This was a research paper I wrote in my English 102 class at Shoreline Community College. Though it was not published, it did receive a 4.0 grade.

The paper was originally written in 1992, and looking back at it now, I feel that most of it stands up pretty well, though other parts are a bit obsolete. Technically speaking, the science and research in the paper is sound, except for the part in which I state that most of a rain forests' nutrients are stored in the vegetation rather than the soil. This is true for tropical rain forests, and is a major reason why the soil of a clear-cut tropical rain forest is so poor and unstable, yielding crops for only a few years. However, in my paper I apply this concept to the temperate rain forest of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and on that point I am incorrect. I say that the paper is a bit obsolete, because since the time that I wrote it, timber production in Western Washington has declined by about two-thirds. The environmental disaster I predict has apparently been diverted, at least temporarily. However, this is not to say that what I present here could not become topical once again, if timber production again rises to the level it was at during the 1980s. We must be careful to learn from our past mistakes, so that we do not repeat them.

Copyright © 1993 Mike Kohary

Bangladesh is a country located on a vast, low-lying delta of shifting islands of silt at the mouth of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers. This country depends on the flooding that occurs after water from annual monsoon rains in the Himalayan mountain ranges of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China flows downward through rivers to Bangladesh and into the Bay of Bengal. The flooding enables the people to grow rice, Bangladesh's major source of food, and ensures an annual deposit of Himalayan soil in the delta basin, maintaining soil fertility. While the people of Bangladesh depend on moderate flooding such as this, massive flooding has historically proved disastrous. Large-scale flooding occurred only once every 50 years or so until 1950, and was caused by excessive runoff from the Himalayas and storm surges from cyclones in the Bay of Bengal. However, since 1950 these floods have increased dramatically. Between 1970 and 1990, the average interval between major floods was only 4 years. In 1988, a massive flood covered two-thirds of the country's land mass for days, leveling 2 million homes and killing 2,000 people. 30 million people, a quarter of the population, were left homeless, and hundreds of thousands more contracted diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever. A quarter of the country's crops were destroyed, resulting in a famine that killed thousands more. This flood alone cost the country, one of the poorest in the world with an average per capita income of about $170, at least $1.5 billion (Miller p.237). These figures are similar to those that might be produced in a war.

Ironically, these events were not "acts of God"; far from it, they were the direct result of human interference in the Himalayan ecosystem. Rapid population growth has resulted in large-scale deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable farming practices on steep mountain slopes that easily erode, greatly diminishing the ability of the soil in this mountain watershed to absorb water (Miller p.237). Normally, the watershed would absorb rainwater and release it to rivers and springs gradually, over a period of time. Instead, the water runs straight down the Himalayas north of Bangladesh's border, reaching its destination essentially all at once. Especially when coupled with heavier than normal monsoon rains, this lack of watershed productivity results in massive flooding. The truly sad part is that this situation will take hundreds or even thousands of years to correct, if it can ever be corrected at all.

Worldwide, forests are disappearing faster than any other terrestrial ecosystem. In the last 30 years, about half of the world's forests were destroyed to provide cropland, rangeland, lumber, fuelwood, dam reservoirs, and urban lands (Miller p.329). In the United States, our best estimates show an original volume of 5200 billion board feet of virgin forest reduced to between 2000 and 2800 billion board feet of mixed growth forest by the end of the 19th century (Williams p.215). Here in the Pacific Northwest, the timber industry has loomed large, having cut 87% of the virgin forest by the 1980s (Norse p.6). It is estimated that if "current rates of logging (continue), all unprotected ancient forest in....Washington and Oregon will be gone by the year 2023." (Norse p.7) Second-growth forest faces a fate no better; rampant population growth in Washington state has ensured a healthy economy for housing and commercial developers, and it has been forestlands that have felt the heaviest impact. Yet it seems that public debate in Washington state has focused (with due thanks to the media) on a "jobs versus owls" perspective, which is at best an overly simple way to look at a complex problem. At worst, it is a dangerous perspective, for it takes the public's attention away from what is really important: the complete destruction of an ecosystem that is vital at best to our quality of life and at worst to the survival of anything that lives in the Northwest, animal or human. 200 years ago, before Washington state was settled, the entire land mass of Western Washington was literally covered with trees, a result of millions of years of evolution of an ecosystem suitable to natural factors of the Pacific Northwest. In a geologic instant, humans have transformed the landscape, clearing land for agriculture, urban development, and timber. We toy with our fate, unwilling to take responsibility for our actions, preferring to react rather than proact and leaving the consequences of environmental devastation to future generations of people. The case of Bangladesh is not an isolated one; one need only look at nations such as Thailand, Russia, China, Haiti, Brazil and countless others to see examples of the consequences of environmental degradation, and in particular, deforestation. It is likely that current forestry practices in the Northwest will result in increased flooding, mass extinction of plants and animals, soil erosion and desertification, increased air pollution, and contribute to the Greenhouse Effect, as well as innumerable other dangers that could render land unlivable. Are we willing to take even the slightest chance that these things will happen? Apparently many people are, fearful for their jobs and immediate futures. This is somewhat understandable, for change is always a bit scary, and life-altering challenges often require a great deal of courage in order to deal with them. Yet the evidence is indisputable and points to a single conclusion: if timber production in the Northwest continues at current levels of yield, our forests will be rendered extinct, putting our quality of life and perhaps our very survival in serious jeopardy.

