Restoring Ecosystem Health in Frequent-Fire Forests of the American West - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 222

their self-regulatory mechanisms, conserve biological diversity, and improve human
habitat values by implementing science-based ecological restoration treatments.
12.2 Clear Thinking Is Essential
What is needed today is clear thinking. Fuzzy thinking can be a major threat to marshalling
the nation's resources to address the critical problem in time to prevent catastrophic losses
that will affect future generations. Elementary logic suggests that clear problem defini-
tion, explicitly stated premises, and collection and analysis of relevant facts are essential
and should lead to the development, implementation, monitoring, and ongoing evalua-
tion of a range of feasible solutions. Logic also cautions us against being misled by logical
dodges, faulty premises, and faulty arguments. For example, recent debates about limit-
ing restoration-based fuel treatments to the urban-wildland interface zone, whether to set
limits to the size of trees that can be thinned, and whether or not to utilize thinned trees
are rife with game-playing that exploits the full range of false logic, misleading facts, and
obfuscation. It is time for that to stop. Such unethical, position-based “negotiation” and
inflammatory rhetoric only increases the likelihood of continued ecosystem-scale destruc-
tion of the western forests.
12.3 To Whom Should We Be Listening?
In the public debate about what to do about declining ecosystem health, it is sometimes
difficult to figure out how much credence to give to various pronouncements. David L.
Sackett, in his foreword to William A. Silverman's book, Where's the Evidence?: Debates in
Modern Medicine , 1 suggests that we can more clearly judge proponents and critics by the
amount of personal risk they have in the situation at-hand. He suggests that the ideas and
feelings of proponents or critics deserve our attention when those people live where events
are played out on a daily basis. He cautions about giving credence to those who have not
even bothered to visit the front lines. Analyzing propositions and criticisms from such
individuals requires judgment as to whether they know what they are talking about and,
if so, whether what they propose or criticize is informed by knowledge, or is even remotely
feasible.
Sackett also suggests that we can judge proponents and critics by the way they handle
themselves in public debates. He writes, “Those who focus on ideas rather than their
advocates, and treat those with whom they disagree as worthy individuals who just
might be right, deserve our most careful and serious study.” He suggests that those who
cannot disparage an idea without devaluing the person who proposes it, deserve one of
three fates: “…simply being ignored, being employed for slightly drunken after-dinner
light entertainment…, or serving as subjects in studies of the psychopathology of
academe.”
Ultimately, special attention must be given to those who have to live with the outcome
of the decisions being made, whether those decisions are about medical treatment for
humans or medical treatment for ecosystems. It is all too easy to engage in ideologically
based arguments from afar. When a person lives with the land, the outcomes are not