Natural resource professionals help settle a controversy between a lumber company and conservationists
Excerpt
IF conservationists and industry would only sit down to talk, their differences could be resolved. This remedy, like most old wives tales, contains only a bit of truth. Where the differences are substantial, no party will yield unless, by so doing, it avoids a real threat or reaps a palpable gain.
Some conservationists have discovered that industry is justifiably eager to avoid being depicted on the evening news as responsible for the rape and pillage of natural resources, particularly if that claim is substantiated by credible, unbiased experts. A recent example of how these tools and threats were used to resolve disagreement over private forestry techniques—a resolution achieved only with the openness of industry and conservationists—occurred in southeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas.
Conservationists' concerns
Over the last decade the Oklahoma Wildlife Federation and more recently the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) have been involved in continuing discussions with the Weyerhaeuser Company about timber management practices on Weyer-haeuser's 900,000-acre holding in southeastern Oklahoma and a contiguous, similar sized holding in southwestern Arkansas.
At the outset of the dispute, the Oklahoma Wildlife Federation estimated that Weyerhaeuser was clearcutting more than 60,000 acres …
Footnotes
Thomas D. Lustig is counsel for the Public Lands and Energy Division, National Wildlife Federation, 1412 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
- Copyright 1983 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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