Should essential services be publicly owned

Quote: beachbumbabs

You're right, and that's exactly why I don't support them. Or the people driving spikes into trees to make them unusable for timbering.

So you favor over aggressive fire suppression? I thought we agreed that it was part of the problem.
I'm no apologist for the Sierra Club, but as far as I know they have never advocated spiking trees.

Quote: JimRockford

So you favor over aggressive fire suppression? I thought we agreed that it was part of the problem.
I'm no apologist for the Sierra Club, but as far as I know they have never advocated spiking trees.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. Sierra Club (though I haven't paid attention to them lately) did not support allowing fires to burn and renew as proper management.
I do support allowing burns to run their course whenever possible.

The tree-spikers are radicals, maybe some overlap with Sierra Club in members, but they're independent. It was a thing happening when I lived in the PNW. Loggers were getting maimed or killed until they figured out how to look for the spikes.

Quote: beachbumbabs

You're right, and that's exactly why I don't support them. Or the people driving spikes into trees to make them unusable for timbering.

OTOH, I don't support clear-cutting without replenishment, just because that's the most cost-effective. They can be selective. They can reforest. And they can, after selecting the most useful trees, do pre-planned controlled burns to complete the life-cycle and conserve properly. That's how to defeat huge uncontrolled wildfires - plan firebreaks and harvests.

JMHO.

If you look sometimes on tv other media where there appears a section of forest where there are a few select tall trees hovering over a younger forest, that is the old style of replanting. The loggers would select a handful of the best trees when logging a section to naturally replant the area. You can see how the forest surrounding those trees is growing in a pyramid fashion as the cones/seeds were most plentiful near the base of the selected seed trees. It worked, but not as efficient as planting seedlings.

Now when Weyerhauser lets contracts for select logging sections, right on the bid for those trees is the figure for replanting. Replanting in PNW, is part of the logging contract, not an after thought that has to be legislated.

I had a friend on a seedling crew that rode behind a D8, pulled in a "sheepsfoot" contraption, that rolled behind the bulldozer up the steepest of hills, gouging holes in the spoils behind logging, and he would feed it the seedlings. He said the ride jumping over stumps was brutal. College kids used to do a lot of that work, with a gunny sack of seedlings and a grub axe. Good money for the summer.

Those forests have been harvested regularly for years, year in and out. Today's logs were planted 40+ years ago. It is simply farming while caring for the forest by thinning, cutting fire/access roads and keeping an eye out for bugs. Tree company's have developed sustainable science for the best and most productive trees of all the local species. Weyerhauser even developed a tree that can be harvested in 20 years, for pulp.

The Gifford Pinchot is managed pretty well on the parts that belong to WY. The fed part of the forest not so much. There are thousands of miles of usable logging roads in case of fire. In California or the SW, entire forests are lost because equipment can't access the fires. Ask any dirt biker or hunter if they like the powerline ROW's.

What a huge difference in how the forest is treated in PNW versus Alaska. The tribes up north were granted huge chunks of land under ANILCA. When I was in Kodiak, the natives sold the trees on the island as well as the nearby island of Afognak. Gypo outfits from PNW bid on the trees, but the natives require no planting or care beyond a percentage of the logs, what destruction and breeding habitat for bugs. What was forest, looks like Dresden after the fire. Neither the logging company's or the natives give two pine cones care, about what was left behind. The slash piles are so rugged a goat can hardly pass through what was left . They clear cut and only selected trees worth export and left everything in it's place behind. For the next few hundred years that land won't be crossed on foot. Mother earth, and all that. pfft.

Quote: petroglyph

If you look sometimes on tv other media where there appears a section of forest where there are a few select tall trees hovering over a younger forest, that is the old style of replanting. The loggers would select a handful of the best trees when logging a section to naturally replant the area. You can see how the forest surrounding those trees is growing in a pyramid fashion as the cones/seeds were most plentiful near the base of the selected seed trees. It worked, but not as efficient as planting seedlings.

Now when Weyerhauser lets contracts for select logging sections, right on the bid for those trees is the figure for replanting. Replanting in PNW, is part of the logging contract, not an after thought that has to be legislated.

