Ax Men TV Show Glorifies Illegal Logging
It turns out that some of the logging glorified on the Ax Men reality show is illegal. I don't watch it, I've seen enough loggers destroying Old-Growth forests in real life. The ads alone are enough to remind me that our forests and rivers, and really our whole planet, are facing a life or death scenario. Either people hold on to their medieval resource plundering mentality and bankrupt the ecology of the Earth, or we somehow rise to the occasion and survive with our planet mostly intact.
posted by John Doe #86 @ 5:51 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
You're stupid and your blog is too.
I'm rubber you're glue, etc.
lol
John - why start the spring so black and white? Life and death? That essentially is what occurs in a forest right?... If anything - the forest is as safe from logging as it has ever been since white people, and the most at risk from fire since Indians...
2 quick points; 1) The "salvage" operator on the show didn't have a permit to harvest the old logs from the rivers he was working in. Thats the extent of the illicit activity shown on the show. 2) actual negative impacts may be occurring in other places (not CA) as evidenced by full bore logging in the winter, as shown on axemen. (Way worse than pulling some old logs out of a creek, especially when you realize that unmitigated winter logging is perfectly legal outside of CA)
As long as the environmental community continues to label people who work in the woods as "people [who] hold on to their medieval resource plundering mentality and bankrupt the ecology of the Earth", it will largely remain an irrelevant movement.
What about a gas station employee? Some one who works at Walmart or Macdonald's? Part of the problem? Probably, but how do you pay your bills? You are guilty just by being a part of this society.
At least in the timber industry, the impact isn't outsourced to the 3rd world. So in 2009', instead of kicking us when we're down, lets vow to be more objective, and not get all the young kids on the wrong track by thinking its cool to bash loggers still.
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...or we somehow rise to the occasion and survive with our planet mostly intact.
Time to move to Washington? Judging by the show axeman, activism would actually make a difference there. (for TV ratings at least...)
You're right Bolithio, not everyone involved in destructive practices has a medieval resource plundering mentality. I'm thinking of people such as those that call the shots for that destructive winter logging you are referring to. I'm not saying that everyone who cuts trees down is an ogre. I myself cut trees down sometimes. Not all logging is bad, but the largest companies seem to exemplify what is still wrong with the industrial timber industry. Why the heavy reliance on clear-cutting Bolithio?
I know you think that clear-cutting can be appropriate in the right circumstances but this is an atrocity. They say it mimics natural disturbances, but what natural disturbance ever happens on this massive geographical scale? Tunguska? Meteor that killed the dinosaurs? Mount Pele? The last ice age?
Is a predominantly multi-aged forest and native plant community just too much to ask for?
You're also right that logging is at a major low. But it's the lowest it's been since 1982, not the lowest it's been since European invasion.
Most of the damage has been done and of course companies like Green Diamond and SPI are targeting the few remaining forests with larger trees and high volume for clear-cutting. We need more forests with large carbon storing trees, not less.
Good points. Remember that the ones calling the shots are consumers. As with any commodity - it is market driven. Logging is so marginal as a professions, that those guys in OR and WA are working in the rain to avoid standing at the welfare line (which our government wont be affording for so much longer...)
Is a predominantly multi-aged forest and native plant community just too much to ask for?
Maybe - A native plant community certainly is not too much to expect, and in the coast ranges, this exists even on intensively managed lands. (Baring strip malls and subdivisions)The days of scotch broom as a stability mitigation are over =)
Multi-aged forests exist as well, but true all-aged communities are not so common in forests in the northwest. Even in virgin stands, its rare to see more than three age classes. Even in these situations, 80% of the trees tend to be one age group, with 10% one each side of the curve made up by another age class.
This is how these trees have evolved, and it is very hard to convince them to do otherwise. This is why CC is still a valid technique. Valid, of course, only when you have ensured that your roads, landings and skid trails are not going to deliver significant amounts of sediment - and that you are protecting creeks, and anything else that may need mitigations (wildlife, landslides etc...)
The only true (unmanaged) all aged forests I have seen personally were in the Olympic Peninsula, and few areas within the Gifford Pinchot near Mt. St. Helens.
...of course companies like Green Diamond and SPI are targeting the few remaining forests with larger trees and high volume for clear-cutting.
Of Course. Though Im not sure about the "few remaining" part. Trees should continue to grow and get larger, and I think the intention of industrial timberland is to grow trees for harvest... Remember that this doesn't stop a forest from being a forest (GD has 300k acres, and I dont think they are running out of trees.)
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