Remember the Spotted Owl?
Sure there was some collateral damage, as in hard working folks put out of work, communities destroyed, economies crippled, but we save the Owl, right?
English: Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). Six Rivers National Forest, NW California http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfsregion5/3699675982/. Slovenčina: Sova sa v priebehu dejín stala symbolom múdrosti. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the late 1980s, we heard that logging was wiping out the owls, and to save them we had to gut one of the Pacific Northwest’s major industries. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the spotted owl threatened in 1990, and in 1992 began putting its habitat off-limits to timber production — 5.3 million acres of it by 2008. In November, the Obama administration nearly doubled that total to 9.6 million acres.
By some estimates, more than 200 mills in the area have closed in the past two decades. Thousands of jobs disappeared. At least we saved the owl, right?
Well, no. Its numbers kept right on declining.
In the intervening years, we’ve learned that its difficulties primarily come from a bigger and tougher rival, the barred owl. Even Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe has noted “mounting evidence that competition from barred owls is a major factor in the spotted owl’s decline.”
So why do we keep making the same mistakes?
Heavy-handed federal regulation can put some of our communities on the endangered list, hurting local industries as well as government finances.
The reason is the avalanche of species under review for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Since 1973, the federal government has listed about 1,400 species as endangered or threatened. Just since 2007, though, more than 1,250 additional species have been petitioned for listing.
This surge is a result of “megapetitions,” requests by activists for reviews of hundreds of species at a time. The Fish and Wildlife Service can’t handle these requests within the statutory deadlines. In fact, clogging the process seems to be the intent of the activists. Delays lead to lawsuits — and settlements on the plaintiffs’ terms.
Let’s not let the Gunnison Sage Grouse become our Spotted Owl!
Read The Washington Times article HERE
Related articles
- Feds consider killing barred owls to save another type (news.blogs.cnn.com)
- Survival of endangered spotted owls forces B.C. to kill cousin species (timescolonist.com)
- Shooting of owls OK’d to protect endangered species (cbc.ca)
- Survival of endangered spotted owls forces cull of cousin species B.C. population threatens to dip to single digits due to loss of habitat, encroachment by larger birds (vancouversun.com)
- Owl vs. Owl (slate.com)
the way I understand the mexican spotted owl situation is none are here but the habitat is just in case the want to come .just more junk science
This figure from the article blows my mind.
“Just since 2007, though, more than 1,250 additional species have been petitioned for listing.”
They are controlling the system by overwhelming it!
Ending the Holocaust really put a lot of Nazis out of work too. Boo-hoo.
Straw man argument and Godwin’s law in your first and only post! Your flame went up in flames.
Woot! This article and the post are complaining about jobs lost to environmental protection regulations. So we should feel sorry for the people who lose their logging job, instead of feeling sorry for the old-growth forest and all of its inhabitants that have been annihilated. Too bad you didn’t have a good answer. My flaming point is that just because someone pays you to do it, i.e. a job, is never a good enough reason to destroy a person, a living thing, the planet, or any part of it. That was the typical Nazi defense, just doing my job, just following orders, just doing my part in the economy. It’s a poor defense for anyone. If that is your job, get a different one. Like maybe studying old growth forests instead of clear-cutting them.
Do you have a non-denial denial for this too?
Also thanks for informing me of Godwin’s law, I’d never heard of it.
Glad I could teach you something.
BTW, you ROCK! at Godwins Law (as in comparing dead jews to lumber, now thats some major hyperbole!) and as you probably found out, he who invokes the Nazis loses the argument by default.
“Why do we keep making the same mistake?”
How is doing everything we can to prevent the completely avoidable extinction of a species a “mistake”?
Is it possible that barred owls and spotted owls are now forced to compete over greatly reduced habitat, as a result of deforestation? Is it possible that it is not one single factor which threatens the spotted owl but a combination?
I didn’t say anything about anyone of any ethnicity or race or religion, although I can see how someone’s associations with the war-that-shall-not-be-named at the hands of the political-party-that-shall-not-be-named might infer that. I think the historical record shows that the victims of the army-that-shall-not-be-named were not limited to any one ethnicity. Although if you would like to make that comparison, you might observe that the ethnicity-which-shall-not-be-named had more of an ability to defend themselves than trees or owls do.
