POSTED IN alt.forestry

"Scott Murphy" wrote in message
om...
hey Joe,

Well, rant is certainly a good description of what I just read. I'm
going to start with my own. g I must admit that it was hard to
follow your argument throughout your writings; I think you were either
misinterpreting or reading stuff into what you had clipped out of the
article. I think you're just ****ed off because Mass. won't pass a
law that says management plans should be drawn up by foresters.
Anyways, here's my thoughts on what you put up on the page, though I
must admit I haven't read the original article, but I've participated
in this debate before.

Your first beef was with the title:

"The very first problem is the title of the publication, implying that
preservationists are a major source of the problem of poor forest
management and the resulting need for the state to import so much of
its wood products."

I don't think that that is what is being implied at all. My read on
that title is this: One might believe that preservation is really
taking place because someone has drawn a box around something on the
map and nothing "industrial" (or restricted activities) is going on
there... well, maybe that's not true. If the "industrialists" just
move down the road (say perhaps to Canada g) then in the grand
scheme of things, are we really coming ahead? I think that's pretty
much all they are pursuing here.

"They" said (note the use of the word IF)

"... well intentioned environmental activism may generate
unanticipated environmental degradation if it fails to recognize that
natural resource preservation is but an Illusion --IF-- it only serves
to shift the source of resources"



But, preserving scattered parcels DOESN'T serve to shift the source of
resources, and certainly wouldn't if rapacious logging was no longer
allowed.

As a civilization, we do need to PRESERVE SOME LAND. The only question is
how much and where, and what kind of land. Some think we already have enough
preserved and some think we need more. It's an unanswered question. Nobody
knows for sure.



It's like a not-in-my-backyard mentality.


Joe says:

"but the implication that a desire to preserve forest land leads to
greater importing of wood resources is unwarranted. "

Is it? We are talking about a finite resource here. What if all
private land WAS managed to your standards, and an increase in
productivity was realized, but society's demand was such that timber
from public land was needed to meet this demand. What if we wanted to
preserve public forests then? Where would the missing volume come
from?


Personally, I don't believe that most public forests should be "preserved"
and neither do 95% of environmentalists. Most believe that most public
forest should be very nicely managed. The small number of folks who think
that MOST public and much private forest should be unmanaged- well, why
worry about such small numbers, while the authors of that paper hardly
mention the fact that so much logging is of poor quality?

I just came from a foresters' event, where a consultant, a member of the
Forest Steward's Guild, from Vermont told the story that- 8,000 acres of
land he once managed, all within 10 acres of his home, to very high
silvicultural standards, later got sold to owners who got shafted by
loggers- who raped and pillaged that 8,000 acres. Such destruction will do
more to move forestry elsewhere, than the fact that a few acres more gets
locked up by the Audubon Society.




This is why they are pushing the recycling, use-reduction, line. What
good is a management/conservation ethic at the end of my hypothetical
line, if there is no consumption ethic tied in with it?



A consumption ethic is fine, but keep in mind, most Americans aren't
overconsuming- the overconsumption occurs mostly by America's upper class
who build multiple oversized houses, drive oversized cars, travel the world
in big jets, work in big city buildings which waste energy and who buy
oversized fancy furniture. Whenever the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer, we can be assured of increasing waste of resources- so the real
argument must become a fundamental political argument about the distribution
of wealth, a topic that the classicly right wing forestry world does not
understand and will never contribute to.


Do you
believe that if forest productivity was increased per acre it would
lead to a decrease in total acres treated? Or would use continue at
the same rate, increasing the total gains realized?

If productivity increased, based on great silviculture, the acres being
managed won't have to decrease because increasing population and continued
paving over of land will mean that the demand will continue to increase- and
yes, I'm all for slowing down our "civilization's" expansion over the
landscape.




Joe said:

"What ideology? That statement is absurd, and indicative of small
mindedness so prevalent in forestry academia. There may be ideologues
on the fringes of the enviro movement, but to talk about "mainstream
environmentalist ideology" implies that most environmentalists are
ideological and that their thinking isn't based on science but is
mostly political and emotional."

I wasn't sure that I agreed with your definition of "ideology", so I
took the liberty of looking it up in a gasp book! g Ideology,
amazingly, is defined as "the science of ideas; a system of ideas
belonging a party, class, or culture". No need to exclude science from
ideologies.


The usual use of the term implies something less than science as in
"communist ideology claimed it could build a perfect world". The use of the
word is pejorative, as those "science of ideas" are usually within the realm
of "social sciences" which as we all know are barely sciences at all. Nobody
speaks of "the ideology of quantum mechanics", or "the ideology of
mathematics". To say that those with a "preservation ethic" use an ideology
implies that their thinking is less than science. You need to read between
the lines.



My interpretation is that the authors simply believe that
preservation represents one of these "fringes" or as I like to put it,
one place on the spectrum.


That's their right to believe what they want, but their paper is a
"scientific paper" produced by The Harvard Forest, for its own political
purposes. And, yes, there are some at the fringes of the preservation
movement who'd like to lock up every acre on the planet, but they're in the
small minority. Audubon and Nature Conservancy lock up land, the National
Park Service locks up land- they can be seen as part of the preservation
movement as they want to preserve some land. Yes, anyone who wants to lock
up all the public land and some private land are indeed on the fringes, yet
they are a small number, and they are not in any way a threat to the multi-
billion dollar logging industry and the forestry profession- there are many,
much bigger issues which hold back great forestry being practiced
everywhere.



It's not a stretch to say that the
level/intensity/severity/type of activity that an ecoforester would
deem acceptable in the forest might be something the preservationist
would not be comfortable with. I think that their statement just
makes good sense: "Mainstream environmentalist ideology must embrace
multiple uses of the forest including harvesting - and local citizens
must consider the use of resources in their own backyard while
maintaining a keen awareness of the global environment."


Again, that use of "ideology" with "mainstream" is a bad choice of words-
the mainstream environmentalists are very intelligent folks who have a very
high education in solid science, whose ideas are very solid indeed, and to
use "ideology" implies that those folks are basing their thinking on
something less than science, on aesthetics, emotions and other fuzzy ways of
thinking. It's a put down.





Anyways, this is getting long winded, so I'll finish up quickly g.
If you look at the wood exports from Canada over the years you'll find
a huge spike right about the time that they "discovered" the owls and
took "appropriate action" g. So while all is good now in owl town,
the boreal forest is getting mowed down in Canada to make up for the
loss.

It wouldn't get mowed down if they actually practiced great forestry up
there. So, the authors of this paper should have pointed out that the
Canadians aren't practicing great forestry, rather than blame forestry's
woes on the handfull of people who think all public land ought to be locked
up.



..the owls you might say, have the illusion that the world is a
better place. Hence the need for the consumption ethic...

Are you going to cut back? Who is going to cut back? This needs to be
answered. It's the rich who need to cut back. I don't know anyone who
consumes too much. Whenever anyone says there needs to be a cutback of
consumption, they need to say who is going to have to cut back. The rich of
course think that everyone else needs to cut back, not themselves.


regardless
of how well you manage private land. What if private land owners
don't want to harvest anything? What if they are preservationists?
That is certainly their choice. Then what do you get? No net gain,
just more owls and less boreal forest. phewf

What do you think Joe? Am I crazy? Or just a snot-nosed forestry
student? g


The latter, currently being brainwashed by the "party line". G



Scott
p.s. - I'm with you about the cutting plans G We insert sarcasm
here omnipotent foresters have to stick together.