🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2469anINN9vn@gambier.rick.cs.ubc.ca> v5x092@rick.cs.ubc.ca (Sacha Michel Mallais) writes:
>
>I really do not think that the real issue is whether or not we should log.
>To stop logging would be ludicrous.  I do think, though, that we should
>make logging (oh no, here it comes) _sustainable_.  I really dont know
>how the logging companies can believe that we will be able to continue
>this rate of logging forever.  We have to stop sometime.  When we
>reach an equilibrium that balances the number of trees that reach harvest
>age and the number that are harvested, then we will have sustainable
>forestry, and _not_ before.

You have to be careful when thinking about where this equilibrium is.
Unlike animal populations, where the regenerative quality of the
population is proportional to the population (few animals produce
few offspring, many animals produce many offspring), if a replanting
program is in effect, tree regeneration is proportional to the amount
of open space (lots of trees means few new trees, and vice versa).
Or if you take it to an extreme, whereas it is possible to hunt an
animal species to extinction, you can cut down all the trees and
so long as you plant new ones you'll eventually get them all back.
Not that I recommend cutting everything down.

The closest animal analogy would be a population augmented by a
wide-scale hatchery program.

The problem as I see it (logging problems are not limited to British
Columbia) is that so long as every child of every logger insists on
being a logger, and so long as every logger has 2+ children, the
number of trees the logging industry cuts down is going to exceed
(or has already exceeded) the level of sustainable yield.
-- 
John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)