This argument, that getting paid for it don’t make it right, applies to everyone everywhere. Are you invoking some guy who made up some arbitrary internet posting protocol to avoid actually responding to the argument I have presented? That’s twice you’ve replied to me, after I unknowingly violated Godwin’s law. Do I get some sort of internet-speeding ticket for that?
I was merely protesting with the implication of this post, that all jobs should be preserved at all costs, until, well until what? Until there’s no fish left in the sea? Until all the old-growth forests are timbered? It’s a totally false choice, between jobs, and not clearcutting, which the timber industry and other extractive industries are fond of presenting. Guess what? When the forest are gone, so are the logging jobs.
…When the (forests) are gone…
Who said jobs should be preserved at all costs? Don’t you think it’s a little sad when jobs and economies are decimated because of what turned out to be ‘junk’ science because it suited some groups political agenda? And if I recall correctly clear cutting was already outlawed around 1972 or so, long before the spotted owl controversy ensued. Apparently it suited some political agendas to lead people to believe it was still being done.
Thanks for your good points, and your patience in maintaining this dialogue, with someone bringing a different perspective to the website. These are really important conversations to have. You may not change my mind, and I may not change yours, but I guess that’s the point of having of having a comment stream, the opportunity to present opposing viewpoints.
1. Just because you call it junk science, doesn’t make it so. See my previous point about spotted owls and barred owls. I’m glad we’re still adding to our knowledge about forests and spotted owls, and that’s so much easier to do while we still have old growth forests and spotted owls.
2. The clear-cutting done pre-1972 contributed greatly to the current and ongoing endangerment of various species. Perhaps the greater issue is that the extinction of these species are indicators of excessive timbering. Any single given species extinction/endangerment is also an indicator of the greater problem. For example, certain recent human activities have caused species extinctions at a rate greater than any of the prior known five great planetary mass extinction events, like the asteroid collision presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. We’ve accomplished in decades what has previously taken hundreds or thousands of years. I really wasn’t using the word holocaust lightly. (whoops I said it again.) How would you refer to a mass extinction event on that scale, on the scale of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, but happening 10 or 20 times faster? I find it extremely disconcerting.
3. Excessive timbering can take many forms, one form being what you know as clear-cutting. There are other forms of timbering which are slightly less destructive. I use clear-cutting as only one example. Perhaps not every timber company observes such prohibitions. Perhaps we now acquire wood from other parts of the world where clear-cutting is not outlawed, for example, the Amazon, or Indonesia. Do we really NEED this timber? For example, this wood is being used to build houses in a nation where there are approximately 22 houses standing empty, to each person that is homeless, so it’s not like we need new houses at this point. The housing market and the real estate market want new houses to be built, but I’m sure you can see the distinction I am making here. We’re not yet forced to make a choice, for instance, between sheltering ourselves, and clear-cutting forests.
4. I hardly think environmental laws have decimated the economy. That’s your straw man. We’re hemorrhaging jobs because American corporations send American jobs overseas, mostly having to do with “free trade” agreements like GATT and NAFTA. American corporations continue to create as many jobs overseas as they do domestically, because they are allowed to, because politicians on both sides of the aisle continue to care more about corporate profits and campaign donations, than American workers. Production in the US continues to set all time records while wages supposedly tied to production, have actually flatlined for about four decades, which also hurts employment, when we can no longer make ends meet with the jobs that are available. Private prison corporations now put prisoners to work in the US, for pennies on the dollar, stealing real jobs and real income away from those who remain unincarcerated.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: big business loves it when there’s mass unemployment. CEO’s are rewarded handsomely for mass layoffs. It’s the way the economy is incentivized, to build the ranks of the armies of unemployed. Corporate profits have climbed steadily for the last four years with a supposed enemy of big business in the White House; and while unemployment has remained high, Wall Street sets new records. Good economy does not equal low unemployment. How is this relevant to the above article? As long as we’re blaming environmentalists or environmental protection regulations for unemployment and destroyed communities (a bit of hyperbole, it’s not like when a tornado or a hurricane hits a community and it’s physically destroyed), then the real culprits keep smoking their stogies and grinning like thieves on their private jets.
