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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (103763)	5/11/2005 4:47:11 PM
From: Oral Roberts	Respond to of 108807

The loonie groups sued and won and stopped the harvest of the down and burnt trees from Yellowstone after the fire. All of that wood that could have been saved, wasted. Boundary Water Canoe area is another fine example of enviro loonacy after the big storms up there downed 1000's of acres of trees. Nope they can't be harvested either. As the forester in charge of that area put it you are looking at the largest forest fire the world has ever seen in this area. It's not a matter of if, only when. I surely would not want to be in that non motorized and wild area when she goes. Canoe ain't nearly fast enough.

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (103763)	5/11/2005 5:43:10 PM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 108807

There is a school of thought that says down and dying timber has an ecological function and should be left. That is valid to a certain extent, but as usual there are complicating factors. A forest stand produces the energy equivalent of about 300 gallons of gasoline per acre per year. If that stored energy is left it can be decomposed by organisms, emitting carbon dioxide in the process which leads to global warming. If that wood is harvested, it acts like a carbon sink and reduces the amount of CO2 emitted. Then there is the possibility of wildfires, which are very expensive to extinguish, create unacceptable soil damage sometimes and have a lot of ancillary costs. If dead and dying timber is allowed to remain, any wildfire will be a LOT worse than it would be if the timber could be harvested. From my point of view, it's a matter of objectives. If your objective is to have a natural ecosystem, as in wilderness areas, dead and down timber should be left right where it is. You have to accept risks posed by uncontrolled wildfire lapping over out of the wilderness. If your objective is to have a forest that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people over the long run, and the land has no designation as wilderness, most of the time harvesting dead and down timber makes sense. Harvesting dead and down timber reduces the fire hazard, prepares the area for management, and returns value to the land owners from the sale of timber. Some times salvage harvest can take the pressure off the rest of the forest that is managed for timber. The only time I would recommend against harvesting such timber is if logging can't be done without unacceptable damage. There are many ways to reduce damage with specialized methods such as helicopter logging, but most of them raise the costs quite a bit. The decision then rests on economics and overriding objectives, such as the importance or value of capturing the wood that would otherwise be lost. Some species of trees must be harvested within a year or two of dying. Others last much longer. Alaska yellow cedar lasts a VERY long time after death. Hemlock and grand fir should be harvested promptly. My opinion of these folks that always insist on preventing the harvest of timber, whether it is planned as part of an regulated yield, or whether it is emergency salvage is that they just want to raise the costs of logging and forest management so high that the enterprise will simply collapse of its own weight. If that happens, we can always get our timber from China and Russia. They don't worry about such things over there.