I had a friend on a seedling crew that rode behind a D8, pulled in a "sheepsfoot" contraption, that rolled behind the bulldozer up the steepest of hills, gouging holes in the spoils behind logging, and he would feed it the seedlings. He said the ride jumping over stumps was brutal. College kids used to do a lot of that work, with a gunny sack of seedlings and a grub axe. Good money for the summer.

Those forests have been harvested regularly for years, year in and out. Today's logs were planted 40+ years ago. It is simply farming while caring for the forest by thinning, cutting fire/access roads and keeping an eye out for bugs. Tree company's have developed sustainable science for the best and most productive trees of all the local species. Weyerhauser even developed a tree that can be harvested in 20 years, for pulp.

The Gifford Pinchot is managed pretty well on the parts that belong to WY. The fed part of the forest not so much. There are thousands of miles of usable logging roads in case of fire. In California or the SW, entire forests are lost because equipment can't access the fires. Ask any dirt biker or hunter if they like the powerline ROW's.

What a huge difference in how the forest is treated in PNW versus Alaska. The tribes up north were granted huge chunks of land under ANILCA. When I was in Kodiak, the natives sold the trees on the island as well as the nearby island of Afognak. Gypo outfits from PNW bid on the trees, but the natives require no planting or care beyond a percentage of the logs, what destruction and breeding habitat for bugs. What was forest, looks like Dresden after the fire. Neither the logging company's or the natives give two pine cones care, about what was left behind. The slash piles are so rugged a goat can hardly pass through what was left . They clear cut and only selected trees worth export and left everything in it's place behind. For the next few hundred years that land won't be crossed on foot. Mother earth, and all that. pfft.

Thanks, really appreciate the overview, especially the detailed.contrast . My dad was with Waldorf/HornerWaldorf/Champion intl/SmurfitStone/for almost 35 years in corrugated. Weyerhauser, CCA, and GP were his major competitors. He retired in 86, right when Stone took over. So we grew up with a lot of awareness.

Tell you what, the thing made me the maddest was flying over near Rainier, following one of the few ways thru there. That's the area I got my Private license. So I'm up there, and I look down, and the loggers have left a fringe about 5 trees deep along the highway, and clear-cut hundreds of square miles beyond them. The USMC barber couldn't have shaved closer than the mess they made of those slopes. Federal land, too.

Still outraged. I'm guessing the damage may have gotten grown through by now, but looked very similar to your description.

It just isn't that hard to do it right.

Quote: beachbumbabs

and the loggers have left a fringe about 5 trees deep along the highway, and clear-cut hundreds of square miles beyond them.

Ahhh, "the infamous Riparian zone"

I also wonder if it has something to do with population. I don't know if colonial people left trees so close to their houses, especially since they would have so much forest or meadows around farther out. Lots for houses today are smaller and smaller, and people live among the trees.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Perhaps I misunderstood you. Sierra Club (though I haven't paid attention to them lately) did not support allowing fires to burn and renew as proper management.
I do support allowing burns to run their course whenever possible.

The tree-spikers are radicals, maybe some overlap with Sierra Club in members, but they're independent. It was a thing happening when I lived in the PNW. Loggers were getting maimed or killed until they figured out how to look for the spikes.

It is my recollection that the Sierra Club was an early advocate of allowing fires as a necessary part of the ecosystem back when the idea was unpopular with politicians and the public. However I can't find a source one way or the other.

Quote: JimRockford

It is my recollection that the Sierra Club was an early advocate of allowing fires as a necessary part of the ecosystem back when the idea was unpopular with politicians and the public. However I can't find a source one way or the other.

In the late 1980s one of the national parks I forget which had really, really bad fires due to the new "let it burn" policy. This caused a lot of backlash at the time, though I think most of the public (non-green-crazies) now sees the benefit.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-10/pge-gets-aig-ed-moodys-downgrade-triggers-800mm-collateral-call-liquidity-crisis

The vultures are circling .

Quote: petroglyph

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-10/pge-gets-aig-ed-moodys-downgrade-triggers-800mm-collateral-call-liquidity-crisis

The vultures are circling .

Haven't they went BK before? After Enron picked them clean?