“A recently released study of second growth availability on the Tongass National Forest shows that the U.S. Forest Service can end industrial old growth logging there within 5 years while, if it chooses, still increasing the total volume of trees harvested. The Forest Service announced in May that it was considering transitioning timber sales from old growth to second growth but within 10 to 15 years. The new study shows that transition can begin immediately and finish in no more than 5 years, shifting logging to second growth in previously logged and roaded areas outside of sensitive resource lands.”
Source: www.geosinstitute.org
GR: Large-scale commercial logging is ecologically detrimental in all cases. Allowing old growth logging in the Tongass is typical of the shameful management of the nation’s forests by the U. S. Forest Service. Theodore Roosevelt founded the Service and placed Gifford Pinchot in charge to control the most destructive forestry practices.
Pinchot failed, and massive clear-cutting has never stopped. Timber companies with support from the U. S. Forest Service have cut and exported our forests without regard for biodiversity and ecosystem stability. To a visitor from another planet we must appear as locusts that strip all resources and then move on. The visitor might conclude that we want the Earth to do what the alien said to the humans in the movie Independence Day: “Die.”