In this file photo, a truck carries logs through the Tillamook State Forest. Amelia Templeton
The court determined that Oregon can manage more than 700,000 acres of donated forestland for a range of values like recreation, water quality and wildlife habitat — not just logging.
Source: Appeals court reverses verdict that awarded $1 billion to Oregon timber counties – OPB
An old-growth redwood tree named “Father of the Forest” in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California in August 2020. Some trees in the park have been standing for 2,000 years.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
“It’s a very good start on the things that we’ve been asking for,” said Kirin Kennedy, director of people and nature policy at the Sierra Club, one of the members of that coalition. She said her group is not necessarily calling for a moratorium on logging old-growth trees, but for a science-based approach to managing them. “We want to protect old trees, but we also want to make sure communities are protected,” said Kennedy.
Source: Biden executive action aims to preserve old-growth trees : NPR
Ecologist Michelle Connolly standing among cedar trees in the inland temperate rainforest near Penny, BC. The inland rainforest gets much less attention from environmental groups than BC’s coastal rainforests, but it is an even rarer ecosystem.
In 2021, Connolly co-authored a peer-reviewed study that found that BC’s inland rainforest — which once totaled over 1.3 million hectares — was endangered, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria, and could experience ecological collapse within a decade if current logging rates continue. The study found that 95 percent of its core habitat, forest located more than 100 meters from a road, had been lost since 1970. “We’re fighting over the last pieces,” Connolly says.
Logs are stacked high in this aerial view of Viking Lumber’s sawmill in Klawock, Alaska. SEAKdrones LLC
Land exchanges have allowed lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to bypass the Roadless Rule and other environmental protections and transfer ownership of thousands of acres of old-growth Tongass National Forest, opening the land up for logging.
Source: A logging loophole is clear-cutting the Tongass National Forest – Grist | Grist
A log truck near Tillamook, Ore., in an undated file photo. Amelia Templeton
Gutman countered that logging revenue isn’t the only permanent value that forestland can provide and that recreation, habitat protection, flood stabilization and other land uses also contribute. “It provides economic value even if the land doesn’t generate revenue,” Gutman told the court. “That’s not just some 21st-century notion being superimposed on statutes from the 1940s.”
Source: $1 billion timber case goes before Oregon Court of Appeals – OPB
Sanitized thinned site on the Deschutes National Forest has removed most of the carbon (and wildlife habitat) which is subsequently emitted as Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere. Photo George Wuerthner
For instance, one study estimates that logging in the United States releases five times the carbon as wildfire, bark beetles, wind thrown, land use conservations, and drought combined.
Source: Logging Contributes to Climate Warming | The Wildlife News
Two women walk through a snow-covered forest on December 26, 2021 in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada. Andrew Chin / Getty Images
The more biodiversity, water and “sweeping views of green space” in the nature jaunt, the better, according to BIV.
Source: Time in Nature Can Now Be Prescribed as Health Care Treatment in Canada – EcoWatch
For reference, the current “tallest tree” in the world is said to be Hyperion at roughly 380 feet tall. Today we will focus on trees (with measurements given) from the 1800’s that stood over 400 feet tall (and take a look at their unique photographs).
Images showing how trees grow more strongly when planted in diverse forests, compare the size of the trees at 11-years-old. The tree on the right was planted in a more diverse area. Author provided
There is no human technology that can compete with forests for take-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and its storage. Darwin’s idea of growing lots of different plants together to increase the overall yield is now being explored by leading academics, who research forests and climate change.
Source: A 150-year-old note from Charles Darwin is inspiring a change in the way forests are planted
Environmentalists worry old-growth logging approvals are increasing, which could be harmful for B.C.’s biodiversity. (The Wilderness Committee)
Old-growth logging approvals have gone up over the past year despite the B.C. government promising to protect old-growth forests, according to new research from an environmental group.
Source: Old-growth logging approvals in B.C. have gone up over the past year, report suggests | CBC News
Getty Images
Logging makes fires worse, not better. One of the most fateful management choices Congress and our federal forest agencies made in the past was to allow logging corporations free reign on public lands to take the biggest, oldest, most fire-resistant trees with them and leave behind flammable piles of slash, dense plantations of young trees and networks of logging roads that would stretch from here to the moon and halfway back. With these roads come more human-sparked fires from logging equipment, irresponsible campers, gunfire and fireworks. Ninety percent of wildland fires are human caused and this labyrinth of logging roads provides the conduit.
Source: Logging is not the solution to wildfires or climate change | TheHill
Put simply, logging is not a carbon solution. All told, the logging industry is the largest fossil fuel emitter in our state. In 2016, the Oregon Global Warming Commission reported that the wood products sector itself contributed 50% more pollution than the transportation and energy sector combined.
Hundreds of people have been mourning the butterfly activists. AFP
Mr Gómez’s body was found in a well on 29 January. His family said that prior to his disappearance, the activist had received threats warning him to stop his campaign against illegal logging.
Source: Second Mexico monarch butterfly activist found dead – BBC News
“We’re seeing these forests disappear overnight. It’s happening so fast, and there’s very little old growth left in this part of B.C. It’s an environmental crisis that’s no less tragic than the loss of coral reefs and tropical rainforests.”