LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I am an avid conservationist, a wildlife enthusiast, a farmer and forest land owner. I have also been blessed to be allowed to serve in two different capacities of administration over the National Forest system 1990-1992 and 2001-2005. More personally, I harvested four hickory trees and one 160-plusyear- old white oak this summer to make flooring and furniture for our home. It was a true spiritual moment before these majestic trees fell. They yield so much in their story as you study the pattern of the grain and the �imperfections� inherent in beautiful wood.

I am sympathetic to Mr. Hoover (editorial, previous page) as to how we do a better job of managing our forest resources. I was directly involved in the �spotted owl� controversy in 1990 having been sworn in as the USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment just one week after the famous Jack Ward Thomas Spotted Owl report. I spent most of my policy time working with our National Forest system and have a deep regard for the people involved in its administration.

For several years now I have pondered the best mechanism to alter poor behavior in natural resource utilization from trees to environmentally controlled animal facilities.  Something must be done to make improvements from our past of taking the resource without regard for its re-creation. Our country, every one of us here today, has a debt to pay for the abuses of the early part of the last century as we developed our country into one that could withstand the forces of evil surrounding two world wars. It was a price worth paying, but one that a debt is still owed. I am concerned we�ve forgotten that obligation. It�s a logical part of policy development to think in terms of mandating reforms � one in the broad range of available options. I have often in the past, in moments of frustration over progress,  thought that as the only option to accomplish the goal. However, when I traveled down that path I (finally) realized from real experience that I was wrong.

We have two widely contrasting ways to change attitudes and therefore, behavior. One, through the acquisition of knowledge leading to better understanding, i.e., voluntary; and two, through the force of law, i.e., mandatory. There are also policy options across the spectrum that combines these two distinct ends. Educating is a tedious process, but it changes the attitude on the way to changing the behavior. When mandatory laws were applied over the landscape we only changed the behavior, with the unwilling cooperation of the governed. This led to another tedious process of constant challenges to the law in Congress and the courts.

So I could suggest that we pick which tedious process we prefer � or whom we want to pay to resolve the conflicts, educators or lawyers. When all we�re trying to do is implement the law that governs the resource to begin with, we are spending an enormous amount of effort to get the results already agreed upon by society. There�s already an underlying law in place for all of these management activities. The major problem is that we fail to enforce the law on the few that flagrantly disregard the resource. The �good actors� get punished by our unwillingness to con-front the bad ones. Mandating practices gets the job done, albeit with more time and paperwork, by those that would do it anyway with encouragement. The issue is that those in the minority that currently violate the law will also violate the mandate. The result is still the same�there�s still the need for enforcement of current law. Those in the majority that would have complied with encouragement (and enforcement of a few flagrant violators is strong encouragement) instead feel the heavy hand of government and now become unwilling participants with those in the agencies that are required to administer the law. The end result is a tension that has increasingly existed over the past 15 years between private landowners and all the natural resource agencies that are trying to accomplish one primary task� a better environment.

I understand the inclination to mandate BMP�s. I�ve been on that path in my search for solutions. But I urge careful consideration of the unintended consequences. We want to move forward positively with the majority of the citizenry in our relationship between the government and the governed. From experience that seems to be where the most progress is made.                             

Jim Moseley, Tippecanoe County

EDITOR�S NOTE:   William Hoover responds:

I�m delighted to find interest in this topic in this region of Indiana. This conversation is more common south of U.S. 40 where the hills and hollows are found. Thank you for your input, Jim. You were in USDA in one of the most contentious periods for forestry in recent history. I respect your analysis and hereby follow up on it.

I don�t consider BMP�s to be a form of regulation as that term is typically used. Rather, timber harvesting BMP�s are analogous to the professional standards that are required to practice medicine, dentistry, etc., assuming one is willing to accept the proposition that the health of a forest environment is analogous to the health of humans. The current voluntary BMP�s program simply addresses the issue of how a forest is harvested once the owner decides what and when to harvest. They focus primarily on minimizing soil erosion, keeping petroleum products off the ground and out of waterways, closing out a harvest area to minimize erosion until natural regeneration again provides continuous ground cover. The forest regulations, implemented primarily in states on either coast, deal specifically with how forests are managed, when they can be harvested, regeneration requirements, and usually require that a permit be issued before timber can be harvested. In some states this permit requires submission of a detailed application accompanied by an environmental impact assessment prepared by approved consultants.

The voluntary BMP program was initiated to minimize the likelihood that onerous forest regulation would be implemented in Indiana. Making these voluntary BMP�s mandatory may indeed be a step in the direction of forest regulation, but the intent is to make our practices consistent with the requirements for certification in the global market place.

Finally, Jim�s point about �bad actors� is on point as the lawyers say. Leaders in the timber industry would very much like to have a way to reduce, if not eliminate, loggers who abuse the forest, land, waterways and human sensibilities by the way they harvest timber. The voluntary BMP program did not provide a vehicle for doing this, and it�s not clear that mandatory BMP�s would either given the need for very expensive enforcement action. But the supporters of the proposed mandatory BMP program believe that it represents the next minimum step that offers the potential to reduce the impact of bad actors.

Existing statutes dealing with soil erosion and water pollution have not been adequate to accomplish this. Thanks again for the dialogue.