The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (45 page)

14
. Interview, 2008. About one well-documented Kanto forest, Wajirou Suzuki notes the acceleration of logging: “With development of domestic industries after World War I, the demand for charcoal increased dramatically, and during World War II, charcoal-burning and manufacturing equipment for military horses became the main industries in the area” (Suzuki, “Forest vegetation,” 30).

15
. As in central Japan, Yunnan forests without human disturbance revert to broadleaf associations, without pine. Stanley Richardson,
Forestry in communist China
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 31. Histories of village use also show parallels. While he does not write about Yunnan, Nicholas Menzies describes village forest use in imperial China in a way quite reminiscent of the satoyama literature: “The community forests of Shanxi were known collectively as
She Shan
(village mountains)…. These hillsides were unsuitable for agriculture, but they were important to their users to provide for ritual needs (such as grave sites for clan members), and as a source of forest products. Ren Chengtong noted that villages used the timber from their forests to provide funding and materials for public works within the community, and that villagers also had rights to gather nuts, fruit, wildlife (for meat), mushrooms, and medicinal herbs for their private use” (Menzies,
Forest and land management in imperial China
[London: St. Martin’s Press, 1994], 80–81).

16
. Forest reform, leading to several kinds of tenure categories including contracts with households, began in 1981. For an analysis of changing forest tenure, see
L
iu Dachang, “Tenure and management of non-state forests in China since 1950,”
Environmental History
6, no. 2 (2001): 239–263.

17
.
Y
in Shaoting’s pioneering work on shifting cultivation in Yunnan introduced the sustainability of the peasant landscape to scholars for whom peasants
were generally imagined as backward. Yin,
People and forests
, trans. Magnus Fiskesjo (Kunming: Yunnan Education Publishing House, 2001).

18
. Liu (“Tenure,” 244) writes of the “disastrous deforestation” of this period.

C
HAPTER 14.
S
ERENDIPITY

1
. A useful description of the mills and their work is found in P. Cogswell, Jr., “Deschutes country pine logging,” in
High and mighty: Selected sketches about the Deschutes country
, ed. T. Vaughn, 235–259 (Portland, OR: Oregon Historical Society, 1981). One of the stranger mill towns was Hixon, “which wandered about Deschutes, Lake, and Klamath counties, moving every few years to be close to Shelvin-Hixon’s logging operations” (251). With the advent of logging roads, mill towns settled down.

2
. When the company withdrew its drug policy, many people signed up.

3
. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003—which mandated logging, thinning, and post-burn salvage as the route to forest health—pushed the Forest Service into a series of continuing battles with conservationists (Vaughn and Cortner,
George W. Bush’s healthy forests
[cited in chap. 5, n. 3]).

4
. William Robbins,
Landscapes of promise: The Oregon story, 1800–1940
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 224.

5
. Quoted in ibid., 223.

6
. Quoted in ibid., 225.

7
. Quoted in ibid., 231.

8
. This part of the story is well documented by local historians. Two points come through in all accounts. First, private owners from the first encroached on what was supposed to be public land, creating a mix of public and private forest holdings (e.g., Cogswell, “Deschutes”). Second, the race to build a railroad up the Deschutes River encouraged land speculation and added excitement and urgency to attempts to grab the forests (e.g., W. Carlson, “The great railroad building race up the Deschutes River,” in
Little-known tales from Oregon history
, 4:74–77 [Bend, OR: Sun Publishing, 2001]).

9
. In 1916, two large mill complexes, Shelvin-Hixon and Brooks-Scanlon, opened along the Deschutes River (Robbins,
Landscapes of promise
, 233). Shelvin-Hixon sold out in 1950, while an expanded Brooks-Scanlon continued (Robbins,
Landscapes of conflict
[cited in chap. 3, n. 5], 162). Brooks-Scanlon merged with Diamond International Corporation in 1980 (Cogswell, “Deschutes,” 259).

10
. Robbins (
Landscapes of conflict
, 152) quotes the
New York Times
in 1948: “More and more, lumber operators are looking to national and state-owned forests to fill out their operations.” In the eastern Cascades, the fact that valuable timber remained mainly in national forests stimulated mill consolidation in 1950. Phil Brogan,
East of the Cascades
(Hillsboro, OR: Binford and Mort, 1964), 256.