5. Saving the planet, and by that I mean not destroying it, is WAY more important than “the economy,” so yeah, if it ever came to that, I think we should radically reconfigure our economy to include the non-commodity economy of air, water, and soil which is going on all around us all the time. When this economy does well, people with a lot of money get more of it. When this economy does poorly, poor people suffer. I agree that is remarkably unfair, and I think we’re fully capable of coming up with a better system than that.
6. Yes, who does say that certain jobs in certain industries should be preserved at all costs? Not me. This post is explicitly blaming environmental protections for the loss of certain jobs, and the welfare of those relevant breadwinners and their families. If saving trees or owls or tree frogs or giant redwoods means that we lose some logging jobs, then I’m sure our communities will pitch in to help find other work for out-of-work loggers. Banning whaling put whalers out of work too, but they were damn close to putting themselves out of work. In tough times we can all pull together. What do soldiers do for work after a war? Maybe out-of-work loggers can do those awesome chainsaw carvings of bears and eagles and cougars, from pieces of already-timbered trees? Maybe they could do some gardening? That would make their income go farther as well. If they really like being in the forest, maybe they could get jobs studying forests, instead of timbering them, as I said before. I’ve even heard of loggers becoming (gasp!) enviromentalists! I’m sorry that it’s so tough to find work in the US these days, I can relate to that. But I’m not sorry if there are fewer of certain jobs, like logging. Maybe logging towns are a little like mining towns, that seem to be doing well until the mine is tapped out and then the town dies, and everyone moves on.
Also I wish it was true that we don’t clear cut in North America anymore, as you say, but I’m afraid you do not recall correctly: a couple of internet searches will provide photographic evidence of recent and ongoing clear cuts in California and Nova Scotia, for example, while new permits have been applied for to clear cut more of Oregon’s forests. It’s not just a “green scare,” or a political tactic. Nor is it the only harmful method of logging.
A tourniquet will cure a bout of poison oak on your hand. As soon as the itching begins watch for the little fluid filled blister. As soon as they appear apply the tourniquet tightly at the wrist and soon the poison oak will be completely cured.
This is exactly what has occurred in the timber industry. Complaints, protests, manipulated public opinion instead of solid science has destroyed, killed, amputated most of the timber industry. It has caused the federal government to disobey contractual law in relation to the O&C timber grant lands. Has decimated lives, businesses, whole communities for nothing. Listen carefully to me. “The Spotted Owl is a sick hoax”. Part of the hoax is real, the Spotted Owl is on it’s way out. That has nothing to do with logging or improper land management. The real loosers are those who have bought this hook line and sinker and believe they are doing the “right thing” while destroying the lives of other Americans. They are totally motivated to go against the flow of society and support a higher cause. A higher cause that is more important than individuals or industries or communities. A cause so great it supersedes mankind all together. Someday they will realize the truth of my words and it will be a time of awakening for them. They will understand how they were used as a tool to take control of those free Americans who used to control their own destinies. Maybe this describes you Reuben, maybe it does not.
In any case the point of this article is that logging or not logging made no difference on the Spotted Owl.
Amen! farmrdave
farmrdave, thank you for your perspective and your opinion, and again I regret that my initial remark was careless, patently offense to many people, and easily misunderstood.
While I do not believe everything that scientists say, and you probably don’t either, this article in the Washington Times is not a piece of journalism which is interviewing various scientists in order to try to get to the heart of the matter, it is an opinion piece and as such the author is entitled to their opinion as well, but they are also claiming no special knowledge or expertise in the matter. The author quotes one sentence of one person’s opinion that there is no conclusive evidence of any kind, but only “mounting evidence that competition from barred owls is a major factor in the spotted owl’s decline,” meaning that the barred owl cannot be considered the only factor. That being said, we may both agree that even and especially journalists cannot be expected to understand all of the science or quote all of their sources fully and accurately, or even to consult the most relevant knowledgeable sources, but they should be expected to at least attempt to corroborate or refute statements like this.
