Spring, glorious Spring! The flowers’ magnificent display overwhelms my senses and I am drunkenly ecstatic with their glory. I take care driving, since my eyes tend to drift to the vibrant colors that appear along the winding road. It is my favorite time of year; it is what I work so diligently for, this bounty of beauty that expresses God in every curled unfolding of a blossom’s petal.

In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring which became the springboard for the modern environmental movement and the impetus behind the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. In the book, Ms. Carson discussed such issues as the discovery of widespread fish and wildlife kills due to pesticide usage, governmental cover ups, the partnership of academic science with industry, and the silence of the medical profession. She expressed the idea nothing in nature exists alone; all ecosystems are affected by what we do in our attempt to control nature. Spraying herbicides not only kills the weeds, it can poison the beneficial insects, birds, fish, and wetlands as it makes its way downstream. It seeps into groundwater, poisoning the people who rely on this resource.

We had our own recent example in WNC. What mental picture do you have when someone mentions apple orchards? Sunshine, fragrant white blossoms, green grass and blue skies…not poisoned water and earth that is so caustic you cannot even dig in the dirt! Yet, that is what the residents of a local housing development, built on a previous apple farm, are currently facing.

The EPA had 35,000 pesticides to review in 1972, and is not yet finished with the process. The dangerous ones are "regulated or restricted." A very few have been canceled. Loopholes add difficulty in enforcement of the regulations. The Union Carbide disaster in India in 1985 and recent cyanide poisoning in Hungary’s streams effect the whole world.

Another threat is currently winding its way into our food chain and is being accepted without governmental regulation or testing. I am referring to genetic engineering and biotechnology. Fiddling about with plant and animals basic gene structure, and melding them with "positive aspects" of other genes is becoming widely accepted without testing, and with little or no oversight by the government or the public.

Two cases in point: The monarch butterflies are dying from corn which has been genetically altered to prevent insect damage, and our nation’s cattle are being treated with Bovine Growth Hormone to increase milk production—even though there is a surplus of milk, butter, and cheese and the long range effects to humans are unknown. Frito-Lay has just announced they will not use genetically engineered foods in its products. Public response is being closely watched by other major corporations. To comment on the ban: call 1-800-352-4477, operator 100, or consumer.affairs@fritolay.com. Genes are also manipulated to prevent frost damage. Other countries are refusing to buy our agricultural products because of the possible ramifications, but our industries ramrod governmental protection for their cause. The Recurring Silent Spring, by Patricia Hynes deals with some of these areas of concern.

Our forests need your help. The Asheville Citizen Times reported on 3/6/2000 that a poll is being taken regarding President Clinton’s initiative to double the amount of protected wilderness in national forests, especially the 50 million acres of roadless areas including the 152,378 acres in the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests. The pressure to log and develop roadless areas grows daily. The US General Accounting Office released a report in 1999 saying many of the forests are in poor health—a clear "go" sign to allow logging interest in. A close acquaintance of mine who works for the U.S. Forest Service told me the "managed forests" of the South—read pine monocultures that have replaced the once varied hardwoods—are in eminent peril with the epidemic increase of the pine beetle. The shorter, warmer winters are taking a toll as well—the pine beetles don’t have the cold to slow their destruction. Environmental leaders need public opinion to make an impact on the president’s initiative. To put the logging issue in perspective, please allow me to quote from A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (which happens to be a fabulously funny tome on the Appalachian Trail which I highly recommend!):

About 240 million acres of America’s forests are owned by the government. The bulk of this—191 million acres, spread over 155 parcels of land—is held by the U.S. Forest Service…(most designated as "multiple-use," allowing mining, condominium development, snowmobiling, and lots of logging….) The Forest Service is truly an extraordinary institution. A lot of people, seeing that word forest in the title, assume it has something to do with looking after trees. In fact, no—though that was the original plan. It was conceived a century ago as a kind of woodland bank, a permanent repository of American timber, when people grew alarmed at the rate at which American forests were falling… In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding. There are 378,000 miles of roads in America’s national forests. That may seem a meaningless figure, but look at it this way—it is eight times the total mileage of America’s interstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body….It is the avowed aim of the U.S. forest Service to construct 580,000 miles of additional forest road by the middle of the next century.

The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service’s 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third—49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio—is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, including (to take one recent but heartbreaking example) 209 acres of thousand-year-old redwoods in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest.

In 1987, it casually announced that it would allow private timber interests to remove hundreds of acres of wood a year from the venerable and verdant Pisgah National Forest, next door to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and that 80 percent of that would be through what it delicately calls "scientific forestry"—clear-cutting to you and me…This isn’t science. It’s rape.

Mr. Bryson continues to say that the Forest Service lost an average of $242 million a year between 1989-1997, $2 billion, all told. With the minute charge for raw materials to private industry, whether it is logging companies or gas or gold mining industries, this does not come as a surprise.

In the hillsides of surrounding counties, I have watched the destruction of the land since Willamette built a chip mill in Union Mills. Flagrant violations of water and pollution laws did not prevent the opening nor operation. The drive along Highway 221 toward what will soon be the oxymoron of Forest City, shows the depressing precursor of what is in store for Western North Carolina. ONLY YOU can prevent it. Mail a card today. E-mail your friends. Get involved. Raise your voice in the prevention of logging in roadless areas. Send a postcard to: US Forest Service, Att: Roadless Areas NOI, PO Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 84122. Do it today!