🚀 go-pugleaf

maguahiker@gmail.com wrote:
> On Jan 27, 12:40 pm, SMITH29 <smit...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> habe...@lycos.com wrote:
>>> On Jan 27, 1:51 am, jazzerci...@hotmail.com (-) wrote:
>>>> http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-25-095.asp
>>>> Bush Opens Roadless Tongass National Forest to Logging
>>>> JUNEAU, Alaska, January 25, 2008 (ENS) - Today, the Bush administration put a
>>>> "for sale" sign on trees in pristine roadless areas of the Tongass rainforest
>>>> in Alaska - America's largest national forest.
>>>> This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections parallels two
>>>> others made recently in national forests located in Idaho and Colorado.
>>>> Conservationists from across the country are indignant that roads will be
>>>> punched through some of the nation's last, best roadless areas to allow
>>>> private corporations to log America's public lands.
>>>> "The few remaining roadless areas of our national forests are some of the only
>>>> safe harbors for America's wildlife," said Mary Beth Beetham at Defenders of
>>>> Wildlife. "As global warming threatens to dramatically change the landscape we
>>>> must have the foresight to preserve these last remaining pristine forests for
>>>> future generations. It's folly for the Bush administration, in its last few
>>>> months, to work to destroy these areas."
>>>> In December 2003, Bush officials "temporarily" exempted Alaska's Tongass
>>>> rainforest from the Clinton era Roadless Rule, designed to protect 58 million
>>>> acres of roadless wild forests in 39 states.
>>>> The Bush administration's new management plan for the Tongass National Forest
>>>> will raise no revenue for the U.S. government, as the U.S. taxpayers will have
>>>> to pay to build the roads the timber companies need to access the forest.
>>>> "With so much of our forest heritage already lost, every roadless acre counts.
>>>> The spectacular roadless areas in Alaska deserve as much protection as those
>>>> in every other state," said Larry Edwards with Greenpeace in Sitka, Alaska.
>>>> "The Roadless Rule and the courts have sheltered many of the last, best places
>>>> in our national forests, even during an administration hostile to forest
>>>> protection. Now, with one foot out the door, Bush officials are looking for
>>>> whatever way they can to give away the family silver," said Franz Matzner at
>>>> the Natural Resources Defense Council.
>>>> Tongass logging fell dramatically in the 1990s, and for years now has existed
>>>> at levels that do not require slicing roads and clearcuts into virgin
>>>> old-growth forests, as the Forest Service itself has acknowledged.
>>>> "The new plan suffers from the same central problem as the old plan. It leaves
>>>> 2.4 million acres of wild, roadless backcountry areas open to clear cutting
>>>> and new logging roads," said Earthjustice attorney Tom Waldo. "The Tongass is
>>>> worth a whole lot more to the American people as a standing forest than it is
>>>> as a sea of stumps and logs."
>>>> The land management plan released today was ordered more than two years ago by
>>>> a federal court which concluded that the old plan justifying opening Tongass
>>>> wildlands for development was invalid due to several factors, including a
>>>> gross overestimation of demand for Tongass logs.
>>>> Congress also has expressed concern with Tongass wilderness logging. The House
>>>> of Representative has voted three times to stop taxpayer dollars from funding
>>>> new logging roads there.
>>>> In September 2006, the federal District Court of Northern California ordered
>>>> the Bush administration to reinstate the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule
>>>> to protect almost 50 million acres of National Forests and grasslands across
>>>> the lower 48 states and Puerto Rico from road construction, logging, and other
>>>> harmful development.
>>>> Roadless area of the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska.
>>>>           (Photo credit unknown)
>>>>    http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/20080125_tongass.jpg
>>>> Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration violated both the
>>>> National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act by when it
>>>> repealed the Roadless Rule and put into place another rule without any
>>>> substantial analysis or need.
>>>> But the long term status of the roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest
