board77

Hal

just very recently you told me that if another poster wants to post simplistic drive-by one liners without explaination, that is their right and I should get off their case and leave them alone


take your own advice ....

I'm not trying to be simplistic, sf. yov said that people's need for homes should be a factor in deciding whether to harvest a given forest. I responded that it's quite possible to provide everyone with homes without making use of resources that had been set aside for preservation.

the difference is, SF, we're actually still on topic.

using a song about vanishing trees in a thread about forest sale is not on topic?

explain that one to me Hal?

Please .. explain it to me

Dave LF

my remark about simplicity WAS NOT directed at you.

I understand perfectly what you mean

sauronsfinger wrote:

Dave LF, my remark about simplicity WAS NOT directed at you.

Ah; I blame Bush for making me paranoid.

(now there is a cheap drive-by shot!)

You know, I'm debating whether to post this because I don't think my voice will be heard amidst all the mud-slinging....

The average person who looks on forests as a renewable resources has NO IDEA, NO CONCEPT of what clear-cutting does to the forest ecosystem, especially the soil. While visiting B.C., I saw clear-cutting being done on mountainsides. The next rain that comes along...and B.C. gets LOTS of rain!....is going to wash that soil into the nearest stream, and that will be it as far as forest regerneration goes for a very, very long time. Trees can't grown on bare rock!

Friends of ours live in Lorne Park, just east of Toronto. The forest in their particular subdivision has NEVER been cut. They have trillums popping up out of their lawn!! I asked for permission to take some trilliums home, and our hosts said 'yes'. Well, those trilliums weren't growing in soil so much as they were growing in a natural sponge made up of root fibers. Cutting it with a spade was very, very difficult. I felt like I was cutting a chunk of living flesh out of the forest floor.

After I got that trillium out, and replanted it at home, I had to move it the next spring, because larger plants were crowding it out. That fibrous chunk of roots was still there, providing a framework to help anchor the plant in the soil.

This natural sponge has many crucial functions. The most important is to absorb water, and allow it to percolate slowly through the soil, instead of flowing quickly into the nearest stream. This is vital for many reasons: it prevents erosion, it allows for more constant water levels in the streams, thus improving the environment for fish and for recreational activities. Many large rivers that were once navigable by small watercraft are no longer useable due to the drop in water levels. Some of this is due to removal of water for irrigation, but a lot is due to the rapid runoff that happens after a rainstorm, because so much of the forest has been cut and paved over.

The forest soil does regenerate to a certain extent, aas the new forest grows, but after that experience I had in Lorne Park, I now realize it would take many centuries to return to what it once was.

Sunsilver

IO read every word of your post. You make an excellent point. It takes centuries to grow these forests. It takes just a short time to destroy them.

logging companies (at least in the US) do not clear cut like that any more. They're just as interested in the forest growing back quickly as anyone else.

They're also interested in things like not having the forest burn down, or endanger people living near the forest.

It's not as simple an issue as "pro-environment=anti-logging"

loggers have done bad thigns in the past... but to now say because of that... all logging is bad... is not fair.

I hear you, Sunsilver.

That's why I support both preservation and conservation. (The difference between the two being obvious, I think. ??? Preservation means you leave the land alone; conservation means wise and judicious use of the land. There is a place and a need for both. I think the government is fine to manage the majority of that; I'm a big supporter of the Department of Natural Resources.)

Lali

I believe that we humans have forgotten good husbandry of land use.

Of course I think adobe houses are much better than log houses.

Is it too late to make a quip about being at loggerheads?

Sunsilver - I agree with you.

Hal - everytime I fly over Oregon I see huge bare patches that can only be recent clearcutting, or not-so recent clearcutting that never grew back. Looks awfully sad, either way.

Looking at the information in the original post, it appears that these are sales of parcels that allow for expansion of towns at the edge of forests, and sale of "administrative" properties, whatever that means.

laureanna wrote:

Is it too late to make a quip about being at loggerheads?

