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Siskiyou Project via AP file
National forest uses include logging like this work in Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest. Trying to balance resource use and resource protection has been controversial.
It's no easy task figuring out how to balance forest and wildlife protection with logging, drilling and offroading on the nation's 155 national forests, but the Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a rule it says will do just that. An era of collaboration and less litigation was promised with the rule managing forests, but some initial reaction by interested parties -- which range from environmentalists to loggers to offroaders -- was not promising.
"Our preferred alternative will safeguard our natural resources and provide a roadmap for getting work done on the ground that will restore our forests while providing job opportunities for local communities," U.S. Agriculture Department chief Tom Vilsack vowed in a statement.
The rule essentially revises the existing framework for how each forest's managers must proceed with a given issue -- be it a request to log, a request to protect some species or even a request to open part of a forest to offroad vehicles.
The U.S. Forest Service, which is part of USDA, last year issued a draft of the rule for public review. That process generated more than 300,000 comments that Vilsack said were weighed and, in some cases, incorporated into the final rule.
Unlike national parks, which protect resources, national forests were created to balance resource protection with resource use but that still hasn't prevented decades of legal battles.
"We expect to see much less litigation because of the increased collaborative effort" in deciding what happens in each forest, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told reporters.
Officials noted that several changes were made to the draft, including adding emphasis on "sound science" and, according to Tidwell, "beefed up protection of water resources."
Tidwell said the rule would also streamline how each national forest is managed, which will free up "more time, more money to get the restoration done" across the 193 million acres of forest.
The Natural Resources Defense Council had a mixed initial take on the rule. "It is much more meaningful about getting local officials to apply the best available science," NRDC forest analyst Niel Lawrence told msnbc.com, and there's "significant improvement in public participation."
But the environmental group is also "very concerned" because the rule removes a provision ensuring that wildlife will have viable populations distributed across the forests where they are now found, Lawrence said. "It jettisons the single most important conservation protection" on U.S. forests over the last 30 years, he added.
The NRDC intends to lobby the administration and if that doesn't work a lawsuit is "perfectly possible," Lawrence said.
A timber industry group, for its part, told msnbc.com that it needed a day or two to review the rule. But, in a statement issued right after the rule, the American Forest Resource Council voiced concern. "We are very concerned about whether the agency took the comments we made on the draft rule to heart and made changes needed to avoid the mistakes of the past," said council President Tom Partin.
The BlueRibbon Coalition, a group representing offroad interests, also said it was still reviewing the rule.
In Congress, the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Washington state Republican Doc Hastings, said the concerns he'd raised earlier "fell on deaf ears."
"These new Obama regulations introduce excessive layers of bureaucracy that will cost jobs, hinder proper forest management, increase litigation and add burdensome costs for Americans," he said in a statement.
Last November, Hastings' committee hosted a hearing where critics piled on against the draft rule.
"First, the proposed planning rule will increase the complexity, cost, and time for the Forest Service to complete forest plans," testified Scott Horngren on behalf of the American Forest Resource Council. "Second, of greater concern, is that the planning rule will make the projects that implement the plans more vulnerable to lawsuits than they are today."
The last time the planning rules were updated was in 1982. Several attempts to revise it have been thrown out by federal courts. In 2009, a Bush administration plan was struck down. Environmentalists had fought the rule, saying it rolled back key forest protections.
The Obama administration decided not to challenge that ruling and instead come up with new rules.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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I'd consider myself to be somewhat environmentally friendly (not a full blown tree worshiper, but not...not) and although I generally consider 'logging' a dirty word, I have to say I'm pissed that they didn't let logging companies into the BWCA a few years ago to clean out all the blowdown from storms we had. They didn't do that because they wanted it to be "natural" and guess what happened? It ignited into a firestorm last summer that could have been prevented -.-
To say nothing of the tens of millions spent on wild land fires every year, all over the US. I'm endlessly amazed by people who go into psycho shock at the thought of leaving a carbon footprint, yet call it 'natural' when a forest fire dumps unimaginable loads into the air.
well for millions of years fire has been the method that nature has used to regenerate itself. Take a look at any of the forests that have burned and a few years later you will see a rejuvinated forest. It is useful. everything is regenerated, species are not lost, nothing is so destroyed that it cannot grow again. However, when people carelessly dump crap into the air and environment that leads to destruction and impacts the earth in a manner that causes species of animals and plants to be lost forever and destroys the beathability of the air and nondrinkability of water - the "psycho shock" you refer to IS necessary. Obviously you don't care about the earth or get the purpose of a wild fire cause by nature (e.g., lightening stike) so it's a good thing that somebody gets it and is vocal about it.
