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Congradulations Tyler, You and your Sierra club buddies can pat youselves on the back when the giant Sequoias go up in flames. And don't forget all of the animals that will be killed at the same time. Ever seen a deer run into the burning forest because it's so confused it can't get away or a mother eagle trying to save her chicks and her wings burst into flames because she got too close to the fire. All these things have been played out many times over the past few years (as Diane Fienstin eluded too) and it's because of the eco-savors such as yourself who think having our forest burn completely up is a good thing. When there is a small amount of fuel on the floor of the forest the fire will burn on the floor and not ignite the larger trees.
Trees are just large plants that have evolved the ability to grow long wooden stems. They didn't do that so we could cut them up into lumber and grind them into pulp; they actually had only one purpose in mind and that was to get their needles or leaves higher up above the other plants where the tree could then monopolize the Sun’s energy for photosynthesis. When foresters create openings or clearcuts when they harvest trees, one of the reasons for doing it is so the new trees growing back can be in full sunlight. Trees are basically plants that want to be in the sun. If trees wanted to be in the shade they would have been shrubs instead, they would not have spent so much time and energy growing long wooden stems. Forests are home to the majority of living species; not the oceans, nor the grasslands, nor the alpine areas, but ecosystems that are dominated by trees. There is a fairly simple reason for this. The living bodies of the trees themselves create a new environment that would not be there in their absence. Now the canopy above is home to millions of birds and insects where there was once only thin air. And beneath the canopy, in the interior of the forest, the environment is now protected from frost and sun and wind. This, in combination with the food provided by the leaves, fruits and even the wood of the trees, creates thousands of new habitats into which new species can evolve, species that could never have existed if it were not for the presence of the living trees.

This gives rise to the obvious concern that if the trees are cut down the habitats or homes will be lost and the species that live in them will die. Indeed, in 1996 the World Wildlife Fund, at a media conference in Geneva, announced that 50,000 species are going extinct each year due to human activity. And the main cause of these 50,000 extinctions, they said, is commercial logging. The story was carried around the world by Associated Press and other media and hundreds of millions of people came to believe that forestry is the main cause of species extinction.

During the past three years the World Wildlife Fund has been asked on many occasions to please provide a list of some of the species that have supposedly become extinct due to logging. They have not offered up a single example as evidence. In fact, no species has become extinct in North America due to forestry.
The spotted owl is one of the many species that was never threatened with extinction due to forestry, and yet in the early 1990's, 30,000 loggers were thrown out of work in the US Pacific Northwest due to concern that logging in the National Forests would cause the owl’s extinction. Since that time, in just a few short years, it has been shown by actual field observations that there are more than twice as many spotted owls in the public forests of Washington state than were thought to be theoretically possible when those loggers lost their jobs. More importantly, it is now evident that spotted owls are capable of living and breeding in landscapes that are dominated by second growth forests. Over 1000 spotted owls have been documented on Simpson Timber's half million acre second growth redwood forests in northern California. And yet, in reporting on the settlement of the Headwaters redwood forests nearby, the New York Times described the spotted owl as a "nearly extinct species" despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of them thriving in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Fire has always been the main cause of forest destruction, or disturbance, as ecologists like to call it in order to use a more neutral term. But fire is natural, we are told, and does not destroy the forest ecosystem like logging, which is unnatural. Nature never comes with logging trucks and takes the trees away. All kinds of rhetoric is used to give the impression that logging is somehow fundamentally different from other forms of forest disturbance. There is no truth to this. It is true that logging is different from fire, but fire is also very different from a volcano, which in turn is very different from an ice age. In fact, no two fires are ever the same. These are differences of degree, not kind. Forests are just as capable of recovering from destruction by logging as they are from any other form of disturbance. All that is necessary for renewal is that the disturbance is ended, that the fire is out, that the volcano stops erupting, that the ice retreats, or that the loggers go back down the road and allow the forest to begin growing back, which it will begin to do almost immediately.
If you don’t think fire destroys the ecosystem, you should try counting the species left alive after a severe forest fire. A hot wildfire in a dry pine forest not only kills every living thing above the ground, it also burns the soil, killing the roots and seeds, basically sterilizing the site and leaving it lifeless.

Brian, I am not sure what koolaide you are drinking, but your last statement is absolutely incorrect. Wildfire brings NEW life to forested areas. Many seed varietals REQUIRE the heat of a wildfire to germinate. A local case in point is the OVLC property on the east end that burned in '99. The Ilvento Preserve is successfully reforesting and has seen new plant varietals that lay dormant until the fire came. Now, I am absolutely NOT a proponent of wildfires, but your argument was simply too lame to ignore.

