CA: World's other forests feed state's appetite for timber

Sac Bee ^ | 10/5/03 | Tim Knudson

[NormsRevenge]

Thick as a phone book, a new state report on the environment cites a little-recognized danger to global forests: California.

By consuming "vast amounts of ... wood products" while increasingly protecting our own forests from logging, Californians are sharpening the pace of cutting elsewhere, including Canada, says a draft of the report "The Changing California, Forest and Range 2003 Assessment," obtained by The Bee.

[NormsRevenge]

TIMMMMMMBERRRRRRRRRR!!!!

[Torie]

Oh the horror. Meanwhile New England has more forest land than it did in 1700.

[Support Free Republic]

Aww man! Enough of the fundraiser posts!!!

Only YOU can make fundraiser posts go away. Please contribute!

[Dog Gone]

California should do the right thing, and build all homes and offices from adobe. Clay tablets could easily replace paper.

Everything possible should be done to spare every tree on the planet, because timber is not a crop. It's some sort of weird sacred life form.

[SamAdams76]

Meanwhile New England has more forest land than it did in 1700.

You're not kidding. I just spent the whole summer walking through a tiny part of it. Until I started walking several miles a day, I never realized how many trails there were within just a few miles of my house. There are about 200 miles of marked trails within a five mile radius of where I live.

Flying from Manchester, NH to Birmingham, AL recently, I couldn't help but notice that it was pretty much all forest the entire way with a few cities and towns poking through at times. The entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. appears to be mostly woodlands.

[NormsRevenge]

heck, the plains pioneers built their homes out of sod.. I don't know how that would go over in Bel Air and Pacific Palisades but..

and I agree, plants have feeelings too, yaknow. ;-)

[Migraine]

What's so funny about all this is that it's moot. As soon as the Russkies realize it and put infrastructure in place to do something about it, we'll all buy 100% of our lumber from them. They have enough timber to house the world for the next 500 years.

[F-117A]

They could start by not wasting the newsprint used to print the LA Times!

[F-117A]

... and Ninth Circuit decisions!

[cake_crumb]

"By consuming "vast amounts of ... wood products" while increasingly protecting our own forests from logging, Californians are sharpening the pace of cutting elsewhere, including Canada, says a draft of the report "The Changing California, Forest and Range 2003 Assessment," obtained by The Bee."

DARN I'm glad that was only water I was drinking!

Good thing many states "elsewhere" have good forestry management policies, and the most heavily logged states continue to have the most forest. According to environazis, this should not be possible, and these states shouldn't have any forests left.

[AlextheWise1]

Yup NewEngland is mostly forest...In soem places moreso than when the Piligrims arrived ( the costal regions had been cleared for agriculter by the indians for 3 miles of so in most places)

150 years ago all of newenglad to around Bangor Maine was 80% or so cleared for farmland. and guess what? it all grew back on its own...

[cake_crumb]

"150 years ago all of newenglad to around Bangor Maine was 80% or so cleared for farmland. and guess what? it all grew back on its own... "

Yeah, plants are like that. The environazis have people convinced that once they're cut, forests will never grow back....then force environmental policy that creates the conditions for devestating wildfires that kill everything, even the microbes in the dirt, cause the soil to erode away and allow invasions by noxious, non-native weeds.

I've never understood how people could believe it's better to burn than to tend and nurture. I can see me now, tending my flowerbeds with a flamethrower instead of a dandilion digger.

[blam]

"Oh the horror. Meanwhile New England has more forest land than it did in 1700."

Alabama is 73% forest (not cotton fields like everyone thinks) and it is increasing by one million acres a year.

[Torie]

I was amazed to see that in Alabama, West Tennessee and Mississippi, even way back when in the early 1970's when I drove through. The only place I saw the "real" thing, cotton fields with hands picking it in the sun, was in the delta region of Arkansas.

[Torie]

Of course, much of that Southern forest is just producing pulp fiber for the New York and Los Angeles Times.

[cookcounty]

If only the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle would do the right thing and stop chopping down all that pulpwood!! Have they no sense of civic responsibility?

[blam]

"Of course, much of that Southern forest is just producing pulp fiber for the New York and Los Angeles Times."

LOL. Pulp Fiction.

[Jonathan E]

There doesn't seem to be a connection here that we should harvest our forest to produce and control wood as a natural resource for the growth of this country just as we should drill for oil here as well. Bulid the needed refineries and clear out the forest so new trees can grow and underbrush is not a catalist for thousands and thousands of acres of wood lost to fire. Common sense for our economy, our way of life, our very government is lost on environmentalists. Environmentalist distain our republic and Man's position in the nature of things. They should be outed and made to live by what they preach. No modern conviences, wild animals roaming anywhere, preindustrial age manufacturing and economy, no private property rights (not for you anyway, but try to go into a conservation area and pick a flower or even a rock), make them take their environmentalism out of our schools (talk about no seperartion of 'church' and state, and the list goes on and on. A revitalization of the power of the Constitution (the supreme law of the land) and it's Bill of Rights, common sense, and a belief in that America is right, will overcome this political correct malaise that has blinded America. Environmentalists are bloodletting this country do death. I have 17 different environmental departments in my local county but not one on protecting private property.

[SierraWasp]

I just contributed already!!! You got blood out of a turnip!!! Sorry it was so anemic. As Bill said to Monica... Keep up the good work!!!