Hi Hakan;
100% in agreement with all of that. Clearcutting IS bad, I thought I
made that distinction. It is also true that clearcutting does not hurt
bears or elk. Selective cutting and even the use of helicopters to
remove the odd massive tree are being used which is normally cost
prohibitive. But then again I guess my attitude is that basing
everything on dollar cost is not the right attitude for how to live in
this world. I bet lumber is more expensive in areas where selective
logging is being carried out as the norm. But that is a good thing and
makes people less wasteful when it impacts thier pocket book.
WRT your comments r.e. the treatment of animals yes and factory farming
techniques are easy to ignore when your meat is only seen as a nicely
packaged 'commodity' on the store shelf rather than the reality of
inhumane treatment animals experience in thier short lives at our
hands. We just don't look carefully enough at what we are doing and we
are encouraged not to.
Joe
Hakan Falk wrote:
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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