Posted on 05/31/2016 8:51:08 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Europes last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan.
Polands new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Białowieża are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species, according to its only published inventory.
Oak trees as high as 150 feet that have grown for 450 years could be reduced to stumps under the planned threefold increase in tree fells. Białowieża hosts Europes largest bison population and wolves and lynx still roam freely across its sun-mottled interior. Its foliage stretches for nearly 1,000 square miles across the border between Poland and Belarus.
Beneath its green canopy, sunlight filters down on to a panorama of skyscraper trees soaring as much as 180 feet into the air, swampy water pools dammed by beavers, and psychedelic fungi that sprout from tree trunks.
But a recently-passed logging law to allow work to begin on the old-growth forest has divided families, and led to death threats against campaigners and allegations of an environmental coup by state interests linked to the timber trade. The logging in Białowieża is expected to raise about 700m złotys (£124m), and pave the way for extensive and more lucrative tree clearances.
Sources say that internal government discussions have already begun on extending the new timber regime to the national park, which covers 17% of the forest and has been untouched by humans since the ice age.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Clearings are good for fauna.
Polands new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Biatowiea are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species... Oak trees as high as 150 feet that have grown for 450 years could be reduced to stumps under the planned threefold increase in tree fells.IOW, 450 years is "ancient". The secondary growth here in former lumber camp Michigan (IOW, most of the state) is over 100 years old, and the street-lining elms planted in this town during the Arbor Day craze around 1900 were mostly blown down in a big storm when I was a kid (what a mess that was). Even then those trees were nearly as old as human life expectancy was at the time, and they were enormous. Sounds like Poland is more interested in managing its own resources and competing with notorious enemies of the environment like the former USSR, the worker's paradise.
Never saw that. I should check out the old propaganda films, I guess.
No doubt part of a devious plan to sell ‘em hundreds of thousands of tons of grain at below market prices.
The EU buys wood pellets from US and burn babies when no ones looking for fuel! The EU is in death troughs!
I seriously doubt any forest in Europe is “primeval”. Old, yes, but people have lived all over Europe for thousands of years and Poland has been fought over since ancient times.
The issue is indeed controversial, the question is If the forest should be totally left alone, even If nature is going to destroy it (fire, disease etc.) or should it be protected, so for example If diseased trees should be cut when the scale of disease is becoming dangerous.
Of course you cut the diseased trees down, and the trees immediately around them, too.
Also, a controlled burn to remove ground debris.
That is HOW you protect a forest.
Dunno why the Envirofascists can’t figure this out...
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