Opinion
A4
Saturday, June 25, 2022
OUR VIEW
A tip of the hat
to the area’s
graduates
W
e salute the host of college and high
school graduates who strolled across
the stage this month, clutching their
diplomas.
While graduation is certainly a recognized
rite of passage, it is also a time of refl ection and
hope. Now, more than ever, we need every area
graduate.
Lofty goals and sentiments are often legion
during graduation — as they should be — but the
basic fact remains that the nation, the state and
the local community needs every one of those
graduates to step out into the adult world with a
goal to make a diff erence.
It may appear easy to dismiss the notion that
a single person can make an impact, but the
truth is each young man and woman who walks
off the graduation stage this month can make a
diff erence.
And we need those who want and can make a
diff erence.
At a time when the nation is rife with division,
where discord is consumed like an energy drink,
America, Oregon, Union and Wallowa counties
need young people who still retain the determi-
nation of their youth. People who are ready and
eager to step up and seek change.
Our greatest resource as a nation is our youth.
Our prospects, our opportunities for success as
a county, state and nation rest on the hopes and
desires of our young people.
Our young are the agents of our future, and the
potential they represent is as valuable as any new
policy, law or idea.
Granted, we remain the greatest nation on
Earth in terms of goals and values, and at no time
in our shared history has chances of a happy life
for our youth been more acute than now.
Yet challenges, risks, also remain for our
youth. There is no way to deny that the obstacles
the nation and the state face are signifi cant. The
perceived problems stack up easily, and solutions
often are fl eeting.
That is why the views, the ambitions, of those
who have just graduated are so important to our
collective prosperity. We need every one of the
new graduates to feel they can make a diff erence,
that they can help their community, their state
and even their nation.
We salute every single graduate from Eastern
Oregon University and all of our area high
schools. We hope that they will be able to move
ahead in life with a calm but steady resolve to
give back to their community and spark change
for the good of all.
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opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of The Observer.
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Anti-forestry lawsuit puts
forests and communities at risk
made it harder for the Forest Service
to remove tree species that compete
NICK
with native pine and are less resilient
SMITH
to fi re such as grand fi r or white fi r.
OTHER VIEWS
This compelled the national forests
in Eastern Oregon to pursue dozens
ix anti-forestry groups are
of project-specifi c amendments to
suing to block a new policy
the 21-inch rule over the past 20
that would make it a little
years in order to meet desired forest
easier for the U.S. Forest Service
conditions.
to reduce wildfi re risks and restore
This arbitrary rule created an
forest health on national forestlands
expensive and time-consuming pro-
in Eastern Oregon and Washington.
cess, and as a result, the Forest Service
In doing so, their lawsuit aff ects sev- has struggled to keep pace with the
eral projects that would conduct
growing risks and restoration needs of
hazardous fuel reduction on at least
these forests, which places a variety of
209,000 acres of land that’s vulner-
forest values and uses at risk.
able to severe fi re.
During the 30 years of this tem-
The lawsuit aims
porary rule, anti-for-
to preserve an out-
estry groups enjoyed
One thing all of
dated and unscien-
the status quo
these projects have
tifi c rule from the
because it tied the
Clinton-era, known
hands of our public
in common is their
as the “Eastside
lands managers.
primary objective
Screens.” It origi-
They could also use
nally imposed a tem-
it to block resto-
is not necessarily
porary rule prohib-
ration projects they
iting the removal of
did not like, even if
timber harvest, but
trees larger than 21
the science-based
hazardous fuels
inches in diameter
treatments were sup-
on national forests
by collabo-
reduction and forest ported
east of the Cascades,
ratives with diverse
including the
interests.
resiliency.
Malheur, Umatilla,
Rather than accel-
Wallowa-Whitman, Deschutes,
erate the trajectory of forests toward
Ochoco and Fremont-Winema.
a late-seral structure, as sound forest
With little public involvement and management would help accomplish,
no scientifi c justifi cation, this tempo- this temporary, arbitrary and unsci-
rary and arbitrary rule became per-
entifi c rule created forest conditions
manent when it was amended into
that are unnaturally dense and exac-
the management plans as standards
erbate risk to wildfi re, insect and
for these federally owned forests.
disease infestations, and drought.
In theory, the rule was intended
Rather than lifting this rule com-
to protect and improve forest condi-
pletely, the Forest Service made only
tions associated with old and mature modest changes to its policy. In Jan-
forest habitat. But in practice, it
uary 2021, the agency adopted the
S
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█
Nick Smith is the executive director of Healthy
Forests, Healthy Communities, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization supporting active
forest management on federal lands.
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“Old Tree and Large Tree Guide-
lines,” which includes diameter
limits for tree removal ranging from
21 to 30 inches, depending on tree
species, and an overarching age limit
on tree removal of 150 years.
In announcing their lawsuit,
anti-forestry groups labeled this
modest change as a “Trump-era”
rule allowing wholesale “logging
of old growth.” Yet the new guide-
line has given our public lands man-
agers some fl exibility to restore
unhealthy forests by implementing
science-based treatments that are
appropriate to the landscape.
The Forest Service is using this
new guideline to develop several
projects on six national forests. One
thing all of these projects have in
common is their primary objective
is not necessarily timber harvest, but
hazardous fuels reduction and forest
resiliency. Some projects are located
in areas identifi ed as Wildland Urban
Interface (WUI) where the wildfi re
threat to communities is heightened.
It’s unfortunate these groups
would sue to block projects that
would improve the health of our
forests and reduce the risks to our
public lands and nearby communi-
ties. As climate change continues to
impact our forests, the Forest Ser-
vice should be doing everything
possible to prevent large-scale, car-
bon-emitting wildfi res, while max-
imizing the ability of our forests
to sequester more carbon and store
more carbon in both healthy trees
and wood products.
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