Ax Men v. Timber Management

Ax Men v. Timber Management

Sustainability and the depiction of logging in the History Channel's Ax Men

The television series Ax Men lionizes the bravery of men who are involved in the logging industry. However, because of concerns about the environmental sustainability of widespread logging, the laudatory tone of the History Channel series has also drawn a great deal of controversy. The show has been criticized for glorifying a practice which destroys the natural environment of states of the union where widespread logging is practiced. This controversy grew even more intense after the stars of the show were found guilty of illegal logging. "The [Washington] state Department of Natural Resources has seized more than two dozen logs it says a timber crew featured on the History Channel's reality show Ax Men salvaged illegally" ("Stars of Ax Men," AP, 2009). "It is unfortunate that the History Channel has chosen to glorify illegal activity and unsafe logging practices on their television program," said the state's Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark (Cornwall 2009).

The practice in question was that of "salvaging logs from the Hoquiam River without permits…the state normally doesn't issue permits for underwater log salvage because of the potential ecological impacts of pulling the logs from the river" (Cornwall 2009). The casual nature of the men's violation suggested that it was not uncommon for them to act in such an unsustainable manner, given that they did so confidently on camera. Environmentalists allege that such incidents exemplify the carelessness of the logging industry and the lack of concern shown by loggers for the environment and basic environmental regulations regarding sustainable logging.

Supporters of the logging industry state that, given the high unemployment rates in the southwestern United States, this is no time to place the environment over human lives and sustainability must take a backseat to job growth. Long-term environmental concerns, they state, mean little when massive numbers of people are out of work and desperately looking for jobs. Yet the overall viability of the logging industry within the region has been under increasing scrutiny, environmental questions aside for more than twenty years. "Even with sustainable forest management, financial and technological changes are decreasing the employment opportunities in rural communities. The contribution of the logging industry to local economies has been decreasing due to timber competition from other regions, technological change" as well as environmental regulations (Levi & Kotcher 1995). The state of Oregon was torn apart during the 1990s, because of environmentalist's support of expanding the protection of the endangered Spotted Owl, whose survival they believed was critical for the ecosystem of the region but even without such restrictions, the region could not have been protected from the bottoming out of the construction market.

While the U.S. federal courts have largely supported efforts to preserve the habitat of the Spotted Owl, the recent economic downturn has caused sentiment to turn against environmentalists and advocates of more sustainable logging practices. For example, in 2009, to preserve the state of Oregon's timber industry, the Board of Forestry announced its plans to increase the cutting of timber in Oregon's state-owned forests. "The hope is that by cutting more trees, hard-hit rural counties such as Clatsop and Tillamook will get an infusion of jobs," although according to a study by the state Department of Forestry, "increasing timber harvests would in fact lower the probability of preserving watershed function -- a bureaucratic way of acknowledging the environmental impacts of the plan" (Bellos 2009). Defenders of the proposal pointed to Oregon's 12% unemployment rate at the time (which has lowered to a still-record high 10%) largely caused because of contractions in the housing sector and construction industry, part of the lifeblood of the state. Recently, environmentalists have pointed to the catastrophic waterslides caused by heavy rains and the fact that the speed of global warming will harm, not simply generations of the future, but even generations in the here and now, given the rate of the climbing temperatures caused by destruction of forest land. More intensive logging is not the answer, they say.

The Obama Administration has been far more sympathetic to environmental concerns than the past Administration. Citing environmental damage, President Obama rescinded the WOPR Act or Western Oregon Plan Revisions, a Bush Administration plan to increase old-growth logging. "Experts agreed that a huge increase in clear-cut logging would muddy important salmon streams, decimate habitat for threatened species, remove popular groves of old-growth forest, and emit massive amounts of global warming pollution" (Heiken, 2010). But the Administration and even anti-logging activists are not insensitive to the need for job growth. Rather than focusing on the past, they suggest that the southwest should instead focus upon the future.