ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES in rocky mountain coniferous ...

By the mid-1 960's the apparently unforeseen impacts of timber harvesting reached the
publ ic and fostered organized opposition (USDA Forest Service 1975). The opposition
be1 ieved that continued harvesting in the high-a1 ti tude forests would have serious
effects on soil, water, wildlife, and landscape values. These concerns took on
special currency with the rapidly increasing publ ic attention to environmental
quality in the late 1960's.
The Rockies are nationally famous for magnificent landscapes and rich resources of
water and wildlife. Many citizens consider these the essentials of a quality envi-
ronment. For some, even minor change is degradation, and timber harvest produces
more than minor change. Consequently, harvesting in the Rockies suddenly moved into
national significance within the context of environmental quality.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
This scenario has been repeated again and again in hamlets, cities, states, and over
issues involving the atmosphere, the sea, the land, and even the depths of the earth.
Environmental issues include the air we breathe, the food we eat, the clothes we
wear, the landscapes we see, the animals we seldom see, and even things we imagine.
And we wonder: "Why has this wave of environmental concern swept over our country?"
Indeed, why would the Supreme Court decide to stop construction of a $120 million
dam to save an endangered but useless little fish? Why would hundreds of thousands
of citizens protest the slaughter of whales and seals they had never seen? Why would
a provincial judge force road builders to spend millions of dollars to save a pond
used by a few dozen endangered geese every winter?
Jacques Costeau (1978) rep1 ied to these, his own questions, with: "The answer is
simple. Today the public is realizing that there is an urgent need for an envi-
ronmental code of ethics." Whether this is all there is to it, I am not sure. But
the respect that the general public has for Costeau certainly lends credibility to
the environmental movement .
Quite possibly the element of the environment that first gave rise to public concern
about forest management was that of adverse visual effects. Few people in the 1950's
and 1960's understood the environmental movement, and fewer knew what ecology and
silviculture meant. But untidyness was something most of us had been conditioned to
recognize as undesirable. Adverse visual impacts became a rallying point, one to
which other elements of environmental quality became attached--some with substance,
others as whims of imagination.
And the environmental movement kept growing. The concern with forestry grew too.
Timber harvesting began sharing the spot1 ight with preservationist goals and
objectives, Forestry, like other environmental issues, developed a following that
inevitably found its way to Congress, frequently through a congressman from a
district where environmental degradation had occurred. The legislation and regula-
tion that followed is unprecedented in its impact on social, industrial, and
pol itical activities.
The environmental movement is now a Juggernaut. Built into its power structure is a
whole new regulatory agency that must prove it can regulate; vast sums of industry
investment that must be recoverable; a whole new profession of environmental law,
with a more than ample following of agressive attorneys.