V12 #1 November 1990 - Archives - The Evergreen State College

BOTANIST
continued from page 8
Although it is within the
realm of possibility that a
timber sale could be delayed or
cancelled because of a plant,
Potash hastens to point out
that most forestry issues are
not black-and-white, cut-ordon't-cut
situations.
"Say we find moonwarts,"
she says, "or any other
sensitive or endangered species
on a proposed timber site. It's
not a matter of 'Well there's a
moonwart, so no sale.' The
first thing we do is determine
the requirements for the
species, then write about
impacts: how changes in the
soil, hydrology and light
conditions will affect the plant.
"Then we try to work
with timber crews, engineers
and other people in the Forest
Service. For example, perhaps
the road crew could change the
spacing between culverts to
lessen changes in the hydrology,
or maybe the species can
withstand flooding if a certain
amount of the canopy is left
intact or maybe..."
Two million acres is another
tough concept to grasp. Think
of it this way: imagine covering
the Evergreen campus on foot,
from soccer fields to Organic
Farm, from bus loop to
Geoduck Beach, not missing a
square foot. Now imagine
2,000 Evergreens, laid out
together with no easy trails,
mown lawns or predominantly
gentle terrain. Imagine miles of
devil's club, wetlands, tall
timber, rivers, boulders,
wilderness and clear cut.
Those 2 million acres are
Potash's venue, a roughly 30mile-wide
corridor of forest in
central Washington, extending
from the Mt. Rainier area to
the Canadian border. Of
course, no human or conceiva-
bly workable group of humans
could cover that area in depth
in a lifetime. What it will take
to produce a reasonable profile
of plantlife in the forest is
nothing less than first-rate
thinking, planning and
teamwork.
And there's the rub.
Nothing manmade is as
complex and mystifying as the
biodiversity of an old growth
forest. But the machinery of
bureacracy conies close.
Forestry issues involve huge,
interlocking, interrelated
government entities: Congress,
the USD A, the Forest Service,
Fish and Wildlife, Department
of Natural Resources and state
safety inspectors just to name a
few. Bear in mind that each
agency consists of hundreds of
people in sub-agencies often on
the ready to fight for turf,
authority and jurisdiction.
Throw in lawyers, media, and
advocacy groups from timber
and environmental camps and
you have a minefield of
personal and political crosspurposes.
Daunting?
"This is the job," says
Potash, "that I've always
wanted." Her enthusiasm for
the task is genuine and
infectious. At her desk and in
the woods itself, she emanates
a zest for discovery and making
things work.
Her desk in Seattle is a
testament to the double life of
field botanist and administrator:
word processing manual;
phone and rolodex; a thick-asa-Bible
volume entitled Final
Environmental Impact
Statement; a plastic-coated field
guide to flora of the Pacific
Northwest; a memo typed
military-style (ALL CAPS) from
a forest ranger; an organization
chart; a metric ruler; two sizes
of tweezers; a magnifying glass,
and two ziplock plastic bags
containing green and swampylooking
plants.
14 THE EVERGREEN REVIEW
"Those are sedges," she
says, "It's odd to sit here at a
desk, under florescent lights
and examine plants. It's a lot
harder identifying things in the
field. You can't pick the
sensitive or endangered plants.
Usually I'm squatting down in
the rain, crawling under devil's
club to look at them."
The phone rings and she
engages in a lively conversation
about swamp gentians. "It's a
sexy project," she says, "People
love bogs. I'd like to do it
myself."
She's talking with a Forest
Service employee responsible
for the rare plants program at
the North Bend station. He and
Potash are discussing the pros
and cons of recruiting members
of private conservation groups
to volunteer for the enormous
task of plant study in the
national forests.
"On the other hand," she
says, "you don't want to take a
lot of people out there. It's a
delicate situation, socially and
ecologically."
