Facing Nature’s Limits

That the coming century will be an era of limits is becoming clearer: Washington’s decision this week to slash the allowable catch by Pacific commercial fishing boats so dwindling stocks can regenerate is only the latest bit of evidence. Last year, the Clinton administration scuttled a Forest Service plan to increase logging in 12 Sierra Nevada national forests and canceled timber sales on public land to allow trees to mature and to prevent further erosion and watershed damage.

Americans may be embracing a new paradigm for natural resource use. With signs of decline obvious, federal and state agencies are beginning to take difficult yet necessary steps to ensure that timber, fish, wildlife and grazing land remain available to future generations.

As this century dawned, the nation’s natural resources seemed inexhaustible. Domestic supplies of coal and iron stoked industrial growth and urbanization on an unprecedented scale. Extractive industries, including logging and mining, saw sustained increases and American farm production had become the envy of the world.

Homestead laws had opened farmland to those who would work it, and nominal royalties or payments bought the right to graze, mine, log or fish on federal land or in federal waters. Those policies fostered more than a century of agricultural and industrial growth. But we now see their cost in damaged range land, eroded forest watersheds and depleted fish supplies along both coasts.

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that half of public grazing lands and almost 70% of forest watersheds are ecologically distressed. Overfishing has depleted 40% of U.S. fish stocks, and 43% more are being taken at the maximum sustainable rate. The list goes on.

In the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly, biologist Paul Ehrlich and four colleagues persuasively argue that overconsumption is an immediate threat to biodiversity and biological resources. There can be no “middle way,” they contend, no more splitting the difference between those who argue our resource base is ample and those who see the signs of decline. Instead, we will have to take hard steps to slow resource consumption to maintain continued supplies.

That is what’s starting to happen now. The new fishing limits, which took effect Thursday, require commercial fishers to reduce by up to 65% their haul of several species known as ground fish, including cod, Dover sole and various rockfish. These fish represent half the total value of California’s annual commercial fish harvest. This limit follows 1997 action by the California Legislature to increase protection for both squid and abalone, as well as recent federal limits on commercial fishing in New England.

Laws protecting endangered species have resulted in limits on logging in some areas and a meritorious attempt in Congress to safeguard forests in roadless areas. Reform of grazing and mining on federal land remains a key task for Congress.

Such resource policy shifts--those already implemented as well as those that should be--have disrupted livelihoods, families and communities. These costs should be mitigated to the greatest degree possible, with job training, extended unemployment benefits, tax breaks for job creation and more. But without prudent limits, continued resource degradation and more widespread economic disruption are all too likely. Some pain now will save the next generation greater anguish.