(09-01-2020, 12:31 PM)oregontim Wrote: (09-01-2020, 11:28 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote: Turning to the propaganda of photos of harvested forests, the propaganda element consists of the implication that the evil loggers will leave the forest in that denuded condition, rub their hands together and cackle like Snidely Whiplash, and move on to ravage the next forest. That's simply not true. Replanting begins even before the cutting is finished. Weyerhauser, among others, has always insisted it plants more trees than it cuts down, and no one has ever claimed foul.
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What is not healthy are those lovely scenic forests we view as we drive up Highway 80. (I would imagine, by the way, that Oregon forests are even worse.) They may look and smell nice. But what you are looking at (I have come to realize) is the arboreal equivalent of the sums of Calcutta - trees wildly overgrown, stunting each other's growth, the sheer numbers preventing the healthy growth. It's counterintuitive to view the bare ruined choirs as good forest management, and the wildly overgrown types as bad, but that is apparently the case.
In my previous post on this I was referring to fact, an eye witness account of what I see every time I drive east from Eugene into the Cascades, which is an ugly patchwork of clearcuts that are wide bare spots on the hills. Photos that depict that are not propaganda, they are images of things as they are, now, in Oregon and Washington. I’m talking about what you see on any of the roads that go east from the Willamette Valley. It’s not all clearcut, by any means; there’s still a lot of forest; but what stands out are the glaringly out of place clear cuts and there are way too many of them. And that’s what you’ll see, today ... the word “propaganda” doesn’t apply to reality.
Of course these issues are never as black-and-white as we’d like. Lots of shades of gray. An Oregon family that owns even 10 or 20 acres of forest can generate single-digit millions once every 40 years or so when they cut it all down, and they almost always understand that it’s a recurring revenue only if they do the work to replant, and care for it. But after the cut, for a decade or two, it’s really ugly, changes the ecosystem, and exacerbates erosion. The tiny new trees don’t grow the same in an open sunny clearcut field as they do in a real forest. And there are interesting issues around the good of the common, and the rights of property owners, that generate debate. Both sides have serious thoughtful arguments.
But you can’t dismiss the images of the actual reality of it, what we see today, as propaganda. That’s dismissive and grossly inaccurate. The clearcuts are all over.
Regarding the comparison to I80, My wife’s nephew lived with us in Eugene for a few years, not that long ago. He’d grown up a city kid and he came to love the forests of Oregon, particularly what we call “old growth” forest. He discovered, to his dismay, that old growth is surprisingly hard to find. The drive east to the cascades goes through a whole lot of forest, but the enthusiasts share maps of the very reduced areas that are actually old growth. I’m not sure on which side of this discussion that fact fits; but so like so many facts, it doesn’t take sides.
It’s dangerous to dismiss reality as propaganda.
Indeed it is. But appearances can be deceiving, and seeing should not always be believing.
The appearance of a cleared forest may be decimation. But, like a harvested wheat field, it is actually a stage in renewal and regeneration - a passageway to growth. The reality is health - and when the image is presented with a different implication, that is propaganda.
Similarly, a green lush overgrown forest may seem to be in perfect health. But the reading that has come to light in this line indicates it is anything but. The comparison to a Calcutta slum does not seem to me a bad one.
The outward presentation is one thing, the reality quite another. It often happens like that. Apparently, we have been endorsing the wrong values - or rather, too narrow a set of values - since the Smoky-the-Bear days. Our good intentions have led to sickened overcrowded forests. I'm certainly not in favor of unlimited logging, but an expansion would be helpful - and the photos of cleared tracts now seem to me deliberately and cynically misleading.
