🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Plamondon wrote:
> 
> In article <33D17587.7783@livingston.net> dstaples@livingston.net writes:
> 
> >Private owners lack desire, drive, money and insentive to manage timber
> >for the long run.
> 
> I doubt you could make a more sweeping generalization if you tried.
> There must be millions of private timber owners in the world, and
> many stands of wonderfully managed private timber.  I know that my
> own property borders on two of them.

Agreed, but, the average stand on private tracts is less than the
average stand on industrial or government tracts.  What brings the
average down?  The mass of unmanaged private stands.
> 
> I've noticed that many people plant walnut trees, put forty-year roofs
> on their houses, educate their children, and indulge in other acts
> with an eye to the very long term.

As I would encourage my clients, but seldom does the average owner look
that far into the future with timberland.
> 
>
> 
> Private management is not centralized.  Even today, private management
> varies from picture-book horse logging to insensate "rape the land,
> then let what's left be seized for back taxes."  The techniques
> and philosophy are more varied.  This is good.   So long as
> private owners are given a free hand, it doesn't much matter who
> is elected.  As soon as they are tightly controlled, both public
> and private lands are put at risk by every election, rather than
> just the public lands.

Politics has little to do with management of private tracts, and
management on private tracts are de-centralized to the point of
non-existance.  Federal assistance in managment has been available for
decades, with changing political scenes having very little effect on the
land.  Current budget cuts have reduce federal assistance, not
politics.  But, even when available, public assistance on private land
is under utilized.
> 
> With tight regulation of private timber, you're putting all your eggs
> into the government's basket, then putting the basket up for grabs
> at each election.  This is far too optimistic and complacent a
> strategy for me.  Diversity, even with a low average level of quality,
> is much more robust than monolithic control.  It's like the difference
> between a monoculture forest and old growth:  it's not all of a piece,
> and catastrophe is far less likely.

No, hasnot been the case, wide range of available assistance past that
of a mono-culture.  Most governmental assistance programs accept that
doing nothing is sometimes the best managment practice. Unfortunately,
the lack of activity on many of the tracts have left acres after acres
of non-productive brush and weed species.  We dont have the time to
allow nature to reestablish a productive forest on many of these tracts,
they need encouragement now to repair the damages.  We are not speaking
of control, we are speaking of the lack of managment on a vast acreage
of ownership, at a much lower level than the besiged federal and state
lands, and even lower than the dreaded company lands.
the environmentalists ignore the larger acreage, to attack the land
owners who have been doing the job for 100 years or so.  Subtle changes
in legislation to encourage the managment of private lands would be more
productive than trying to shut down the logging, and eventual
replanting, of 3000 acres of private company red woods in California.  

In my county of 900 some odd square miles, we have 30,000+ acres plus of
private land that is non-productive waste land.  Brush and erosion.  But
the scenes of disaster on the 5 o'clock news are of logging a 3000 acre
high visibility tract in California.  

I see a strong lack of committment on behalf of the environmentalists to
see the real problem.  Nature Conservancy is a group that puts their
money where their mouth is, and purchase to protect the environment.   
They, like well managed private stands, are the exception, rather than
the rule.  It takes committment.

-- 
Ego Stroke:  http://www.livingston.net/dstaples/