Posted on 07/25/2022 11:53:01 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday announced plans to replant trees on millions of acres of burned and dead woodlands as officials struggle to counter the increasing toll on the nation’s forests from wildfires, insects and other manifestations of climate change.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said it will have to quadruple the number of tree seedlings produced by nurseries to get through the backlog and meet future needs. That comes after Congress last year passed bipartisan legislation directing the Forest Service to plant 1.2 billion trees over the next decade and after President Joe Biden in April ordered the agency to make the nation’s forests more resilient as the globe gets hotter.
The Forest Service this year is spending more than $100 million on reforestation work. Spending is expected to further increase in coming years, to as much as $260 million annually, under the sweeping federal infrastructure bill approved last year, agency officials said.
Congress in 1980 created a reforestation trust that had previously capped funding — which came from tariffs on timber products — at $30 million annually. That’s proven far too little as high intensity fires increase.
Insects, disease and timber harvests also contribute to the amount of land that needs reforestation work, but the vast majority comes from fires. In the past five years alone more than 5 million acres were severely burned.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
National Forest Service has maintained for decades, and still today, that maybe upwards of 80% of forest fires are man made. Stuff doesn’t just burst into flame by itself, and lighting strikes are dramatic but infrequent causes. Forest mismanagement is well known to be responsible for local increases in intensity.
Now If you goto agree nursery, instead of $5 for a tree, it will be $5,000 for the same exact tree...and it might die within a year since it was grown in China!! 🤓
The ASS PRESS strikes again with a bullshit story that goes back at least to the 60’s when I fought forest fires in California.
Back then we had tremendous forest fires, bark beetles were killing hundreds of thousands of trees, and we were having a horrible drought.
What’s changed? Now “IT’S GLOBAL WARMING”!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We also planted thousands of tree on “WINTER TRAIL CREW” until the F#CKEN FEDS cut all our budgets and we were all laid off.
Back then we just called it weather, dry years, Santa Ana winds, a few firebugs and POOF it’s all gone!
Can’t do it! When a timber contractor puts in a bid to salvage lumber from a burned out area the ENVIRONAZIS immediately file a law suit on “environmental grounds”, the suit drags through the courts for several years usually 5 to 7 years.
The dead trees are worthless after about 1 year in the field.
YUP; back in the day we would drop the infested trees, buck them, then spray them with LINDANE or CHLORDANE.
If you did that now days you would be headed for PRISON ASAP!
Local government is just as bad. I was talking to a county worker that is helping “rehabilitate” private land that the county has bought. They have bought tens of thousands of acres. Mostly along water ways to improve drainage, salmon habitat, etc.
Sounds like mostly mowing and killing blackberries and planting “better” plants. But before any work is done he clears small areas so the archaeologist can do some probes to make sure no indian relics are there. It sounded like every single new planting had to be investigated, but that seems a bit much.
He covers a wide area. I said it sounded like a lot of driving.
“Out of a 10 hour day I do 4 hours of work. The rest is driving, walking around the various parks and stuff.”
Yeh, ... those trees were addicted to CO2 and overdosed. The pusher needs new addicts.
The Oaks are just too greedy.
The Chestnuts deserve an extra share!
These people are destroying America and don't care that we know it. But their constituents are genuinely that stupid. Sad.
02 September 2015
Global forest survey finds trillions of trees Rachel Ehrenberg, Nature (2015) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18287
Cite this article
Ehrenberg, R. Global forest survey finds trillions of trees. Nature (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.18287 Combination approach uses ground-based surveys and satellites to find many more trees than anticipated.
There are roughly 3 trillion trees on Earth — more than seven times the number previously estimated — according to a new tally by an international team of scientists. The study also finds that human activity negatively affects tree abundance from the boreal forests to the equator. Roughly 15 billion trees are cut down each year, the researchers estimate; since the onset of human civilization, the global number of trees has dropped by roughly 46%.
“We have more forests then when the country was first settled.”
Not exactly. However, we have much more forests in places like MN, WI, VT, MA, NH, ME, NY, CT than we did after the Civil War.
ME & NH are the number #1 & 2 most forested states in country as a percentage.
Many of the northern states were heavily logged/cleared of timber in the 1800s and early 1900s. NH was 80% cleared in 1865. Primarily for farmland. However, the White Mtn national forest was also cleared/cut. One hundred years later it was 80% forested. Most of the smart farmers learned you could grow things better in OH, IN, IL & IA than you could in the rocks and acidic soils of New England.
Out in the western US there were vast forests in the Pacific Northwest. However, there was evidence of major fires in places like California for eons. Places where the fires literally burned right down to the ocean/beach.
There are species like Douglas Fir that actually depend on forest fires to regenerate themselves. These are the largest conifer trees in the western US and Canada except the Sequoias and Redwoods.
Douglas Fir cones will open from the heat from the fire. The Doug Fir seedlings are not shade tolerant. They can not grow in the shade of other trees. Therefore, their cones adapted to opening after major fires. Then the little trees could grow up in bright sunlight. This is also the reason why foresters clear cut. So, the DF seedlings will grow upon being replanted.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.