You and I both know what would be happening in this country right now, they would completely shut down the (several) suspected counties where this little morsel was suspected of coming from and fuck anyone who was in the middle of trying to make a living there, while they scoured the country side with butterfly nets looking for another one of these fucking things.
Don't get me wrong, I love shit like this, where some long thought lost little delicacy has been rediscovered.
My point is , look what happened there, compared to what happens here.
Just so ya know, I about puked when I started reading the article at that link.
I can be a bit of a tree hugger but trees make the world go round and Forest Managery and Logging used to employ millions of workers around the world, especially in the area I grew up in and that all came to a screeching halt because of the Spotted Owl.
Where I grew up used to be the largest lumber exporting port in the entire fucking world.
Now there is nothing left, all the saw mills, lumber yards, trucks, fallers, buckers, chip plants, paper mills, dock workers, every fucking related industry is still dead and now the government checks making up for the loss of revenue because of the controversial shut down of the forests because of the conservationist firestorm of these small birds in question, are about to dry up.
Look for a new contender to the disaster Appalachia is in the next few years, on the West Coast.
Let us not forget the Marbled Murrelet and the Snowy Plover in the scheme of things around here.
I have to think they all taste like chicken with a little BBQ sauce on a grill.
Good on 'em for finding a lost specie.
Grab a butterfly net and a bottle of BBQ sauce before the fucking government hears about it.
Dude, ya left out all the parts of the eradication of old growth forests, the ravaging of the ecosystem, the wiping out of the streams, rivers and fish populations that used to FEED Oregon's fishermen.
ReplyDeleteThe mud, silt, and waste tailings in the streams and rivers, all that forest that drank up carbon dioxide, gone.
See, ya left out the whole other side of the issue.
The deregulation, the cutbacks in Forest Service management practices and people, the horrible history of the corporate lumber companies (Boise/Cascade, Georgia-Pacific, Sierra Pacific).
They raped it, they ruined it, they shut down. Workers be damned. Had it not been for LACK of governmental oversight, there might still be some logging industry to employ people, had they done sustainable planning and logging from the get go.
But it take it all, and move on.
And what you have now, is blighted forest lands, people without work abandoned by all with no retraining, and wasted fishing industry from Seattle to Los Angeles.
Wasn't the owl's fault, or the DFH tree huggers, hoss. Talk to some Forest Service people with educations and lifetimes serving the forests. They'll paint the other side of the story for ya.
And fuck Reagan, James Watt and the policy's they imposed for their crony's to get rich and pillage.
Harumph.
Larue, my man, you have a point, to a point.
ReplyDeleteYes, gthese are all legitimate concerns, and some of gthese practices still exist, to my dismay.
Yet, in the area where I grew up, they are now slowly working on the THIRD crop of replanted trees that have become marketable.
The Old Growth needs to be left alone in my opinion, there are more than enough trees to keep the industry viable, on a much smaller scale.
The old days are gone forever, of that there is no doubt.
However, my point is that when the government gets involved, bad shgit happens.
Your point about the California Salmon population crash is a prime example.
The government got involved in a water war in the Klamagth basin and basically shut it off for everyone but the farmers.
Thank you Dick Fucking Cheney.
The result was a massive die off because what water there was available for the fish got too hot and killed them all.
Now, there are no fish in the sea because they could not get upstream to spawn and even if they did, the molts would have died.
It's a fucking mess but my real point here is that when the government gets involved, it gets fucked up.
I have to admit I was being a bit of an asshole with this post.
Heh.
I are an Ornery Bastard, remember?
My family's been in the lumber industry for 5 generations. My dad cut trees for 50 years. Each of my brothers and I spent more than a few summers in the sawmill pulling 2 inch slivers outta our hands. Spent one of those summers on the Green Chain - fuck that!
ReplyDeleteIn eastern WA, you can't clearcut. It's too sparse, slower growing Ponderosa and Doug fir. But they made it work. Now, there's nothing - no mill, no logs.
Weyerhauser and Boise Cascade came in and bought the land after they drove the mill under. They're trying to grow western spruce and firs from the wet side of the mountains on land that doesn't see a tenth of the rain. Weyerhauser modified the seeds to live in the climate. But, what about the rest of the ecosystem? What happens when you start growing trees in areas they've never been? What kind of bug is going to find them? How will it change the bugs already there? It's all about the Benjamins. They have gyppos cut the trees, then ship them to Canada for processing or to Japan as whole logs.
As I was growing up, I realized the most dedicated environmentalist was an old logger. He worked outside every day of the year, in 100 degrees or minus 20, rain or shine. When it came time to take a break, he would gather the whole fam damily and go back into the woods to have fun. He hunted and fished in the same places he logged.
He taught us that you don't leave your crap in the woods, if you brought it in, you take it back out. If you find something that doesn't belong, pack it out. Or as Dad put it: "I don't want to come back here to go fishin' and see your goddamn beer cans lyin' all around. I'll kick your ass from here to next Tuesday."
Words to live by.
What they said.
ReplyDeleteI just came in again to lay this on you:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hcn.org/issues/124/3963
Busted, I get ornery, too. More so as I get older (56). *G*
ReplyDeleteI hope you listen to www.bootliquor.com
It's for people like . . . you . . er, us. *G*
David A-great comment.
Thanks for sharing . . . as an AVID backpacker of a few years in the Sierra, I learnt fast to keep a clean trek and camp. '71-'76 or so. All summers long, and some winters too, from Yosemite to Kings Canyon. Best thing I ever did! *G*
Bagging up yer shit and packing it out though, is a bit much (I've read that it's encouraged in many places I used to pack thru). I DO understand that it's essential for Colorado River/Grand Canyon river trips. A buddy has done a few of those . . . you poop, you bag it, and SOMEone is carrying that shit out.
Best to all, sorry I came out swinging a bit. Just a bit tense these daze, but I'm hopin to get over it with BushCo sort of gone . . *G*
-Life's simple, don't fuck it up.