Don,
Quoting from my response to James: "they oversee and are reluctant to
expose the remnants to public scrutiny for a variety of reasons, some laudable,
some not.". One of the laudable reasons speaks to the very point you make, i.e.
to keep from losing the remnants. Can't get much more laudable than that. Then
there are the reasons that aren't laudable, but that's another story. Sometimes
the good foresters and rangers have to hide the old growth, not from the
public, but from their bosses. I know a retired forester in New Hampshire who
kept a pristine area of old growth hidden by various methods from his bosses,
who declared that the mere use of the term old growth was anathema. You, that
forester, and others I've known are unsung heros. We owe you all a big debt.
Bob
-------------- Original message --------------
From: DON BERTOLETTE <[email protected]>
Bob/JBS-
Time for a once every few years rant...;>]
I'm a forester that's known old-growth before I knew what it was
called...traipsing around in the wildernesses of the West in the 1960s, I've
wandered in wonder among them, photographed them, revered them.
I'm reminded of a time in the 90's when a forestry professor, one-time Pentagon
analyst, and an aspiring graduate forester wandered among trees in Dunbar Brook
area...the forestry professor, very much aware of his surroundings from several
ways of viewing them said, paraphrasing a Supreme Court judges comment "...I
know when I'm in 'em, and I can tell when I've walked out of 'em...but I can't
yet put the difference to words".
I spent some time thereafter putting words to what that difference was. Some
of them have been taken away..."old-growth", "ecosystem management", and others
have either been "institutionalized" or fallen out of favor with academics.
Time spent trying to define a now-disavowed phrase like "old-growth" turned
out to be a good intellectual enterprise, but more akin to a 'holy grail', at
least nearly as unattainable.
One definition of old-growth occasionally used in this forum is that definition
used by the agency that manages them. Well it's no wonder that the three
people you guys refer to had different levels of understanding/comprehension of
what old-growth is.
As a retired one of those guys you speak of, the other side of the coin is how
to establish trust with the public, who with the best of intentions are fully
capable of loving out environment to death. Next time you visit Grand Canyon
National Park, let me know if you think that more than 4 million folks have
visited it per year for decades. Some think we're too protective of NPS
lands...you should see the hoops the NPS makes researchers leap through...you'd
think that you could trust academics to practice 'low-impact' research!
But what we three have in common is good intentions, and we must continue to
push our agendas forward if the few 'remnants' remaining are to be left to
their own devices!
-Don
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ENTS] Re: Shavers Mountain Old Growth Stand
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 14:42:15 +0000
James-Bob,
I think the answer is a combination of the two. Some foresters and rangers
do know where remnant patches of old growth are on the lands they oversee and
are reluctant to expose th remnants to public scrutiny for a variety of
reasons, some laudable, some not. Other foresters and rangers don't recognize
old growth even when standing in the middle of it. I suspect the latter are
predominantly administrators and younger people.
I once emerged from a dense old-growth red spruce stand in the southern
Adirondacks with a large tape measure in hand to be greeted by a ranger who was
understandably curious about what I was doing. We struck up a conversation and
during the course of the conversation I became aware that he did not realize
the area I had been in was old growth. His answers to a number of craftily
worded questions convinced me that he wasn't just playing dumb. He really
didn't know. He like many others based his understanding on what the lumber
community had told him about cutting in the Adirondacks. On the other hand, on
another occasion, I talked to another state employee who acknowledged the
existence of a far larger region of "first growth" in the Adirondacks. His
understanding was more in concert with the findings of a researcher named
Barbara McMartin, who wrote an excellent book on the historyof the Adirondack
forests. Two individuals, both in the sa me organization, one with a good unders
tanding and the other clueless. I think that scenario plays out all over. I
could give many other examples from personal experience.
Bob
-------------- Original message --------------
From: JamesRobertSmith <[email protected]>
>
> I was in the Otter Creek Wilderness two years ago. Before I left for
> that trip, I got in touch with the Forest Service and asked
> specifically if there was any old growth patches in there and, if so,
> how to find them. I was told that there was no old growth remaining,
> that it had all been logged out and that the entire wilderness was
> second growth except--perhaps--for some remnant trees.
>
> I've encountered this problem with almost every park and forest
> service with whom I've communicated. Either the rangers/foresters
> actually don't know jack about the areas over which they're in charge,
> or they don't want "outsiders" mucking about in their old growth
> forests.
>
&g t; Alas!
>
> This is especially irksome, because I don't know when I'll ever get
> back to the Otter Creek Wilderness.
>
> Nice photos on Smugmug! Even if I do have to turn off my firewall to
> look at that website.
>
>
Life on your PC is safer, easier, and more enjoyable with Windows Vista®. See
how
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