After the call Potash
explains it's a new ballgame
with plants in the Forest
Service. Some districts are very
interested, others don't have
the time, and some just don't
want to be bothered. Creating
a network of people who care
about rare plants and have the
expertise to identify them is
one of Potash's top priorities.
"Hopefully we'll train timber
cruisers and other Forest
Service people to be on the
lookout for rare species."
The image is captivating:
everyone from engineers and
surveyors to roadbuilders and
loggers paying as much
attention to what's on the
ground as to the 400-year-old
giants towering over them.
Potash's first fieldwork
took place over 14 years ago as
an Evergreen student when she
studied at the Malheur Bird
Observatory in Oregon and
observed elephant seals at the
Point Reyes Observatory in
California. Last year she
earned a masters degree in
ecosystems analysis from the
University of Washington,
writing her thesis on "Sprouting
of Red Heather in Response
to Fire."
I wondered why someone
so active would chose to
specialize in botany rather than
wildlife. One of the reasons is
simple. The reality of wildlife
research means hours of sitting
motionless in observation
blinds. She also loves the
intellectual challenge of keying
a plant: "You become aware of
the evolutionary relationships
between organisms."
Three days after visiting her
office, I accompany Potash to a
stand of old growth timber, the
Darrington sale referred to
earlier in this story. We are
members of a party of 15
who'll review the proposed
timber site. There's a silviculturist,
an Audubon Society
member, a member of the
Nature Conservancy, a wildlife
biologist, fisheries biologist, an
hydrologist, a timber management
officer, foresters and the
district ranger. There's also a
representative for the Tulalip
tribe whose interest is the
shrinking area of natural forest
suitable for ceremonial
purposes.
The hike is a traveling
seminar. The group strings out
into little ad hoc discussion
groups of twos and threes, with
topics ranging from the
abstraction of policies,
agencies, theories and politics
to the here-and-now of this
Douglas Fir, this Western
Hemlock. Every now and then
with no formal notice or
apparent organization, the
entire group gathers to discuss
the implications of the sale. We
stand quiet for awhile, blinking
at the trees above us until
someone starts to speak.
I Most of the talk is over my
head: windthrow, blowdown,
corridors, sunscald, storage,
recharge, canopy intersection,
fragmentation, overstory,
understory, exploding growth,
edge. I am reminded of the
saying that Eskimos have over
100 words for ice and snow.
Likewise, those of us on the
periphery of forests think
generally in two words, "big"
and "trees," while people like
Potash and her co-workers
have developed a whole lexicon
to deal with the complexity of
forest life.
One phrase that continually
surfaces is "New Perspectives."
It's the new thinking
that recognizes a forest as a
complex, biological community
rather than just a woodlot.
Recognizing the biodiversity of
a forest is one thing. Removing
400-year-old, twenty-ton trees
and recreating that diversity of
life is something else again.
It's all new territory. What
trees and how many do we
leave standing? Should we cut
lots of little sections or several
huge stands? What actually
lives here now? What'll happen
in 80, 100, 300 years? Will we
have recreated a forest or a
treelot? No one knows for
sure. It's like giving a pocket
watch to a five-year old and
asking her to take it apart and
put it together again.
But there's hope in
knowledge. A year ago there
was no botanist for this forest.
Now she's up ahead with a 10pound
field guide tucked into
the back pouch of her rain
parka. It's also safe to say that
a few years ago there probably
wouldn't have been an
hydrologist, a biologist, an
environmentalist, a journalist
or a tribal representative
present on this survey.
There's hope, too, in
communication. A fair amount
of networking takes place on
the hike: Potash and the
hydrologist discuss what
constitutes wetlands; the
wildlife specialist discusses
shade and seedling growth with
the silviculturist; a timber
cruiser and an environmentalist
discuss the effects of blowdown
on the edge of the proposed
cut. Every exchange of
knowledge and resources
contributes a tiny piece to the
puzzle of a forest.