Forest fires are necessary in some ecosystems, notably lodgepole and sequoia forests. The fire opens the cones to release the seeds. Fires also reduce undergrowth to allow new seedlings to flourish.
Our forests are ecosystems, all the reasons man breathes. An ecosystem's wildlife is biological diversity, the strands in the web of all life. While it is true, we are experiencing more, faster, hotter and more frequent fires in the western USA, it is not because of blow downs, which are a natural process that renews the ecosystem and provides habitat for biological diversity.
Ironically, wildfire dynamics changed because of soil disturbances, like human intrusions, like logging, trampling, off road vehicles. Once the soil is disturbed, opportunistic weeds quickly take over in the vacated soil. These weeds are transports and invasives from Europe that are synonymous with "straw", highly inflammable. The weeds, an annual, die out, just in time for fire season. They cause a hotter, faster, more intense and more frequent fires. Plus, some are insistent, a scrambling climate is also a contributor. Deforestation or logging also releases the sequestered heat trapping gases back into the atmosphere.
These forests of said article are ecosystems, the economy of all life. Our forests and wild landscapes release oxygen, balance the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, naturally regulate and moderate the climate, are the natural sequesters of heat trapping gases, which are released when the soil is disturbed and the plant biological diversity, including the trees, are sliced away, contributing to more C02 and methane released into the atmosphere...
Ecosystems provide the vital nitrogen cycle, the circulation of vital nutrients, the entirety of Earth's biogeochemistry, the hydrological storage and flux, the creation of the soil and its renewal and a long list of all the reasons man exists.
Obviously, on the most vital issues, Obama is, once again taking a weak stance on man's safety in the big picture, instead of standing up for oxygen, fresh water, the climate, the atmosphere and life itself. All ecosystems are all integrated, and they all have loops and feedbacks to the very climate and the atmosphere, and they all, altogether, create the very life zone of the Earth, the biosphere/ecosphere.
This is as critical as it gets.
Marz--
In a geologic sense, the carbon tied up in forests is very recently sequestered and when it burns doesn't really contribute to climate change the way fossil fuels do.
These forests functioned perfectly well for eons without human "management" like removing blowdown. It's a healthier forest after that kind of forest, a form of creative destruction.
Where is the provisions for the Green Bud farmers?
There are forest fires, and then there are man-made devastations. I've been a forest fire fighter, and seen for myself that a lot of smaller, more normal fires basically clean up the forest floor and don't climb up past the dead lower branches. Trees of a certain height, thickness and health continue to grow afterwards. Unfortunately, the local devastation that went through a bug-killed forest burned the forest duff, destroying what passed for top soil down to the dirt and stone, and climbed up to the crowns. It has taken years for the return of fireweeds that come in after the canopy and the duff are destroyed. You need fireweeds to protect and shade tree seedlings for the next forest. If the buggy stuff had been cut down for firewood, the duff would still have been viable.
The problem with the fire that the OP is talking about is it got HUGE and could have very easily threatened Ely had the weather or wind taken a turn for the worst.
The picture openning this article is totally misleading--it is a photo showing the logging of an area ravaged by a wildfire (see all the dead trees in the background). Dead materials are being removed and the area will be replanted with trees. It looks ugly now (but don't blame logging) but will look much better in a few years with trees growing up (rather than brush).
Planting trees does not re-create an ecosystem. Fires are a vital component to an ecosystem. Fires renew the entire ecosystem. Fires produce fresh minerals that renew and invigorate a life giving and sustaining soil. Fires contribute to ecological safety as they create ecosystems' plant succession, which contributes to the totality of biological richness. The richer the biological diversity, the more stable and life sustaining the entire system.
The great Sequoia trees would be extinct without fires. These great giants produce a tiny seed that requires fire to burn off the seeds' hardened crust, so the seeds can establish. All of California's plant biological diversity evolved with fire, just like our wild lilacs that only succeed after a wildfire.
