Vivian Parker’s Recent Comments

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  Clearcutting in California

  You're right--Backcut--the Forest Service doesn't clearcut anymore in California. That's because they call it "group selection" now!!! Group selection--yep, clearcutting groups of trees. It is the same thing, but in today's Forest Service,  clearcuts in California are less than 10 acres in size--bazillions of them, all over the landscape. But we are grateful for small incremental progress. Of course, private industry more than makes up for the FS' incremental progress. At the rate SPI is clearcutting California, there won't be any native wildlife left in 100 years.  

  Forest Service clearcuts, oops, I mean groups--are cut, bulldozed, piled and burned, doused in herbicides, replanted to uniform single species tree farms managed with repeated applications of herbicides (ok, not in all 18 National Forests in California--just the  forests of the Sierra Nevada that contain species on the brink of extinction like the California spotted owl, the Sierra Nevada Pacific fisher, and the Yosemite toad).

  Then after this treatment the Forest Service has the gall to tell us that this is done in the name of restoration. Backcut, you intentionally tried to mislead Grist's readers. On It's time for conservationists to collaborate with an agency they've long demonized posted 3 years, 7 months ago 103 Responses

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  Truce with Forest Service

  California is conspicuously absent from this discussion. The agency continues to promote bad projects (for example, you need go no further than the recent controversy over salvage logging of the Biscuit Fire and the attempt by some timber industry proponents at OSU and the agencies to suppress scientific research--see Washington Post, February 26). I don't know of anyone in California who is tying up the FS with appeals and lawsuits--does anyone have the time or money to do that??--unless it is absolutely necessary to keep the agency from destroying habitat for rare and endangered species, using pseudoscience to justify unsustainable logging  and other illegal and unethical acts. I get Mitchell's point, but collaboration is a two way street...On It's time for conservationists to collaborate with an agency they've long demonized posted 3 years, 8 months ago 103 Responses