Why is there suddenly competition from the barred owl? If the habitat and forage of any creature is reduced or eliminated, that creature’s population is reduced, even beyond critical mass, and/or eliminated entirely. I would suggest, regarding the Spotted Owl, which I agree with you is not really the central issue, that if its major threat is only from another owl, then the Spotted Owl should have disappeared *long ago* unless there is a reason that there are suddenly more barred owls, i.e. a radical increase in barred owl habitat and forage, such as is the case with the common crow or raven for instance which benefit greatly from roadkill, but seems unlikely in the case of the barred owl since both owls are competing for the same habitat and forage, or else both owls are dealing with greatly reduced habitat and forage and suddenly forced to compete, and the Spotted Owl might be the more vulnerable of the two, due to human deprivation of the Spotted Owl’s habitat, which happens to be large stands of dense, old-growth forest. While it may not be the only wildlife which is limited to such habitat, it may happen to be at the moment the most knowable and “charismatic” of such creatures. Each of these creatures and organisms gives us a chance to learn and observe more about how all of the elements of a unique or rare ecosystem work and cooperate and benefit each other.
We may very well disagree about the desirability or undesirability of various methods of timbering various forests, but you also seem to be implying that we have a need or necessity to do so, which is being unduly or unscrupulously obstructed, so much so that the good “of all mankind” is being undermined… If I have this wrong, nevermind, but if so, why exactly do you believe that this is necessary, or some sort of human right? While I can imagine many circumstances in which I may wish to fell a few trees, to clear a bit of room for a house and a garden for example, I am aware of no such right nor obligation nor necessity, although of course you may disagree philosophically. Further, you state that to object is to go against the flow of society. Do you believe that flow of society is always in the right? I would suspect not, if it came to educating your own children, or preventing someone from dumping toxic waste into a stream in your backyard, for example. I’m sure we can both think of many more examples. As far as serving a higher cause, I’ve met very few people of faith, who are the majority of people who describe themselves as serving a higher cause, that have any objections to any kind or quantity of deforestation, and in fact they are generally in favor of it. Likewise with those whose higher cause is power, or material wealth, or greed.
I don’t really understand your metaphor about poison oak, although I certainly understand your point about feeling that we’re often being lied to or the wool is being pulled over our eyes; but on that point, would you believe everything the logging industry and their associates and representatives say? Don’t they have an obvious vested interest in advocating their own position, that being more logging, with less regulation? I would be surprised if they would advocate any position which would limit their own industry, they would be absolute fools to do that. But there is no law that says that they have to tell the truth about any science or scientific findings, or research. Why would you assume that environmentalists have a bigger incentive to lie to us than, for example, the timber industry? If we’re going to see a hoax behind every tree and owl and environmentalist, I don’t see why the timber industry or any industry gets an automatic free pass from healthy skepticism. I can see plenty of incentive for any industry to be less than honest, or to simply not inquire as to the damage their practices and products result in, but on the other hand I really don’t understand what the implied incentive is for environmentalists to be deceptive and dishonest, although I know that accusation is very popular. Have they been bought off by the owls? Bribed by the tree frogs?
Roubon, Shouting down a well. When the sound comes back it sounds like a bunch of words that actually have little meaning.
Why do you assume that the favored habitat of the Spotted Owl is dense old growth forest? For much of the first decade of Spotted Owl research that was the assumption. So studies were only done in old growth fir forest. Later it was learned by the scientists (likely self proclaimed) that the Owl is like most other creatures and they live where they can find all needed circumstances. The first Spotted Owl I saw was roosting in a hollow ash tree at lest 15 miles from any stand of old growth. So it was discovered that the Owl does about as well in re-prod forest as in old growth.
Reuben says, “How is doing everything we can to prevent the completely avoidable extinction of a species……” My answer to that part of your statement/question is. “I have important work to do here and a vary short time to do it”. If I am lucky enough to have 70 productive years in my life that is not nearly enough. If you wish to spend your life swimming upstream instead of accomplishing what it is you are here to do than so be it. I have two great grandchildren. Saving a Owl that is dwindling due to it’s inability to compete for food is not high on my priority list of items to spend my time on.
