Again, Admin Opening Tongass National Forest...

What’s happening to our country that we have a contagion of idiocy (John Kelly’s word) and pathological lying?

Forest management is trimming the undergrowth of bushes and small trees, not the same as clear cutting in logging.

Harvesting dead trees due to beetle infestation is not done by loggers but by small operators who cut them in small to be able to haul them out of the forest as there is no place for big equipment to maneuver inside the forest without cutting live trees to make roads.

Seriously, would you camp beside and oil pump or even be allowed on logging roads?

Logging companies don’t even have well maintained roads on the company-owned lands, what made us think they’ll maintain or restore it in logged over national forests?

Mining, haven’t you heard of closed and abandoned mines where clean up are done on taxpayers’ dime? Never mind your delusional hope of their land restoration.

Yosemite Sam1 wrote:
Forest management is trimming the undergrowth of bushes and small trees, .

It's a lot more than that.

You must not have read the President's order. there will be no clear cutting.

pigman1 wrote:
Another green joke? This is a National Forrest we're talking about. Remember...The Land Of Many Uses. Not a National Park, Not a Wildlife Preserve, Not a National Monument. Anyone out there ever actually camped (RV'd) in a logged over national forest? I have in a logged over area (the Tongas)in Alaska and it was wonderful. The logging companies maintained the roads, put in campsites (they were free), and furnished free firewood. We watched a bald eagle nest hatch 3 eggs while we were there. The slope was so great we looked DOWN into the nest. But there was NO erosion.

Until the tree huggers started trying to protect every tree, the logging industry in Alaska thrived. Yes, there were abuses, but those have ceased and the current management practices work well. It's a balance, trees grow and die, streams erode with or without logging, wildlife locate to the best area for them, be it virgin forest or cut over land renewing itself with planted trees.

Lets start to get real folks. Go camp there, THEN start to see what's really happening. Watch a grizzly use the Alaska Pipeline as a super highway for travel because it's easier than traveling the tundra, watch Musk Oxen using a 1 acre field surrounded by oil pipes at Prudhoe Bay as a refuge while their calves nursed and cavorted, and watch the horses and cattle grazing within 50' of producing oil wells in the Texas Permian Basin.

The vast majority of the **** you read is some die hard tree hugger who was never there, feeding stories to gullible news writers who are looking for a headline about anything. Wake Up and SEE IT then start a reasonable conversation.

This is absolutely correct! A National Forest is about using the resources responsibly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/trump-pushes-to-allow-new-logging-in-alaskas-tongass-national-forest/2019/08/27/b4ca78d6-c832-11e9-be05-f76ac4ec618c_story.html

Tom/Barb wrote:

2oldman wrote:

avoidcrowds wrote:
I live in Colorado, where much of our forest is dead due to pine beetle infestation, which is due to suppressing fires for too long.

I've heard a different explanation for that.

Yeah, man brought the beetle here, and now won't take care of the problem. Then they whine when it burns and call it Mother Nature taking care of the problem, we created.
When in reality the dead trees should be harvested and used, and the forest slash cleaned up.

Good forest management practices. OH but hell no the greenies won't allow that.

I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but it was on an interpretive sign in a park in CO. Possibly RMNP, or Mesa Verde. Anyway, it was explaining why all the trees are dead, and why so many had to be cut down in the campground. Long multi-paragraph sign. The very last sentence of the very last paragraph was something to the effect of “This has happened dozens of times over the last XX-thousand years”. So, pine beetles aren’t new, or even a crisis. It happens, the forest recovers, it will happen again.

I agree that the dead trees could and should be harvested. There are things that could still be made from the lumber. Ever hear of “Beetle-Kill Pine” flooring? Look it up, it’s beautiful, and expensive.

:):)

The interesting part of this is that the total area being considered is about 498,000 acres. Which sounds like and is a large area. Until you consider that the Tongass National Forest is over 17,000,000 acres in size.
The alarmist are having conniption fits over tiny portions of the area. (3%)
It should also be noted that much of Tongass is islands and in some cases adjacent to National park lands that will likely never be developed in any way.
The biggest problem is that folks in the areas deciding many of these issues have no concept of what they are doing. Tongass is halfway between the size of West Virginia and South Carolina. It alone, is larger than 10 of our states.
We are talking about huge areas, and in many cases the folks sitting in as experts have never travelled sufficiently to have any comprehension of the scale of things they are dealing with. And with the media, you usually have someone who's only desire is to sensationalize the issue as much as they can, which then stirs up the unknowing masses to scream that the sky is falling.

NRALIFR wrote:
The very last sentence of the very last paragraph was something to the effect of “This has happened dozens of times over the last XX-thousand years”. So, pine beetles aren’t new, or even a crisis. It happens, the forest recovers, it will happen again.

I agree that the dead trees could and should be harvested. There are things that could still be made from the lumber. Ever hear of “Beetle-Kill Pine” flooring? Look it up, it’s beautiful, and expensive.

The Japanese pine beetle was brought here in the 1920s in the pallet and packing wood from Japan.

They have no natural enemies, nothing eats them.

While the Japanese pine beetle is a non-native destructive pest, it’s the mountain pine beetle that’s killing all the pine trees, and it’s native to the US.

The damage caused by these two beetles is distinctly different.

:):)

NRALIFR wrote:
While the Japanese pine beetle is a non-native destructive pest, it’s the mountain pine beetle that’s killing all the pine trees, and it’s native to the US.

The damage caused by these two beetles is distinctly different.

:):)

That I didn't know.
Ya live, ya learn. Hopefully :)

National Forests are not National Parks. National Forests have always been mined, timber cut, drilled, you name it. The directive of National Forests is asset management, NOT preservation.

Like it or not, that is the way it has always been.