Forest Management

Some say she's alright, some say she'll never learn
Some rush into things, some stand and wait their turn
I've been here all along, standing here all this time
But you never noticed, just let the same tired flames burn
--Bruce Hornsby & the Range

Thirty five years ago I was completing my first six months in the working world following college graduation. I was a process engineer working for a large paper manufacturer in Wisconsin. The company had an excellent orientation for new management hires that included a road to our timberland operations. Me and another half dozen of that year's cohort jumped in a van and headed north to the woodlands as the fall leaves lit up the countryside.

Two lessons learned from our foresters on that trip stuck with me. One was that trees are like any other crop. They can be planted and harvested. The difference between growing trees and, say, corn is the time it takes for a crop to mature. Forest product companies and the consumers of their products are no more 'killing trees' than farmers and their consumers are killing corn.

The second lesson involved practices in good forest management. Remove dead and blighted trees. Thin out growth. Create space and buffers. Many of these practices were oriented toward containing damage caused by wildfires. Companies in the area had painfully learned this lesson thru experience. In fact, I regularly drove thru thousands of acres of unmanaged forestland south of town that had been decimated by wildfire 10-20 years earlier.

Today's 'environmentalists,' particularly the younger generation brainwashed by an equally ignorant older generation of grade school, high school, and college instructors, revolt at the notion of messing with the natural 'look' of a woodland.

As such, we are vulnerable to catastrophes like the current wildfires raging across California. That's the PCH at Malibu above.

The president is correct in calling such ignorance out.