They are the ancient giants of America – towering trunks of sequoias or beech or ash that started to sprout in some cases before the age of the Roman empire, with the few survivors of a frenzy of settler logging now appreciated as crucial allies in an era of climate and biodiversity crises.
Joe Biden has vowed to protect these “cherished” remnants of old growth forest, as well as the next generation of mature forests, directing his government to draw up new plans to conserve the ecological powerhouses that enable US forests to soak up about 10% of the country’s carbon emissions, as well as provide a vital crucible for clean water and wildlife.
Yet, the US Forest Service has not included mature trees in this new plan, which also includes loopholes conservationists say allow ongoing felling of trees that are hundreds of years old. The Forest Service, responsible for 154 national forests and nearly 25m acres (10m hectares) of old growth trees in the US, has also largely declined to conduct required reviews of multiple logging projects amid a stampede of tree cutting that threatens the oldest, richest trees before any new curtailments are imposed.
“The largest logging projects I’ve ever seen are targeting the last, best remaining old growth trees left in the country,” said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist and co-founder of the John Muir Project.
The logging industry sucks. They log old growth and plant a single species in what was previously a diverse ecosystem. They spray poison to protect their saplings from competition, and among the poisoned dead are fruit plants which fed the local wildlife. All wildlife suffers as a result.
I met up with some loggers who took down a very old pine I used to walk past. They told me that it looked like it contained a lot of good wood, but after it fell they realized it wasn’t so good after all. So they left it laying there, and their attitude was ‘oh well.’
Adding to all this suckage, the industry takes trees from the land we all share and if they don’t get exported to another country, they get processed and sold here for exorbitant prices. That wood could be used to build affordable housing but no, the rich have to get richer, even if it means shitting all over everything.
Not just that, but often an invasive species. That said, cities are just as bad on that front, allowing developers to put Bradford pear trees in every subdivision. They grow very quickly and flower early in their lives, so developers love them. They also reproduce very quickly and the flowers stink. They’re also pretty weak and tend to blow away in storms where they end up doing things like going through someone’s car. Then they escape and get everywhere. If you see white-flowering trees blooming in the spring on highway off-ramps and you notice more of them every year, that’s why.
On top of everything else, they don’t actually produce pears.
Too bad they aren’t useful to loggers.
Ugh, it’s like people are against free food. I know fruit trees can make a mess, but why not plant fruitless trees over paved areas, and fruiting trees in parks and other wooded areas? It’s also true that the fruit will attract so-called ‘pests’, but they would also attract more beneficial creatures as well…
We are so alienated from life in this country :(
Yeah well life isn’t profitable
Edit: enough.
That depends on whether or not you can own the person with the life. Then their life is profitable as long as they keep working in the plantation fields.