Brian, you are wrong. As a hunter (no hate mail please), I know the best places to hunt are recently burned areas where there is an abundance of new growth and new life where the deer tend to congregate.

Brian - thanks for your comments and participation.

So, you think the Bush administration is looking out for our forests and doing the right thing from an environmental standpoint?

And giving handouts and free passes to the logging industry has nothing to do with it?

This administration cannot be trusted with ANYTHING. They are incompetent and corrupt to the core, and if they have an Orwellian "Healthy Forests Initiative" then you know its the exact opposite.

I won an award for my post because it was well researched and well cited. Please review before criticizing and being an administration apologist.

With all due respect, Tyler, I don't know who is handing out these awards to you, maybe it's the nucklehead committee it doesn't really matter. You are wrong. Using your logic then, I guess you don't have a problem with the Giant Sequoias burning up. Sure some vegitation will grow back, but since there is no canopy to protect the new saplings it will change the environment to more of a shrub cover than a forest. Don't you know anything ! The Giant Sequoias are very fire proof because of their bark, but the other pines do not have this protection. You make it sound like GW is just iching to get out there with a chain saw and cut down all of the historic old giant Sequoias just because he is so evil with his evil logging friends, give me a break. We already know the out come of what you advicate by the intensity and destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres, if not in the millions of burned forest in the passed 10 years due to the build up of dense forest that was not logged. And the millions of creatures that you and the sierra club are responsible for killing. The next thing you will be advicating is not letting anybody at all even go into the forest because we humans are not part of nature.

Hi Brian -

Well, first off, George Bush likes nothing more than clearing brush, and as a matter of fact, here are links to photos of ol' W. with a chainsaw:
http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123085/2059971/2074802/2074846/021204_BushChainsaw.jpg
http://lonestartimes.com/images/Benzion/March_06/Bush_Chainsaw.JPG
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/images/bush-ghosttree.jpg
http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/onion_news2802.article.jpg
http://www.musicforamerica.org/files/images/thumbs/thumb_bushchainsaw-32705.jpg

That said, I don't W. specifically hates trees - I think that he couldn't care less about our environment, and is more than happy to provide his logging industry pals with financial gain to the detriment of the long-term health of our environment.

Second of all, feel free to back up your assertion with sources. Let's take a look at where I get the information that can be found in my posts on how natural fires affect forests:

http://www.yosemite.org/aboutya.html
The Yosemite Association is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the support of Yosemite National Park through a program that includes membership, book publishing and sales, outdoor seminars, and visitor services. Established in 1923, the association was the first such "cooperating association" in the U.S. Our revenues are used to support education, museum, research, and environmental programs in Yosemite through donations to the National Park Service.

http://www.nps.gov/seki/fire/indxfire.htm
Sequoia and Kings Canyon Fire Information Cache - National Park Service wildland fire management activities are essential to the protection of human life, personal property and irreplaceable natural and cultural resources, and to the accomplishment of the NPS mission. High safety risks and expenses associated with fire management activities require exceptional skill and attention to detail when planning and implementing fire management activities.

So let's see - Tyler sources the Yosemite Association and the National Forest Service, whose job it is to protect the forests, and Brian sources...uh, himself.

I am not using "my own logic". I wrote a series of stories in response to a lawsuit filed to stop the administration's "Healthy Forest Initiative" based on research into what the Bush administration wants to do vs. the people whose job it is to protect the forests for our generation and future generations.

Have you ever been to the sequoias or giant redwoods? Trees that are 3,000 years old are scarred by (natural) fire, thriving in a rich, abundant ecosystem filled with vibrant flora and fauna.

Regarding your assertion that "logging is somehow fundamentally different from other forms of forest disturbance" - well there is a world of difference between clear-cutting forests and sustainable forestry. To not make the distinction between legitimate sustainable forestry and what the Bush administration wanted to push through for their logging industry cronies is deceptive at best.

Cheers,
Tyler

Hi Tyler,
Thanks for having this forum even though we disagree. Yes I have been in the back country, in fact my kids and I were just up there at the begining of summer. And on the way up we happened to drive though a badly burned area. I can sight plenty of references, here is a good one: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:3O-wi4SMVe0J:extension.oregonstate.edu/douglas/forestry/pdf/ThinFact04.pdf+thinning+of+the+forest&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=18, sorry about the long link. Here is an instance where timber interests and environmentalist actually came together: http://www.kswild.org/KSNews/southsidemtaarticle
I would be interested to know what you consider "sustainable forestry" ?