Sometimes, it is the more subtle aspects of an ecosystem that have the greatest effect on that ecosystem; watersheds certainly fall into this category. Most of the time, you cannot see them, yet every day, you see their effects without even knowing it. A watershed is what keeps the rivers and streams flowing, the lakes filled, and the drinking water clean. It charges springs and keeps soil erosion in check. It prevents excessive flooding and provides habitat for aquatic animals. Yet none of these things define what a watershed is; rather, they define its effects on an ecosystem. Strictly speaking, a watershed is a land area that delivers runoff water, sediment, and dissolved substances to bodies of surface water. Forested watersheds are like giant sponges, absorbing, holding, and gradually releasing water that recharges springs, streams, and aquifers (Miller p.329). In fact, more water is stored in the forests of the world (especially the tropical rain forests) than in its lakes (Gore p.106). It is important to note the many elements at work here: as rain falls over the forest, it first hits the tops of the trees, or the canopy. The water then drips from branch to branch, leaf to leaf, all the way down to the ground, where it gently strikes the soil. In this case, the surface of the canopy receives the full climatic impact (McCormick p.63), which it can take far better than the soil can; that is, in fact, the reason it is there. The soil then absorbs some of the moisture, the rest of it either evaporating or running downhill. The absorbed moisture is usually held underground for several months as it slowly makes its way downhill. This concept may be a little difficult to imagine, but think of it like an underground river; not in the normal sense of a river but one that slowly moves through the dirt and rock. This is an accurate visualization; "flowing" underground water has measurable movement, and it is extremely slow. The benefits of this system are clear: soil erosion is almost non-existent, the water is filtered and cleansed as it moves through the soil and rock, and the water is released gradually over long periods of time, ensuring a year-round water supply for rivers and streams, and making sure that they are not overloaded with too much water at once.

In contrast, the soil of a clear-cut area is heated by the direct rays of the sun, quickly dried, and thrashed by rain, sleet, and hail (McCormick p.63). Under these conditions, topsoil erosion can increase up to 100 times the natural rate (Dietrich, Seattle Times). In a study done by the Wadebridge Ecological Center in the United Kingdom, scientists working in the sub-Saharan African nation of the Ivory Coast carefully recorded incredible differences between rates of erosion before and after deforestation. They found that even on steep slopes, the rate of soil erosion in forested land was found to be as low as .03 tons per hectare per year. Once the land was cleared, that figure rose to 90 tons per hectare, a 3000% increase (Gore p.120). As the soil erodes, it becomes less capable of absorbing water, and the rainfall simply runs downhill, taking more soil with it. The rainwater enters rivers and streams relatively quickly, in a matter of days rather than months, choking them with soil sediments and overloading them with water, which often results in flooding. Due to settling sediment, the riverbed gets shallower, the river's capacity to drain the floodwaters is impaired, and the flooding along the banks becomes even worse (Gore p.107). The sediments kill fish, especially young salmon fry and trout, and eventually run into the ocean, where the salt water renders the soil sediment lifeless, never to be used in a biologically productive way again. Since there is little water flowing underground in the watershed to recharge rivers, streams, and springs, the rivers and streams run low when it doesn't rain. This means they are heavy in fall and winter, and low in spring and summer when they are most needed by humans and wildlife.

