LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

[December 27th, 2006] THE FURS AMENDMENT

To Aaron Mesh: To blame practitioners of free speech for laws which restrict free speech is the sort of absurdity I would expect from George W. Bush, not a columnist for a Portland weekly ["John Brown's Bunny," WW, Dec. 6, 2006]. I can only imagine that it is the "animal rights" aspect that is getting in your way of understanding that the whole point of free speech is that it's free and that sometimes it's going to piss people off and worry them. Would you be writing the same article if this were the 1960s, for example, and these were war protesters? Civil-rights protesters? I can assure you that these same types of "blame the victim" columns were likely written back then, when peaceniks and "militant" black men were considered freaks or "going too far" by society.

Today, it's animal-rights activists, and I can only hope that 40 or 50 years from now these same issues will be well enough understood that the same sorts of casual write-offs aren't made about their right to protest.

As well, fur protesting isn't an issue of "overly emotional" people wanting to save "fuzzy animals." If you have ever seriously researched the state of the modern factory "fur farm," I don't think you could find it in your heart to dismiss these protesters as misguided. I think you would understand why they would want to stop such practices as keeping wild animals in tiny metal cages for years while they pace back and forth, anally electrocuting these animals, trapping them with traps that cause them to chew their own legs off, and in some cases, skinning them alive. I recommend watching the pertinent section on "Earthlings" (part 6) available on YouTube. Watch that, and I think you might gain some understanding of why people would want to protest a fur store. Indeed, I don't think anyone with a heart could watch this unmoved.

At any rate, I am disappointed by the idea you present that it's an activist's fault somehow if free speech is taken away. The whole reason we have free speech is to allow for activism. This is the country, after all, where one of our founding fathers (Thomas Jefferson) said there should be a revolution every 20 years. I think that Americans are learning to live without free speech and take on the attitude that free speech is OK, "within limits" and that we somehow have to "deserve" free speech by being good boys and girls. I see this attitude in your piece, and it sorely disappoints me.

Jennifer Howell
Southeast Brooklyn Street

TREE COUNTERS

Thank you for Ian Demsky's excellent article, "Green vs. 'Green'" [WW, Dec. 13, 2006]. There are a couple of corrections and clarifications needed. The Pinchot Institute is conducting a study to determine the degree to which forest management practices on five national forests are consistent with the standards of the two major third-party forest certification systems now in use in the U.S., the Forest Stewardship Council and Sustainable Forestry Initiative. The study includes two national forests in Oregon: the Mount Hood, as reported as well as the Lakeview Federal Stewardship Unit (a portion of the Fremont-Winema National Forest). The Siuslaw National Forest is not part of the study. None of these national forests will actually become certified as part of this study.

This article reported concerns that certification on the Mount Hood National Forest could allow the agency to "increase logging on the forest under the guise of environmental friendliness." Certification standards address sustainable forest management that may or may not include timber harvesting for commercial purposes. For example, FSC recently certified Marsh-Billing-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Vermont, where the forest management objectives are strictly education and demonstration. The statutory mandates under which the national forests are managed require the conservation and sustainable management of a wide range of public values. Certification does not, and cannot, take the place of these statutes or their requirements for broad public participation in resource management decisions. Third-party certification has proved useful in improving forest practices on public and private forests around the world, and knowing how consistent the management of our public forests is with internationally accepted standards of sustainable forest management will be useful information for forest managers and concerned citizens alike.

Dr. V. Alaric Sample
President, Pinchot Institute for Conservation
Washington, D.C.

Ian Demsky responds: The list of National Forests slated to be part of the assessment came from a 2005 Forest Service document outlining the project. The Forest Service confirmed Tuesday the Siuslaw National Forest came off that list.