The New Land Rush

[xoxoxoBruce]

The National Forest Service is chartered to care for federally owned forests in a way that will provide a steady supply of trees for wood products. The words pristene, wild, natural, scenic and biodiversity are not in their mission statement.
Being a federal job, they are suject to the pressures of politics which is always make someone happy right NOW. Often at the expense of the land their supposed to keep productive for the future.

There are many people, especially in the west where large portions of land are federally held, that would like to see much of this federal land move into the tax base.
Part of the global economy is not having to conserve what can be bought elsewhere.

Federal money budgeted for schools is huge. Every school district in the nation gets some. Of course it's usually not enough to cover the federally mandated programs the districts are required to satisfy, but that's another topic.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Marichiko cheats. The bulk of Mari's post covers a very different sort of problem than selling public lands. Cutting of timber on Federally owned property is an example of "the tragedy of the commons", which occurs when nobody owns the land they are working.

The tragedy of the commons is usually described as: "When cattle are raised on the public square the farmers let them overgraze it; when cattle are raised on private farms this is never permitted to happen." Ironically, Mari's post is an argument for private ownership of land.

UT didn't read the OP:

National Forest Service officials said they want to sell about 200,000 acres to raise about $800 million over the next few years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land.

Why are there logging cutbacks on federal land? Because it is the environmentally sound thing to do. If a private timber outfit were to buy those lands, there would still be logging cut backs because the land needs time to recover from past tree harvests. A tree has the same rate of growth on the day after it is sold to a private outfit as it did the day before.

The feds have something called the US Forest Service which is staffed by professionals who have studied forestry for a minimum of 4 years. They know all about conducting reasonable timber sales and replanting afterwards. Unfortunately, politicians jump in the middle and scream free enterprise and at the same time cut funding for care of the land. The reswult is the destruction of forests that you find in many areas out West.

Come out to Colorado and I can show you some forests that ARE being quite well managed by the Forest Service since they were never clear cut in the first place. These forests are carefully harvested for their timber, have good regeneration, and are used by the general public for recreation like hunting and camping, as well.

Private timber concens do maintain vast tree farms. Weyerhauser comes to mind. However, Weyerhauser doesn't allow people to go traipsing around on its tree farms and that's what they are - farms and not ecosystems.

The "tragedy of the commons" is about too many people attempting to use too little land. The problem here is an irresponsible federal land management system where politicians are destroying your and my public lands and then using that destruction as an excuse to sell those federal lands out from under us. I read no where in the OP that the feds will sell these lands to anyone in particular - they most likely will go to the highest bidder. The article mentioned land in California. Depending on WHERE in California, most timber outfits would not be especially interested because California has the same problem as Colorado - a dry climate not conducive to the brisk regeneration of forests.

You would absolve the federal government of all responsibility and have OUR public lands sold off to what most likely will be private developers. Again, its a short sighted solution to the problem. Once all that land is sold where is the money coming from for the next government boondoggle?

Originally Posted by Griff

Many of the lands out West were managed for timber for many years, then enviros normally from away with no economic stake come in and for good or ill change the purpose the lands are managed for. Privately held land is easy to manage for a specific purpose.

Lands out west here were MIS-managed for timber by your politician from Boston for years until the havoc this caused was apparent to everyone who lives out here. The Forest Service then managed to start a few environmentally sound policies which have been disrupted by the likes of James Watt and now Bushco. Privately held land will be managed to extract the maximum commercial profit. In the Rocky Mountain West, this will not be timber sales, but the parceling out of land into ranchette subdivisions. This practice will NOT generate jobs for the locals. The hypothetical community of Bumfuck was not based on a viable local industry of timber harvesting, but a short sighted desire by logging outfits to extract everything they possibly could for a one time only commercial gain. It can take 50 years or longer to regenerate a forest in the Rockies. The logging town of Bumfuck has no business ever being created as a logging town in the first place.

The cattlemen's association wants to pounce on federal lands here and run sheep and cows on them. They are PO'ed because the Forest Service won't issue the grazing permits that would allow them to re-enact UT's tragedy of the commons.

