Category Archives: Environmentalism

Weekend Postcard from Mountain Home State Forest

I was the Assistant Forest Manager at Mountain Home State Forest in the early 1980’s. Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest is a 4,800 acre tract of forest land in Tulare County managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The State Forest lies within the Tule River watershed some 22 air miles northeastContinue reading “Weekend Postcard from Mountain Home State Forest”

The silence of the limbs

My name is Norm, I love trees, and I’m a forester. Foresters love all the types of forests that exist, young, old, and in between. Trees are awesome. We love all the stuff they provide, such as shade, habitat, cleaner air, clean water, and yes, wood. We are not Romantics. We don’t confer pastoral sceneryContinue reading “The silence of the limbs”

Sounding the alarmed, are the world’s forests 80% fragmented?

Ignorance is the parent of fear” – Herman Melville Willful Sturm und Drang A statement crafted to alarm you: “…80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone.” – Tzeporah Berman, co-founder of ForestEthics. But it could have come from any number of environmental organizations—in competition for your wallet. You need to act nowContinue reading “Sounding the alarmed, are the world’s forests 80% fragmented?”

Have one-half of the world’s forests been converted to non-forest use?

I posted recently “You’re pulling my Yang. Ten reasons to use dead tree stuff,” the Yang being half of the Taoist Yin-Yang concept of male/female, light/dark/ ebb/flow, action/reaction. The post’s message was that we can’t look at only one side of an issue as a Yahoo Green blog had done (10 big reasons to stopContinue reading “Have one-half of the world’s forests been converted to non-forest use?”

You’re pulling my Yang. Ten dead-on reasons for using dead tree stuff.

Some anti-logging activists have latched onto a fact like mistletoe on a branch; it looks green but it’s hurting the trees rather than helping. The fact: Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, and via photosynthesis combine the CO2 with hydrogen to make wood, and expel oxygen. This process pulls CO2 , a greenhouse gas,Continue reading “You’re pulling my Yang. Ten dead-on reasons for using dead tree stuff.”

California’s Deforestation Due to Wildfire

This is a map of the National Forests in California. These forests comprise about half of the forestland in California. The Forest Service graphic below shows the results of the 2000-2009 fire season in California. About 1% of California’s fires chalk up 90% of the total acreage burned. Half a million acres that had theContinue reading “California’s Deforestation Due to Wildfire”

How much deforestation is there?

I mentioned the other day in “What Killed the environmental Movement, that generally environmental organizations tell you how bad things are but will never say anything improved? Check this out: [Illegal logging and unsustainable forest practices] lead to the loss of nearly 36 million acres of natural forests each year, an area roughly the sizeContinue reading “How much deforestation is there?”