Best Posts in Thread: raping the forest this is sad stuff.

I'm absolutely NO expert on any of this, but I do want to share some observations or things I've noticed or learned from others.

Some Native American tribes in the Great Plains areas DID set fire to smaller sections of prairie grassland. As I was made to understand this, small fires were intentionally set from time to time when the grasses and plant life that the buffalo herds fed on appeared to be in a diminished state. The following years after these smaller fires were set and went out (whether intentionally set by the tribes or from lightening strikes), the vegetation began to renew itself and in a couple more years, became more dense than it was in those areas before these fires came about. This allowed the buffalo herds in that area to graze in closer proximity to the nomadic tribes in that area and make hunting buffalo (their major protein source) a faster and easier task for the tribes.

Later on, when the Plains tribes were being relocated to reservation areas, the US Army DID intentionally set large fires across hugh tracts of prairie land in order to reduce good buffalo grazing land near tribal areas. Large fires were set and used as an incendiary incentive to force the tribal populations to relocate to these newly designated reservation areas.

In my conversations with a couple of foresters in the Pacific Northwest, I was made to understand that a new trend seems to be the replanting of forests with different species of trees being planted in closer proximity to one another. In other words, there seems to be a greater desire to move away from mono-replanting of hugh tracts of only one single species of trees towards a replanting with smaller tracts of single speceies and planting different species of trees closer together. The thought behind this is that there seems to be a heartier forest near the borders than elsewhere. Again, I am not a learned person in this, but simply reporting what my conversations were with these two fellows who have been in the foresty business all their working lifetimes. The one fellow I spoke with has a Masters Degree in Forestry Economics (didn't know you could even get a degree in this).

In Oregon, we do have some "Old Growth" timberland under protected status. I direct you to this website for further information.

Associated Oregon Loggers: Forest | Facts | Common Questions

Finally, a few observations of mine.

I noticed when I was a kid how big the timber industry is in Oregon. It's BIG business. What I found ironic when as an adult, I visited the Oregon History Museum, and discovered some of the big "Timber Barons" in Oregon actually came from Europe and from the Eastern US, and clear cut our forests. This, in spite of the fact that they knew better and knew about reforesting as this reforestation process was and had been done in Europe and in the Eastern US for quite some time prior to the clear cutting of our forests in Oregon. I guess the reforestation piece was forgotten to be done as no one really said it HAD to be done. So Oregon had to eventually initiate replanting laws so as to regenerate this industry and protect our resources of the timberland -- for which there are many secondary, but very important resouces on these lands outside of the timber itself.

There is a balance to be had here -- to be sure.

Methinks Mother Nature is a wise woman and we have much to learn from her.

V/R,
nwlivewire

 

Unfortunately most of the deforestation here is done illegally by apparently well connected people (you almost never hear of anyone being caught let alone prosecuted) for profit. They are just raping the natural resources for their own illicit gains.

 

If our foresters would replant after harvesting the timber, this would be very helpful in so many ways. Trees can be a super renewable resource when adequate stewardship is performed.

V/R,
nwlivewire

 

As with a lot of things the correct answer would seem to be in the middle between the extremes. Clear cutting a forest is bad, anyone can see that. Soil erosion alone is a good enough reason to not do this.

Consider the other extreme? The old growth forest that so many people say must be protected at all cost and kept inviolate? An old growth forest is a sterile forest. Where light doesn't reach the ground there is relatively little life to be found. New young vibrant growth doesn't get a chance to start until one of the older trees dies and makes room or until a forest fire clears the land just as surely as clear cutting would. Years ago, there was a big hullabaloo about how few spotted owls were to be found in the old growth forests, nobody ever thought to ask why? It's because the old trees weren't providing sustenance for the small animals that owl eat so sensibly the owls went elsewhere. The US has some pretty horrific forest fires because we won't allow people to log off enough forest to make effective firebreaks! so we lose tens of miles at a time rather than some hundreds of acres. In the US I will admit that we are idiots in the conservation of our natural resources in both what we over protect as much as what we don't protect enough. Of course sometimes nature and random chance makes what man does look brilliant! I have read that when colonists came to North America they found when they arrived that 75% of the continents forests were on fire, natives? Natural causes? Who knows? It's what you get with old growth forests. We can do a lot better. We would do a lot better to manage our natural renewable resources than simply to say hands of, nobody touch. Then people like Al Gore who say hands off nobody touch the forest makes a lot of money leasing his land with timber on it to be clear cut. Such is life.

 

Greed and Ignorance

 

Dumaguete Awareness
13 March at 23:31 ·

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