Thanks to Emily Dolhansky (@emilydolhansky) for these Oregon photos!
Apparently the East-Side screens don’t apply to BLM land.. hence photos.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: re Eastside Screens
The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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Thanks to Emily Dolhansky (@emilydolhansky) for these Oregon photos!
Apparently the East-Side screens don’t apply to BLM land.. hence photos.
These photos aren’t taken from the same spot, so it’s hard to tell what’s been removed.
They didn’t take enough out.
So for 382 million years tall trees have been thriving on this planet without chainsaws and logging and now you think that none of that happened and we can’t save the forest unless we cut down as much as possible? No wonder you’re too ashamed to use your real name. If I were as out of touch as you, I’d feel the same way too.
Deane, most of us her on Smokey Wire are interested in helping both forests and people survive and thrive. We humans have had an enormous impact on forests, and they’ve been crucial to our survival, and they’ll continue to be crucial resources. “Wise use” is the key. I don’t know of anyone who wants to “cut down as much as possible.”
Yeah, no one wants that in theory, but in practice everyone is avoiding an honest discussion about the cumulative harms being done. Just a bunch of talk about being responsible on an individual level, but when you add up the total of everything that’s being cut by all 8 billion of us there’s nothing wise about any of it, just denial after denial of how bad deforestation is getting on this planet.
If you want proof, just do a comprehensive study of average tree crown diameter, as well as co-dominant densities via all the aerial and satellite photos that have been done over the past 90 years and it will be clear as clear can be that 8 billion people are doing a great job at ensuring nothing but weeds and tiny crown saplings and expanding areas of desertification is what’s really going on behind the dishonest claim of wise use.
Even up here in Washington state, we’re losing 200,000 acres per decade to permanent deforestation but any time we try to address this the people most responsible for causing it will explain that the problem is too many regulations that can limit how much forest they can cut down and we need more wise use with less oversite, which is the same things as saying we need more denial of how bad long term deforestation is currently getting on this planet.
Deane, do you have a source for the 200K figure?
Forest cover in the US _increased_ by ~5% since 1990, according to UN FAO figures. And as a nation we aren’t harvesting the annual growth. This USFS storymap offers a look at the data and trends. “… the growth-to-removals ratio at the National scale is 1.92, or we grow nearly twice the volume we remove from timberland, annually.”
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/82dcef460b1a470db0f8f4dd7cf6f9b7/page/page_4/
Lol… Y’all are so busy cherry picking bogus data to sustain your planet killing Kleptocracy you aren’t even looking at basic facts… Even the timber industry liars who took over state land forestry management are more honest with the data than you:
“Washington State permanently lost 400,000 acres of forestland to human development from 2007 to 2019. Scientists expect the pace of forest conversion to increase without intervention, but even at the current pace, the state is on track to lose an additional 625,000 acres to development by 2040. In addition, more than 4.5 million acres have burned in wildfires since 2010.” https://www.dnr.wa.gov/news/commissioner-hilary-franz-introduces-%E2%80%9Ckeep-washington-evergreen%E2%80%9D-plan-forest-conservation-and
Yes. The explosion of OLYMPIA, Issaquah, Vancouver, Port Townsend, Port Angeles, Spokane, Sequim, and others (NW Oregon, central OR).
That is not forestry, that is wealthy suburban expansion. Perhaps you need to direct your anger at the tech industry and remote workers?
Trees regrow. Condos and townhomes don’t, they just add to the tax base for states.
Further, Dean-O,
Your own link to WA DNR says 400k acres lost over 12 years, 2007-19. As you quoted. Hardly the source for you 200k acre per year claim, unless you count all those condos and townhomes in you hip little suburban rural mountain towns.
Also, the 4.5 million acres burned over 11 years, is about 400k acres burned per year. Aren’t your scientist buddies, Hanson Dellasala etc the ones saying fire is good? All fire? Is there any nuance to the severity of the fire, that your word vomitted in your link? Or did something just appeal to your personal beliefs and agenda?
Notice all those (D)’s in front of sponsored legislation in the link you shared?
Where is 200k a year of forests lost year from? Please, since you posit that you are a scientist and told us that you went to school in some kind of “Global” studies for grad school, share the facts and science.
I thought the principle of “thinning” for ecological purposes (as well as fuel reduction) was to remove the trees that are only there because of fire suppression. It doesn’t look to me like that would be true of the circled trees. The thing I notice about the bottom photo is that there aren’t as many big trees (that probably survived past fires). (Surprise.)
Like the comment above says though, these photos are taken from different places so you can’t tell if this is a before thinning and after thinning photo. Circling trees in blue on a photo doesn’t mean anything.
I’ve had marks of my own criticized from photographs taken of them. We don’t know what the silvicultural prescription was here…was it a fuels thinning of true selection? If the latter, it is a good practice to remove overmature, stressed or diseased trees to release smaller regeneration. My point is that trying to understand a mark based on photographs alone is not going to do anyone justice.
