The timber industry has come a long way over the past decades for which they have been given very little credit. Growing up in Southern Oregon I used to go into the woods near my home and find red clay logging roads that had become ditches with sides taller than I was. And the mills would empty their log ponds into the creek and it would turn black for weeks. The Environazis will never be happy until timber industry is dead! And what gets me is those groups are funded by contributions from idiots that have never, now will ever, set foot in the State.
That really is true.
Growing up in Southern Oregon [...]
I have been here in the Flathead Valley (NW MT) since I was about 10-12 years old...
I used to go into the woods near my home and find red clay logging roads that had become ditches with sides taller than I was. And the mills would empty their log ponds into the creek and it would turn black for weeks.
True, but even if, one can go where our grandfathers did their work - You can find them easily in that they did not pull their stumps, and some of those stumps are still there, even to this day - you would be hard pressed to find the 'damage' they did now. For the most part, even the logging I participated in is long healed over, a beautiful woodland, and is ready to be logged again. I can hardly even find the roads, and I know where they are.
And while our grandfathers and fathers did do damage, it is largely limited to concentrated sites where, even if they did know they were doing irreparable harm, there was no alternative solution present at the time. Those who fault them always accuse them of greed, and never take ignorance into account, or that the level of technology was insufficient to address the problems they knew they had...
I would equate it to our current problem with plastics (as a particular example, but hardly limited to that alone), which are having enormous impact on the environment, and which we have no solution for...
The Environazis will never be happy until timber industry is dead! And what gets me is those groups are funded by contributions from idiots that have never, now will ever, set foot in the State.
They will not be happy even then. It isn't about environment - It is about control. Taken as a whole, our forefathers were better stewards than we are, and they did not have the supposed advantage of environmental sciences, or our much vaunted technologies. The folks that live on the land, they that are dependent and interdependent with the land tend to be closer to that land, and understand it better than those afar off who seek to control them.
Thx for your reply.