Ramesh, E.O. Wilson is wrong on a few fronts. There are plenty of things Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative would do to prevent fires. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel, who does some of the best work around on environmental stewardship, pointed out yesterday in an editorial for the paper, “Mr. Bush’s Healthy Forests would …[allow] immediate thinning of the most at-risk areas, and streamlin[e] the regulatory process. That is, if it ever passes Congress.” Wilson forgets that court challenges muck up the ability of folks to thin endangered forests.

Moreover, Wilson resorts to the kind of flimsy thinking and argument that makes it impossible to work with some environmentalists on constructive solutions to real problems. He writes:

The Forest Service’s accounting does not include long-term profits that accrue indirectly from natural habitats. These add-ons derive from peripheral tourist facilities and other businesses attracted by the amenities of pleasant environments. Such economic growth is all but absent in the case of logging and other extractive industries, for the obvious reason that Americans do not find mill towns and logging roads appealing. In a nutshell, current federal policy is promoting a proportionately minor income producer to the detriment of the dominant income producer.

But then at the end of the piece he writes that America’s national forests “are a public trust of incalculable value.” What the hell does that even mean? Either way, of course they aren’t of “incalculable” value. Indeed, Wilson makes his argument based on their economic value in eco-tourism!