Maybe something got lost in translation. If these were supposed to represent situations where the Eastside Screens restrictions would be a problem (and if the Screens are supposed to be about ecological forestry), my point was that these don’t look like site-inappropriate overstory trees that are circled. Both photos also look more like what most people would consider overstory “logging” rather than “thinning from below.”
I’m familiar with the work of @emilydolhansky and use to discuss it with her often on Twitter before Elon Musk ruined that forum.
She knows alot about thinning monocrop tree farms but is entirely clueless and in some case downright ecologically illiterate when it comes to ecosystem management.
All the papers published and federal guidelines written on which trees are the most beneficial to wildlife clearly is something she’s never read a single sentence of.
Trees with a slight lean build up more detritus on the trunk and this is profoundly beneficial to all the species, from microroganisms living in canopy soils, to sustaining moss & lichen populations, to all the wildlife that depend on this living system for nesting and foraging.
Of course mono-crop tree farmer Emily thinks targeting the highest wildlife value trees for removal is an improvement rather than a detriment. So sick of the shameful ignorance she perpetuates every day she’s out marking trees!
Not only is Emily uneducated on protecting high value wildlife trees, but her before and after photos always suck because she was never educated on how to properly set up before and after photo points. Accurate photo points don’t really matter to her because she almost never returns to locations where’s she’s marked trees so she almost never realizes when her tree marking has gone wrong. Ignorance is bliss as far as she’s concerned.
In general the work she does consistently increases long term stand mortality when you count both the trees she marks for removal, as well as the trees that die from facing greater exposure to drought and wind because too many trees were removed.
A simple limbing up of all deadwood and removal of specific high canopy branches to increase spacing in the same direction the main run of a fire historically moves through an area is all that’s needed to ensure this patch of trees can live long past our short lifetimes.
This has got to be one of the more outlandish, offensive, outright crude and inappropriate comments you have yet made Deanne. Please go away, and let the scientists with good intentions and actual adult characteristics discuss things.
Offensive and crude is something more associated with people who are too scared/cowardly to use their own name and never follow up with references to dispute specific points, but instead resort to crass sweeping across the board dismissiveness of anyone who’s raises concerns about people marking trees lacking basic training in forest ecology.
Where are the these scientists of good intentions of which you speak?
Why are you too scared to name them?
Why are you too scared to name yourself?
Get off the “A” complaint train. I have my reasons, and stick to them. I guess you and Dr Zyback have more in common than you realize.
All of the language in your post is a personal attack on someone you have a difference of opinion with, and it is mean and nasty and unprofessional and tacky and not needed here. You are extremely talented at using inappropriate and misleading arguments statements, whether you realize it or not. Congrats.
Every single comment you make here is a personal attack on others, crude, aggressive, and reeks of toxic masculinity (something you railed against when you still had Twitter, except for when you were talking about the NFL? See? These things cut both ways).
Further, you never seem to taken any issue with what “2nd Law” writes anonymously, despite it being anon.
Double standards when it fits your agenda?
Please don’t attack people who aren’t even in the conversation.. Emily was kind enough to share her photos.
I still find interesting things on Twitter, including Emily’s photos. So I would disagree that Musk “ruined” Twitter.. although it looks like there might be a competitive war about to begin with Substack.
Deane, what happens when people make troll-like comments is that people just scroll past and don’t read them. Is that what you want?
Hello Sharon, it’s been awhile. Thanks for your closing comment on Friday regarding the ongoing rants by Mr. Rimerman. For many years I have enjoyed simply being a reader and observer of the conversations in TSW. I have found very little to comment on since there has been no shortage of credentialed contributors and I have never been tempted to be baited by those few that aren’t. I must admit however that I never expected to see posts that read like excerpts out of “The Overstory” or rants that more than validated why Tom Nichols felt compelled to write both his essay and later book on The Death of Expertise.
Though now retired after 36 years of being a professional forester, silviculturist, and fire practitioner, I like many including our co-conspirators in the wood products industry became accustomed long ago to being vilified as those responsible for a century of forest mismanagement and over-zealous fire suppression so these rants are amateurish at best and as you note, the best advice is to ignore.
Yes, Mr. Rimerman I confirmed you earned an MPA in 2008 though the precise concentration could not be determined nor your undergraduate work. Though admirable I might suggest leaving your 20-year old Fall Creek tree sitting protest experience, association with Earth First!, recruiting street youths and wood warriors, Warrior Poets, and “research by Google” behind.
Instead could you please share with us your scientific expertise and accomplishments from 1991-2009 that focused on international forest protection issues with an emphasis on policy in California, Oregon, and Washington; as a Global Forestry Policy Analyst since 2005 for Forest Policy Research (?), accomplishments in international forest governance, and your efforts at canopy sculpting to replicate thinning (Wildlife News post, 1/2023 with same rants). If time and per your most recent resume, sharing the scientific relationship with your current employment in on-line marketing and promotions for a fitness center in Olympia, WA would be valuable as well. I have the link if you need it to refresh.
It might be best as you wrote to stick to photography, Web skills, and recording poems with ambient-minded improvisational musicians for which you appear to be far better suited.