While wildfires are ecosystem enriching and enhancing, logging turns a living ecosystem into a dead space, no more life giving and sustaining than the surface of Mars. And, bare soil and stumps are infinitely hotter in climate than a forest as trees and plants not only sequester the heat trapping gases, they evaptranspire cooling water vapor that cools the leaves, the soil and the surrounding area. And, they shade the Earth from the heat of the sun...
Mankind exists only because of ecosystems and biological diversity, yet to-date, mankind has never re-created an ecosystem; ecosystems are so complex, man has yet to learn 99% of how they create and support all life.
Dont read too much into the photo or you will lose the point of the article. Forest management can be difficult at best. Logging and selective thinning is important to the forest.
"Planting trees does not re-create an ecosystem"
That, of course, is absurd. ANYTHING that grows creates an eco system.
I live on acreage that is third growth, registered forest. In less than 25 years the trees are already 75' high and the forest is diverse with cedar, spruce, pine, alder, wild cherry, etc. The logging left ground material that is rotting and returning nutrients to the forest. Grass first grows in the open areas but dies out as the trees grow and provide too much shade. Then the ferns take over until they too are choked off by the ever towering tree tops. This evolution is exactly what happens after a fire.
Since I live in logging country I see the various stages all around the county.
There is also great animal diversity with owls, bald eagles, hawks, chipmunks, squirrels, mountain beavers, elk, deer, bear, cougar, coyote, possum, raccoon, and bobcat tracking through my property.
At least in the Pacific Northwest, trees grow like weeds. Every year I have to pull out seedlings or I won't have a driveway.
Anyone who thinks this world would be a better place without humans I term an enviro-nazi. Nothing less than total control of pristine natural resources will satisfy them and they will lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their goals.
Jungle, exactly who "managed" and "thinned" this nation's forests that survived gorgeously for 20,000 years until the white man and his arrogance, or he knows what's better for our living Earth than Earth? Our virgin, old growth forests have been hanging around long before the brainwashed, ecologically ignorant, "managers" showed up. How did Earth get it right for multi-thousands of years without this nation's Earth managers?
Our Earth's forests are ecosystems; they are in the eco-nomy of oxygen releasing [thin oxygen?], the hydrological storage and flux [less planet cooling evapotranspiration that cools the leaves, the soil and the surrounding area with less trees]. Even ancient tribes recognized, when they thinned and cut down the trees in the forest, the climate grew hotter and drier. Even Plato witnessed deforestation's aftermath of opening the sky to the heat of the sun in the absence of the shade of trees, and all the springs and waters dried up.
Each tree stores many pounds of the heat trapping gases in its living body that will be released back into the atmosphere when it is chopped down. And, once the soil is disturbed, even more heat trapping gases will be released. Thinning opens the sky for more of the sun's heat to reach the Earth, drying out the life giving of soil, causing a hotter and drier climate.
In an ecosystem shared by both Mexico and the U.S. along the border, Mexico's side of the border became hotter when Mexico introduced cattle to its side of the border. The cattle consumed some of the vegetation, leaving a few bare spots of exposed soil, and their climate heated up.
Yup modern man has so managed the Earth, he is scrambling all the laws of the ecology of the Earth. His managing is causing less historic levels of oxygen, a climate crisis, a more desert and drier Earth and ecocide. Managed unto death and dying ecosystems. Ecocide!
P111, to-date, this nation's top, ecologically literate scientists cannot not re-create an ecosystem; man can grow plants and trees, but an ecosystem is one, whole organism. Modern science comprehends only one percent of the totality of ecosystem functions, systems and services. An ecosystem is the countless microorganisms in the soil, all the way up the chains of life and the niches and symbiosis of all plant and animal biological diversity or the profound complexities of all the functions, cycles and systems that create and sustain all life. How can they create an ecosystem when man has not mapped all of the Earth's living animal and plant species?
Ecologically literate scientists attempted to re-create a wetland ecosystem for a critically endangered bird in SoCal. Ironically, the bird would have nothing to do with this man-made system. This attempt was a total failure. This falling extinct bird wouldn't establish this wetland as his habitat, home.
In the biospheres, this nation's top scientists tried to create and sustain an ecosystem. They didn't even come close. Swiftly, the biospheres deteriorated and could only support invasive, introduced plant and animal weeds or a dead biosphere, dead Earth.
