Tidy symbols tend to be more attractive than messy facts, and this is especially true in environmental politics. But choosing symbols over facts can be self-defeating, on both sides of conservation issues. And it isn't good for the environment either.
One such symbol is the forest fire. The Bush administration is saying that fires in national forests, like southwestern Oregon's 2002 Biscuit Fire, threaten local communities and "forest health" and must be controlled by post-fire management such as salvage logging. The facts are messier, however. The mixed conifer forest in the Siskiyou Mountains, where the Biscuit Fire occurred, is mostly "fire-adapted" -- that is, it benefits from fire, ecologically speaking. (And if fire suppression hadn't been practiced for nearly a century in the forest, the 2002 blaze wouldn't have been as destructive to human purposes as it was.)
What the Bush administration is really after with salvage logging is access for the timber industry to pockets of old-growth trees. Yet there are no good reasons to allow such logging in the Siskiyou National Forest. The evidence shows that it isn't the best way to protect humans from fire or to promote forest health -- the forest can take care of itself, and communities can be protected by clearing safety zones around them.
The drawbacks of logging on the steep slopes, like those of the Siskiyous, are also well documented. Logging causes erosion and other damage that results in the destruction of salmon spawning streams and the salmon fishery. Besides, as authorities like Forest Service biologist Jerry Franklin have been saying for years, wood imports and new building technologies have combined with old growth's scarcity and remoteness to make it no longer all that important to the timber industry.
So why would the Bush administration push salvage logging? Back to symbols: Cutting old growth is symbolic because it suits the anti-environmentalist "wise use" agenda. And this is partly the environmentalists' fault because such pointless targeting of old growth is a reaction to environmentalists' own symbol mongering. They chose "ancient forest" as their tidy poster child and fundraising rallying cry, and also along the way neglected messy facts. Old growth is wonderful and vital, but it is not the be-all and end-all of forest preservation.
