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| ".....
8,500 acres of magnificent pines ..... were destroyed and the red-cockaded
woodpecker, an innocent caught in the struggle between environmentalists
and foresters, lost its home....." |
Some
20 years ago when Congress created several wilderness areas in East
Texas, environmental groups cheered the establishment of the Indian
Mounds Wilderness in Sabine
County.
But, as things turned out, what Washington created was a humongous
bug factory that destroyed an interesting piece of East
Texas history.
The roots of Indian Mounds reach back to the 1980s when Congressman
Charles Wilson convinced Congress to pass federal legislation creating
a federal wilderness sanctuary.
The Indian Mounds for which the area was named were not actual mounds.
While they resemble early Caddo Indian burial mounds found near Alto
and Nacogdoches,
archeological excavations have produced little signs of Indian habitation
in the area.
Like its mounds, the 11,000-acre Indian Mounds Wilderness Area wasnąt
real either.
Instead of being virgin forests, the lands were cut over by gypsy
lumbermen in the early l900s. Old photographs show vast landscapes
of stumps with few trees growing on the lands.
When the U.S. Forest Service bought the lands in the l930s, they were
replanted by the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide new forests
to support the region's lumber economy.
Gordon Steele, a former U.S. Forest Service employee, said Congress
ignored the agency's appraisal that the area didnąt fit the legal
description of a wilderness. The area was laced with pipelines, a
road leading to a subdivision, and other signs of civilization, he
said.
When it was created by Congress, Indian Mounds' most striking feature
was its tall, thick pine trees, most of them 80 years old. Uncut since
the l930s, they had been managed by federal foresters for maximum
maturity and size.
They had also become a favored habitat of the endangered red-cockaded
woodpecker.
But in 1992 Indian Mounds was stricken by a terrorist attack -- billions
of southern pine beetles forming one of the the largest continuous
beetle infestation in the U.S.
When the U.S. Forest Service moved to control the beetles and save
the wilderness, environmental groups protested. They said man should
not interfere with nature in wilderness areas.
As a result, 8,500 acres of magnificent pines -- the very feature
which resulted in the establishment of Indian Mounds -- were destroyed
and the red-cockaded woodpecker, an innocent caught in the struggle
between environmentalists and foresters, lost its home.
Today, ten years later, Indian Mounds -- the wilderness that never
was one and the Indian mounds that werenąt authentic either -- is
a growing concern for Sabine
County residents who live near the wilderness.
They fear the falling pine timber, standing snags, and the availability
of ground-level fuel has made the wilderness susceptible to forest
fires started by lightning strikes and hunters.
"We're sitting on a fire disaster waiting to happen," said
County Judge Jack Leath.
Congress, meanwhile, has moved on to dealing with other terrorists,
unmindful that a band of nature's best assassins destroyed one of
its legislative creations in 1992.
All
Things Historical May
5, 2002
A syndicated column in over 70 East Texas newspapers |
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