How can man create an ecosystem while he only understands a mere one percent of their functions and systems? Man might plant a few trees and plants, helter skelter, but what of the complexities of a life giving soil? A map of every and all species of plants, trees, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals when each day, man discovers new species untoward never discovered, including their niches and all life attached to their existence? Like, if you were to establish the complexities of an unknown, what would you plant, what species are keystone, their viable populations to support the ecosystem, the right mixtures of plants, trees and all animal biological diversity?
How can man understand something that took 4.5 billions years to create while he is so utterly stupid as to kill all the reasons he exists? Indeed, how many Americans can articulate ecosystems' vital, life supporting services, like oxygen releasing, the balancing of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, climate regulation and moderation, etc., etc.,? Very few, the low minority.
Maybe I missed something.
Not sure how a picture of a logging operation in a forest killed by fire has any relationship to this story.
Logging our forests is at least 10 times better than what I've seen happen in the Puget Sound region. I would like to see the harvesting of trees spread out over a longer period of time. This would create more land with a mature forest. Why is it that over 90% of the environmentalists in western Washington live in an Assfault Jungle where an old growth forest once stood?
to answer your question: They don't want to get their bicycles dirty and it's close to work.
I live in western WA and I like the logging industry. It's rather tough to build houses without lumber! I see a number of slopes in various stages of regrowth from previous logging in there is something visceral about it, a way of life centuries old.
Or course we are far better at managing resources now than ever before. Also, our forest land is substantially more than it was a century ago. Before coal, wood would be used in making steel, as well as ships, etc. and the native forests here were substantially reduced. Once they discovered how to turn coal into coke for steel and the world transitioned to steel ships, forests were able to recover.
WA state has a wonderful program where you can register forestry land for reduced taxation. This helps protect the land, the animal population, helps the land owner, and allows for wood production on private property. It's win-win all the way around.
P111, You jest, right? Modern man has killed one-half of all forested ecosystems on the EArth. Our terrestrial ecosystems are the most endangered! How many of our terrestrial ecosystems have been plowed, bulldozed, chain sawed and concreted into extinction? We are currently living in a recent ecocide, and today, the extinction rate is 1,000 times higher than normal.
What sits on the surface of the EArth influences climate, precisely why science refers to cities as "heat islands" as their climates are hotter than a forested or terrestrial ecosystem. Killing our terrestrial ecosystems for any reason, heats up and dries out the climate. Many scientists are screaming, they have no analogues to all the unnatural and frightening changes occurring globally. Many scientists scream, we are experiencing less historic levels of oxygen [those forests, trees and plants]; Many scientists are concerned, Earth can no longer sequester the heat trapping gases.
The problem is, houses, cities, parking lots, shopping malls, agriculture bulldozers and chain saws are about as life creating and sustaining as the surface of Mars!
Earth first.... We'll log the other planets later.
Thanks, you beat me to it.
Yep! They have tee shirts and bumper stickers in my area with that message. Definitely logging country.
I guess he hasn't learned the lesson that when you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.
The "environmentalists" will not be happy until every forest is locked up to prevent any harvest. Oddly, the vast majority of these people live in houses made of wood, sit on chairs made partially (at least) of wood, and write their screeds on paper made from trees. Meanwhile, a couple of counties in Oregon (with much federal property and little private property) that depend on harvest taxes for their revenue are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Don't forget their welfare checks are printed on paper
I know many environmentalist who are very much employed. It's not that we don't want any trees cut down but we need to be more smart about it. The roots of the trees hold the soil together. When too many of them are removed, the soil is loose and ripe for mudslides. If you've never seen an avalanche of of dirt rocks and debre coming down a mountain and taking everything in it's path, it's one to behold. They also slow the process of flooding and provide a life source for animals who are part of our very food chain (for those of you who hunt). It's not about locking up every forest but it's about being good stewards, that is at the very least, leave it the way you found it. If you're going to take down acres of trees, at least replace them with saplings. Many laws require it anyway.
I also consider myself an environmentalist and I'm not against logging per se. As Carolyn points out, you can harvest trees without wholesale destruction. Clearcutting couldn't be more devastating; however, it is the cheapest way to market. Perhaps we should be building our houses out of something else, like they do in Europe where forests are more managed and rare.
