Editor’s Note: Wildlands Defense and Deep Green Resistance have formed a coalition to tackle the immense but largely unnoticed problem of pinyon-juniper deforestation.  Following a successful fund raiser in October, DGR members Max Wilbert and Will Falk traveled to Nevada with Wildlands Defense Board Secretary Katie Fite to inspect several public lands sites that have already been stripped completely of the high-desert forests.  The first part of Will Falk’s report back can be found on the DGR News Service; the second part, excerpted below, can be found here.

By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance

The trunk I lean against is the trunk of a tree lost in another clear-cut. I do not want to see clear-cuts anymore, so I face away from the carnage. Behind me are the scattered corpses of pinyon-pine and juniper. Many of these trees were two or three hundred years old and had watched countless of the Great Basin’s arid summers and bitter winters. The pinyon-pines had offered up their delicious nuts to birds like turkeys, Clark’s nutcrackers, Steller’s jays, scrub jays, and pinyon jays as well as wood rats, bears, deer and humans for centuries.

With my back turned to the clear-cut, the wide, clear sky, the drama tracing the sharp mountainsides, and the seemingly eternal evenness of the Cave Valley floor creates a vastness that overpowers any inclination I possess towards my own importance.

Read more at Pinyon-Juniper Forests: The Oldest Refugee Crisis