Patrick: National Marine Fisheries and scientists disagree with your rosy assessment on the temporary nature of the damage due to logging. The problem is that logging as practiced creates perpetual and ongoing damage to streams and watersheds which shows up as permanent damage to fishing stocks (and other wildlife). Every year on the watershed there is a new clearcut and more road usage and more erosion and slides. The clearcut may heal, the stream may run clear; but the fish can't distinguish one clearcut from another, the spawning beds are buried even though the stream runs clear. You make the same mistake most folks make - you assume that since the clearcut re-vegetates that all is well, or that since the stream clears up it is under control. Not hardly. The damage accumulates over time, incrementally, to wildlife. The land recovers more quickly; for the fish and wildlife, the damage is more permanent. There is no watershed that I know of, where logging has not seriously hurt the fish runs, or where the runs have come back to their pre-logging levels. Current logging practices hurt the fish and hurt them significantly. Scientists can tell industry exactly how to make this happen, but industry won't do it. Can you document a single watershed where the fisheries are in better shape now after logging than before the watershed was logged? Forestry can probably be made into a sustainable activity for wood production, Patrick, some good scientists will agree with that statement, but we really won't know for a thousand years or so, will we. Making logging sustainable for wildlife and "other forest values" is more difficult. Current practices are not close to sustainable on this basis, however, and this is widely accepted, even by many industry diehards when you get them off and alone over a beer. The salmon story is far from over, and I'll buy you a beer if forestry practices (in the US anyway) don't get tighter than they are now to save these fish. Tom Haswell 541-757-7608 > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-forest@listserv.funet.fi > [mailto:owner-forest@listserv.funet.fi]On Behalf Of Patrick Moore > Sent: Sunday, June 07, 1998 4:43 PM > To: FOREST@listserv.funet.fi > Subject: Re: Environmental Call to Arms (salmon) > > > W. T. Haswell writes: > > >Your disrespectful reply to Jerry West does not due the list a service, > Patrick. > >Your description of the demise of the salmon runs as the result of > everything > >but logging, and your flippant trivialization of landslides to a measure of > >percentage of total area echoes your prostitution to a pursuit devoid of > any > >science. Simply unbelievable. > > I can't imagine how my reply was disrespectful, am I supposed to tug my > forelock? > I did not say that logging caused no damage, I said dams, overfishing, > agriculture and urbanization caused more damage, and that dams, agriculture > and urbanization's impacts are permanent whereas logging, and hopefully > overfishing, can be temporary. > > Perhaps the best evidence for this can be found in "Fisheries, Status of > Anadromous Salmon and Trout in British Columbia and Yukon, Vol. 21 No. 10, > October 1996" > > There are 9,663 identified stocks of salmon in BC and Yukon. 142 of these > are extinct. All but three of these extinct stocks are either in the > populated, urbanized, farmed area in south-west BC or in the Columbia River > (dams). While logging may cause temporary depression in stocks, it rarely, > if ever, causes extinction. Depressed stocks can be rebuilt, this is more > difficult for extinct ones. Also, 62 of the extinct stocks, nearly half, are > in the Greater Vancouver area where the spawning streams are in cement > pipes. > > Just trying to get things in perspective for those of you who think logging > is the main threat to ecosystems. Forestry is the most sustainable of all > the primary industries by which the human species obtains food and > materials. > > Cheers > > Patrick Moore, Greenspirit > http://www.greenspirit.com > May the Forest be With You > > Snail Mail: > 4068 West 32nd Avenue > Vancouver, B.C. V6S 1Z6 > Canada >
Mail converted by
MHonArc 1.1.0