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Cutting down the forest for the trees
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Storie...035387,00.html
Article Last Updated: Saturday, December 07, 2002 - 12:18:27 AM MST Cutting down the forest for the trees Just over the Vermont line from Rowe is a vast lowland forest called Lamb Brook, filled with giant beech and maple trees that provide food for bears and shelter for migratory songbirds. A few years ago, the U.S. Forest Service proposed to open up this part of the Green Mountain National Forest to logging, but an immense popular outcry and a successful lawsuit in federal court by a local environmental group, Green Mountain Forest Watch, saved Lamb Brook. For a little while, anyway. Anyone who's taken a driving trip out west has seen the way the national forests are managed there, whole hillsides scalped to the bare earth for mile after mile and replanted as tree farms. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the hillsides are greener. The difference lies in citizen participation. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires decisions on the national forests, including the writing of the "forest plans" that govern their use, to be open to citizens. Out west, the timber industry dominates the process. Here, more people live near the forests and prefer to use them for recreation. Now, a seemingly innocuous rules change proposed by the Bush administration would take away the rights of citizens to intervene in timber sales and hand the timber industry a mandate to clear-cut the national forests. The U.S. Department of Agriculture official in charge of the Forest Service is Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. He has found a loophole in NEPA that exempts decisions with no environmental impact, like painting the outhouses at rest areas, from public review. Rey's clever idea was to expand that loophole to the writing of forest plans, so they could be rewritten to favor logging over environmental protection and citizens would have no right to object. There has been a tremendous outcry from environmental groups, which would be completely frozen out, and even from the Forest Service's own scientists, whose recommendations are being ignored. Sadly, there's little anyone can do. As a rules change, the measure doesn't have to go through Congress. There will be a 90-day comment period, after which the Bush administration is free to ignore the comments. This is no reason not to comment. The administration ended its bid to lower arsenic standards in drinking water after a huge public outcry, so write everyone from the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest to the White House. And go see Lamb Brook while you still can. Heading north out of Heartwellville, the hard-to-spot trailhead is on the north side of Route 100. |
#3
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Cutting down the forest for the trees
In article ,
writes: Anyone who's taken a driving trip out west has seen the way the national forests are managed there, whole hillsides scalped to the bare earth for mile after mile and replanted as tree farms. Obviously, this person has not actually BEEN out west. Most of what I see on Federal lands are overstocked and unhealthy forests. This person has to be talking about Pacific Northwest private timber industry lands. Again, clearcutting (over 5 acres) has been specifically banned since the early 90's in the USFS Region 5 (California). I don't know about Washington, but the Oregon Forest Practices Act bans clear cuts of over 80 acres. That is 1/8 of a square mile. However, private lands have indeed been replanted as tree farms, because that is exactly what they are. Federal lands in the PNW are pretty much as you describe. -- http://home.teleport.com/~larryc |
#4
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Cutting down the forest for the trees
(Larry Harrell) wrote in message . com...
(Aozotorp) wrote in message ... http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Storie...035387,00.html Article Last Updated: Saturday, December 07, 2002 - 12:18:27 AM MST Cutting down the forest for the trees Just over the Vermont line from Rowe is a vast lowland forest called Lamb Brook, filled with giant beech and maple trees that provide food for bears and shelter for migratory songbirds. A few years ago, the U.S. Forest Service proposed to open up this part of the Green Mountain National Forest to logging, but an immense popular outcry and a successful lawsuit in federal court by a local environmental group, Green Mountain Forest Watch, saved Lamb Brook. For a little while, anyway. Anyone who's taken a driving trip out west has seen the way the national forests are managed there, whole hillsides scalped to the bare earth for mile after mile and replanted as tree farms. Obviously, this person has not actually BEEN out west. Most of what I see on Federal lands are overstocked and unhealthy forests. As it will be again = if they find no large timber to cut! This person has to be talking about Pacific Northwest private timber industry lands. Again, clearcutting (over 5 acres) has been specifically banned since the early 90's in the USFS Region 5 (California). In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the hillsides are greener. The difference lies in citizen participation. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires decisions on the national forests, including the writing of the "forest plans" that govern their use, to be open to citizens. Out west, the timber industry dominates the process. Is that why Federal timber volumes in the West are down by at least an order of magnitude since the Spotted Owl? Why didn't the timber industry block the decision to voluntarily and radically reduce timber harvests to protect the unlisted California Spotted Owl in California (including the nearly universal ban on harvesting trees over 30" in diameter)? Oh they did much better! Since the 1981 seminal research report on old-growth forests which indicated that some species may need old-growth forests to survive, the Froest service immediately responded to this hard question by logging as much old growth forest as it could in the 1980's! Indeed it was one ploy of the Forest Service to focus on the Spotted Owl over all the other species of concern so that they could minimize the view of the problem at hand = Thus minimizing the other species! Finally in 1992, District Judge Bill Dwyer ordered the Forest Service to end all such old-growth cutting until protection for all the endangered species in the forests was considered! A Panel set up by the Forest Service to study this concept found there was little if any scientific information on the other species of the area! This included 328 species which very little was known about! The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan called for surveys that would protect these old-growth species until it was established what specific needs each would have to survive@! However the Forest services response was to act as if no plan was to be viewed. Biologists wer not allowed to go out and carry out these surveys! Operations in progess were stopped! Even so the Forest service sought to exempt species from protection until Judge Dwyer in 1999 ordered no such exemptions would exist without the surveys! With Dwyer gone and the Bush regime in control, Bush is set to return to the old 1980's clear cutting = especially after meeting in closed door meeting with timber interests! |
