It’s called the NIMBY syndrome: Not In My Back Yard. The syndrome seems to particularly affect those who flee our cities seeking peace and quiet in California’s countrysides.
Long before the urbanites and suburbanites moved to these beautiful communities, a handful of industriesÑforestry, mining, ranching and agriculture enriched and enlivened their economies in the Sierra Nevada, the north coast and elsewhere in rural California.
While their homes are made primarily of wood, they resist the harvesting and replanting of forest products in California, which has the world’s toughest environmental protections.
By not relying on our state’s own resources, California consumers transfer responsibility for forest resource production to areas with less sophisticated and less sustainable forest practices.
This year’s California Tree Farmer of the Year, Allen Edwards, sees the contradiction firsthand in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
A former economist with the California Energy Commission who has owned and managed his family’s 520 acres of forestland since 1976, Edwards could easily sell his land to a developer and reap a huge profit. Land like his is particularly coveted for its proximity to highways.
Many of his neighbors who have recently moved from Sacramento and the Bay Area tried to stop him from harvesting his trees a few years ago.
"They had this wonderful view of our land, and they thought that view belonged to them," Edwards says. "They moved up here and thought that the public roads belonged to them and would not share them with logging trucks even though the roads were originally built for logging and mining."
Edwards proceeded with selective logging, despite objections. Ultimately, his decision would mean more for his community than either heÑor his neighborsÑwould know. In 2001, a catastrophic fire tore through adjacent, unmanaged forestland and headed out of the American River canyon straight for Edwards’s land and the homes of his neighbors.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), looking for a way to get the upper hand against the fire, used Edwards’s land, which had been thinned through selective logging, to stage a fight against the wildfire.
Edwards’s managed land helped stop the fire and won Edwards the CDF Director’s 2001 Partnership Award. The fire also helped educate his urban and suburban neighbors about what a managed, healthy forest could do for them.
Forest management activities be they planting or harvesting trees, thinning fire-prone thickets, removing excess fuel or trucking logs to a sawmill undoubtedly influence the natural and aesthetic environment. Still, the potential negative environmental impacts of even the sloppiest forest practices do not compare with what happens when a piece of ground ceases to grow trees and grows houses and shopping centers instead.
Urbanization, after all, is the ultimate land conversion. When you add permanent structures, pavement, vehicles, wires, pipelines and fences to a forest environment, certain ecological attributes cease to exist.
Ironically, the new residents who have fled urban areas and suburbia seem to have more tolerance for land uses that fragment and urbanize forests than for the types of management practices that have maintained the forest landscape for generations.
Seeking to be a part of what is "natural," they are changing California’s forests more drastically than the chainsaw ever did.
This is not to suggest that urban growth is an evil thing that must be stopped. However, in order to strike a proper balance between development and conservation, we all need to consider how well-intentioned protectionism may only drive open spaces further away from communities.
The greatest threat to our natural heritage isn’t the effort to harvest some of the trees in our overgrown forests, but the conversion of agricultural and forestland to development. From 1982 to 1997, development of private and state lands for urban uses increased by one-third (25 million acres) the bulk of it forestland, according to the USDA’s National Resource Inventory. Even environmental groups normally opposed to any forest management practices or harvesting are beginning to understand that such activities are preferable to development.
In a landmark deal earlier this year, the Evergreen Forest Trust agreed to purchase 100,000 acres near Seattle, Washington, from Weyerhauser Company. While protecting sensitive areas, the Trust will continue to harvest timber from the land to accomplish what it calls its "overarching goal to keep forestland near growing, urbanizing areas from being converted to other uses."
With a little more understanding, we all might come to appreciate forest management under some of the most strict regulations in the world as the smartest and most natural defense against uncontrolled growth in the forests of Northern California.
Then all of our backyards would benefit.
Donn Zea is president of the California Forest Products Commission,
www.calforests.org.