Carolyn I'll also add that about 95% of all the air you breathe has been oxygenated by trees.They also control the climate to a huge extent,so much so that one can tell on a weather map where the cities are and where the woods are.They are an enormous source of locked up solar energy,they are the best solar collectors on the planet.You dont have coal,natural gas or oil if you dont have trees,simple as that.They also feed us,warm us and cool us in summer.Wildlife's one thing,and I dont think of myself as a tree hugger though I sound like one only for the fact that I heat my house with dead trees that had to be removed from other's property.I do believe that what God intended for our species to do is to maintain well what we have now,give back wisely what one takes for their own use;to better the species if possible.Since we are a sentient species..able to realize the importance of what exists now it should be of top priority to manage what we have now well,not to lock up what exists and let nature take it's course,because we now co-exist with nature,that is not possible.We cannot let forests burn to the extent they have done for millenia because that infringes on our coexistence with trees.We now live amongst trees and the majority prefer to.That means we have to pay to protect our existence as well as theirs by fighting the wildfires that arise or by managing the underbrush,dead trees,etc and do scheduled overstory removal to let understory grow..BUT it's gotta be done right
Wild fires are actually very healthy for the forest. They rid the woods of old, dead and decaying debre which fertile the ground. The fires also spur new growth and actually, there are some seeds that need the heat of the fire to open up and grow. It's when we manage and suppress fires that when they finally occur, they are out of control infernos. This is why they now have prescribed burns in many national parks.
Leave the tree huggers out of this. Just make it easier for the elves to buy guns and they will protect the forests from the trolls that want to clear cut and strip mine everything. Funny how ALL the trolls supporting the deforestation of the planet will gain ABSOLUTELY nothing by allowing it to continue. Stupid is as Stupid does.
Logging can be healthy for forests especially as natural fires are prevented. Why don't they study and emulate the practices Collins Pine uses. Now, Sierra Pacific, on the other hand is a greedy company that clear cuts, eventually they'll run themselves out of business after they have devastated their lands.
Again, at least in the Pacific Northwest trees grow like weeds. As many activist environmentalists live in arid CA, they don't have a clue. When I lived there it was a real struggle to make things grow. Up here you can't to beat nature back with a stick! :<)
Trees grow 3-5 feet/yr. It is a constant struggle to keep them from reclaiming my driveway and area around the house. If you've seen some of the programs on Chernobyl, in the short time since the meltdown nature has almost completely reclaimed the surrounding suburbs.
Nature is far more robust than people think. Even denuded forests will grow back with or without seedlings. Mine was not seeded yet it is think with trees.
43 did everything he could to make it simple for his handlers to export ever tree growing in the United States.
How dare you promise to leave a single tree standing in this country! We need to boast the economy by selling off all our natural resources. We are a service society in the eyes of all the righteously rabid Reaganites. Cut those trees and send them to China so they can come back properly conditioned into pressed sawdust and shaped into humidity absorbing furniture and artificial fabrics. We need those spaces where the damned trees stand today for parking lots, golf courses of the rich, mansions for the elitists who really do control our government and own the economy.
Any decent in ecological unsound deforestation will be considered a act of blasphemy in the name of our lord dog Ronnie!
Typical leftist enviro-nazi. We have far more forest land than a century ago. Wood is a renewable resource, it can be harvested and regrown. I see our logging industry in action every day and fully support them.
It must really frost you he beat imbecile Carter in a landslide and won his second term with the biggest landslide in history, carrying 49 states.
Hi All,
Looking at the picture with this piece with a caption stating it is the result of logging is just wrong. Having been on many burns this is the result of a wildland fire. It looks like the fire management folks are clearing burned trees out of the area. Loggers don't want that wood. I must say that the USDA Forest Service have fire management plans that call for control burning to a degree that matches the natural fire cycles. When doing this the ladder fuels that buildup on the ground are reduced so when there is a fire it is a devistating event. I have also seen what happens when control burns are blocked by do-gooders and when a fire does happen, it distroys everything and that is not good and it costly to fight.
Thanks, Chris
I live in Southern Oregon, I know this battle all too well and it's funny that everyone is crying about the economy on environmental protection behalf but not once talking about the destruction of jobs from the greedy owners of the logging companies that lay off all their workers and replace them with automated machines, then make sure they are at the next political rally to cry about not getting everything they want. Maybe people wouldn't look at the loggers so harshly if they cleaned up their trash, left trees intact next to the rivers, streams, and roads to prevent erosion, stopped clear cutting anything that stands, and abusing BLM and Forest Roads, leaving tax-payers and the Forest Service to fix the roads and clean up their mess.
