Forum: As go our forests, so goes our environmental future
Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 7, 2026
By Michael W. Shurgot / Herald Forum
“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculturre Brooke Rollins in announcing recission of the federal Roadless Rule last year.
“Deforestation was a or the major factor in all the collapses of past societies described in this book,” reports Jared Diamond in his book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”
The above statements represent two diametrically opposed views of the environmental importance of forests.
The first was quoted by Lynda Mapes in her essay “Wild Alaska At Risk,” published Jan. 4, in Pacific Northwest magazine. The second, from Diamond’s 2005 tome on the history of catastrophic collapses of entire civilizations, summarizes much of his extensive research into past societies that have engineered their own demise through egregious mismanagement of their natural resources, especially forests.
As we begin the second year of the Trump administration’s management of our forests by the agriculture and interior departments, this nation confronts major decisions about not just whether and how heavily to log national forests, especially old growth; but also about our fundamental attitude toward our shared natural environment.
As Mapes explains, the Roadless Rule, which was formally adopted by President Bill Clinton in 2001, currently protects about 2.5 million acres of old growth in the Tongass National Forest of southeast Alaska. Mapes quotes Dominick DellaSala, a scientist based in Oregon, who explains that the Tongass “sequesters about 20 percent of all the carbon stored in the country’s entire national forest system.”
Despite this scientific fact, President Trump wants to revoke this rule, and secretary Rollins asserts that the rule prevents the “reasonable” use of the ancient trees of the Tongass. What is clearly at stake here is something much larger than just the number of 300- to 800-year-old trees that Trump and Rollins want to log in the Tongass, or the percentage of carbon stored there. The truly crucial issue is whether we, as a society — a civilization — going forward, see ourselves as part of or superior to our flora and fauna.
One would have thought that the adoption of the Roadless Rule, along with the passage of numerous other significant environmental laws since the mid-1960s, would have cemented in our national consciousness the importance of forest preservation. But the Trump administration disdains conservation and blindly advocates unlimited exploitation of all natural resources.
Diamond’s research, which neither Trump nor Rollins appear to have read or care about, is a clear warning that prolonged maximum cutting of our forests, especially the few remaining stands of old growth, combined with the administration’s relentless promotion of fossil fuel burning, could be immensely dangerous.
The American people must decide whether they are willing to sacrifice to blind greed not just the great ancient trees of the Tongass but also the remaining old growth stands in our national forests. The looming legal battles over the future of the Tongass National Forest may very well determine whether this nation still believes in ecological sanity.
Michael W. Shurgot lives in Seattle.
