🚀 go-pugleaf

orion@unix.infoserve.net (Orion) wrote:

>  Granted, we aren't anywhere near perfect at it...but then until 
>recently we didn't even realize that we were creating a long-term problem.

There were lots of voices pointing out the obvious back in the 1950's
when I was a kid.  I saw with my own eyes the results of "modern
logging" (that's what they called it back then too) on the hills
fringing the Alberni Canal as I rode the Uchuck ferry to Uclulet in
1954.

I listened to a manager in the Forest Management Office of the
Ministry of Forests argue back in the 1960's that you couldn't plant
trees over clearcuts forever because the soil would eventually be
exhausted.  I heard the Foresters answer, in essence, "Hey, no
problem, you can just use fertilizer".

And I heard for all this time the various forest companies tell us how
all that stuff was in the past and that with "modern" logging
techniques we had nothing to worry about.

It sounded hollow back then. too.  Lots of people knew what was going
to happen, and spoke up about it, and were roundly ignored.



Ed Seedhouse
Victoria, B.C.

"Do you get that restless feeling 
 when you hear a whistle blast,
 like an echo from the past, 
 of a cold diesel rolling down 
 a road that's built to last?"

- G. Lightfoot