Very Disheartening news

[tlbj6142]

In addition, WE THE PEOPLE pay for roadbuilding and the logging program of the US Forest Service LOSES over ONE BILLION dollars per year.

This is what bothers me more than anything else about logging. Why do we (the US Gov't) let ourselves get ripoff? I once heared it has something to do with an old law which sets the max price we can sell/rent an acre of land.

I have the same concerns with grazing lands out west. This "issue" isn't just a forest thing. And its "been around for years", so I doubt you could blame it on anyone administration.

Any ideas?

[weary]

Bingo! No group puts out more false information than the environmental lobby.

There are nutty people out there who claim to be environmentalists. But it strikes me that the mainstream environmental groups make major efforts to be accurate. The real problem is not false information. But being such a stickler for accuracy that major problems never get adequately debated.

I hear Bulldog's complaint often. I have yet to see any documentation.

Weary

[Kozmic Zian]

Our current Prez will go down as the most anti-environmental ever. His administration is full of former industry lawyers. Shortsighted and greedy they all are. No balance; all industry. It's sad that some on this forum can't see that or don't want to. Lone Wolf, is your head so far up your arse that you can't admit the Prez blows chunks or are you just yanking our chains to see what we'll say? Seriously; what's going on inside that head of yours?

Yea....Chains. He's a chain yanker from way back. I agree. Most of these, what are they, republicans, seem to think that it's now or never. Conservatives in general, seem to think that. To hell with manana. Live for today. The mony's here now....we don't want that to go away do we? America was founded on the priciple that the 'woods have bears and wolves there, it's dark there and dangerous.....Indian's live in there'. Cut it all down. And now of course, 'We got oil, we don't need no stinkin' woods. Cut it all down! Bush says, 'We need Energy and Oil and Religion'....you seen Delay lately....I think he thinks he's a preacher or something....I thought politics and religion didn't mix so well, what about you?
The 'Whole Damn Thing' is goin' to hell in a handbag, jack....Who cares about 'The Woods' when there's a damn war going on.......That fits right up their ally.....What's a hiker to do? Get out and walk while there's still time, I say. KZ@

[Tha Wookie]

Not to start an argument but logging companies, mining companies, etc employ PEOPLE who depend on these jobs to support their families.

Environmentalists employ nobody.

I work for the Nature Conservancy and NOLS. There goes your uneducated statement. Do you work for Georgia Pacific or any of the other giant logging corporations that continue to rape our country?

The truth is that sustainable timber harvest methods provide enough wood and jobs for our consumption and economy. Many educated and ethical logging companies do follow sustainable harvesting methods. But many people, who will stop at anything to maximize profit at the expense of our life-support systems, ecological balance, clean water, clean air, human life, and our recreational opportunities, simply don't care about anything else but power and greed.

Those people control all the fools who voted for Bush. They are so easily controled. So I don't see why you or anyone else in that herd of glazed-eyed sheep would be any better educated now. Hooved locusts as Muir called them, moving across the land eating everything down to the roots. I imagine the Bush puppet has a good laugh every now and then at all of the suckers financing his leaders' agendas.

They never question. The sheepherder can do no wrong in their eyes. They do whatever he says, too busy stuffing their fat bellies to even lift their head and find their own route.

Everybody needs to go out and get a copy of Ed Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang. It's time.

Over 90% percent of this country has been altered by Europeans. When will we put an end to the ecological genocide?

[Kozmic Zian]

This is what bothers me more than anything else about logging. Why do we (the US Gov't) let ourselves get ripoff? I once heared it has something to do with an old law which sets the max price we can sell/rent an acre of land.

I have the same concerns with grazing lands out west. This "issue" isn't just a forest thing. And its "been around for years", so I doubt you could blame it on anyone administration.

Any ideas?

Yea....Don't vote for these dingwah's.....Clinton might have been a philanderer, but at least he knew about the environment. Look what he did at the end. Set into law the preservation of millions of acres of America's pristine lands. How can this current admin just change everything at will with no resistance. We should all write to our congressmen about this issue. If something isn't done, our children's children won't have anywhere to hike. Oh, boy. Here we go. I hate this issue 'cause it seems so out of control....whatever happened to the environmental respect the people of this country used to have for all things great and small. It's like everything else. Population out of control, immigration out of control, government out of control and addressing issues that really don't reflect the needs of the people. Ah, the foiables of Democracy.....It's best aspect, freedom is it's own downfall. KZ@

[papa john]

Everything is so black and white to you isn't Wookie? If you look at the numbers of people working for timber, oil and other companies in similar industries, the number of people who work for environmental concerns pale in comparison.

You have every right to disagree, but please do so in a respectful manner. You know nothing about me, where do you get off calling me uneducated? I do not resort to name calling, please extend me the same courtesy.

[jmaclennan]

Papa John - "You know nothing about me, where do you get off calling me uneducated?"

Tha Wookie did not say you were uneducated. He said it was an uneducated statement. Tha Wookie - "There goes your uneducated statement."

