Newspapers Can Have Very Poor Timing

We've all seen the notification that humanity just managed to drive the West African rhinoceros to extinction. Big ups there, Monkey-boys.

But get this - on November 13, 2013, within the same week this news is going around, The Forks Forum publishes ANOTHER article proving humans cannot live with animals.

Evidently a bear was "rampaging" through the area, eating farm animals, especially lambs and goats. Of course, the bear was killed, and the paper did use the term "rampaging." I'll give the reporter credit for trying to just be a good reporter, writing what she saw and heard. She actually is a reporter, unlike me, who is actually a fiction writer (admittedly social and historical fiction, but we WILL put in what we figure out - it's what we're trained to do). And us correspondents for the paper (I'm the - ahem - "West End North Correspondent." Put THAT on a nametag) do NOT write those titles. Thank you.

Considering that the Forks area has been gobbling up all the bear's habitat with clearcuts, why would anybody be surprised? One is always amazed that people try to stick farm animals into a wilderness, with absolutely no idea of what can happen when the apex predators suddenly lose their homes and food sources. Then again, I've become more and more amazed how people - even those claiming to be rural - CANNOT read animal body language, or understand wilderness forest dynamics. I swear, these people might as well have been raised in the houses behind the 7-11 in Bremerton. They're just that knowledgeable when it comes to how animals and forests actually work.

I keep my chickens in a chicken tractor. I do not try to build a completely hard, secure cage for them (although I have one, for the dead of winter, because even we sometimes get blizzards). The reason I have a light little cage is so  I can move it around - and if a starving apex predator shows up and flips the thing, the hens won't be trapped, but can scatter. Predators will kill every last animal they can catch - they're just like us, getting everything we can get our paws on - but if they can only grab one, they'll stop to eat it, and the rest will get away. 

Every time somebody whines about a mountain-lion getting their horse, you can bet a Chinese dinner somebody just clearcut next to their place. The lions prefer DEER and ELK. Not your stupid horse - those things kick! But they'll try for the more difficult meat if it's the only thing they can get.

And keeping weak domestic animals out in a field where something that eats meat - and lives by natural rules - can do a double-take and say, "OOH! Marshmallows!" is just proof the owner is stupid, not the predator is evil.

I heard a woman on A Prairie Home Companion the other day, saying she'd begun to hunt deer as revenge for their eating her tulips. WTF? What planet do these people live on? The ONLY reason for hunting or fishing is if you're hungry or cold. Period. Not for your entertainment or ego or because you need to take it out on your ex.

In Africa, the lion populations are crashing. The Masai no longer hunt them for "proof of manhood." They now guard them. How are they paid? Tourism money.

But if we keep trying to live in the 19th century because there's plenty to kill and waste, we'll all end up having to hang our heads in shame, again, because another species went under on our watch (and the West End STILL has the shame of intentionally wiping out an apex predator - for CASH!). You'd think the Christians and Jews would be on this one - the holy book they share says "steward," not "meat-headed greedy redneck." 

The Forum (you wonder if white people have ANY sense of timing) also published a shot of beautiful big-leaf maple trees with this caption - but you can't see the photo when you go there. The shot is along the Sol-Duc river. Tree-cutting is not allowed along the river, because salmon need forests and shade.

The title and lack of photo is appropriate, considering Rayonier just wiped out all the big-leaf maples along the south side of Frontier Street. This means the older folks and kids will have no place cool to walk in the summer, or see this year's crop of leaves. 

I know, you folks from California or Nevada will call us heat wimps; well, we are. We need our shade. They couldn't have left at least that little plot of land alone while clearcutting a tsunami tunnel into the back of town? Evidently, the humans mean less than the salmon - or we all mean nothing to a corporation based in Florida.

You know - where most of the profits for the death of your tourism industry are going? 

(I am so fired).

Logger Covers His Face

Behind county facility, in watershed

I'm not making any judgement comments, but here's today's report:

In the Quarter Store today, a worker was poking fun at her sister-in-law as an activist.

Another woman said, "I saw 18 logging trucks on the road today."

This is basically a photo essay. The cutting is going on right behind a town that is trying to revive a tourism/media/entertainment industry. The cutting probably has not taken wild-life repercussions into consideration, near a town.

The driver said, "I wanna know why you're taking my picture!"

