🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <33DE2027.68DB@mailhost.alaska.net> arktika@mailhost.alaska.net writes:
|I don't understand where some people would think that tree farming is
|not the same as other types of farming.  The only difference is the
|length of time between planting and harvesting.

Reduced to gross agricultural terms, there certainly are similarities
between silviculture and agriculture.  Both attempt to reduce the natural
diversity of plant species in favor of the monoculture being propagated.
There are certainly dry-land farming techniques that mimic the irrigationless
approach to farming trees.

But the conceptual gap that some of us have is equating tree farms with
natural forests.  Natural forests, just like the natural grasslands that
were the antecedents to most productive croplands, support a complex
hierarchy of interrelated species, and only superficially resemble the
human-managed cultures that have supplanted most of them.  But even 
"managed" forests and an intermediary step between natural forests and 
tree farms, and historically, the intention has been to manage them for
more than simply their value as a crop.  Other management goals have been
the preservation of wildlife, water conservation, and recreational use.
How many farms can you say the same thing about?

And to "Guerilla" who tries to feed us some hype about programming by
environmental cults, I say that the only unthinking reaction here is his.
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Robert Reed                      Home Animation Limited             503-656-8414
email: robert@slipknot.rain.com                         West Linn, OR 97068-3222

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to
think of the victims of intact ones.
--Peter De Vries
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