Free Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond Page A

logging. They feel frustrated that logging proposals appearing well justified to them (such as for the purpose of reducing the forest fire fuel loads discussed below) en counter long delays in the courts. But the environmental organizations fil ing the protests have concluded that they should suspect the usual disguised pro-logging agenda behind any seemingly reasonable government proposal involving logging. All of the Bitterroot Valley's former timber mills have now closed, because so little timber is available from Montana publicly owned timberland, and because the valley's privately owned timberland has already been logged twice. The mills' closing has meant the loss of many high-paying unionized jobs, as well as of traditional Montanan self-image.
    Elsewhere in Montana, outside the Bitterroot Valley, much private tim berland remains, most of it originating from government land grants made in the 1860s to the Great Northern Railroad as an inducement for building a transcontinental railroad. In 1989 that land was spun off from the rail roads to a Seattle-based entity called Plum Creek Timber Company, organized for tax purposes as a real estate investment trust (so that its earnings will be taxed at lower rates as capital gains), and now the largest owner of private timberland in Montana and the second-largest one in the U.S. I've read Plum Creek's publications and talked with their director of corporate affairs, Bob Jirsa, who defends Plum Creek's environmental policies and sustainable forestry practices. I've also heard numerous Montana friends vent unfavorable opinions about Plum Creek. Typical of their complaints are the following: "Plum Creek cares only about the bottom line"; "they are not interested in sustainable forestry"; "they have a corporate culture, and their goal is 'Get out more logs!' "; "Plum Creek earns money in what ever way it can from the land"; "they do weed control only if someone complains."
    Should these polarized views remind you of the views that I already quoted about mining companies, you're right. Plum Creek is organized as a profit-making business, not as a charity. If Montana citizens want Plum Creek to do things that would diminish its profits, it's their responsibility to get their politicians to pass and enforce laws demanding those things, or to buy out the lands and manage them differently. Looming over this dispute is a basic hard fact: Montana's cold dry climate and high elevation place most of its land at a relative disadvantage for forestry. Trees grow several times faster in the U.S. Southeast and Northeast than in Montana. While Plum Creek's largest land holdings are in Montana, four other states (Ar kansas, Georgia, Maine, and Mississippi) each produce more timber for Plum Creek on only 60 to 64% of its Montana acreage. Plum Creek cannot get a high rate of return from its Montana logging operations: it has to pay taxes and fire protection on the land while sitting on it for 60 to 80 years be fore harvesting trees, whereas trees reach a harvestable size in 30 years on its southeastern U.S. lands. When Plum Creek faces economic realities and sees more value in developing its Montana lands, especially those along rivers and lakes, for real estate than for timber, that's because prospective buyers who seek beautiful waterfront property hold the same opinion. Those buy ers are often representatives of conservation interests, including the govern ment. For all these reasons, the future of logging in Montana even more than elsewhere in the U.S. is uncertain, as is that of mining.
    Related to these issues of forest logging are issues of forest fires, which have recently increased in intensity and extent in some forest types in Mon tana and throughout the western U.S., with the summers of 1988, 1996, 2000, 2002, and 2003 being especially severe fire years. In the summer of  2000, one-fifth of the Bitterroot Valley's remaining area of forest burned. Whenever I fly back to the Bitterroot