A National Park in Danger
CARTER, VERNON
A National Park in Danger The Northwest's, beautiful Olympic Park is threatened by lumbermen who are now pressing Congress to make its trees available for logging By Vernon Carter Olympic...
...Assistant Secretary Lewis has refused to listen to the lumbermen, and he is supported by the National Park Service, the National Parks Association, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and other organizations...
...Chamber of Commerce, to Assistant Secretary of the Interior Orme Lewis...
...In 1935, Senator Mon Wallgren introduced a bill to create the Olympic National Park, which passed in 1938...
...On the whole, timber has been cut in the Northwest faster than nature will grow it...
...Indications are that it will advocate a drastic reduction of the national-park boundaries—perhaps down to 300,000 acres, or essentially what it was as a national monument...
...Now the lumbermen are more desperate...
...President Franklin D. Roosevelt enlarged the park in 1940...
...In this session of Congress, we can expect another flareup...
...During World War I, the timber men were temporarily successful...
...Since 1947, more mountainsides in western Washington have been denuded and more mills have closed...
...Olympic Park's Sitka spruce trees reach 200 feet in height and 6 in diameter, and its Douglas firs reach 250 feet in height and 10 in diameter...
...Immediately, lumber interests in western Washington charged that Truman's action was politically inspired...
...To admit loggers into Olympic National Park would only stem the tide of depletion for a few years...
...Tree choppers have eyed the park avidly since 1909, when it was set aside as a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt...
...On the pretext of unbottling valuable minerals needed for war, half the monument was eliminated...
...At its northern extremity, the ocean strip widens slightly to include the western shore of Lake Ozette...
...They hope that Congress, instead of severing part of the park, will appropriate more money for developing tourist accommodations, building roads to the awe-sonic peaks, and making the park more attractive lo visitors...
...A National Park in Danger The Northwest's, beautiful Olympic Park is threatened by lumbermen who are now pressing Congress to make its trees available for logging By Vernon Carter Olympic National Park is in trouble again...
...And meanwhile an area of unequaled splendor, which lures about 450.000 persons annually to ride, loaf, hike, camp or fish, would be ruined...
...Typical of this attitude was the letter of John H. Forbes, manager of the Aberdeen (Wash...
...To forestall another raid, local residents, backed by natural-wilderness organizations, started a drive to give the monument area national-park status...
...Thus, the battle, dormant since 1947, is on again...
...Again the park people won...
...This approach also failed...
...Once the report is in, the timber cutters will press Congress for its acceptance...
...They complained that the park, which contains about 9 billion board-feet of virgin timber, was much too large, and that locking up the forest forever spelled ruin for communities on the Olympic Peninsula...
...This included a 50-mile strip along the Pacific Ocean, connected with the Olympic Mountains by a narrow corridor of scenic forest along the Queets River...
...In 1946, the loggers tried again, pleading this time that the Douglas fir was needed for veterans' housing...
...During the past year, a committee was named by Washington's Governor Arthur Langlie to report on Olympic National Park...
...This time, there were extensive hearings, highlighted by a clash between Federal Government foresters (who said it was sinful to waste so much mature timber) and national-park men (who said the primeval wilderness was needed for recreation and inspiration...
...While it is true that the mill operators face a shutdown and workers may lose their jobs, these troubles go deep into the roots of our forest-based industries...
...Secretary of the Interior Ickes refused to surrender a single tree, however...
...In 1942, lumbermen claimed that the spruce was urgently needed for war purposes...
...It asked that timberlands be severed from the park to assure continuance of lumber-mill payrolls on the peninsula, and insisted that the park is too large to be developed for recreational purposes with the funds made available by Congress...
...Two weeks before leaving office, President Truman issued a proclamation adding 47,750 acres to the 850,000-acre park...
...The Interior Department sides with the public...
...As virgin timber peters out, sawmills give way to pulp and paper mills, which can use the skinnier, second-growth timber...
...A year later, five bills were introduced in Congress to make part of the area available to loggers, either by outright withdrawal of designated heavily timbered areas, or by creating a commission to determine which pieces should be eliminated "in order to render locally and nationally the maximum public benefits...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 1
