as reviewed by Tim Holmes
Traveling along a winding Adirondack road, you round a curve and see a load of logs disappear around the next. As you catch up to the load and settle into the tempo of following the logs from curve to curve, is this an annoyance or an opportunity? If nothing but a problem – or at best an inconvenience – you have much to gain from Roger Dziengeleski’s excellent essay. If instead you start to wonder – “What type of logs are those and what is their condition?” “Where were they harvested and where are they headed?” “What products will result?” – and if you view the forest products industry as a key variable in the Great Experiment, then you will thoroughly appreciate Dziengeleski’s penetrating analysis of where the forest industry has been and where it could be in a diversified and sustainable forest products economy.
As with Gilborn’s and the Brocke’s efforts, his writing has a tempo and flow that make this historical tale hard to put down. In the first three pages of this 23-page essay, Dziengeleski provides a capsule history of the major recommendations and proposals for sustaining New York’s forest products industry. The good news is that most of the strategic planning has been done. Unfortunately, few of the recommendations have been implemented in spite of the stated goal for the Adirondack Park of “preserving land as well as the vitally important rural economy, including forest-product manufacturing.”
Under Dziengeleski’s pen the Adirondack Park’s forest economy is a microcosm of the global economy that has buffeted rural communities throughout the world. It is evident there have been winners as well as losers but by just about any measure the Adirondack Park’s forest-products economy belongs in the later category. With this essay we now have a better understanding of how and why that occurred, and possibly, how it could be changed.
There is no hand wringing here, just the facts and their interrelationships. A few of the main characters in this compelling story are corporate social responsibility, illegal logging in developing countries, forest parcelization, easements, past timber cutting practices, sustainable forestry in the Adirondacks, and beech bark disease. Another major influence is the public’s demand for wood products and the corporate rush to supply that demand at the lowest possible cost. It is worth quoting Dziengeleski’s summary of that polemic in its entirety:
“This is really a true “ugly American” policy. We want our forest-products manufacturers and landowners to follow the very best forest management and manufacturing practices but at the same time we purchase lower-priced forest products made at overseas manufacturing facilities that pollute and use wood from clear-cut tropical forests. China, the largest exporting country in the world, is now importing wood chips and logs because there is not enough local forest left to supply its forest-products manufacturing facilities.”
Dziengeleski ends on an optimistic note, or at least one of cautious optimism. As he points out:
“The Adirondack experiment is a long-term experiment in adaptive management. There are changes on the horizon that may swing public opinion in another direction and if so, the Adirondack forest may be ready to produce needed forest products.”
His observations on the lack of ecological-based management of Adirondack Park forests are not unlike those of Rainer Brocke in relation to wildlife management in the Adirondack Park. While management of the Adirondack Park’s Forest Preserve has been one of benign neglect, his optimism is due to what appears to be a renewed interest in the “adaptive” aspect of adaptive management. Dziengeleski’s reference to adaptive management is reminding us to take more seriously our responsibility for doing the research and the evaluation engendered in the concept of “the Great Experiment.” And what better place than the Adirondack Park to explore possibilities for integrating forest product-based economies with forest ecology, biodiversity and sustainable use?
* Pp. 298-320 in The Great Experiment in Conservation, Voices from the Adirondack Park. Edited by William Porter, Jon Erickson and Ross Whaley. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.
