Any activity worth participating in is worth trying to manage. Baseball teams have managers. Other sports teams have coaches who try to see what is happening on the field and react to it in an appropriate manner. Parents manage their children. They don’t let them stick pennies into outlets or make a blind mad dash through a busy intersection. Businesses manage their activities. Costs versus expenses are closely watched. Unpopular inventory is marked down and sold at discount to make room for more popular stock. As individuals, we all manage our own time and money. Why is it then, in a world where everything worth doing is managed, that a group of enviro-nuts can convince other wise rational people that our forests should be allowed to burn to the ground rather than have humans manage their growth and health? The enviro-nuts claim, “It’s nature taking its course.” Well “nature is also taking its course” when your four year old goes dashing into the street, but we don’t think it’s unwise to grab him and stop him when he tries – even if he cries when we do so. Enviro-nuts, it seems, would rather have 100,000s of acres of habitat and wildlife destroyed in unnecessary and costly forest fires than let the logging industry make a dime’s profit clearing out the deadwood and creating firebreaks to protect the forests.
The Griffin has a forestry degree from Michigan State and is an avid outdoorsman. He gets it right in this timely post from Ohio, where we all know only 70,000 votes separated Kerry from his quest for the White House. The Griffin sends:
“Renewable resources are ...renewable, fulfill a need, and provide jobs. We are concluding the winter logging season here in Ohio. The protesters don't show up during the period from Christmas to spring break. Too cold. But they have been out in the woods lately as the weather is breaking, actually on the roads by the woods, singing kum-by-ya and we shall overcome. The loggers are collecting the raw material to build furniture and homes from stands of timber that are growing at a much slower rate because these stands are in decline. As a result of this forest management, space for new trees is created, and life in the forest goes on.
“In my lifetime, much of it spent outdoors, and someone that knows some things about the environment, wildlife, and trees, the protestors being the open minded and inclusive do-gooders that they are need to consider a few facts.
1) FACT -There are more deer in N. America today than were here when the Mayflower hit Plymouth.
2) FACT -There is more timber growing today than when the pilgrims had the first Thanksgiving.
3) FACT- License fees from hunters and fisherman generate more income for land and wildlife mgt (by a factor of 1000) over all the environmental groups combined.
4)FACT- The USDA, Dept of Forestry budget in 2004 was $245 million. Over $100 million was set aside to pay legal fees from the lawsuits they receive every year.
5)FACT - Natures way of eliminating old growth forest is catastrophic fire that kills everything and leaves a moonscape look to the land. Yellowstone in the 1990's.
“A scientific, healthy approach to land mgt includes logging. Market factors and economics are included in the plan. Plastics and metals are not renewable and very little is recycled as the energy needed makes it uneconomical – even if the energy is produced by nuke, wind, coal, etc, it is still uneconomical. Get the facts. Above are only a few.
“We really need to keep an eye on those that are misguided and threaten our forests. And they are not the loggers. They are the protesters, courts, judges, and environmental radicals. Here in Ohio it is the time of year to protest logging. People say they are not hurting us so let them have their say. Well, between the lawsuits, their trespassing, work disruptions, revenue loss through logging bans by courts and judges that will not learn the facts, they come with a big price tag. They are getting expensive and we all pay for it in increased taxes and wood products. Get your wallets out.”
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