Regards,

Brian

Hi Brian -

re: sustainable forestry - the Sustainable Forest Initiative (http://www.aboutsfi.org/) says it very well, I think: "The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) program is a comprehensive system of principles, objectives and performance measures developed by professional foresters, conservationists and scientists, among others that combines the perpetual growing and harvesting of trees with the long-term protection of wildlife, plants, soil and water quality."

What Bill Lockyer was trying to stop with his lawsuit was not sustainable forestry, and NOT thinning, which you link to. I'm not against either of those things. In fact, the second article you link to shows that the people who are making the decisions - the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - are the ones who SHOULD be making those decisions. What I explicitly object to is those decisions being made at the presidential level by a president who has perhaps the worst environmental record in US history.

Lockyer's lawsuit was to stop commercial logging in a forest that had been protected from commercial logging by Clinton AND George H.W. Bush.

http://www.sierraclub.org/ca/sequoia/

"Giant Sequoia National Monument boasts more than half of all the Sequoia redwoods in the world, with most of the remainder found in the adjacent National Park. The popularity and awe-inspiring beauty of the Sequoia forest and its wildlife led President Bill Clinton [to] permanently protect the forest as a National Monument under the Antiquities Act. Earlier, President George Bush Sr. had proclaimed the Sequoia groves off limits to commercial logging."

"In 2005, the Bush administration officially reversed those policies by finalizing plans to allow what amounts to commercial logging in the Monument, even inside the prized Giant Sequoia groves. The administration's plan would have allowed 7.5 million board feet of timber to be removed annually from the Monument, enough to fill 1,500 logging trucks each year. This policy would have included logging of healthy trees of any species as big as 30 inches in diameter or more. Trees that size can be as much as 300 years old."

So, this whole discussion about forest fires, sustainable forestry, thinning, etc. is moot when taken in context with what the Bush administration wanted to do: open up the Sequoia National Forest to commercial logging.

Cheers,
Tyler

Hi Tyler,
I have to say that these forestry matters are a real hot button issue for me ! I think the Sustainable Forests Initiative is good thing and I support it. We need California to adopt it like other states already have. Unfortunately the Sierra Club has come out against it. http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/may99/050399f.htm . Part of the motivation for SFI in the first place was all of the devistating fires in the first part of this decade. If you read the President's Healthy Forests Initiative you will find that many of the same issues are adressed in SFI. click the pdf under National : http://www.afandpa.org/Template.cfm?Section=Forestry2&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=6&ContentID=7457 .

Regards,

Brian

Hi Brian -

First of all, I should have done more research into the SFI. Their boilerplate makes sense, but the motive has to be questioned based on the companies behind it. And that is addressed by the Sierra Club (in 1999). The Sierra Club actually points people to the Forest Stewardship Council as a "a genuinely independent forest certification program".

The AF&PA, which you point to, is a bunch of timber/paper conglomerates, whose goals are "addressing those issues that:
* constitute a large cost component for the industry,
* place the U.S. industry at a competitive disadvantage,
* affect all or a significant part of the industry, and
* present an opportunity for AF&PA actions to have a major impact."

AF&PA has this to say about the environment:
"Environmental regulation is a major threat to the industry's competitiveness because it requires large capital expenditures that increase operating costs and divert capital away from productive uses. Moreover, the U.S. enforcement and compliance system imposes additional cost penalties that are not borne by our international competitors. Our strategy is to work for an environmental policy based on an appropriate balance of environmental protection with societal and economic values, including recognition of the realities of international competition. We also seek to develop new, less adversarial ways to work with regulators and with non-government environmental organizations. We support the use of sound science and cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation and also work toward cost-effective regulation in other areas, including employee health and safety and energy policy."

In other words, we the industry will be friendly to the environment when it makes economic sense to do so.

So further to that, you've said, Brian, that the President's Healthy Forests Initiative is in alignment with the AF&PA. And the AF&PA says that "Environmental regulation is a major threat to the industry's competitiveness."

So I am not sure what your argument actually is. Are you pro-environment, period, or are you pro-environment only when it makes financial sense to the industries that are damaging the environment in the first place, with the assistance of the Bush administration?