We have seen the results of clearcutting forested watersheds already. Salmon runs throughout Washington state are at all-time lows, and several species have become or are in serious danger of becoming extinct. There are many reasons for this besides deforestation, but that is not the least of them, because it results in low water levels, higher water temperatures due to the lack of shade, and muddy, sediment choked water unsuitable for aquatic life. Flooding in low-lying areas has increased dramatically, and we are facing a water-shortage crisis. Many would argue that our water-shortage problems are due to a lack of snowpack in the mountains, and they would be right. But the lack of snowpack can easily be traced back to the lack of water recycling provided by a forest. It doesn't rain (or snow) if there is no water to evaporate, and in a clear-cut, there is little water to evaporate. Forests create their own, unique climates that have far-reaching impacts on surrounding ecosystems; forests themselves literally produce clouds through a process called evapotranspiration, the evaporation of a plant's transpiration (the equivalent of human sweat) (Gore p.106). In a worst case scenario, this deforestation will result in desertification as the soil erodes away and the rainfall decreases. This is not an unprecedented scenario by any means; much of the Middle East was once covered with rain forest. Desertification would have obvious impacts on wildlife and human life, and considering that one of Washington's largest industries is agriculture, it would mean certain economic depression.

While rainfall plays a large role in the watershed of an ecosystem, it plays an even larger role in an entire ecosystem: the rain forest. Rain forests are not simply forests that receive a lot of rain. They are worlds of their own, hosting at least 50% of the world's total stock of species. Though tropical rain forests occupy only 7% of the world's land mass, they supply us with hundreds of food products and industrial materials, and provide raw materials used in 25% of America's prescription and non-prescription drugs and 75% of the world's cancer fighting drugs (Miller p.331). Less than 1% of tropical forest species have been examined for their possible use as human resources. The Olympic National Rain Forest is not a tropical forest, but it is every bit as productive as one and is the only remaining rain forest in the continental United States. The key here is that the rain and the forest are not mutually exclusive; rather, one feeds off the other. Rain forests create and regulate their own local climates, using a recycling watershed system that circulates ground water into rain through evapotranspiration, which falls back to the forest to be recycled again. This system is deceptively fragile; if large areas are cut, the soil dries, the recycling of ground water into rain ceases, and the rain forest is, for all practical purposes, lost forever (Miller p.330). The cleared areas instead convert to grassland and eventually desert. This is because most of the nutrients are in the vegetation, not in the upper layers of soil as in most other terrestrial ecosystems; it is estimated that only 5% of the nutrients are in the soil, the other 95% being in the forest itself (Gore p.117). Once the vegetation is removed, the soils rapidly lose nutrients as the heavy rainfall washes away most of the thin layer of topsoil, and the prospects of plant life become slim (Miller p.92). The water then runs downhill instead of being absorbed into the watershed, and we already know the rest.

A major problem with the clearcutting of a rain forest or an old- growth forest is one of biodiversity, and the potential for the destruction of an ecosystem from lack of it. There are several concepts that need to be understood here. One is the Law of Tolerance, which states that the existence, abundance, and distribution of a species in an ecosystem is determined by whether the levels of one or more physical or chemical factors fall above or below the levels tolerated by the species (Miller p.70). In other words, a plant that is killed by freezing temperatures will not be found in the far north, but rather will be distributed in an area with a more moderate climate. Another is the concept of a limiting factor, which is any factor, such as temperature, light, water, or soil nutrients, that is found to be limiting the population growth of a species in an ecosystem (Miller p.71). The two concepts fit together to form the Limiting Factor Principle: too much or too little of any abiotic factor can limit or prevent growth of a population of a species in an ecosystem even if all other factors are at or near the optimum range of tolerance for the species (Miller p.71). For example, think of salmon in a river and a limiting factor such as temperature. Even if everything else about the river is just right for the salmon, they will not survive if the temperature gets too low or too high, moving beyond their range of tolerance. But surely throughout the millennia of the planet's history, the temperature has done just that, and the salmon have somehow survived. The reason for this is simple and brings us finally to the concept of biodiversity: individual organisms within a large population of a species may have slightly different tolerance levels because of small differences in their genetic makeup, health, and age (Miller p.70). In the past, when the temperature got too hot or cold, most of the salmon may have died, but a few of them survived. These survivors made up a new gene pool that was able to withstand the higher temperature, and the species evolved. A more likely scenario is that the temperature rose gradually over many years, and the tolerance range of the species evolved with the change as the salmon that couldn't live in the new temperature died and only the ones that lived propagated their species.