I answered, 'Don't have to." This is an unpaid photo essay, by an American citizen.

The company is cutting on either cheaply-purchased land, or forestry land. The driver said this company was Rayonier. Rayonier has worked to recover other riverside by the Clallam River. But - Rayonier's Real Estate offices are in Florida.

Does that look like selective logging?

Merrill and Ring has already accidently exposed their intentions toward the scenic route. An expensive sign campaign for "working forests" MIGHT be a real-estate scam, but I have no further information; it just looks like monkey business. Merrill and Ring cut down all the timber on the highway in Pillar Point, a State Park.

The whole operation has a real "Get it Before It's Too Late, as fast as possible" feel to it. It's cutting directly into tourism-viewing areas, seeming to concentrate on it.

Cutting toward the stream and swamp

Local children feel hopeless up here about their future, but are launching anti-bullying campaigns, especially in view of the recent suicide of a child who - according to local stories (not verified, but repeated) felt his future was blocked. 

The generation that supports clearcut logging isn't helping the future generation, nor do they seem to care. The do collect large scholarships for the kids - but it's almost as though they're massaging their consciences. High school graduation classes are down to a handful of kids, while the parking lot of a local apartment complex is the center of kids waiting for their drug dealer - and drug use is about repressing pain.

If they have a future, a real one, that isn't just selling off the place and moving to condos in Arizona, as a developer would offer, the kids will have to do that themselves, with help from the better among our generation.

Selective logging based on a 500-year cycle - and it has to be 500 years, because forests aren't corn fields - must be the future. They're down to producing chipboard, and if you've ever had to deal with wood, you'll know how bad it is, now.

These trucks are very expensive, take a lot of tree money

As the English said, after WWII, trying to rebuild with their forests gone: "You can't get the wood, you know.

Why would the driver be reluctant to show his face?

Transition Port Angeles is trying to rescue the local communities and make life better and more sustainable - but ARE they addressing the resource crash? And it is crashing, or will, if these practices continue as they are. 

It's not 1895, folks. It's not even 1954. It's 2013 - and don't let it become just another place that ate its resources and turned into more concrete or empty grasslands. 

Scotland had a forest. The Middle East and Greece were forested. Easter Island were forested. But not any more. We can destroy forests, and they don't come back, or if they do, they're ghosts of themselves, and their wildlife is gone.

And I'm from Everett/Mukilteo. Let's just say that what happened up there gave me a case of PTSD that makes me unable to ignore a place where I see the same practices - where I once saw the large park tree a couple of truckers stole to try to get on the tv show "Axmen." This place has eagle habitat - including nests along the cliffs, rivers and roads. The eagle may not be an endangered species any more, but taking away their habitat would be a good way to jump-start the status. Silver lining? Or 30 pieces of silver?

We can live in a forest - or we can live on Easter Island.

Letter I just wrote to Rayonier Hunting:

"Hi! I'm contacting you because the Rayonier Timber doesn't have an email contact, only phone, and this might be a message more along your line.

Rayonier Timber is clearcutting right into a stream area, right behind a town, with eagle habitat along the river. In the past, clearcutting near towns has driven out the resident cougar, with subsequent human/animal interactions that proved lethal to the animal.

The town is Clallam Bay. A photo the area can be seen at http://www.sekiu.com/

The point you see on the left of the picture, on the cliffs has at least two live eagle nests, and is a nesting area for other base population predators, especially along the Clallam River and another wetland stream, where eagles regularly fish and share the area with other fishing birds and animals, including otters, both river and sea.

With timber sales to Japan up in the area, just checking to make sure Rayonier knows about the habitat, and the repercussions involved in cutting that close to a town. Use lines get fudged when there's cash to be collected; a major park tree was stolen up here by unaffiliated loggers to try to get on the tv show "Axmen."

And I do fish, and enjoy a bit of venison now and again - but no hunting or fishing can survive habitat collapse, especially along a wildlife stream. This is also an Audubon area, which holds out a future for local kids in tourism, which benefits from the same forest conditions as hunting. We've recently had a suicide of a promising young man, and other kids are using drugs to repress pain. They need help for a real future.

I write as growing up in the tree-pulp industry in Everett/Mukilteo - that didn't pay any attention to its resources.

Donna Barr
CC to Transition Port Angeles"