11
. Hirt,
Conspiracy
(cited in chap. 3, n. 5).

12
. Robbins,
Landscapes of conflict
, 14.

13
. Writing about ponderosa in Oregon and northern California, Fiske and Tappeiner write, “Herbicide use started in the 1950’s with adaptation of agricultural
aerial application techniques of the phenoxy herbicides. Later, appropriate use of a much broader range of herbicides was established.” John Fiske and John Tappeiner,
An overview of key silvicultural information for Ponderosa pine
(USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-198, 2005).

14
. Znerold, “New integrated forest resource plan for ponderosa pine” (cited in chap. 3, n. 6), 3.

15
. Indented quotations in this section are from the Klamath Tribes website,
http://www.klamathtribes.org/background/termination.html
.

16
. Donald Fixico’s
The invasion of Indian country in the twentieth century
(Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998) tells the Klamath story in the context of other terminations and seizures.

17
. Crown-Zellerbach, a pulp-and-paper company, was able to buy ninety thousand acres of reservation land for timber (
http://www.klamathtribes.org/background/termination.html
). In 1953, Crown-Zellerbach possessed the second-largest timber holdings in the West, after Weyerhaeuser (Harvard Business School, Baker Library, Lehman Brothers Collection,
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/industry.html?company=crown_zellerbach_corp
).

18
. Edward Wolf,
Klamath heartlands: A guide to the Klamath Reservation forest plan
(Portland, OR: Ecotrust, 2004). The Klamath Tribes employ specialists in forestry to monitor projects slated for reservation land. In 1997, the Tribes successfully appealed a proposed national forest timber sale, which led to a 1999 memorandum of agreement on forest management (Vaughn and Cortner,
George W. Bush’s healthy forests
, 98–100).

19
. Robbins (
Landscapes of conflict
, 163) notes that Brooks-Scanlon had already begun to cut some lodgepole in 1950 to augment its decreasing ponderosa supplies.

20
. Znerold, “New integrated forest resource plan for ponderosa pine,” 4.

21
. Jerry Franklin and C. T. Dyrness,
Natural vegetation of Oregon and Washington
(Portland, OR: Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, 1988), 185.

22
. This ability to quickly colonize open lands impressed novice forester Thornton Munger, who was sent by the Forest Service in 1908 to study the encroachment of lodgepole pine on ponderosa territory. Munger considered lodgepole “a practically worthless weed”; he also thought the problem for ponderosa was too many fires, which, he thought, killed ponderosa and advantaged lodgepole. He promoted the prevention of forest fires to preserve ponderosa. This is almost the opposite of what foresters argue today. Even Munger later changed his mind: “It has since struck me how audacious or naïve it was for the Washington Office to assign a forest assistant with no experience, who had not even seen the two species before” (Munger quoted in Les Joslin,
Ponderosa promise: A history of U.S. Forest Service research in central Oregon
[General Technical Report PNW-GTR-711, Portland, OR: U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 2007], 7).

23
. Fujita, “Succession of higher fungi” (cited in chap. 12, n. 28).

24
. Fumihiko
Y
oshimura, interview, 2008. Dr. Yoshimura has seen matsutake with trees as young as thirty years old.

25
. Fungal underground bodies have a more sustained presence than fruiting bodies. In boreal Europe, mycorrhizal fungi remain in the soil after fires, reinfecting pine seedlings (Lena Jonsson, Anders Dahlberg, Marie-Charlotte Nilsson, Olle Zackrisson, and Ola Karen, “Ectomycorrhizal fungal communities in late-successional Swedish boreal forests, and their composition following wildfire,”
Molecular Ecology
8 [1999]: 205–215).

26
. As early as 1934, long before lodgepole was considered a commercial species, foresters in the eastern Cascades experimented with thinning lodgepoles to speed up wood production. Only after World War II, however, when lodgepole became a resource for pulp and paper, as well as for poles, box shook, and even lumber, did its silviculture become an important interest of the eastern Cascades Forest Service. In 1957, a lodgepole pulp mill was opened near Chiloquin. Joslin,
Ponderosa promise
, 21, 51, 36.