The key here, though, is that biodiversity requires a large population to work properly. In modifying ecosystems for our use, we simplify them. We bulldoze and plow grasslands and forests, and then replace the thousands of interrelated plant and animal species in these ecosystems with greatly simplified, single-crop monocultures, or with urban structures (Miller p.111). When an old-growth forest is cut down and replanted with a single species of tree, its chances of surviving a tolerance problem are severely decreased and the risk of extinction is relatively high.

Compounding the problem of a lack of biodiversity is human interference in the nutrient cycle of a forest. The forest floor is the key to a forest ecosystem: each year, about 2 tons of debris (dead leaves, flower parts, fruits, seeds, twigs, logs, feces, and animal remains) litter each acre of the floor. If the debris were allowed to accumulate, life in the forest would cease due to a shortage of such elements as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, all essential to life. These elements are scarce and must be recycled again and again. Nature takes care of this nicely with bacteria that daily decompose matter that totals 100 to 1000 times their own weight. As decomposition takes place, it frees the component chemicals from the forest debris, as well as cleans up the litter (McCormick pp.21-22). It should be obvious what happens when we interfere in this cycle. When a section of forest is clear-cut, there is little debris left to decompose, interrupting the nutrient cycle, and a great deal of the remaining nutrients in the soil will be washed away as the soil erodes. When we try to replant a rain forest, it does not grow back because it now lacks the rain and nutrients required for plants and wildlife, and the lack of water and nutrients serve as limiting factors for the populations of most rain forest species. In order to achieve a short term gain, we have lost the rain forest, and all of the productivity that came with it. A clear-cut old-growth forest suffers a serious loss of soil and nutrients as well, and the second-growth that follows it will not be as healthy. Third-growth forest is more often than not left uncut, because the resulting trees are unsuitable even for lumber. There has never been a successful fourth-growth forest anywhere in the world, and by now it should be clear that trees are inherently unsustainable as a resource on a human time scale when clear-cut. The lesson to be learned here is that biodiversity and the nutrient cycle are imperative processes in the regeneration of a forest ecosystem. Human activity interferes with both, and subsequently, we run the risk of losing that ecosystem.

The loss of forestland also contributes to the Greenhouse Effect, the trapping and buildup of heat in the atmosphere near the earth's surface, resulting in global warming. Contrary to popular belief, there is no scientific dispute that the Greenhouse Effect is real. Examination of fossil climate records, cores of trapped air in ancient ice, and the atmosphere of Venus has convinced scientists that there is a close correlation between the amount of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere and global temperature (Dietrich, Seattle Times). Nor is the concept a new one. In 1827, French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Fourier first noted that the heat-trapping action of the atmosphere helps warm the planet. He also suggested, without knowledge of the role played by carbon dioxide, that human activity could modify the insulating effect and alter climate (Time-Life p.109). The Greenhouse Effect is, simply stated, the theory that certain gases prevent heat from radiating out of the atmosphere, trapping it around the globe. The balance of heat radiating in opposed to the amount of heat radiating out is upset, and the heat accumulates with results beyond our imagination. Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas, and is produced mostly from automobiles and other industrial polluters. It has ranged from 200 to several thousand parts per million throughout the earth's history, and currently resides in the hundreds. However, these changes occurred over geologic time scales - millions of years. Carbon dioxide is now accumulating in the atmosphere at unprecedented rates that can be measured in decades; it has increased about 20% since 1960, and this rate continues to accelerate (Shands and Hoffman p.1). Climate models and empirical evidence from past climate changes suggest a climate sensitivity for doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide that agrees with the estimate of 5.4 +/- 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the National Academy Of Sciences (Shands and Hoffman p.57). Compare this with the last great ice age, when the mean global temperature was only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit less than it is today. It is generally believed that changes may be apparent over the next several decades (Shands and Hoffman p.73).

