Coffee-table books by the Sierra Club usually feature beautiful photographs of wilderness. Its latest, however, is full of horror shots about chopping down forests - including four pages devoted to clear-cutting in Utah.
The environmental group is delivering the 300-page "Clearcut, The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry" to federal agencies in Washington as part of lobbying to stop timber harvesting in the national forests."It's a magnificent tool, for nothing speaks for the forests more than seeing the tragedy of what's been done to them," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director.
One photo covering two pages in the book shows wide clearings cut within pinyon forests in southern Utah's Henry Mountains in areas overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The book quotes photographer Edgar Boyles saying, "I was stunned, shocked, saddened all at once. Over the years, I had seen evidence of chaining in many Western states, even on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
"But nothing had hit me like this sudden aerial revelation. So much destruction - generally carried out by the BLM in the name of `range improvement.' "
The Sierra Club says southern Utah is one of the few places where "chaining" - or uprooting trees with heavy chains strung between bulldozers - is still allowed in pinyon forests on federal land. Chained areas are then replanted with wheat grass to allow more grazing.
The book calls chaining a scientifically discredited practice that amounts to having forests "butchered for the short-term benefit of one generation."
BLM spokesman Don Banks said chaining on the Henry Mountains was done to improve forage for bison and livestock.
But chaining on public lands is not as common as it used to be. "They're rare and they're small. It hasn't been used very often lately," Banks said.
The BLM hasn't authorized any chainings since the controversial one on Amasa's Back near Moab in 1990, Banks said.
Utah's Dixie National Forest is also featured in the Sierra Club book, which shows a photo of a clear-cut area littered with old logs, with only low, scrubby plants growing where trees once stood.
The book says, "The (Dixie) is scarred with 33-year-old clear-cut strips that have not regenerated despite repeated plantings. The Forest Service has continued clear-cutting under new pseudonyms."
Dixie spokesman Mark Van Every admitted that traditional clear-cutting has not been as successful as hoped.
"That was done in an experimental basis. What we found out is that particular technique was not best suited to this area," Van Every said. "The policy on the Dixie is there is no clear-cutting being done on any of our current projects."
A Sierra Club press release said its book is designed "to shock people and to make them angry about what their government and the timber industry have done to some of the world's most magnificent forests." It sells for $30.
Randall Hayes, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, said the book "shows the hypocrisy of our government telling countries like Brazil to preserve their forests while we continue to liquidate ours."