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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (14970)	9/25/2002 9:51:16 PM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 93284

The forests in the east have been cut over three times already! The forests in the west are still on their first run, and depending on the particular forest, anywhere from 5 to 35% have been harvested. Don't quote me on the percentages. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska has only about 685,000 acres allocated to timber production out of six million acres of productive forest. It will take 100 years to get through the 685,000 acres, at which time the first forests cut will be 100 years old. The Russians clearcut around Sitka with no thought whatsoever of forest management. Those clearcuts are now dense forest that only a knowledgeable observer would be able to tell they were once cut. What environmentalists want is total shutdown of all timber harvest, and they do everything in their power to achieve it. They keep saying they don't want shutdown, but it is a bald-faced lie, in my opinion. They do. The National Environmental Policy Act requires that all the resources of the forest be analyzed, so your statement that "Those considerations are left out of most of your harvest formulas " is completely false. They are analyzed to the point where it takes fifteen years to do a plan that is supposed to have a ten year life. The environmentalists are never happy with the results and neither is the timber industry. Maybe it is just about right since everybody is equally unhappy. But it is my understanding that some 80% of the national forests have been cut at some time and are therefore not old-growth. It's a fiction to think that environmentalists want to ban all timber harvest, they just want to preserve some of the forest areas. That means not just preserving the trees, but preserving enough contiguous wild land for the birds and animals to thrive in sustainable numbers. Those considerations are left out of most of your harvest formulas.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (14970)	9/26/2002 2:29:48 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 93284

TigerPaw, Re: I don't have numbers handy, But it is my understanding that some 80% of the national forests have been cut at some time In the Pacific Northwest, including Washington, Oregon and Idaho, 98% of all old-growth virgin forests have been harvested. Alaska, where Dave can't see the forest for the trees, is the only part of the nation that hasn't been aggressively harvested to near complete extinction of old-growth timber. Not for lack of trying. <g> Bush's scheme to cut the last of the old-growth in the name of fire safety is a cruel hoax. Old growth forests such as we have here in the PNW are substantially less prone to catastrophic crown fires than the second and third growth stands that are the location of vast new human development. In old growth pine and fir forests, the number of large trees is around 50 trees per acre in healthy stands. In most of the previously harvested areas that are the prime fire areas, the count of trees is often up to 1,500 per acre. It is this over-crowding that is the prime cause of the hot crown fires spreading in firestorms. Cutting the old growth does absolutely nothing to protect communities form fire damage.