Forests play an important role in the balance of gases in our atmosphere. Nutrients, chemicals essential for life, are recycled in the ecosphere and in mature ecosystems in biogeochemical cycles where the nutrients move from the environment, to organisms, then back to the environment (Miller p.75). The two basic types of biogeochemical cycles are gaseous and sedimentary, but we will only concern ourselves with the gaseous cycle here. The major gaseous cycles are the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles (Miller p.75), and once again, we will only look at the carbon cycle, as it is directly relevant to the Greenhouse Effect. Carbon is the basic building block of the many organic compounds necessary for life. Most land plants get their carbon by absorbing carbon dioxide gas through pores in their leaves. Through the process of photosynthesis, the carbon in carbon dioxide is converted to carbon in complex organic compounds such as glucose. Then the cells in oxygen-consuming plants, animals, and decomposers carry out aerobic cellular respiration, which breaks down complex organic compounds and converts the carbon back to carbon dioxide for reuse in the ecosystem (Miller p.75). Some of the earth's carbon is tied up in fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, oil shale, and natural gas, which formed over millions of years as the organic compounds in dead plants and animals were buried and subjected to high pressures and temperatures. The catalyst for the Greenhouse Effect is the extraction and burning of fossil fuels by humans, producing carbon dioxide that flows into our atmosphere in unprecedented amounts. Unfortunately, humans have also engaged in the mass removal of forests and vegetation, leaving fewer trees and plants to absorb the carbon dioxide. In Brazil, where tropical rain forest is regularly slash-burned, it is almost a paradox: the burning wood releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, and as a result of the slash-burn, there are less trees left to absorb what the burning wood is putting out. It might be comical if it weren't so serious. The most difficult part of all is to imagine and realize the ultimate truth: we are intervening in a natural cycle in such a way that we jeopardize the balance of chemicals in our atmosphere. This atmosphere is the air that we breathe, and more than anything else, we depend on it for our very survival.

Clearly, this is a global problem, and the Northwest forest plays only a small percentage of the role on a global scale. But we must remember that it all adds up. If everyone took the attitude that their particular forest didn't do much to slow the Greenhouse Effect and proceeded to cut it down, the results would, of course, be disastrous. Unfortunately, this is precisely the attitude that is predominant throughout the world. If everybody realized that while their individual forest's role is small, every forest counts, then we could do much to try to avert widespread disaster. The Pacific Northwest forest is important in the carbon cycle. Our trees soak up a great deal of the pollution that we spew forth, helping to keep our air clean. In a world where half of the forestland has been destroyed in less than half a lifetime, we possess a great asset that can be nurtured to help us with the inevitable atmospheric problems that we are certain to face in our future.

It would seem that the evidence presented thus far is totally overwhelming, pointing to one conclusion only: that we are headed for an ecological disaster of an unprecedented nature, one that will destroy our lives as we know it. Yet ecological concerns still take a back seat to economic concerns in our society, probably because a job or profit margin is so much more tangible and convenient to deal with than the prediction of irreparable ecological damage. While the issue of lost jobs is certainly the subject of another paper altogether, it bears a brief mentioning here. The jobs issue actually seems quite hollow when the true facts are closely examined. It has been assumed by the media, and subsequently the general public, that the loss of timber related jobs in the Northwest has been due solely to reduced timber harvesting on federal lands. This is simply not true by any stretch of the imagination. For example, Oregon and Washington lumber production set a record in 1986, yet the number of workers required to produce the lumber dropped from 136,500 to 100,600 in the eight years leading up to that (Ervin p.107). This was due to nothing more than increased efficiency, accomplished by adding work shifts, pushing workers harder, and automation. To underscore such an exercise in contradiction, Weyerhauser coupled its new profit sharing program with wage cuts and a streamlined work force! One Weyerhauser official was quoted as saying that the company restructured some plants to be "run by essentially unsupervised hourly crews." (Ervin p.107) To date, these reasons have been directly responsible for more than 55,000 jobs. In 1988, the Wilderness Society used a Forest Service computer model to project a 50% drop in jobs by 2030 even if national timber sales remained constant. The same model predicted that if logging on national forests were reduced 25%, only an additional 6% could be added to that job loss figure (Ervin p.107). Clearly, the argument of job loss due to reductions in timber production is highly inaccurate and, at best, misleading. Adding to the fuel is the factor of log exportation to Asian countries. In 1988, log exporting hit a new high; over 229 port calls were made in Grays Harbor alone to pick up logs from the Olympic Peninsula, and more than one-third of Washington's timber harvest went overseas without any processing in domestic mills (Ervin p.109). In effect, log exports cost jobs because companies ship them overseas to be processed, rather than employing workers in state mills to do the job. This is ludicrous behavior by top timber companies and exporters, such as Weyerhauser and ITT Rayonier, and the State Department Of Natural Resources, all who received top dollar for log exports. This is behavior consistent with a third-world nation that lacks the industrial capacity to process its own natural resources, and is certainly a factor of great magnitude in the job-loss issue.

