IDAHO'S MAGRUDER CORRIDER TRAIL AND PLENTIFUL IDAHO FORESTS
Posted on 03/11/2012 7:40:44 AM PDT by Jeff Head
I saw Lorax yesterday with five of my grankids, ages 10 down to 5.
It was a fun kids movie, but clearly slanted towards environmentalism and particularly with an anti-business and anti-lumber company...really, and anti-capitalism bias.
On the way home it provided teaching moments. I asked the kids how many of them did not like lumber companies that cut down and harvest trees and why. All of them said they did not like them because they are "stealing our air," hurting animals, and destroying their places to live.
I pointed to the Boise Mountains which we could see from the windows of my Pickup Truck, which they love to drive in...crew cab, 4x4 with a big V-8, and said,
"You see all that dark green on the mountains as far as you can see...that's forests. Almost all lumber companies do not cut down "all" the forests. In fact, they plant more than they cut. We have more forests in the US now than they did 300 years ago in Colonial America."
I then asked..."Who likes wooden playground swings, see saws, etc., pencils, your furniture, your houses?" They all said they did. I asked them to start looking for things made of wood as we drove...they saw fences, signs, roofs, paper, carts, trailers, etc., etc. I told them that all of that was made from wood by companies who, yes make a profit because those people have jobs...but who also try and make the forests better, and bigger in the process.
After a good ten minutes of them pointing out all of these thigns, I then asked, "Who likes lumber companies now, and why?"
At that point they all said they did because they are really making more forest which makes more air, and trying to protect the forests even if they do cut down some of the trees and all of the neat things we have in society because those companies are working in the forests.
This is a long explanation...but it was a good teaching moment for grandpa and I thought I should share.
AMEIRCA AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORY.
So, property rights are prohibiting them from taking care of the land and producing a product or service the business is sitting on? They are just being cheap.
I would take responsible care regardless. I am not advocating an extreme leftest point.
If I had a business, I would take care of the environment while I comduct my business. I would try to make sure as much as possible to take care of it. Yes, there are costs, but they will be made up in a greater return. I am looking at the bigger picture. It is being socially responsible. It is a win win for my business and the community.
Some businesses do not care for the environment unfortuately, so there needs to be laws. Like I said before, there needs to be a balance. This should be a reasonable idea that most people would agree with. Unfortuately, it seems like only the extremists on both sides are heard.
You are dead on, and there will be consequences.
"Wherefore G-d also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts; to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; Who changed the truth of G-d into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen." Romans 1: 24-25
Then things get worse...
In the absence of sunlight, the dark, cool forest floor becomes relatively uninhabitable for the plants and to the wildlife that had earlier thrived there. Hence, to rejuvenate the forest as a nurturing environment, it becomes time to harvest a stand by clear cutting and start anew.According to today’s forest wisdom, new methods of clear cutting attempt to blend cut stands into the landscape. By removing smaller plots of trees that are mature enough for harvesting, clear cutting mimics natural occurrences like tornadoes, hurricanes or forest fires that have been unnaturally suppressed to protect people and property. Link
The Earth can take care of itself just fine.
I plant a new garden every year to replenish my pantry...works like a charm.
“Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged to oppose it, both before and after the entry of the United States into World War II. His cartoons tended to regard the fear of communism as overstated, finding the greater threat in the Dies Committee and those who threatened to cut the US’s “life line” to Stalin and the USSR, the ones carrying “our war load”
“Though Geisel made a point of not beginning the writing of his stories with a moral in mind, stating that “kids can see a moral coming a mile off,” he was not against writing about issues; he said that “there’s an inherent moral in any story,” and he remarked that he was “subversive as hell.”
Many of Geisel’s books express his views on a remarkable variety of social and political issues: The Lorax (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; “The Sneetches” (1961), about racial equality; The Butter Battle Book (1984), about the arms race; Yertle the Turtle (1958), about Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), criticizing the materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and Horton Hears a Who! (1950), about anti-isolationism and internationalism.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Political_views
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The movie is and the the 'leftists' WILL utilize it as such....you are not realizing the lefts teaching-moment of the movie to further extreme environmental 'justice'....there's already a "Lorax Environmental Club' on facebook
Bangor is a stones throw from my spread now and I was on the Connie in Bremerton back in 74. Know the area well.
The notion the timber companies 20 or 30 years ago operated with the slightest bit of forward thinking is laughable. If you aren’t seeing the result of this cut and run policy you aren’t looking. I know a few families that still own huge swaths of timber property on the sound. When ever the subject comes up, they comment on how shortsighted everyone was in the old days. There was zero replanting, huge mudslides from too much cutting, etc.
By “private” I assume you mean lands held in trust by outfits like Pope et al. These trusts consist of both public and private. These days they are better stewards. It’s debatable whether this change of heart is the result better heads prevailing or heavy-handed government policies.
Regardless. It doesn’t matter who cut where. The fact is huge areas look exactly as I describe. Even a child can see that. And even a child knows there were more trees around 300 hundred years ago.
In that area, perhaps...but in Vermont; there are MORE trees than there were 300 years ago...farmland has disappeared at an alarming rate.
And so it begins......
NEA’s Read Across America “The Lorax”
http://www.nea.org/grants/886.htm
http://www.nea.org/home/51021.htm
Regards,
TS
“And even a child knows there were more trees around 300 hundred years ago.”
And God knows that children are born with an innate knowledge of How Things Were three centuries before they were born./ sarc
When British colonists landed in Virginia three hundred years ago they commented upon the lack of underbrush in the forest. They could ride a horse through the forest at a gallop because the forest wasn’t dense with trees and the forest floor was clear.
The forests had this condition because the native Indians routinely set fires to clear out underbrush. This removed hiding places for both enemies and the game they hunted. It was only after the Indians were pushed back across the Appalachians that the eastern forests reverted to thick wilderness. Maybe those children who are born with innate historical knowledge can fill you in on the details.
I think you’ve just inadvertently started the “Jeff Head Idaho Travel Agency”.
The EPA needs to be re-directed to fighting mental toxins.
That’s good. At the national level though, it’s pretty obvious that that trend is the reverse.
Great strategy! Raise them up in the way that they should go ... go keep it up, Grandpa!
.....ok, now we are talking about “underbrush”.....
good lord.....
I stated that in the United States (that’s the whole country) there are more trees and that’s just a fact, particluarly in the Northeast, the South, etc.
But even 20-30 years ago...you are talikning the 80s and 90s here, the lumber companies had long since (in most cases) begun harvesting trees like a crop and [planting more than they were cutting with the idea that the turnover rte, depending on the type of wood and product desired, would be every 25 or more years.
Sorry but that’s just the facts. Doesn’t mean all of them were, and it doesn;t mean it held in all areas...but the facts are the large timber companies have been harvesting timber with an eye towards conservation for at least that period of time and longer, and that there are more trees nation wide now than there were then.
It holds here in the intermountain west, the south the northeast, where the forest sizes are larger, by the way, than they are here or in the Northwest. Along the west coast you have a relative narrow band along and to the east of the Cascades and coastal ranges, and another relatively narrow band along the Sierra Nevada, where in the south and other areas the forested areas go on for hundreds of miles east-west, and even further north-south.
More trees, and less farmland..? That's good?
Wow.
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