Defining Sustainability....

I found this 2010 study from UMD "Quality of Life and and Population Movement on the Iron Range". An interesting result is the popularity of "Sustainability" and it is curious how the writers define future "sustainable" activities : "development dollars could be spent on mountain biking trails, tourism development near the casino at Giants Ridge, pit-diving, and ATV trails that celebrate the outdoors, serve local residents, and bring in tourism dollars (PP 36)". None of these has anything to do with sustainability and rely completely on the outside population to spend money. One might think that developing local resources, such as redeveloping the former agricultural base (less importation of food), might have entered consciousness.Two immediate benefits are decreased long term fuel use (reducing importation) and recirculating money locally, rather than exporting it to far off corporations. Instead, however, we have ATV trails defined as "sustainable"; anyone making this statement should be handed the "most dumba$* idea of the decade" award. Unfortunately, this is what often passes for the mainstream economic development thinking on the Range, and it is outside the lead agencies you find actual creativity.

The Pagami Creek Fire and Land Policy:

Due to their responsibility for the Pagami creek fire, the Forest Service is an easy scapegoat right now. However, they are trapped between public expectations, ignorant politicians who tell the public sometimes outright lies and a long held, now thankfully disappearing belief that all natural processes like fire are bad.

For nearly a century after logging created the severe fires of 1910, the policy was to put all fires out. Until science showed that ecosystems are long since adapted to fire, all fire was considered evil. Finally, it is now recognized that fire is a natural ecosystem process. In recent decades, this has become an on the ground practice. The management for the Pagami creek fire is just one example. The fire, if nature had its way, would most likely have burned a similar area until the weather changed.

The idea that it is a “catastrophe” or a “tragedy” is purely a human judgment. That judgment, of course, is only because of human occupation and property.

The true tragedies lie deeper within; both in people’s assumptions about nature and our political system’s continued subsidies and allowance for human dispersal no matter what the cost. A useful corollary for fire is this: Building any structure in this landscape and not expecting fire is the same as building on a sandbar island in the Mississippi river and complaining about spring flooding while repeatedly expecting others to pay the rebuilding costs. The expectation for fire protection is similar; the Ham Lake fire cost about 11 million dollars and benefitted cabin and resort owners on the Gunflint trail. If one added the fire protection before, during and after, the bill is enormous and others (we) are paying for it. The same is true for this fire; again, the public is paying for the property protection of a few, subsidized by roads and fire protection, who choose to build structures in a fire prone landscape far from any infrastructure.

The Forest Service, like all government, is caught between reality, the delusional expectations of people and the interests of the elite who are mostly concerned with extracting as much cash money as they can from everyone, whether politicians or citizens. The Fire-Industrial complex, the system of contractors and agency employees who rely on large scale fire suppression for their existence and income simply adds inertia.

Whenever a fire occurs, there are always claims that somehow more and different management such as logging are the solution. This is not the case, however; the true costs of preventing fire on the landscape would rival a Defense Department cost plus contract and alter the ecosystem forever. Local zoning officials are as much to blame; by failing to recognize the reality of fire and not incorporating that reality into codes has as much to with any “tragedy” as someone deliberately lighting a match. The Pagami creek fire is merely the result of decades of these policy failures.

Until we recognize that nature has its own whims regardless of our desires, we will continue to pay the enormous cost that is unlimited human settlement. I don’t have the space here to list the biological costs, however, and that is where the true tragedy is.

For acts bordering on sociopathy, we have this: Farmer snapped over Pelicans. According to his lawyer, he simply "snapped". Having worked in the field, I have dealt with the stupid and arrogant decisions people make regarding wildlife. While everyone focuses on the act itself, let's look at the decisions he made leading to this. He chooses to rent and farm land immediately adjacent to a lake and does this for several years despite the birds nesting there. It is only seven acres of rented land yet he still insists and rather than giving up, he continues. Finally, instead of saying it is only seven acres, he chooses, after being warned, to destroy them, assuming officials aren't returning. And to top it off, he has received almost 600,000 in farm subsidies. This shows precisely just how messed up farm policy is; subsidies for destroying things.