Of course, no matter how many jobs are kept or lost, timber companies are still in this business to make money. Dr. Kenneth P. Davis, former president of The Society Of American Foresters, testified before a Senate committee in 1970, saying, "(Clearcutting)...is efficient, economic, and in general produces forest products and resources useful to man." (Frome p.82) The problem here is that the product (wood) does not reflect its true cost. According to one calculation, a typical tree provides $196,250 worth of ecological benefits in the form of oxygen, air pollution control, soil fertility, erosion control, water recycling, humidity control, wildlife habitat, and protein for wildlife. The same tree sold as timber brings about $590 (Miller p.330). Even if the former estimate is thousands of dollars off, the gain hardly justifies the cost. Instead, the principle of internalizing all external costs should be utilized; in other words, the market price of anything should include all present and future costs of any pollution, environmental degradation, or other harmful effects connected with it that are passed on to society and the environment (Miller, inside cover). To put it simply, we must fit the economy to the forest, not the forest to the economy. In clearcutting, entire hillsides are deforested, then the "slash" is often stacked in windrows or the hillside is machine terraced. This hardly seems efficient or economical, since the clear-cut often fails to regenerate even with repeated planting (Frome p.82g). The timber industry is, one way or the other, doomed to fail, and the industry would be wise to diversify now in order to plan for the future. Environmental technology is a huge market looming over humankind, just waiting to be taken advantage of. Of all the industries out there, the timber industry is perhaps one of the best poised to take advantage of it, and misplaced timber workers are in a similar position. After all, our decimated forests are going to require human interference of a more benevolent nature.

When we as a society need to make a decision about something with such far reaching impacts as the timber issue, we must be careful to prioritize our justifications and act with due regard to our future. It is clear that economic considerations are completely insignificant, and therefore irrelevant, in the face of such an impending environmental disaster, and that, in fact, economic factors are totally dependent on the outcome of the survival of the Northwest forest ecosystem. We must think of how livable this land would be without any significant forest. We face the possibility of rampant flooding, biologically dead rivers and lakes, soil unfit for farming, polluted water supplies, drought, and mass wildlife extinction. Can any job or economy compare to that? Can any economy survive with such a lack of vital resources? We must make a decision based on the only factor that matters: biological science. Carl Sagan writes, "...safeguarding the water we drink and the air we breathe and the global environment that sustains us is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for all our other activities.....protecting the environment (also) opens up a range of entrepreneurial opportunities for those with the ancient human talents of intelligence and inventiveness."

Everything that we do, everything about our lifestyles, depends on the state and health of our environment, a lesson that countries such as Bangladesh have learned all too well. We must come to terms with the fact that everything on this planet is interdependent; when we do something that affects the natural cycle, it creates effects that are often unpredictable. Examine the evidence above, and you will see how it all ties in together. Soil erosion ties into watersheds, which tie into rain forests, which tie into biodiversity, and so on and so forth. Affect one, and you affect them all. We must protect the land that sustains us, and we must do this not only to ensure our survival, but also because it is the right thing to do. In the words of the great naturalist Aldo Leopold, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Works Cited

Dietrich, Bill. "Warming? Ozone? A Sketch Of The Arguments." Seattle Times. 29 Oct. 1992: A13

Ervin, Keith. Fragile Majesty: The Battle For North America's Last Great Forest. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1989

Frome, Michael. The Forest Service. New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1971

Gore, Senator Al. Earth In The Balance. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992

McCormick, Jack. The Living Forest. New York: Harper & Row, 1959

Miller, G. Tyler. Environmental Science: Sustaining The Earth. 3rd Ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991

Norse, Elliot A. Ancient Forests Of The Pacific Northwest. Island Press, 1990

Sagan, Carl. "To Avert A Common Danger." Parade Magazine. March 1992

Shands, William E., and John S. Hoffman, Ed. The Greenhouse Effect, Climate Change, and U.S. Forests. Washington: The Conservation Foundation, 1987

Time-Life Books. The Third Planet. Richmond: Time-Life, 1989

Williams, Michael. "The Death And Rebirth Of The American Forest: Clearing And Reversion In The United States, 1900-1980." World Deforestation In The Twentieth Century. Ed. John F. Richards and Richard P. Tucker. London: Duke University Press, 1988

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