"I believe that much of the environmental movement has gone astray and lost its perspective on the subject of forests. All human activity has an impact on the environment, but forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Indeed, wood is the most renewable material used in large quantities to build and maintain our civilization. The only viable substitutes are non-renewable materials such as fossil fuels, steel, cement, and plastic, all of which result in severe impacts to the environment."

"There is no doubt that some of the forestry practices that were used in the past are no longer acceptable due to changing values about the environment. Huge clearcuts with little or no concern for fish-bearing streams or other wildlife were once common throughout the Pacific Northwest. The various codes of forest practice that have been adopted in each of the jurisdictions have changed this dramatically. Today, the trend is towards smaller, more carefully contoured clearings with mandatory stream protection and consideration for other species. Single trees and patches of tress are often left standing within the clearings to provide habitat for birds and other wildlife. Public recreation and aesthetics are part of the planning process and governments play a major role in making the rules and enforcing them. These changes are occurring all across North America and are part of a worldwide trend to manage forests on a sustainable basis.

Despite these changes, there are still many people within the environmental community who do not accept these new standards. Their demands would appear to require and end to large-scale forestry operations over much of the land; based on the assumption that logging is so destructive to the environment that it must be drastically curtailed.

Perhaps the most dangerous myth that has been created in the war of words of the environment is that human activity is somehow "unnatural," that we are not really part of nature but apart from it. Human intervention in nature is portrayed as fundamentally negative while other species can do no wrong. This gives rise to the perception that humans are not really part of nature, that we are like a cancer on earth. There could be no more unfortunate teaching for our children than to further alienate them from an understanding of their place in the natural world. It is difficult enough for the masses of people in cities to understand their connection to the rest of creation without reinforcing a feeling of separation.

The central teaching of ecology is that we are part of nature and interdependent with it. All our acts are "natural" in this sense. If there is a place for the word "unnatural" it is certainly not as a definition of all human activity as opposed to non-human activity. This is a clear case of a word being used in a way that was never intended. The word "unnatural" is a moral word that is meant to distinguish certain socially unacceptable types of behavior from acceptable behavior. Practices such as incest are considered unnatural because we have moral codes against them. Ask yourself if whales and trees are capable of unnatural acts. They are not because we don't apply moral principles to species other than our own.

I hope to demonstrate that this false dualism, that humans are unnatural and everything else is natural, is particularly inappropriate in relation to forests. Forests are able to respond to disturbance caused by humans in the same manner as they respond to disturbance from fire, disease, and climate change. Some severe forest fires cause far greater damage to the forest ecosystem than would have been caused by logging. Some fires cause less damage, for example when they burn only the grass and shrubs beneath the trees but leave many of the trees alive."

This excerpt originally published in the book "Green Spirit, Trees Are The Answer" by Patrick Moore ©2000 Greenspirit Enterprises Ltd.