State not doing enough to protect biodiversity: ecologist
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee’s lack of care for its plants, animals and their habitats reflects a country more concerned with industry than the natural resources it often destroys, a University of Tennessee ecologist told a Legislative subcommittee Tuesday.
Dr. Daniel Simberloff, a professor of environmental studies at UT-Knoxville, testified before the House Environmental Subcommittee at the request of Chairman Mike McDonald, who is sponsoring a bill to regulate the chip mill industry in Tennessee.
“It’s sad to say neither the U.S. as a whole nor the state of Tennessee is doing a great job of safeguarding our biodiversity,” Simberloff said.
Simberloff told committee members that while Tennessee isn’t a large state — it represents just over 1 percent of the area in the United States — it has a “huge share of the biodiversity because of its remarkable (number) of habitats.”
Those habitats are home to almost half the country’s freshwater mussels, almost 40 percent of all freshwater fish, and 45 percent of all birds, Simberloff said.
But Tennessee isn’t protecting its mountains, streams, rivers and caves, he said. Instead, it’s damaging them with clearcutting forests, which he called “about as drastic a habitat change as you can imagine.”
“Even if clearcutting is followed by planting pine plantations, there is such a huge difference between forests dominated by hardwoods like oaks and hickories and one dominated by pines that a very large fraction of the plants and animals that live in the native forest simply cannot survive in a pine plantation — even a well-managed one,” he said.
McDonald’s bill would require chip, pulp and paper mills to get permits from the state, pay a fee for registration, detail which counties will be harvested and how many acres the company plans to cut.
The state would then be required to perform a “forest resource review” that analyzes the environmental impact of the proposed facility.
“If we don’t do something pretty soon, Tennessee as we know it — with our plant life and wildlife and the beauty of the state — will be forever changed,” said McDonald, D-Portland.
The Tennessee Forestry Association, the lobbying arm for the state’s $20 billion lumber and paper industry, sees McDonald’s proposal a bit differently.
Tracy O’Neill, the group’s chief lobbyist in Nashville, calls the measure a “dangerous, philosophically inappropriate bill” with permit requirements that would reportedly cost each company $50,000.
“I don’t know of anybody in this day and age, industrial or not, that can afford that type of permit. This is the anti-jobs bill of 2004,” O’Neill said. “What it would ultimately do is force out the industries that are currently in Tennessee, along with hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
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On the Net:
Tennessee Forestry Association, http://www.tnforestry.com