It's amazing how all you tree huggers are against logging but all want to live in a house built from lumber and read the paper made from wood.
Wrong, ras, it's about not destroying everything in an effort to maximize short-term profit. Doing logging on the cheap won't help anyone, and probably doesn't generate even more jobs by processing timber locally instead of sending much of it to Japan or Taiwan.
That's a load of crap. I live in logging country and even on hill sides there is no erosion because undergrowth and stumps stabilize the soil. One can't say it never happens but it is NOT the norm, not even close.
I grew up in Eastern Oregon, and I remember selective logging taking place there.
I was shocked when I saw my first clear cut in a Ponderosa forest. The ground was churned up, the forest duff was destroyed, as were a whole generation of small trees, which, under selective logging, would have been able to be harvested in another decade or so. Instead, seedlings were planted, which the deer ate like cows eat meadow grass, and which died in the strong sunlight. So then the next go around had to have little nets around them. So the next harvest of the trees has been put off for a long time.
Elk
If I am remembering this right - and there is a good possibility I am not - Selective logging took the Ponderosa trees and left the Lodgepole pine.
Then the wood beetle hit. The reason the beetle was so devastating was because there were no breaks in the species of trees. Where there were Ponderosa before now was an unbroken line of Lodgepole.
Again, I might be wrong but I think I might be at least close.
The day Obama makes anything easier for mining or forest or exploitation of carbon based resources, will be the day he is voted out of office.
Obviously we need to log the forests to a manageable degree. We need wood for lumbar to build homes, furniture, picture frames, fences, Oh and to provide Oxygen for us to breath, etc etc.... Obviously we need balanced standing forests for wildlife. After all nature is valuable for quality of life, and who wants to live in a world where you can't go out and look at deer, elk, squirrels, rabbits, ect. Not to mention hunting. After all deer and elk along with many other hunted species are able to live with little human interaction as long as the forests remain intact and as long as hunted species are managed and not over hunted. Although I do agree we could live with much less forest if the masses would stop having children, there would be much less need for the above mentioned resources. You decide. The only thing is, I'd like to see the control in the hands of each state rather than the fed. I haven't read the bill/Law. My hope is that it is not more federal takeover of states and individual rights.
We have enough plastic to build everything we need. The oil companies would support that. If we run out we can just start harvesting plastic out of the oceans. There is plenty of it there.
I wasn't aware of plastic studs. I'd also be interested in what poisonous fumes are out-gassed in case of a fire.
The environmental groups sue our government for whatever "rule" they want. They almost always sue in a "friendly" court - usually San Francisco and the taxpayers have to pay for all of the court costs through a loop hole that was designed to let the average man sue the government. 99.9% of the environmentalists never spend any time going to any of the land that they want to lock away from humans.
Obama caved to the lawyers.
Yeah, you tell 'em. Are you a paid troll, or just straight out stupid?
Tetrapoda, my guess is that heartmom is just straight out stupid.
I guess the truth hurts.
There is no Blue Ribbon Committee" representing "off road vehicles".
While I'm sure I'll get called a wild-eyed hippie tree-hugger (so what?), my long experience with various National Forests gives me a perspective. Wild unbroken spaces are necessary for the health of the world. I'm a hard working tax payer too, and I want to see a contiguous wild world available to my grandchildren, and not just island parks. I am in no way a purist, while I don't see the need for more roads, I also know the existing NF roads are in terrible shape, some have been more or less abandoned because there is no budget to keep them up. Too often timber sales were way to sweet a deal for the logging compoanies, and not the public so much. I cringe at dirt bikes, but I share the forest with them, as long as they don't try to go *everywhere*. My bent is mushrooms, a whole other world, and not compatible with overuse of the forest. Some balance needs to be found. Forests don't grow so fast as you have to rush things or you'll miss the harvest. Think these things through, and don't get so deparate you ruin it all, like Reagan admin tried.
And more liberal crap. You want unbroken spaces then turn around and decry the shape of the access roads. Which is it?
Reasonable lumber prices mean lower cost homes which means more people can afford them. Of course you never think of the little guy trying to buy his first home, you just think how much you want to blindly punish business for making a capitalist profit. Horror of horrors!
It must really frost you that Reagan beat idiot Carter in a landslide and won his second term with the biggest landslide in history, carrying 49 states.
