"David J. Bockman" wrote:

The most recent clearcutting is a little less than a mile
from my home, a
gorgeous tract of rolling wooded hills about 40 acres or so
in size.

snip


Perhaps most egregious of all, just at the edge of the
property line sits
(now sat) a huge old red oak, 300+ years old, approximately 8
feet in
diameter at eye level.... they cut that down a week ago.

It will all be raw, terraformed clay in another week, ready
for
construction.


Same thing going on where I live, David. Orange County is the
fastest growing area
in NY State because of the proximity to NYC.

I have an elderly parishoner, a retired farmer, who has given
me permission to
collect on his 180-acre farm that has been in his family for
250 years. He has
Parkinson's Disease, and knows he won't live forever. He said
I may as well have
some of the trees, since he realizes that after he's gone the
whole thing will
undoubtedly be developed. His beautiful farm is surounded by
McMansions.


Well, you guys could all move to Florida. We've never _heard_ of
development down here!

Of course we have NO native forest left that isn't either in the
hands of the state (thankfully) or groups like the Nature
Conservancy (thankfully also, but they then sell it to the state
at exhorbitant prices).

Of course, we do have gazillions of square miles of second-growth
forests that are still healthy (if scrubby) and gazillions
squared square miles of planted pines which are, in effect,
ecological deserts.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - "Pssst!
Wanna buy some swampland? Cheap!"

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