Protect the last of the wild
Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed &quot;solutions&quot;.<p>One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.<p>As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; &quot;they have PhDs! they know better than us!&quot;... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.<p>City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.<p>Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...<p>Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.