And if anyone wants to see what great stewards of the land private outfits are, I invite you all to go visit Uravan, Colorado, a mining community on the Colorado-Utah border that no longer exists. The big uranium mining concerns owned quite a bit of land and uranium mines out there in the 50's. Uranium was mined without a second thought as to the consequences of unsound mining procedures. The entire town of Uravan had to be closed down and dismantled thanks to contamination from uranium tailings. The heavy metals from the mines has leached into the rivers making the Dolores River (well-named) one of the spookiest rivers I have ever seen in my life. There are no fish in it, no aquatic insects, not even algae. The Dolores is dead for a good 100 miles. Go look at it and then contrast it with the neighboring San Miguel River Basin which was not subjected to the tender mercies of private land owners. The San Miguel is a vibrant living river and the communities that were built near its banks are still in existance.

Busterb, my quotes were taken after Beestie's habit of making up imaginary quotes in various other threads.

[busterb]

Mari. Where in this thread did you find the quotes that you used? I can't find them. Are my eyes that bad? Perhaps I just don't understand the the topic.

[Undertoad]

The "tragedy of the commons" is about too many people attempting to use too little land.

I defined the phrase twice in my post, and yet you re-defined it here... incorrectly.

The feds managed it incorrectly and yet you demand they continue to manage it.

The correct answer is to sell the land under deed restrictions to only permit certain uses by any future owner.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I defined the phrase twice in my post, and yet you re-defined it here... incorrectly.

The feds managed it incorrectly and yet you demand they continue to manage it.

The correct answer is to sell the land under deed restrictions to only permit certain uses by any future owner.

Garrett Hardin, a population biologist, coined the term "the tragedy of the commons" in a rather lengthy article which first appeared in Science Magazine in December, 1968. The term was then taken up by other ecologists and biologists:

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity"--and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

[elSicomoro]

One of the things I love most about Missouri (and it's hard to love sometimes) is that we have a large amount of forest here, primarily in the southern half of the state. Some of that land proposed for sale is here in the state...it's part of the Mark Twain National Forest. I'm not overly familiar with all the details, but I'd hate to see us lose any of this land, as it's beautiful and it's in areas that are not heavily populated.

[Undertoad]

Wikipedia:

The tragedy of the commons is a phrase used to refer to a class of phenomena that involve a conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good. The term derives originally from a parable published by William Forster Lloyd who was Drummond Professor at Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society, in his 1833 book on population.
...
The parable demonstrates how unrestricted access to a resource such as a pasture ultimately dooms the resource because of over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, while the costs of exploitation are distributed between all those exploiting the resource.

That was the parable to which I was referring. The Wiki entry also notes that

It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons".

BTW, the overpopulation scientists were kind of humbled when the growth curve started its downtrend in the 1980s. "Oops." Our doomsaying always sounds better when it's semi-scientific.

Please give your cite as to the declining growth curve of the global human population. Also please state what rate of growth is acceptable on a finite planet with finite resources.

Hardin is the one who brought the term "tragedy of the commons" into the popular language where the concept has been largely misunderstood every since. I was first introduced to the term in a class on population biology in 1974 where we were required to read the original sources.

Sorry you don't care for the findings of biologists and other scientists. :p

[Undertoad]

Wikipedia on overpopulation:

The world's human population is currently growing by more than 75 million people per year. This is down from a peak numerical growth of about 88 million per year in the late 1980s. About half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility, and population growth in those countries is due to immigration.
...
Population projections
According to projections by the Population Division of the United Nations revised in 2004, the population of the world will stabilize at 9.1 billion by 2050 due to demographic transition. The UN has consistently revised its population projections downwards over the last 10 years. Birth rates are now falling in most developing countries, while the population in many developed countries would also fall without immigration.

Sorry you don't care for the findings of biologists and other scientists.

Sorry you only read the ones that agree with you.

[Kitsune]

Two interesting notes:

``These lands are in most cases isolated parcels,'' said Erin O'Connor, spokeswoman for the Intermountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service based in Ogden. ``Because they are isolated parcels, they are difficult to manage as national forest system lands.''

The Forest Service said that because it is acquiring land through other programs, the proposed sale will result in no net loss of public lands.

