Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of History
First Advisor
William L. Lang
Term of Graduation
Summer 1998
Date of Publication
1998
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.) in History
Department
History
Language
English
Subjects
Forest management -- Oregon -- Mount Hood National Forest, Forest management, Planning, Mount Hood National Forest (Or.), Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness (Or.), Oregon -- Mount Hood National Forest, Oregon -- Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, United States Forest Service -- Planning, United States Forest Service
DOI
10.15760/etd.8081
Physical Description
1 online resource (139 pages)
Abstract
In the 1970s, the Forest Service used ecology in the process that led to the SalmonHuckleberry roadless area in the Mount Hood National Forest becoming a Congressionally designated Wilderness in 1984. This case study of the history of SalmonHuckleberry roadless area confirms the criticism made by environmentalists that noncommercial forest values have received much less priority than commercial uses in forest planning during the late 1960s and 1970s. This study of the area also reveals that the Forest Service's planning process was fundamentally flawed because Forest Service planners often lacked scientific data to support management decisions and downplayed the sigificnace of ecological factors which did not support logging. In the planning process in the Mount Hood National Forest that preceded the creation of the SalmonHuckleberry Wilderness, the Forest -Service used ecological theory to justify management practices such as clearcutting and used the same theories to justify limiting the amount of wilderness in the National Forest system. In efforts to increase timber production, the Forest Service ignored or downplayed the role of wilderness and roadless lands in maintaining a functioning forest ecosystem. On the national level, the Forest Service failed to create a meaningful way to incorporate ecological theory and knowledge into the wilderness selection process, which consisted of two Roadless Area Review and Evaluations ( RARE 1 and 2). In both RARE 1 and 2, the Forest Service primary use of ecology in the decision-making was to create a system to ensure representation of ecosystem types in wilderness areas. The result of this process however, was an overly broad representation system which did not adequately represent the diversity of the ecosystems of the National Forests. A common thread runs through local and national planning in the SalmonHuckleberry area. On both levels, the Forest Service largely downplayed the role of wilderness preservation in helping to maintain functioning forest ecosystems in order to achieve economic and ecological objectives which were deemed to be of greater importance.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39107
Recommended Citation
Barker, Jason Scot, "Ecology, Wilderness Selection, and the Salmonhuckleberry Roadless Area" (1998). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 6220.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.8081
Comments
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