Posted on 10/04/2002 9:46:05 AM PDT by EBUCK
In the words of the Steve the BillBoard guy...
"This is gonna cause a $hit Storm..."
Enjoy
EBUCK
Thinning out forests wouldn't be a bad remedy for the improper practices of the past when natural fires weren't allowed. There are two problems with the practice, however.
One is that logging companies haven't always been trustworthy; allowed to thin, they instead take all the lumber they can get their hands on. I have personal experience of this issue at a Scout camp I am associated with. A storm had blown down numerous trees. After crews of Scouters had cleared campsites, etc., loggers were contracted to take away the larger logs we'd cut, take down the rest of the leaners, etc. Well, instead they just about clear-cut portions of the camp. It'll take 50 years to repair the damage these greedy bastards did.
Another is that in order for thinning to be commercially viable, the loggers need to build roads though the forests, which would change their character considerably, not to mention the erosion problems, etc, the roads would cause, and the access they'd give to motorized vehicles.
In fact, this kind of problem is being faced right now in northern Minnesota. On July 4th of 1999, a huge storm blew down millions of trees over 477,000 acres in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, next to the Superior National Forest. This increased the fuel load in the BWCAW up to an order of magnitude in the affected areas. If left alone, a massive fire would likely be set by lightning that would burn not only a huge part of the area, but also the commerical and residential areas outside the Forest.
After an extensive study, it was decided that the best way to deal with this was to conduct controlled burns over about 76,000 acres, over the next 5 years. I've been reading the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement): it's about 3 inches thick. Maps and everything. Logging was considered, but helicopter logging was just way too damn expensive, and standard logging would tear the wilderness up and make it unsuitable for it's primary use. You can read about it here, including the entire EIS if you want.
Now, I've got no problem with intervention of this kind. And if there's a forested area that already has suitable roads in it, and there's a way to thin out an area via logging technique without tearing it up, then fine. Certainly, improper management techniques got us into a problem, so we'll need to use some management techniques to get us out of them. Just letting things sit won't work. But letting loggers in to "thin" an area isn't necessarily the best way, either.
Oh, and replanting by loggers isn't all that impressive a management technique, either. The end result is to replace a forest with varied tree ages, species, and spacing with something that looks like a 50-foot tall cornfield; one or two species of trees, all the same age, all the same size, all in nice even rows, tons of slash everywhere, and with an environment that won't support the species that were there before the cutting.
Ditto that. Also, every other wildfire which turned into a nuclear firestorm due to environazi meddling. Floristry Circus Klowns....LOL!
BUMP!!
Ye Hah!
Hey Environuts!
Just like the fire at Mt. Carmel.
As for the rest: you're thinking of "tree farming" and "tree farms", not timber or forestry management. Again, two entirely different animals. Apples and oranges.
I don't approve of tree farming. However, it's their property, and their particular management hasn't met with any strong disapproval. However they tend to breed hybrid species of trees, which grow faster for quicker harvesting, the way seed developers develop hybrid species of corn...and I'm not sure that practice bodes well in the long run for forests.
Please learn the differences in terminology. After you learn not to lump apples and oranges together in the same category, get back to me.
This is excerpted from this article. It explains the reality that the enviral whackso don't want any harvesting of any trees including dead ones due to their fires.
About the same time that Kitzhaber was making his case last month for tourism to save Oregon from recession, the Sierra Club and 12 other preservationist groups announced an ill-timed campaign to halt logging of mature and old-growth trees in Oregon's federal forests.
The preservationists's campaigns are especially ill-timed because in Oregon's current economic crisis it will be absolutely necessary to carefully inventory and examine all of Oregon's resources for their most productive use and best practices.
According to Joe Keating of the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, All forests older than 80 years should be protected so that younger forests can develop into old growth.
Let's get this straight: we should protect existing old growth with the goal of all young trees turning into old growth. Sounds like the end game is to stop the cutting of all trees everywhere.
And Keating confirms the Sierra Club goal: The national position is the end of all commercial logging on federal lands. Just about half of Oregon is federally owned.
But federal forests aren't the only targets. Michael Scarpitti, better known as ledge-sitter "Tre Arrow," recently fell to the ground from his tree-sitting perch in the Tillamook Forest, where he and others from the loose-knit Cascadia Forest Alliance were singing a similar no-logging tune about state forests. Scarpitti quickly recovered from his injuries to return to the protests of the Acey Line thin in the Tillamook Forest. This protest isn't just ill-timed; it's also poorly aimed, because the Tillamook is the forest where all interested parties took more than six years to carefully design a sustainable harvest plan for the millions of trees planted by ordinary Oregonians after devastating forest fires left the area a near moonscape. For almost 50 years locals have been waiting to thin and harvest, and waiting to finally rescue their struggling local economies and schools. ============================================================
In summary a real enviral whacko watermelon want no trees dead or alive cut from any forest. Don't let them pretend otherwise.
The enviral Watermelons have devastated the Oregon economy as per Andy Kerr the head enviral nazi and their poster boy governor, The Taxnslobber Kid goals set up about 5 years ago.
Yes. Absolutely. In fact, the job Hubby just completed for the Forestry Dept in NY State was primarily oak and maple. The acreage he and his partner are cleaning up right now for the mill owner is also primarily oak, maple, birch and beech...with a lot of Japanese larch (introduced coniferous), all of which has to go. The job he's currently on was an oil field 50 years ago. It'll take a lot of work. The brush is very thick, and growing around bits of oil rig, pipes, derricks, etc.
LOL...I'm a "dudette", not a dude.
Yep, they clear cut to make a buck. Someone should have marked the trees they could cut before they went in, or had people on site to make sure they were not doing anything that they were not permitted to do. But lumber companies will never clear cut their own lands without good reason. Why? Because they lose money that way. Greed works to keep their actions in check just as it caused your Scout Camp to be ruined. Lumber companies have to find a productive way to consistantly make money or they go out of business. The quickest way to go out of business is to clear cut your land. The most profitable way to run a lumber business is to mangage your forest lands properly.
Oops! Looks like Chainsaw Tommy might be planning a visit to the billboard. Be on the lookout!!
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