One of us should probably write a letter to the editor pointing all this stuff out, albeit briefly, since the R-G now wants LTE limited to 200 words.  

Maybe we both should. 

I feel somewhat constrained because I just moved here this last summer, and I'm still trying to get my head around this ecosystem and its issues. I lived on the Gulf of Mexico for most of my adult life.

The way even longtime residents and forest professionals don't distinguish between tree farms and actual living forests really fascinates me. In the South there was no question of the difference since the loblolly and slash pines never got any older than 25 years, if that, because there was such a big appetite for pulp.  

Hardly anyone remembered the long leaf old growth but there was no mitaking what had replaced it for a forest.