Watching the wildfires in California and struck by the loss of property and lives.
Driving to town yesterday I followed a log truck. Not unusual, we have lots of log trucks in Louisiana, but what struck me about this load was that there were only four logs on the truck. And, it was a full load. As I looked closer, the logs looked like hardwood, easily six feet at the base. Someone is going to get some beautiful slabs out of those logs.
And I wondered. California is going to need a lot of logs to rebuild, and the wildfires are in forests. Why not cut the logs that are standing and use those to mill into lumber. Institute good forestry practices and treat the forest as the renewable resource that it is?
As a young man, I had to know the native pine species in Louisiana Basically, long leaf, short leaf and loblolly's. As the pines were cut down and reforested, the Southern White Pine replaced most of the native species, but I still see the native species.
There is no reason California can't manage its forests, except that it seems they can't manage water or power either. We'll see what the next elections reveal about Los Angeles. Has the disaster changed enough minds that forest management is no longer a foreign concept.
If you want to build houses, you gotta have lumber, and it's standing right there in the forest.
3 comments:
Forest service has to do a study for five years first.
Now here's your problem This is just common sense and therefore alien to anybody working in the government. We pay them 1/2 a million dollars a year to tell us we can't have nice forests or wood for our homes because cutting down a tree will cause the climate to just stop working and we will all die.
Having gone thru a major tornado couple of years ago. Town of 10K the amount of debris left behind took a year to clear and that didn't clear the tree's of the strips of the metal roofing lodged in them. What do you suppose Ca. is going to do with all of that? Seems like they'll be looking to send it elsewhere.
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