land.” But the lion’s share of land usage in the last 40 years has gone to developers. Since then, millions of acres, including Native American religious sites and Wilderness Areas, have been opened to clearcutting or extraction. Watersheds and recreational areas have been damaged, and many plant and animal species severely reduced. To accomplish this, the Forest Service has built one of the earth’s most extensive road systems, with 10,000 miles of new road every year.

The Forest Service and the timber companies employ the most Orwellian of terms and tactics. Clearcutting forests, some over 1000 years old, translates into “harvesting overmature and decadent” trees. The salvage logging rider signed last year called for immediate salvage of “dead and dying trees,” and “those in danger of dying.” Most areas clearcut were of live green trees. This was done under the guise of protecting “forest health,” which is another complex topic in itself. As a bonus, this rider exempted timber companies from environmental laws, and closed the doors on public participation of timber sales.

One of the biggest myths concerns tree replanting. Yes, the Forest Service and the timber companies do replant trees — not the original species, but a single specie, even-aged corn row crop. This new forest is then “managed” as it grows. Competitive species are eliminated, and the crop sprayed with fertilizers and pesticides before it is “selectively cut” decades down the road. In Western forests conifers are preferred; in the Allegheny National Forest, the tree of choice is Black Cherry. Thus, our National Forests (and many private ones as well) are transformed from diverse ecosystems into tree farms.¹¹

A new perspective is needed in this debate, because both sides are currently locked in the insane fantasy that humans exist apart from the other living communities we depend on—the question has so far turned on how best to put the Allegheny Forest to human use. Samuel MacDonald, author of The Agony of an American Wilderness about the mounting conflict in the ANF, puts it in terms of “rights”:

Just try thinking about it from Pittsburgh’s perspective. Would you rather live near a pristine wilderness where you can do backwoods camping? Or would you rather live near a posh rural retreat with a lot of amenities? Is it the government’s job to provide either? What about the people who live there? Do they have a say? What if they want something you don’t want? Do their views take precedent? Why? Why not? What if they “built” the forest with their own hands? What if they saved it from extinction? Is there a balance? Who gets to strike it? What if that balance gets struck and people litigate until that balance is no longer possible? Messy stuff.¹²

Of course, the new forest is a pale shadow, an attempt to heal the wounds those same people opened—does helping to heal those wounds give them “ownership,” or does it just begin to reconcile the broken relationship their past has left them with? If I beat a man within an inch of his life, and then give him a ride to the hospital, how much does he really owe me? They’re living the same ways, and though the modern incarnation may be superficially less malignant, like Collins Pine Corporation, a member of the Forest Stewardship Council (the same orgaization Jared Diamond praised in Collapse), they are still irreversibly rooted in the civilized mindset that the forest fundamentally exists for human use—that the world was put here for us to conquer and rule.

The sane view, the view that emerges from ecology, anthropology, and any kind of serious inquiry whatsoever, is that humans are part of their ecologies—we need to protect the Allegheny Forest not because of its economic or recreational uses, but because it’s our home. What good will the profits of the timber industry do you, if it destroys your home in the process? What good is a prosperous economy without clean air to breathe, or water to drink? The usual frame of “ecology vs. economy” is nonsense; economy is an outgrowth of ecology, an addition to it. Economies are incidental; ecologies are essential. Without a healthy ecology, there is no economy. If your economic well-being relies on an industry that is destroying the ecological basis of your existence, then you need to find another way to make a living. It’s as simple as that. Logging is not the only way of life available, but no matter how you make your living, you’re going to have to find your place in the living community around you, the communities you rely on for air, water, food, and every other necessity of life.

So that’s about the size of it. The place I’m bound to, the place where we’ll be making our home, is the battlefield where all the worst evils of civilization, and the whole environmental movement, have marked out the lines for their own Armageddon. My home has become a battlefield. Expect a lot more posts about the situation and the ANF’s ecology in the future—we won’t be sitting on the sidelines any longer.

Links

• Friends of Allegheny Wilderness
• Allegheny Defense Project
• AntiRust, the weblog of Samuel MacDonald
• Hellbender Chronicles, weblog of the Allegheny Defense Project
• Allegheny Forest Photo Album
• Forest Service Website