Not a "wild-eyed hippie tree-hugger" just misinformed and delusional.
sick brained obama can't figure things out.....
A lot of that going on, huh Jesse? Why should I trust some mewling 'neck like you over Obama who can at least talk and write in a straight line?
Theres nothing that says 'put back what ya take'..replanting after logging should be mandatory
Everywhere I know of, it is. Forests grow back even without replanting. Replanting just accelerates the process as well as controlling the species to be harvested.
The only thing the tree huggers want is new rules so everyone can see pictures of what used to be. They do not want balance and have proven it consistently. This only gives them more power, solves nothing because if not their way they will sue.
you bet this is just a way to feed obamas logging consortiem and lots of kick back for the politions.I have been yelling for years that they need to log the great smokiemnt. park but they cant deside woh gets all the kick backs,and they just don't care.
I support dropping your pants and pissing on all tree huggers!
Pool, it is science, and we recognize, only about 10 percent of Americans are educable. America requires at least, a kindergarten education in the science of ecology, which articulates how Earth functions and cycles to create and sustain all life. You exist and are breathing, only because of ecosystems, and ecosystems exist only because of the wealth and extanction of their plant/tree and animal biological diversity.
Balance ??? I have been a carpenter and woodworker all my life. Now most of what I have to work with is fiberboard with veneer and plastic molding. There is going to be NO wood left at the rate it is being "harvested". We will be sitting on a barren rock if they arent stopped. Anyone that is supporting the lumber industry is going to have grandchildren that will only know what a tree looks like because you can buy plastic ones at Walmart. It will only be a matter of time before the "tree huggers" are banding together and calling themselves "ecowarriors" Good luck to them.
That's total crap. Go down to your local home depot and you can get most anything you want. I built my own cabinets and trim from oak bought at my local store. I've seen studs for as little as $1/ea, you can get what ever lumber you want. There are lumber stores almost everywhere, most will pre cut you an entire house if you give them a pick list, (I've done it twice).
Try again troll.
Mortimer, yes according to the science of ecology, when man kills ecosystems, like our forested, boreal, grassland and chaparral/oak woodland ecosystems, he is, "suicidal". The National Academy of Sciences maintains, pushing extinct biological diversity or the native animals and plants/trees that create and sustain all ecosystems, is about as safe for mankind as thermonuclear war. In other words, when man kills the natural, real physical body of planet Earth or ecosystems, he kills all and every reason he breathes.
Now, we are discussing oxygen releasing, the atmosphere, the climate, the nitrogen cycle, the hydrological storage and flux, the sequestration of those heat trapping gases, the creation and renewal of a life giving soil, the entirety of the Earth's biogeochemistry and a long list of all and every reason man exists.
Man is as inextricably connected to ecosystems as the marine ecosystems are to water or life, life itself, and all ecosystems altogether create the very life zone of the Earth, her biosphere/ecosphere.
Well we can always go to Canada and o thats right Keystone policy.No to canadian lumber also.
That's what is so funny. Envro-nazi's want to stop all logging here if they can, yet Canada is bulldozing it's forests to strip mine the tar sands beneath. We are far more responsible here yet we are the ones getting beat on.
P111, everyone gets beat on when man kills ecosystems and their biological diversity for all the plethora of reasons. Killing ecosystems and their biological diversity is the most dangerous enterprise modern man pursues. All ecosystems are all integrated, and they all have feedbacks & loops to the very atmosphere and global climate. And, all ecosystems, altogether, create the very life zone of the Earth, the biosphere, ecosphere. This Canadian monster will snake through America, killing multi-thousands of acres of boreal, wetland, riverine and grassland systems in Canada and the U.S. After all, our living Earth fails to recognize artificial man-made borders!
"The human economy, social structure and the well-being of our species rest on the bedrock of the health and welfare of integrated global ecological systems. Every breath we take, every bit of sustenance we consume daily are totally dependent on the interrelationships between the atmosphere, soil, water and the diversity of species that inhabit the planet with us...The health of the planet and the survival of our species depend on this maintenance..." A scientist
The science of ecology has nothing to do with Nazisms, Dark Age societal voices and brainwashing.
a little common sense goes a long way the problem is if you try to please eveyone it will never work
A Federal Law's aim to please. Well I can see by the commets it's not working. Well I'll tell you what folks it pleases ME and in our society it's always ME ME ME. But really we need common sense in this country and it seems to be lost.