C
HAPTER 15.
R
UIN

1
. In viewing Japan’s environment through tropical deforestation, I follow Dauvergne,
Shadows
(cited in chap. 8, n. 11). (For regulatory and conservation responses, see Anny Wong, “Deforestation in the tropics,” in
The roots of Japan’s international environmental policies
, 145–200 [New York: Garland, 2001].) Most scholarship on Japan’s environmental problems, in contrast, focuses on industrial pollution (Brett Walker,
Toxic archipelago: A history of industrial disease in Japan
[Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010]; Shigeto
T
suru,
The political economy of the environment: The case of Japan
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999].)

2
. I am indebted to Mayumi and Noboru Ishikawa for these insights. As researchers in Sarawak, they saw the destruction of the forest and wondered about Japan’s responsibility. Back in Japan, they connected this with the ruin of the domestic forest industry. Earlier environmental historians, in contrast, saw only Japan’s “green archipelago” (Totman,
Green archipelago
[cited in chap. 13, n. 8]).

3
. For Japan’s forest policies, I rely particularly on Yoshiya
I
wai, ed.,
Forestry and the forest industry in Japan
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002).

4
. Michael Hathaway,
Environmental winds: Making the global in southwest China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

5
. Miyamato et al., “Changes in forest resource utilization” (cited in chap. 11, note 14), 90. Burning had been conventional for the maintenance of grasslands and for creating forest openings, such as for shifting cultivation (Mitsuo
F
ujiwara, “Silviculture in Japan,” in
Forestry
, ed. Iwai, 10–23, on 12). Now some local forest associations also prohibited burning (Koji
M
atsushita and Kunihiro
H
irata, “Forest owners’ associations,” in
Forestry
, ed. Iwai, 41–66, on 42).

6
. Stephen Pyne,
Fire in America
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 328–334. Pyne argues that the Tillamook fire inaugurated U.S. industrial forest plantations by making replanting standard practice.

7
. Steen,
U.S. Forest Service
; Robbins,
American forestry
(both cited in chap. 2, n. 5).

8
. Iwai,
Forestry
.

9
. Many forest owners had less than five hectares. All had to participate in coordinated forest management, including timber control, reforestation, and the prevention of fire. Matsushita and Hirata, “Forest owners’ associations,” 43.

10
. The incident is recalled as the Lookout air raids; in 1944 and 1945, it was followed by Japanese attempts to launch fire balloons into the jet stream (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
). Frida Knoblock’s
The culture of wilderness
(Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) describes the militarization of the U.S. Forest Service that followed. See also Jake Kosek,
Understories
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

11
. Robbins,
Landscapes of conflict
(cited in chap. 3, n. 5), 176.

12
. Ibid., 163.

13
. Matsushita and Hirata, “Forest owners’ associations,” 45.

14
. Scott Prudham analyzes the industrialization of Oregon’s Douglas fir forestry from the 1950s (“Taming trees: Capital, science, and nature in Pacific slope tree improvement,”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
93, no. 3 [2003]: 636–656). For a prehistory of this industrial turn, see Emily Brock,
Money trees: Douglas fir and American forestry, 1900–1940
(Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2015).

15
. Interview with forest workers conducted by Mayumi and Noboru Ishikawa, Wakayama prefecture, 2009.

16
. Fujiwara, “Silviculture in Japan,” 14.

17
. Ken-ichi
A
kao, “Private forestry,” in
Forestry
, ed. Iwai, 24–40, on 35. Akao further explains that after 1957, the government reduced subsidies to 48 percent for conversion of natural forest to tree plantation.

18
. Quoted in Robbins,
Landscapes of conflict
, 147. The Oregon timber industry was then diversifying to plywood, particleboard, and pulp and paper. Less desirable timber had become usable, encouraging clear-cutting. Gail Wells, “The Oregon coast in modern times: Postwar prosperity,” Oregon History Project, 2006,
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_id=575
.