Ore. He wrote this piece on behalf of the Cascadia Fire Ecology Education Project. Warner Creek is a microcosm for a growing national debate on the way Americans value the wilds. Most of the 5 percent that has not been cut is either protected as federal wilderness or is a patchwork of small plots of a couple hundred acres or less. It is rare to find a place in the range of 10,000 acres that is not designated wilderness and has not been at least partially logged. Warner Creek is one of the last such places.
Trees grow back and there is pretty good hunting on clearcuts in the meantime.
This has been the predominant viewpoint reflected in political debates in the last half-century. We may respectfully use them to sustain ourselves, but the consumer lifestyle is filled with waste, and waste is wrong. As long as we take so much that there is no room in the whole state to sustain living things like wolves or grizzlies, we have overstepped our rights and the wilds must be left to recover. A tree plantation is no more like a forest than a wheat field is like a prairie. Protection of wild places does not need to be justified as a benefit to humans.