Because that's the argument it seems you are making, and that's why we need lawsuits like Bill Lockyer's to stop commercial logging in forests that should be protected.

Tyler,
I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I can't let you get away with your big flip flop on the Sustainable Forest Initiative ! Just a second ago you're telling me how you agree with it and now you don't? Which is it? When you didn't know the Sierra Club was against SFI you where all supportive because you read the content of the initiative and agreed with it. If you think that harvesting trees is evil just say so. I think marching lock-step with the Sierra Club you are just going to continue a very dangerous course for health of our forests. So I guess I would have to ask you again - what do you consider "sustainable forestry"?

No fair answering a question with a question!

You asked me about sustainable forestry, and I Googled it and found that boilerplate from SFI. That basically sums up what sustainable forestry is - it "combines the perpetual growing and harvesting of trees with the long-term protection of wildlife, plants, soil and water quality".

And that's all well and good, and I am sure SFI does some good things.

But SFI's parent organization, which I did not research initially, is the AF&PA, which is fine with sustainable forestry only as long as it makes economic sense. So SFI is really a front for them, to mislead people like myself that should have done more digging.

So what the Sierra Club said, was look, sustainable forestry is fine and important, but trust an independent organization for information, not one founded by timber/paper interests.

So I didn't "flip-flop" on the idea of sustainable forestry - I simply chose a poor example. I should have chosen an independent organization that has no vested interest in the economic exploitation of the forest, but rather, makes it's decision based on what's best for the forest.

I don't think harvesting trees is "evil" - as I have repeatedly said, I am against commercial logging in places that should be protected. What Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative did was open up the Sequoia National Forest for COMMERCIAL LOGGING, NOT SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY. He reversed the presidential orders to protect the forest, issued by Clinton and Papa Bush.

There, I answered your question. Now you can answer mine: Are you pro-environment, period, or are you pro-environment only when it makes financial sense to the industries that are damaging the environment in the first place, with the assistance of the Bush administration?

Tyler,
I think that we need a balance, to say I'm pro-environment,period I'm not sure what that means. If you compare our forests to any other country's in the world you will find that our forest are still as healthy as they were a 100 years ago, maybe even better because we have had some damaging activities in the early 1900's. The Sustainable Forest Initiative is actually quite ridged and it addresses a wide range of concerns relating to forestry. I wouldn't write it off so quickly. I was hoping that you might support it. A lot of these environmental issues are getting squewed out of proportion and I'm just trying to bring up these issues. I talk to a lot of people at the farmers' markets and I know many people here in Ojai feel the same way you do. All I can do is lay out the reasons for the way I see it. I don't think that AF&PA is the controlling the whole SFI thing, I get the impression it is a global initiative. Many of these 3rd world countries are decimating there own forests, I think part of the initiative is directed at those activities. Sure the timber industry wants to make money ! If they don't make money then they will go out of business. I don't think it's fair to regulate them out of business. They don't want to destroy the forests any more than other people, they have a vested interest in keeping the forest thriving. I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

Brian

Hey Brian -

Right, the timber industries do what they do. Fair enough. They are corporations and they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.

But what this story originally was about was the California Attorney General suing to stop the implementation of Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" on the grounds that it would introduce commercial logging to the Sequoia National Forest, as a complete reversal of the policy of two previous Presidents, Clinton and Bush Sr.

That lawsuit was upheld, and thus commercial logging was stopped in the Sequoia National Forest.

Regarding your comment that logging companies "have a vested interest in keeping the forest thriving" - I think that only holds true if there are environmental protections that are established and upheld. If they are given a green light by the Bush administration, then they have far less incentive to "keep the forests thriving" if there are always another 10,000 acres opened up for logging.

I'll part with a quote from an article in seattlepi.com, in which it was revealed in 2003 that the timber industry is calling the shots in the Bush administration:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/136033_bushenviro21.html

"Timber industry attorneys shaped changes the Bush administration has proposed to the Northwest Forest Plan, which put large swaths of forest off-limits to the chain saw, records show."

"Meanwhile, the chief steward of the nation's forests is a former industry lobbyist, and a longtime industry lawyer is advising the administration about salmon protections under the Endangered Species Act."

Yawn!

I'll, keep going if you let me ! I don't want to wear out my welcome though! I did read on the Ojai network that this is a place for rants !

Don't get me started on the Salmon. Should we trust the Oregon fish and game? Better check this out! http://www.pushback.com/justice/salmon/media/index.html

Listen to some of the audio clips down below also !

Brian