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Carl
Ross, Save America's Forests:
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Carl Ross:
This
gathering here today on behalf of forest protection, for the Act
to Save America's Forests, is an important step forward
in the long effort to protect our living forests. Great strides have
been made in the past, and we Americans are proud of our vast open spaces,
and the national parks and places that we have protected, that are as
much a part of the American character and nation as freedom and liberty.
But
there is unfinished business, and time is running out. Most of our original
forest ecosystems have long ago been cut down. Yet, a few percent still
remain, though they are unprotected, on our federal lands. Our national
forests contain the last Ancient Forests, proud survivors of an era
that lasted millions of years, when giant forests ruled the earth, unchallenged.
The relentless march of civilization used up the Ancient Forests, the
wood, the animals, the land, and now we are at the last moment we will
have the opportunity to save these remaining Ancient ecosystems from
our chainsaws.
After
a century of clearcuts, our national forests are badly fragmented. Oceans
of mud are eroding from the roads and clearcuts into pristine rivers.
Fish can't spawn, birds can't nest, animals cannot roam. Many species
are headed towards extinction. There are landscapes of clearcut lands
where there were once endless forests.
The
Act to Save America's Forests is an historic piece of legislation that
would achieve forest protection on a national scale. The Act is a culmination
of science, popular will, and common sense. The Act says the national
forests should be treated in the way that Americans want their public
forests managed. Americans want the last remaining Ancient Forests and
wild, roadless areas protected from logging and roadbuilding. The Act
would accomplish these clearly, in national forests across the country.
The public opposes clearcutting on public lands, and the Act would end
this senseless and destructive management regime, sparing our national
forests from further needless degradation of clearcutting.
And
the public wants the native species of plants and animals on our public
lands protected. If our wild species cannot be safe on our public lands,
then where can they survive? Our national forests should be natural
forests. Indeed, the national forests are the largest spaces left in
America, the last places that large, intact complex, natural forest
ecosystems can survive. We should not be paying tax dollars for either
clearcuts, nor unnatural tree farms on our federal lands. The Act says
that the native species should protected and restored.
Scientists
have strongly endorsed the Act because it is based on the principles
of conservation biology. These three basic directives of the Act, protecting
Ancient Forests, roadless areas and other core forest areas, allowing
limited amounts of ecologically compatible logging in buffer areas,
while preventing clearcutting, and protecting native species, is a comprehensive
plan for managing our national forests. Indeed, a plan of this scale
is the only hope, as modern science has informed us that small patches,
or biological islands of forests cannot long survive. We need to make
our national forests whole once again.
It
should be self-evident to us all, now, that we need to live on this
fragile planet in harmony with nature, not destroy it.
If
we pass the Act into law, a hundred years from now, the millions of
acres of clearcuts and scarred areas will heal over, and the national
forests will be a continuous carpet of towering green forests, such
as existed centuries ago. They will once more be home to all the native
species, who can continue their life and evolutionary place on earth.
In
both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Act
to Save America's Forests has made great legislative progress.
It is time to push forward, end decades of interminable wrangling, and
give strong, clear, and permanent legislative protection to the last
remaining public wild forests.
As
in so many things, the world is watching America, looking to us for
direction. If we turn over a new leaf, and give this comprehensive balanced
protection to our national forests, then we will set an example of large
scale forest protection for the entire world to follow.
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