In all of the known universe, microscopic and celestial, the only constant that is known to man is this fact. Everything is changing. All things are either in the beginning, middle or end. That not only includes mosquitoes, but whole galaxies and everything in between.
So we have a dwindling owl population. That is no reason to destroy the financial lives of so many hard working Americans. Why should Americans have to subsidize Canadian and South American logging to make imported forest products affordable so that average US Americans can afford them? Show me anywhere in the lists of limits on government where it is allowed to do that to honest tax paying voting American citizens. It is not there. It is not within the prevue of our government to destroy Americans livelihood in the name of protecting Owl habitat. The government exists to secure and protect the rights and property of Americans. Whats more, documented proof will soon be available the Owls decline had little of anything to do with harvesting timber within it’s limited habitat in the northwest.
Another point is that the Northern Spotted Owl is really all of one kind with the Spotted Owl who’s major habitat is in Central America, and into northern South America. If you pay attention to crow colonies you will see greater differences between mountain crows and coastal crows than has ever been recorded between any two groups of Spotted Owls. It is all one breed. Not a different breed in every river drainage. ODFW says they are cross breeding with Barred Owls. Maybe this entire effort of preventing the decline of Spotted Owls is having the effect of preventing a news species of Owl from appearing on the scene.
When you read my remarks you are certain you are not shouting down a well.
Posting separately in case the moderator decides it is off topic:
Lastly, but out of concern for anyone including yourself that may contract poison oak in the future, I completely object to your statements regarding the treatment of poison oak, having contacted both poison oak and poison ivy a few times. It’s not fun, especially for those who are particularly allergic. Please do not follow this advice! It can and will make it worse! Generally poison oak will not manifest itself until 24-48 hours after initial contact. In the meantime, the oils have been spread to everything else you might have touched since it got on your skin and clothes, even after washing with soap and water (never wash with hot water if you know you have contacted poison oak, hot water can spread it to other parts of your body!), like other clothes, furniture, and especially bed sheets, especially if you don’t realize you have contracted it in the first place.
There is at least one effective product out there that I know of that is designed to extract most of the harmful oils from your skin and clothes, and it’s found over-the-counter in most drugstores and maybe you know about it. I’ve never heard of any effective home remedies, but if you know of any please let us know. Once the poison oak has been spread from your body to other things, after you initially contact it but before the outbreak, you will continue to spread it to other parts of your body as long as you touch those other things, like your “clean” clothes, your bedclothes, your couch, etc, even for *weeks* afterwards, which creates the illusion that it is spreading through your blood system. As far as I know the only way to get it in your blood is to smoke it or inject it in which case you’ll have lots of other problems. A tourniquet can do nothing, and waiting for the outbreak to manifest is not a good idea, with all due respect. Those oils transfer from your hand to other things so easily. The sooner the oils are extracted from your skin the better, particularly within the first couple of hours to mitigate a really bad outbreak, but as far as I know there are no true remedies.
I’ll let it stay… Re-read his post . You’re not seeing the forest for the trees.
The internet is a source of much information, some true some fiction. Some is intended to educate other is intended to hoodwink.
Clear cutting units of standing trees is good for many reasons. Primarily it reduces cost. Why is that? A clear cut unit concentrates the activities at one location. Means fewer roads, less fuel used, less restoration required to streams and other areas. Can then be replanted and reforested much sooner. In a clear cut the sun is reaching the ground which promotes faster tree growth. The trees are all competing with each other producing vary tall strait trunks with few limbs. All trees are growing at same rate which produces much better and more lumber from each tree. The trees are then harvested at the time when rapid growth slows. This means the wood is not infected with splits, pitch, rot, white speck, insect damage, wind damage, fire, etc. ( It is nearly all usable wood). There is less waste created during harvest of the trees, less clean-up. Replanting, re-harvesting the same units sequesters more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses less fuel to maintain.
All other forms of logging require greater effort with less return, use more fuel, disturb larger areas, increase cost and liability. More roads. Less carbon sequestered. Cause prices that are so much greater than imported that it shifts logging to parts of the world where there are fewer environmental controls hence greater damage to our biosphere.
