Joe,
Only a couple of complementary things,
The Elk an Moose also like clear cut, but they are very bad for
forest management. They eat the top of the newly planted trees.
Clear cuts are also bad, since it often result in that the top soil
is washed down the streams and over fertilize them. this in its
turn results in greater vulnerability to the acid rains from industrial
areas, that kills our lakes. The only reason for clear cut, is the
adoption to modern machinery.
Proper forest management was developed in Southern Germany
around 200 years ago and was implemented in Sweden 150 years
ago. It has proven its viability, but clear cut was not a part of the
those methods.
Why we get a large amount of bushes etc. in clear cuts, is not
because of more sunlight, it is because a lack of pines to control
the vegetation. The pine tree is releasing chemicals from the needles
it drops, that limit the under vegetation and give the pines the
space and nutrition to grow. It is their way of fighting the competition
and only allow species that are good for them.
Fires have always been a natural part of the forest cycle, to keep
the ground relatively clean and add nutrients. This is also done in
good forest management, which starts to be a thing of the past and
had to give way for the use of large machines.
All of this and much more, are to be found in the biofuel archives
from earlier extensive discussions. No need to repeat it in full.
Harvesting properly managed forests for building material, has been
proven viable for more than 150 years. We are also "killing" plants
for food like bread etc. and the way the subject provoke is misleading
and ignorant. We even "kill" animals to eat, but the real abuse is not
that we kill them, it is often worse with the way we let them live.
Hakan
At 04:15 PM 7/6/2005, you wrote:
Hi Chris;
<>Granted a mature forest supports a
<>different ecology than a second growth but for instance studies have
<>shown that there is more food for bears in a clearcut zone than there is
in a mature forest.<
i don't see the relevance of this. you could make the same argument for
garbage dumps. does that mean we should be sending all these huge barges
full of
waste to the canadian wilderness? who conducted these studies? and who
funded
them?
Well here in Canada there is a very strong movement for the preservation
of wildlife habitat and bears are a favorite focus point. The welfare of
bears seems to have become a symbol of environmental awareness for some
folks, so much so that due to restrictions in hunting regulations we have
a situation in northern Ontario where bears are litterally trying to break
in to people's houses. There is a misguided notion that clearcutting
forests puts the bear population at risk and this is clearly an example of
public misinformation which is gladly exploited by those who would like to
see all logging in this country put to an end. I admit I don't know about
the details of the studies I mentioned but I can get references. I am
speaking from experience though. I spend a lot of time roaming around the
forests of this country and I have come across bears many times and often
enough to have a general sense of the likelihood and frequency of such
encounters in a remote forest of Canada be it hardwood, softwood or
boreal. Let me tell you walking around in a clearcut in northern B.C. is
a different experience where it is routine to see bears EVERY DAY and
often several times a day, so much so that it requires a different
attitude to being out there. Clearcutting results in a more plentiful
food supply for bears so much so that they are beginning to overpopulate
which is also not natural and is a problem in itself ( for people AND
bears). I used this example not to say that clearcutting is good but
rather just to illustrate that there are misconceptions about the lumber
industry destroying habitat and threatening the extinction of bears which
are pervasive and obviously untrue. I guess I can't blame ecoterrorist
mouthpieces like David Suzuki for using the same fear mongering and
disinformation tactics to arouse us that the wealthy commonly use to keep
us all hypnotized with our faces in the food trough of excess. But I
don't have to like it.
forest fires have been sending co2 into the atmosphere for millenia, but
that
isn't what has precipitated global warming. furhtermore, in the case of
north america, fire has been one of the primary evolutionary forces. the
ecosystem of this continent has a sort of co-dependency with fire; sort
of like a
purging/renewal mechanism. in fact, there are certain conifers which
need the
high tempatures of a wildfire for their cones to open and release the seeds.
Yes the Jack Pine cone requires heat to release it's seeds and after a
fire a similar thing happens to the burnt area due to opening up the
forest floor to sunlight as what happens after mature trees are removed
although the ground is not torn up and looking like an ugly wound on the
earth as a clearcut does. ( If you've never seen one up close you can't
imagine how ugly it is). Many scrub plants and berry bushes suddenly
shoot up where they couldn't grow before due to lack of light. You are
right that fire does beneficial things but my point was that something
useful to human life is also lost and we still have the need for it so we
will still take it from somewhere else resulting in deforestation in two
places. If we were to go in and selectively remove the largest trees
which are most likely to get a lightning strike and have the most board
feet of lumber we can reduce the loss to fire, keep that CO2
sequestered, and make use of the wood simultaneously. More and more this
is becoming an approach the logging industry is taking. It is more costly
than clearcutting and hence would result in an increase in luber costs for
the consumer which is something I eagerly applaud. I smile when I
consider the day when our cost of living will skyrocket in this society.
As it should.
Having said this I also want to say that I agree we should set asside
certain areas like the old growth coastal rain forests with the huge
douglas firs and sitka spruce that escaped the last glaciation and are
something truely wonderful to behold and spend time in just as we do with
other natural wonders.
i don't know about this, but i've kind of always assumed that a plant's
'oxygen cycle' and 'co2 cycle' pretty much cancel each other out. but
there's no
denying that trees sequester large quantities of carbon (breaking down
co2 to
do so, no?).
Yeah if only humans were as smart as plants........
Joe
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