Hey, that's not too bad, I guess. I'd feel better if they "sealed up" more of the Ocala National Forest, here, by aquiring some of the more abused areas that are privately owned and permit the areas to return to a healed state.

...and...

Previously such funds came from federal timber sales, and the general treasury.

Timber sales have declined in recent years.

Do I read this correctly in that it is not environmental restrictions that are hurting these areas, but rather slow sales?

Hmm.

[Griff]

I believe Canada has been accused of "dumping" timber on the US market.

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Do I read this correctly in that it is not environmental restrictions that are hurting these areas, but rather slow sales?

Hmm.

The following is about the closing of a pulp mill in Port Angeles owned by Rayonier Inc. This is a perfect example of what I was saying earlier in this thread. Its from a story published in The High Country News which contains more information about the economy, people, and the environment out West than anybody east of the Mississippi ever wants to know:



Then the supply of wood abated. The price of pulp plummeted. Some locals said it had nothing to do with the spotted owl and the Endangered Species Act. There just weren’t enough big trees anymore.

The shortage was no surprise. In the 1970s, the government made the unprecedented move of opening federal land to clear-cutting. It was a way of flushing fresh cash through the economy, booming the Northwest. The result was simple to predict: Once the forest is clear-cut, second-growth timber will not make near the profits. Rayonier Inc. knew this. Official predictions of it were published 10 years earlier.

When a Northwest coastal forest starts from leveled ground, the biomass of greenery hits a peak after 50 years. Wood, however, continues expansion for another 600 years. If you cut it before 600 years, you’re only getting scraps. The thing to do was to move to Port Angeles, make as much money as possible off old-growth harvest, then brace for the inevitable crash. But a lot of children were born in that time, mortgages acquired, V-8 extra-cab trucks purchased, loans taken.

When forests thinned, when certain regions were closed to timber harvest due to declining spotted owl populations, the industry faltered. Rayonier went from using 242 million board-feet in 1985 to 13.6 million a decade later.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Sorry you only read the ones that agree with you.

Sorry you don't read. The world population was around 2.5 billion in 1950. A world population of 9.1 billion is more than triple. I haven't noticed forests tripling or arable land tripling or the size of the earth tripling. Yes, population growth rates have slowed. The growth rate in 1950 was 1.47%. It is expected to be around .5% in 2050. No one is predicting that the population growth rate will then stay at .5% forever after. Scientists simply don't want to make more long term predictions than that. There are simply too many variables involved. A growth rate of .5 % of 9 billion means that about 45 million more people will be added to the world's population every year. Naturally this amount will increase exponentialy if the growth rate remains constant. Do the math UT, all is far from rosey with the world's population growth. From a report on world population growth done by The US Census


The U.S. Census Bureau’s long-term projections indicate that the globe’s population will grow to approximately 9.1 billion in 2050, an increase of over 45 percent compared to its size in 2002. The largest gains in population
between 2002 and 2050 are projected to be in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Near East. In these regions, many countries are expected to more than double in size by 2050, with some more than tripling. More moderate gains are expected in that time period for North Africa, the Americas, Asia, and
Pacific. Although some countries in these regions are expected to more than double in size, the typical country is likely to experience a smaller increase.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a majority of the countries Europe and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union are expected to experience a decline in population between 2002 and 2050.

Isn't that nice? The first world nations will lose population, while the third world becomes more over-crowded and desperate than ever. Interesting...

[xoxoxoBruce]

The largest gains in population between 2002 and 2050 are projected to be in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Near East. In these regions, many countries are expected to more than double in size by 2050, with some more than tripling.

I have faith that drought, starvation and machete hacking will moderate those increases.

They actually take those things into consideration, Bruce. For example, they noted rather sadly that HIV probably will not slow population growth in the countries most heavily impacted by the AIDS epidemic as much as they first thought it would.

According to the study, population growth is all about the fertility rate of adult women (duh!) In the Mid East we all know that Abdul is going to keep Abdulette barefoot and pregnant, absent some massive cultural upheavel.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I have faith that drought, starvation and machete hacking will moderate those increases.

Harsh.

...but true.