Nope.

We have been assured several times that logging companies will maintain the forests for their continuing profitablity (like logging companies do in Malaysia, the Amazon, the Phillipines, West Africa, Burma erc etc) That may be so for the moment but once they are privately owned it takes only one decision and a phone call and a cash flow problem for a forest to be asset stripped. Companies can change hands and the decision can be made in Beijing, Osaka, Moscow, Riyadh or Aberdeen. It couldn't be stopped - it is private property after all and therefore sacred.
Not only will hillside forest never grow back after the soil is washed away, the water runoff will be faster and erode faster downstream and cause flooding in the flood plains. But the US is prepared for flooding I believe.
The market can only deliver the quick buck and in its place that is fine and useful. The market is the last device to trust for long term sustainable environments.

Missed the first sentence before:

yovargas wrote:

As wonderful as these forests are, people need homes. People don't need national parks.

People don't need national parks in the same way that they don't really need art, music, or literature. But if we really were at the point where the choice had to be made (we aren't), I would choose to make some people go without homes before I'd make every person go without wilderness.

Speaking as a person who hikes, camps, fishes, and spends as much time as I can in the woods I find it a very sad thought to lose all the wild places. However we have to use the natural resources in order to survive. There is a balance, and we need to find it, preservation is fine in some areas, like national parks. national forests are also important though, in a park I can't hunt, I can't fish, I can't decide to climb that hill if theres not a trail there, I can't do a million things that I normally do when I go "real" camping, and they charge money. Camping in a national park is like visiting a museum, pretty but you can't touch. Private land owned by groups like Ducks and Trout unlimited is not the whole answer, it helps but it doesn't really fill the niche that national forests do.

Also something to keep in mind about the national forest land being sold, is what the condition's are there going to be? I was"window shopping" land on the Klicitat river for a fishing camp, the land is really cheap, the reason being you can't put in septic systems, can't log it, and are very limited on the buildings you can put on it, for my purposes that'd be fine, but it wouldn't work for much else other then that.

ToshoftheWuffingas wrote:

The market is the last device to trust for long term sustainable environments.

Hardin agrees with you, as do I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Dave_LF wrote:

But if we really were at the point where the choice had to be made (we aren't)...

Agreed, we aren't...

Dave_LF wrote:

I would choose to make some people go without homes before I'd make every person go without wilderness.

...but this statement comes off as very calous to me unless you are willing to give up your home when forced to choose. [/i]

Is it an either or statement? Seems to me that Americans could live at a much higher density than the traditional ranch style suburban homes on a third of an acre - which is less than 5,000 people per square mile. Places like Bombay, Lagos, Hong Kong and Jakarta have over 100,000 people per square mile. There's plenty of opportunity for infilling on existing developed land before we have to go and cut down our forests.

I live in an apartment complex in an area that is zoned for 1 dwelling unit per 1,000 square feet of land - that's equivalent to a density of 40,000 people per square mile - but my city also has about one quarter of its land as dedicated open space, which I enjoy exploring. If it were all fenced off into little parcels of suburbia, I couldn't.

I agree fully, laurenna. High-density living also reduces fossil-fuel consumption because people aren't commuting 100 miles a day and because 1 big building is cheaper to heat/cool etc. than a bunch of little ones.

I was addressing a hypothetical situation where, even with all the non-park land used as efficiently as possible, there still wasn't enough space to give everyone a home. Ignoring the fact that in that world homlessness would be the least of our social problems, I still say that limited homlessness is a lesser evil than universal wildernesslessness (yikes). And if that meant me, so be it.

From a game perspective, it's similar to making freedom/security judgements. Yes, in some cases choosing freedom means accepting a higher risk of getting blown up, but freedom is worth the risk. If choosing to preserve forests meant taking the risk of being homeless someday, I'd still say it's a good bet.