>>>> in Alaska was not settled by Judge Laporte. In 2003, the Bush administration
>>>> exempted the Tongass from the roadless rule by creating a separate amendment
>>>> that was based on the validity of the Tongass Land Management Plan.
>>>> "The Forest Service is losing money hand over fist on roads that Americans
>>>> don't even want," said Christy Goldfuss of Environment America.
>>>> "Today," said Caitlin Hills with American Lands Alliance, "the federal
>>>> government, in defiance of the facts and the strongly expressed sentiments of
>>>> the American people to protect all roadless areas, has answered 'fire up the
>>>> chainsaws.'"
>>>> "The Tongass is the crown jewel of our nation's roadless wildlands," said
>>>> Trish Rolfe at Alaska Sierra Club. "Wild salmon, bears, eagles, and wolves
>>>> thrive there among moss-draped ancient trees, along crystalline fjords and
>>>> untamed rivers. It has nine million acres of roadless areas that lack
>>>> permanent protection. The Bush administration has just put some of the best of
>>>> them on the chopping block."
>>>> "All over the Tongass there are roadless wildlands that local people and
>>>> visitors hold dear, jeopardized by this new plan," said Gregory Vickrey with
>>>> Tongass Conservation Society.
>>>> "These are special places critical to the region's incredible fish, deer and
>>>> other wildlife, world-famous recreational opportunities, cherished subsistence
>>>> practices, and the businesses and jobs that depend on the region's natural
>>>> treasures," said Vickrey. "These are the very things that make Southeast
>>>> Alaskans most want to live here."
>>>> Environment News Service (ENS) 2008.
>>> Agree that Bush is a disaster. But which party has the will to tackle
>>> that most devastating
>>> of environmental impacts, the population growth which is now almost
>>> totally a function of
>>> immigration, legal and illegal?
>>> Dennis
>> xxxx
>> We eventually lose unmanaged forest land to uncontrollable fires.
>> Strip ( clear cutting ) harvesting provides fire breaks so the whole
>> plot doesn't go up in flames. Reforestation plants trees in those strips
>> and in 20-30 years the old growth strip is harvested.
>>
>> We should properly manage ALL our forest lands to preserve this finite
>> resource.
>> I have watched forest fires out of control and they are beautiful at
>> night as the trees explode and fire balls jump tree top to tree top.
>> Impossible to control and too hot to get near.
>> Tree hugger s and Spotted Owl freaks are the forest's worst enemy next
>> to fire as No.1 ...
>> Logging on the Olympic Peninsula was halted years ago putting an
>> industry out of business just to save an endangered Owl which was later
>> found to actually prefer living in a McDonald's elevated sign in Los
>> Angeles California........
>> So much for the environmental movement and it's loony ideas.
>>
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>>
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> 
> Who properly managed it before we came along? mother nature. She has a
> way of cycling things the way they should be which I suppose is why it
> is being chosen that we are a limited entity upon her back too. She
> makes changes to accomadate herself to rid us...like fleas when a dog
> scratches. The forests did quite fine on their own before we came
> along and this is what the cycle of fires, tornadoes...etc. does. It
> works out the kinks that need working. From the death of trees in fire
> comes the rebirth of new and improved and needed forests. Forests get
> too large and the branches too high...and so.
xxxx
So, that's when we harvest some for houses rather than a forest fire.

  Thus limiting the animal
> population too. Then the forest fire wipes out the larger trees
> allowing for smaller growth again...branches within reach again for
> new animals to come back and enjoy. It is the lifelong cycle that has
> been going on forever before we stepped onto the shores and decided we
> could take over. Nature eventually reclaims what is nature. It is a
> lesson in Ecology.
xxxx
So you would be happy without wood products ?
> 
> Unfortunately now that we are in the picture. It is far more difficult
> to justify allowing her to run her coarse. Essentially it is a
> Catch-22. No one will win.
xxxx
Our forest programs have been working as well as our game management 
programs.
Visit a forest and a game farm and see for yourself.
The one think you don't mention is nature is chaos and we instill some 
order to our natural resources.

29
> 
> ~Magua~