Papa John - "Everything is so black and white to you isn't Wookie?" Actually, Papa John, you said that "environmetalists employ nobody." Forgetting Wookie's comments for a moment, that seems pretty black and white to me.

By the way, Papa John, companies that engage in mountaintop removal mining employ people. Does that mean we have to support what they do?

[fiddlehead]

Hey yeah Fiddlehead,

How goes it? What time is it over there anyway?

Hey Sly, doin pretty good! Have taken up rock climbing and thinking about surfin. We're 12 hours different than you.
I've told a few Canadian friends about this (wilderness areas now a thing of the past) They weren't surprised at all. I am only surprised at the fact that the American public is not outraged! But then, they voted for him, aye? fh

[Tha Wookie]

Sorry papa, but you just said "Environmentalists employ nobody".

That is why I educated you on the matter. Don't take it personally. If you don't like being corrected, then don't say things that are false.

I'm the one seeing things black and white? funny! Keep reading...

True, logging provides jobs, but a job does not justify jack squat. War provides jobs. Drug dealing provides jobs. Prostitution provides jobs. Logging provides jobs.

Logging operations are not all the same. That's what I pointed out in my post. Many are sustainable, and use methods where they do not harvest old-growth or previously untouched or protected lands. In fact, I have met environmentalist loggers. How does that fit into your employment arguement? Do you think loggers all hate nature?

This issue is not about the pros and cons of the intrinsic nature of logging. It's about Bush opening what little untouched land we have left to be raped, clearcut, and destroyed. What those people commonly do out there in the National Forests is not sustainable. It's pig-headed greed. Then he and his masters can plant some nice green grass for his voters.

So you see it's not black and white at all. Some logging practices are responsible, but many (usually in the public lands) are not at all. Just because someone is hired doesn't mean the job is a good one.

What the logging groups mean when they whine about job loss is that they are too irresponsible or not smart enough to do things right and stay in business.

Plus, here's another thing I thought of:

When they clearcut an area, the new seedlings all start at the same time, creating an unbalanced forest with usually only one dominant tree
type (the most profitable). These trees grow roughly at the same rate, and crowd each other unaturally, creating a thick and unhealthy forest. It also creates a forest with thousands of dead trees (one study compared 300 trees to a natural plot to thousands in an adjacent recovering cleared plot), and those kinds of practices are part of the reason why forest fires have been so hot in recent years. The irresonsible loggers created the mess. Now we get to subsidize them to go clean it up, and to make whole new ones out of pristine nature.

[tlbj6142]

Clinton might have been a philanderer, but at least he knew about the environment. Look what he did at the end. Set into law the preservation of millions of acres of America's pristine lands.

Did he really care, or did he just want to piss off the next administration? If it is done via "excutive order" its all politics, favors and positioning for the next guy's term.

[bogey]

Any body here use paper? Live in a house? Ever build yourself a shed? Trees must fall and that what that land is for. Or we could just keep 3rd world countries destroying their forests to give us timber.

Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific etc, have, to the best of my recollection, enough managed forrest growing, to sustain the needs of the paper industry.

I can't quote Dollars, number, and board-feet though, just, something I think I remember reading.

[ripple]

"Only 4% of timber products come from OUR National Forests. So, the crap about using paper or living in a wood-frame house don't cut it...!"



If that is true, where does the 96% of the timber products come from. Maybe those rain forrests we are always told to save. I quess some people rather exploit poor counties and talk out one side saying save your rain forrests but be happier saving our trees that were set aside for harvest.


"Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific etc, have, to the best of my recollection, enough managed forrest growing, to sustain the needs of the paper industry. "

Paper maybe, What about all the timber for all these houses that are be
built?



"Yea....Don't vote for these dingwah's.....Clinton might have been a philanderer, but at least he knew about the environment. Look what he did at the end."



Why do you think he did that at the end? Just to make it look bad for the next administration. He did the same thing w/ the Koyoto treaty signed it but knew it would destroy our economy. Left it up to the next administration to decide not to ratify it.

[weary]

Why do you think he did that at the end? Just to make it look bad for the next administration. He did the same thing w/ the Koyoto treaty signed it but knew it would destroy our economy. Left it up to the next administration to decide not to ratify it.

If so, Clinton took a complicated way of doing it. There were 600 public hearings over two years. No issue ever received more public comment, or more lopsided views in favor of protection of the roadless areas.

Roadless areas are a tiny subset of the National Forests. Most of the National Forest has been roaded again and again, harvested again and again. The issue is whether it is wise to keep a few places where nature is allow to do as nature wants.

I think it is. Just as we protect historical areas, it seems wise to me to keep a relatively few natural areas if only to see what a natural forest will look like over the decades, and centuries. Most forests have been harvested three or four times. Maine foresters talk of the "Fourth Forest," i.e. a forest that has been cut four times.

My town land trust, at least, has a policy of allowing our 500 acres to remain forever wild, so that over the decades something that approaches what the first first pioneers saw 400 years ago, may eventually emerge.

