Re: Surely you jest my good friend!

C, I guess it all depends on what color glasses you are looking through. You call me a hippie child, envirofreak, tree hugger etc. My occupation is a forester. I worked 3 years for the U.S. Forest Service (the Feds) and ten years now for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and my job actually is to mark timber, put it out to bid and then oversee the logging. To the local "environmentalists" and many of the environmental groups I actually am the enemy, a scourge so to speak. There are even websites created by them to show the "destruction" of the envirnment that I and my fellow management foresters are creating - some even hand out pamphlets on the street to make people aware of the dangers we are befalling on them.

The Nature Conservacy is one very notable exception. My attitude about them has completely changed. They recognize the need for proper management of forests to keep land from development, provide jobs and local natural resources, and also insure a diverse age class of forests so that all ecosystems and the plants, insects, birds, animals etc. that need them are provided for. Most living things in the forests are niche oriented and do best only in certain ecosystems, and the age (and hence size and structure of the trees) is one of the primary factors. Most of the forests in Massachusetts are the same age and without putting some of them back to ground zero periodically so to speak you end up with a very uniform ecosystem that does not provide for the diversity mentioned above. This of course use to happen when lightening fires would periodically burn tracts of forests, as well as the Native Americans, but this of course does not happen very frequently around here anymore as all fires are immediately treated. So, I am sort of stuck in the middle. I don't get no respect from many environmentalists because I am a raper of the environment and I don't get no respect from people like you. My middle name must be Rodney hehe. Tweet