#5
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Cutting down the forest for the trees
Is that why Federal timber volumes in the West are down by at least an
order of magnitude since the Spotted Owl? Why didn't the timber industry block the decision to voluntarily and radically reduce timber harvests to protect the unlisted California Spotted Owl in California (including the nearly universal ban on harvesting trees over 30" in diameter)? Oh they did much better! Since the 1981 seminal research report on old-growth forests which indicated that some species may need old-growth forests to survive, the Froest service immediately responded to this hard question by logging as much old growth forest as it could in the 1980's! Indeed it was one ploy of the Forest Service to focus on the Spotted Owl over all the other species of concern so that they could minimize the view of the problem at hand = Thus minimizing the other species! Finally in 1992, District Judge Bill Dwyer ordered the Forest Service to end all such old-growth cutting until protection for all the endangered species in the forests was considered! A Panel set up by the Forest Service to study this concept found there was little if any scientific information on the other species of the area! This included 328 species which very little was known about! The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan called for surveys that would protect these old-growth species until it was established what specific needs each would have to survive@! However the Forest services response was to act as if no plan was to be viewed. Biologists wer not allowed to go out and carry out these surveys! Operations in progess were stopped! Even so the Forest service sought to exempt species from protection until Judge Dwyer in 1999 ordered no such exemptions would exist without the surveys! With Dwyer gone and the Bush regime in control, Bush is set to return to the old 1980's clear cutting = especially after meeting in closed door meeting with timber interests! With Republicans in power, "preservationists" have now become so alarmist that they are now saying that the forest's "sky is falling" and destructive logging will again dominate. From my point of view, the Forest Service cannot and will not go back to even the 80's style of "overstory removal". Eco-forestry is here to stay in MY little corner of the USFS. The "mouthy minority" team of the media and the preservationists is wearing thin on the American public (as well as the Chief of the Forest Service). I've been watching that pendulum swing one way for so long and worrying that when it swings back, it could go way too far back. Larry |
#6
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Cutting down the forest for the trees
Now this article's not one-sided...
So, mainly what I want to know is when the sky is going to fall??? ha ha ha, Geoff Aozotorp wrote: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Storie...035387,00.html Article Last Updated: Saturday, December 07, 2002 - 12:18:27 AM MST Cutting down the forest for the trees Just over the Vermont line from Rowe is a vast lowland forest called Lamb Brook, filled with giant beech and maple trees that provide food for bears and shelter for migratory songbirds. A few years ago, the U.S. Forest Service proposed to open up this part of the Green Mountain National Forest to logging, but an immense popular outcry and a successful lawsuit in federal court by a local environmental group, Green Mountain Forest Watch, saved Lamb Brook. For a little while, anyway. Anyone who's taken a driving trip out west has seen the way the national forests are managed there, whole hillsides scalped to the bare earth for mile after mile and replanted as tree farms. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the hillsides are greener. The difference lies in citizen participation. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires decisions on the national forests, including the writing of the "forest plans" that govern their use, to be open to citizens. Out west, the timber industry dominates the process. Here, more people live near the forests and prefer to use them for recreation. Now, a seemingly innocuous rules change proposed by the Bush administration would take away the rights of citizens to intervene in timber sales and hand the timber industry a mandate to clear-cut the national forests. The U.S. Department of Agriculture official in charge of the Forest Service is Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. He has found a loophole in NEPA that exempts decisions with no environmental impact, like painting the outhouses at rest areas, from public review. Rey's clever idea was to expand that loophole to the writing of forest plans, so they could be rewritten to favor logging over environmental protection and citizens would have no right to object. There has been a tremendous outcry from environmental groups, which would be completely frozen out, and even from the Forest Service's own scientists, whose recommendations are being ignored. Sadly, there's little anyone can do. As a rules change, the measure doesn't have to go through Congress. There will be a 90-day comment period, after which the Bush administration is free to ignore the comments. This is no reason not to comment. The administration ended its bid to lower arsenic standards in drinking water after a huge public outcry, so write everyone from the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest to the White House. And go see Lamb Brook while you still can. Heading north out of Heartwellville, the hard-to-spot trailhead is on the north side of Route 100. |
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