Just as the roadless national forests will never be a significant part of the total forests, our land trust will never be but a tiny percentage of the forests in my town. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth protecting.

Our town land trust has owned significant forest land only about a decade. But already the logging roads are disappearing and a sense of wildness is gradually emerging.

Ideally, the roadless areas should have been a cross section of the National Forests. In fact politics made that impossible. The roadless areas that remain are mostly places where the logging companies found harvesting too expensive, or the quality not worth harvesting.

Now the administration wants to go out of its way to entice people to harvest these last of the wild lands.

Weary

[Colter]

Many conservatives refer to people fighting to save ANWR or to protect roadless areas as "extremists." But in these issues, who are the extremists, really?

About 4% of the US is wilderness. In other words, we are using 96% of our country for timber, oil, mining, farming, homes, malls, and other uses. I don't think anyone in this forum is suggesting we stop using this 96% of the land in a responsible manner.

What some people on this forum ARE suggesting is that we continue to develop the remaining 4% of the wilderness because we NEED those resources. Others are suggesting we save the remaining 4% because the wilderness has value and exploiting it will not solve the real problems.

Which is the extremist viewpoint?

[bulldog49]

What some people on this forum ARE suggesting is that we continue to develop the remaining 4% of the wilderness because we NEED those resources. Others are suggesting we save the remaining 4% because the wilderness has value and exploiting it will not solve the real problems.

Which is the extremist viewpoint?

Tell me who has said we should develop all the 4%. This is the typical rhetoric that comes from the left, always twist what others say to make them appear to be extremists.

I remember when the debate was going on about building the trans-Alaska pipeline environementalists where claiming it would disrupt the caribou migration and cause irrepairable damage to the permafrost. None of the dire predictions made have come to fruition. Likewise, the claims of acid rain killing off the eastern forests that were being thrown around 10 years ago have been proven to be invalid.

I've heard too many from that persusion cry wolf I tend to believe very little what they say.

[TJ aka Teej]

No group puts out more false information than the environmental lobby.

Here's two groups that you must not have heard of:
www.gop.com
www.foxnews.com

[TJ aka Teej]

...the claims of acid rain killing off the eastern forests that were being thrown around 10 years ago have been proven to be invalid.

"Researchers now know that acid rain causes slower growth, injury, or death of forests."
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/acidra...s/forests.html
"Acid Rain Stunts Eastern Forests"
http://www.waterconserve.info/articl...p?linkid=40174

[Rain Man]

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 2, 8:01 PM ET

SEATTLE - A federal judge struck down a move by the Bush administration to ease logging restrictions in the Northwest, saying the government failed to consider the effect on rare plants and animals.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said in her ruling Monday that under federal law, authorities had an obligation to show why the logging restrictions should be changed.

Pechman said she would not issue any specific injunctions pending further hearings, and the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday it hopes to salvage the Bush initiative by fixing the problems cited by the judge.

The rule change, which took effect in the spring of 2004, said forest managers no longer had to look for rare species before logging. The timber industry had complained for years that the rules were overly intrusive and could take years to complete.

Instead, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were to use information provided by state officials in Washington, Oregon and California in determining whether to allow logging, prescribed burns, and trail- or campground-building.

The change applied to 5.5 million acres of old-growth and other forests in the Northwest.

A coalition of environmental groups sued to stop the change, saying it would double logging on federal land in the region and have disastrous consequences for rare species. They cheered the ruling Tuesday.

"That's a huge decision for people who care about old-growth forests in our region and the species that depend on them," said Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist with the World Wildlife Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Rex Holloway, a regional spokesman for the Forest Service, said the agency's lawyers were reviewing the decision and the "inadequacies" pointed out by the judge.

[Krag]

This is a tired argument--if it weren't for "free trade" pacts, there would be a lot more jobs, better jobs than logging and mining which can admittedly be done well, but also often leave hills and mountains bare and desolate. Why not make agricultural hemp legal--now that would meet many of our pulp paper needs without the environmental degradation. That argument has been made well and often by both libertarians and the green party.

[LEGS]

DOES ANYONE ELSE HERE BELONG TO THE NRDC? THIS IS A GOOD GROUP WITH TIES TO MANY OTHER ENVIROMENTAL GROUPS SUCH AS THE SIERRA CLUB AND THE NATURE CONSERVACY. IF YOUR NOT A MEMBER YET OR WOULD LIKE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, WWW.NRDC.ORG. THE NATIONAL RESOURCE DEFENSE COUNCIL IS WHAT THE INTIALS STAND FOR. TALK ABOUT SAVING ANWR AND MANY OTHER AREAS OF THIS COUNTRY AND OTHER REMOTE PLACES IN THE WORLD. THESE GUYS MEAN BUSINESS. I URGE ANY WHO ARE INTERESTED IN SAVING OUR COUNTRYS LAST REMAINING WILD PLACES TO LOOK INTO THIS GROUP. HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE. JOIN THE FIGHT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO SOME GOOD FOR THE BENIFIT OF OUR WAY OF LIFE. HIKE FREE AND SAFE.