🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BENEDICT.93Feb10145828@chaos.utexas.edu> benedict@chaos.utexas.edu (Thomas Benedict) writes:
>Your second line there has the kicker:  "The new trees which must be
>planted" implies that these new trees are planted without fail, and
>that the trees are all that are at stake.  Unfortunately, new trees
>are not always planted, and land is often left denuded.  Even when new
>trees are planted, those species that depended on there being large
>trees are left up a creek.  The local ecology is largely blown away
>when thousands upon thousands of acres of timber are clearcut to make
>paper, regardless of CO2 uptake of the new trees.

I'm glad that you brought up the point about trees being replanted.
It is extremely important that American timber companies continue
to practice wise timber resource management.  Because of their
management practices, this country has more trees than at any time
in the last 70 years.  We have nearly one quarter of a TRILLION
trees - roughly 1,000 trees for every man, woman, and child in the
country.  This is why well-meaning programs like Global Re-Leaf are
misguided - if every person in this country planted one tree each
year from now until the year 2000, we'd still have roughly 1,000
trees for each person.

What we do need is for so-called "conservationists" and "ecologists"
to recognize the importance of minimizing the impact to existing
timber stands.  The current trend is to force timber companies to
use fewer and fewer acres for timber production.  Increasing total
acres in production would increase the number of years between
harvests, and reduce all of the negative consequences of timber
harvesting you mention above.
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John F. Haugh II                  [ PGP 2.1 ] !'s: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
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