Rick Bass: Let The Yaak Be Another Momentus First In American Conservation
In this guest essay, the writer suggests that protecting old growth trees in the Kootenai could establish Montana as a national reference in confronting climate change
Moose traditionally have thrived in the cold wet understories of the Kootenai National Forest in the Yaak Valley. However, they are suffering declines in the US, throughout many of their last hauntsin northern tiers of the Lower 48 states.Afflicting them are habitat loss owed to climate change and development, outbreaks of diseases such as brain worm and infestations of winter ticks. Yes, wolves can have an additive influence on mortality but it secondary to other factors. Photo courtesy Yaak Valley Forest Council
EDITOR’S NOTE: Rick Bass is widely regarded as one of America’s finest living nature writers. A friend of Mountain Journal, he makes his home in the Yaak Valley in the far northwestern corner of the state among some of the last old-growth forests and a tiny, remnant number of grizzly bears. Bass also was, a few years ago, the Wallace Stegner Endowed Chair in Western American Studies at Montana State University and a person who spends lots of time in and around Greater Yellowstone. In this piece below, he presents his case for why protecting a small corner of the Yaak as a "climate refuge" could be a model for thinking about how carbon can be stored in healthy natural environments as a way of confronting climate change. Also read Mountain Journal’s story Montana’s Climate Kids Should Adopt Wildlife As Their Mascot —Todd Wilkinson
by Rick Bass
Far back in the high elevation wetlands of northwest Montana’s Yaak Valley — hidden away on the Kootenai National Forest — is a vast and ancient forest referred to as Black Ram, named for the logging project scheduled to clearcut it. The giant trees include cedar, hemlock, subalpine fir, 315-year old spruce, 600 to 800 year old larch. The region is home to fully 25 percent of all the species of concern in the entire state. Light filters down through the canopy like notes of music; the forest floor is clad in emerald moss and sea-blue lichen.
A record of decision has been signed by the Kootenai, approving its destruction. And yet, we—the Yaak Valley Forest Council—have stalled the bulldozers thus far by protest. There is still a little time. This seems a silly phrase to utter in the presence of a forest whose first seedlings (now soil) reached for the sun well over a thousand years ago. What’s one more year, to a forest filled with such centurions? Well, everything.
Rather than supporting eradication, citizens with the Yaak Valley Forest Council promote the permanent protection of this irreplaceable ecosystem by designating it a Climate Refuge: It would be the first in the country.
Black Ram should continue to store maximum amounts of carbon in its old trees and alpine swamps, and serve as a focal point for increased scientific and artistic inquiry into the study of climate change and its effect on endangered species such as the Yaak’s grizzly bears, the most endangered in the nation. Grizzly bear expert, author and activist Doug Peacock writes, “The Yaak grizzlies are the most imperiled bear population south of Canada. They have been called the walking dead, yet we will never abandon them. As long as they prowl the forest, there is hope.”
We envision the Yaak’s Climate Refuge as being the first forest in an interlocked chain of old forest carbon reserves, stretching in a “Curtain of Green” from Alaska’s Tongass down to Washington’s North Cascades, to Montana’s Yaak—across northern Minnesota, through the Upper Peninsula, across the Adirondacks and Northeast Kingdom and into the North Maine Woods, and farther: a frilled, breathing permeable circumpolar series of such refuges in the northern boreal and sub-boreal forests that excel at holding carbon safely and securely across the centuries.
This is something we can all do instead of just fretting about the burning world. We can actually help cool it. Our nation’s remaining old and mature public forests are worth so much more standing.
Some of the big still-standing, carbon-storing trees in the Kootenai National Forest that envelopes the Yaak Valley. Photo courtesy Randy Beacham
But wait: there’s more to the story! A logging road has already been clearcut to the edge of the ancient forest. During the roadbuilding, a giant old growth spruce was knocked over. We cut a small length of it —like taking a vertebrae out of the skeleton of an immense whale—and commissioned a master luthier to build a one-of-a-kind guitar that will be forever after the voice of this forest, slated for eradication, still in the world, day by day, after so many centuries.
This guitar will make its debut at the first annual Climate Aid this fall, where some of our nation’s finest musicians will play a song of their choosing on the Black Ram guitar— a song of the resistance.
The vibrations of that song will become embedded in the old growth spruce top, the guitar trying to save the rest of the forest it left behind, even as the centuries-old vibrations of the forest remain like a pulse in the wood of the guitar: all that the ancient forest has experienced up to this point. The twinned vibrations will intersect.
From this sound, change will occur.
The forest will be saved, and just in time; the forest will save itself. Our better selves will emerge. Hearts as well as minds will hear, and feel, finally, the unheard voice of the forest, and be touched by it, and will work to protect it rather than allowing it to be destroyed. We’re writing a play, “Whitebark!,” about the campaign. The defense of Black Ram has helped jump start the protection of 100mm acres of old and mature forest on public land in the U.S. alone.
Big plans, for sure. But if now is not the time for big dreams, and actions, then when? Find out more about the Climate Forest Campaign by clicking here.
About Rick Bass
Rick Bass is hailed as one of the foremost American nature writers of his generation. A Texan by birth, Bass (b. 1959) makes his home in the far northwestern corner of Montana, in a remote valley known as the Yaak. Bass has gained acclaim not only for his literary talent but his role as an advocate for protecting still-wild places and the creatures that inhabit them. He is presently serving as interim executive director of the Yaak Valley Forest Council.