Clear-cut, replant, re-harvest, clear-cut, replant re-harvest, is the least damaging method of utilizing one of the greatest renewable resources known to man. This resource is probably the single most beneficial one. There are literally hundreds of products produced from the harvest of forests.
In times passed logging was done with simple goals, cut the tree, use the wood. For several generations this has been improved upon possibly more than in any other industry. In this industry profit goals are similar if not exactly the same as the goals wished for by those who wish to stop logging. The difference is that those in the timber industry understand the science behind what is happening in our forests.
Now you decide, are my comments intended to educate of hoodwink?
Have a nice day.
So what you’re saying is, the timber industry likes to cut down trees because they’re worth money when they’re dead but not when they’re alive and the timber industry likes living trees because someday they can be cut down and then they’re worth money. But I’m the one that can’t see the *forest* for the trees?
How can we determine the value of a living forest, and all of the wildlife therein? There must be a way to do that, to see that the forests are connected to watersheds and rivers and oceans and atmosphere.
Pine forests and hardwood forests do not regenerate in the same fashion. Many pine forests do not regenerate. Many forests regenerate but with different trees. Clear-cuts often result in total soil loss, along with the loss of the microorganisms and fungi therein, along with a loss of shade canopy, along with a loss of the ability of the land to retain water, creating desert-like effects where even planted trees fail; these are all facts acknowledged by the timber industry as well. While the larger effect is to make forests more vulnerable to destructive wild fires, as opposed to healthy and regular forest fires. Clear-cutting, as you have described it, is undoubtedly the most destructive and also the cheapest way to timber, with the greatest profit margin for the timber company. But regardless, a monoculture tree planting is not the same as the complex ecosystem which was destroyed so that some timber industry CEO can have a yacht and a seventh house. There are literally a million other ways to make a living, besides timbering old-growth forests.
I see no reason to blame environmental protections in general for the general ongoing loss of quality jobs and living wages in the United States, which has had a very real impact on many of us, especially lately, for reasons I’ve already mentioned and I won’t repeat. The very fact that it takes even under the best of circumstances a whole human generation or two for a North American forest to regenerate does make this particularly resource extraction/depletion industry a very unstable foundation for a human economic community, not unlike mining towns that boom and bust. When the trees are all gone, so are the logging jobs. It’s definitely a job that if done thoroughly, eventually puts itself out of business. Chaco Canyon in Northern New Mexico was once forested but is now barren desert, the “Fertile Crescent,” birthplace of Western civilization, was once forested but is now mostly barren war-torn desert, Northern Africa was once forested but is now the Saharan desert, Europe was once mostly forested and when that was gone they came to North America and continued the clearing of forests with renewed vigor. Is there a lesson to be learned here about reckless deforestation as a major contributing factor to the subsequent collapse of great civilizations? Jared Diamond makes this case in much more detail than I will go into here.
You raise some great questions regarding how speciation is determined. How much genetic variation determines a separate species? New ways of studying DNA would seem to indicate there is more variation than we’ve been previously aware of. Dogs of different species interbreed, but often the grand effect is weakening the canine genetic pool. Also horses and donkeys can reproduce but are not mistaken for the same species, nor are the lions and tigers which oddly can reproduce. That being said, mass extinctions such as we are seeing unfold today have in the past resulted in a loss of up to ninety-eight percent of all living things, due to asteroid impact or similar global catastrophe, and there was not a return to comparable genetic complexity for 50 million years, so it’s bit of a stretch to say that species extinctions result in greater genetic diversity. But I respect that you are familiar with these birds, you must have a much greater appreciation for them, having seen one yourself, than someone that lives in a city somewhere and has never seen or heard any kind of owl, and maybe never will. I’m glad that you have the opportunity to pass on your appreciation of owls to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I hope they will still have the chance to someday see some for themselves.