Later, I ask Potash about her
piece of the puzzle. We're
driving back to Seattle and I
drop my Greener Environmentalist
Chic and play the devil's
advocate: "Okay, really, Laura,
job responsibilities and correct
politics aside, why all this fuss
about moonwarts and other
weeds?"
Her response is calm but
impassioned: "We don't know
the long-term effects of our
actions. It's presumptuous to
assume we do. Take the fungus
they've discovered on the roots
of trees. They've found out that
that fungus helps trees grow.
"Who knows? Maybe the
moonwart could be a cure for
AIDS or cancer. Not protecting
it would be like burning the
pages of a book before you've
read it."
She pauses as we enter the
city. "Even if moonwarts are of
absolutely no use to humans,
we don't have the right to
destroy any species or to allow
them to be destroyed."
In these hard times, it
takes more than compassion to
do the right thing for our
forests. It takes knowledge
about all life-great and
microscopic. What Potash and
her co-workers are giving us is
as precious as water.
ACTIVIST
continued from page 11
Olympic Peninsula from the
bottom of the pile and starts
flipping through orange and
green overlays. Numbered tags
scattered across the map
indicate the known locations of
spotted owls. The wealth of
biological data contained in
these maps is impressive.
While working on a World
Wildlife Fund project in the
Amazon rain forest, Steel
became acquainted with the
concept of island biogeography:
the study of changes in
animal and plant populations
that occur when large tracts of
habitat are broken into isolated
patches by natural or human
activity. This is essentially what
is happening in the Northwest
and is at the core of the fight
over how much old growth
forest needs to be preserved.
"Before the days of the
spotted owl, conservation was
a recreational issue. The 'Name
it and Save it' philosophy
guided legislation," he explains,
referring to the point of
view that it was easier to get
Congress to save pretty places
than to preserve animal
habitat. "The ancient forests
used to be thought of as
biological deserts," he says,
pointing out the dwindling
islands of green on the map
overlay. "As we learned more
about their diversity of life it
became evident that we needed
to shift from thinking about
landscapes to thinking about
whole ecosystems. At last we're
recognizing the importance of
forests as biological areas."
After jobs with the Forest
Service and the Washington
State Department of Wildlife,
The Audubon Society put Steel
to work organizing the map
library. It didn't take them long
to recognize his skill for
organizing people. "I was in
the right place at the right
time," he says. He believes the
Audubon Society was one of
the first national organizations
to shift its emphasis to "deep
ecology." This required a reevaluation
of what was
politically possible for the
FALL 1990
movement. It meant education
and involving a much larger
part of the population.
Steel sees Washington
state as particularly fertile
ground for political action.
"This is the best lab in the
country right now to see if
people can live in a healthy
environment. We still have a
few areas that are virtually the
same as they were before the
arrival of white men. At the
same time we have a public
that's concerned about
environmental issues. The
combination of both factors is
something unique in the
U.S. I believe that if we can't
practice wise forestry in the
Pacific Northwest, we can't do
it anywhere."
The term "grass roots"
keeps coming up when you
talk to Argon Steel. For him,
environmentalism is a populist
movement. He sees danger in
the tendency to focus on
lobbying in Washington D.C.
at the expense of working in
the community. "The next big
issue for environmental groups
is how to integrate youth and
minorities into the movement,"
he said. "I'm hoping
this campaign will recognize
that minorities have their own
agendas, and the environmental
movement has room
for those agendas. I'd like to
look beyond saving your local
marsh and look at the larger
issues that surround people."
For Steel these larger
issues are economic. "In the
near future we are going to see
more confrontations between
economic interests and
endangered species." He
doesn't believe it's going to be
possible to legislate environmentalism
without making
fundamental changes. "I'm a
little more radical than some
of my fellow environmentalists,"
he admits with a vaguely
dangerous smile.
"Let me tell you what my
priorities are. My first
allegiance is to the environment.
My second is to the
continued on next page
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