The first time I was in an old growth forest, in the midst of a stand of giant redwood trees that were already centuries old when Jesus walked the earth, I couldn’t help but think how limited our human perspective can be, compared to the lifespan of a redwood our lifespans are so relatively brief. The second thought I had was thank god someone saved the last few of these from ruthless timber companies who can only see the value of these trees and forests in dollar amounts and board feet. And the third thought I had was how incredibly tragic that more than ninety-six percent of the old-growth redwoods were annihilated mercilessly, sometimes just to make picnic tables at campgrounds. Yes, a picnic table made of redwood will last a really long time compared to picnic tables made of other kinds of wood, but nowhere near as long as a living redwood would go on living and reproducing, obviously. The redwood is so valuable to the timber industry once it has been killed, that if those trees hadn’t been protected with first state park status and then national park status, we can be sure based on your reasoning that today they would all be gone, forever.
As far as swimming upstream, well heck, I reckon even a dead fish can go downstream.
As far as shouting down a well, I believe that is also known as an echo chamber. What do I think of your comments? I think your comments are intended to parrot industry talking points, which you have done very well. And all I’m saying is that there are other angles from which to see a forest, than from behind a chainsaw or through a crosshairs, other angles which might be equally valid or even more valid.
I also appreciate your comments on the constant changing nature of nature, as this is very much how I think of things too. Ultimately, I hope that when we die we leave behind a planet that is conducive to further and ongoing evolution for all lifeforms, as all other lifeforms have done before us, or we wouldn’t be here at all.
I’m going to bow out of this conversation, and I’ll give you the last word. Thanks again!
It’s funny you bring up “talking points” . I don’t know farmrdave but his posts read like he’s speaking from real world experience and his observations over many years, while yours read like the talking points I read on the Sierra Club website. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because someone works in the timber industry or mineral extraction industry, that they don’t love and enjoy nature.
No, I said what I said and not what you claim I said.
“How can we determine the value of a living forest, and all of the wildlife therein?” That is the crux of this matter. Listen carefully. The answer is, “What is the best benefit to man?”
Your talking makes me believe you are of the opinion that all men are stupid and intend to randomly take what they wish with no regard of nature or any other forms of life that we share our planet with. Accept you of course. You have all of the answers. Simple. You know best for everyone. Stop using our natural resources, period. We should not learn to benefit man while living with those other inhabitants. We should just stop because you know best.
My opinion is that you know little of anything about what goes on in the real world. Home many hundreds of hours have you spent working in and observing the natural forest? How many years have you experimented with different methods of expanding harvest while not damaging other natural flora and fauna? What do you know about the results of uncontrolled erosion? Abut the methods of erosion control? What do you know about building a road that damages nothing while still being reliable and long lasting? What do you know about reducing the fuel consumption of timber harvest? What do you know about benefiting from what is otherwise forest waste? What do you know about reducing or eliminating erosion after harvesting a stand of trees?
In a civil society there are several things necessary to maintain progress. One of them is to obey the law. We have enumerated laws in our country that are the measure against which all other laws must be measured. Ours is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic where the natural freedoms of men and women are guaranteed by the protections listed in the constitution and amendments. The endangered species act is not within things that are left to our government to make rules about. Everyone is able to talk about anything they wish. Spreading knowledge is paramount to success. On the other hand not you or any government agency has any legitimate right to determine what others will or will not do with their lives just because you decided this or that. There are exact measures of what authority is had by any government state or federal. I am vary tired of classroom educated persons with little practical experience dictating what we Americans can and cannot do with our land when they have little of any real knowledge about the issues under discussion.
200 years ago it was thought “drain the swamp and build houses” is the best method. No one needs swamps. Later it was discovered that to maintain a livable habitat we must maintain swamps. Now we do that. Those inside the timber industry know that healthy forests and swamps are necessary to the global environment, to the local environment. We also know the indispensable forest products must be continually produced. Let the timber industry do that. Give your input, listen to the results. Work with your fellow man, not against him. No one is the enemy here.
Thank you, farmerdave. It’s good to know that there are others out there who understand the big picture that is being painted and have eyes to see thru the lies that are being propagated by the so called, “environmental movement”. and others. The real “endangered species” will never make their list. .
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. You’ve used up just about all the patience I have considering your first post compared us to Nazis. You seem to have a lot to say, I suggest you start your own blog!
Have a good evening