Tuesday, August 06, 2013

Logger Covers His Face

Behind county facility, in watershed
I'm not making any judgement comments, but here's today's report:

In the Quarter Store today, a worker was poking fun at her sister-in-law as an activist.

Another woman said, "I saw 18 logging trucks on the road today."

This is basically a photo essay. The cutting is going on right behind a town that is trying to revive a tourism/media/entertainment industry. The cutting probably has not taken wild-life repercussions into consideration, near a town.

The driver said, "I wanna know why you're taking my picture!"

I answered, 'Don't have to." This is an unpaid photo essay, by an American citizen.

The company is cutting on either cheaply-purchased land, or forestry land. The driver said this company was Rayonier. Rayonier has worked to recover other riverside by the Clallam River. But - Rayonier's Real Estate offices are in Florida.
Does that look like selective logging?

Merrill and Ring has already accidently exposed their intentions toward the scenic route. An expensive sign campaign for "working forests" MIGHT be a real-estate scam, but I have no further information; it just looks like monkey business. Merrill and Ring cut down all the timber on the highway in Pillar Point, a State Park.

The whole operation has a real "Get it Before It's Too Late, as fast as possible" feel to it. It's cutting directly into tourism-viewing areas, seeming to concentrate on it.

Cutting toward the stream and swamp
Local children feel hopeless up here about their future, but are launching anti-bullying campaigns, especially in view of the recent suicide of a child who - according to local stories (not verified, but repeated) felt his future was blocked. 

The generation that supports clearcut logging isn't helping the future generation, nor do they seem to care. The do collect large scholarships for the kids - but it's almost as though they're massaging their consciences. High school graduation classes are down to a handful of kids, while the parking lot of a local apartment complex is the center of kids waiting for their drug dealer - and drug use is about repressing pain.

If they have a future, a real one, that isn't just selling off the place and moving to condos in Arizona, as a developer would offer, the kids will have to do that themselves, with help from the better among our generation.

Selective logging based on a 500-year cycle - and it has to be 500 years, because forests aren't corn fields - must be the future. They're down to producing chipboard, and if you've ever had to deal with wood, you'll know how bad it is, now.

These trucks are very expensive, take a lot of tree money
As the English said, after WWII, trying to rebuild with their forests gone: "You can't get the wood, you know.

Why would the driver be reluctant to show his face?
Transition Port Angeles is trying to rescue the local communities and make life better and more sustainable - but ARE they addressing the resource crash? And it is crashing, or will, if these practices continue as they are. 

It's not 1895, folks. It's not even 1954. It's 2013 - and don't let it become just another place that ate its resources and turned into more concrete or empty grasslands. 

Scotland had a forest. The Middle East and Greece were forested. Easter Island were forested. But not any more. We can destroy forests, and they don't come back, or if they do, they're ghosts of themselves, and their wildlife is gone.

And I'm from Everett/Mukilteo. Let's just say that what happened up there gave me a case of PTSD that makes me unable to ignore a place where I see the same practices - where I once saw the large park tree a couple of truckers stole to try to get on the tv show "Axmen." This place has eagle habitat - including nests along the cliffs, rivers and roads. The eagle may not be an endangered species any more, but taking away their habitat would be a good way to jump-start the status. Silver lining? Or 30 pieces of silver?

We can live in a forest - or we can live on Easter Island.

Letter I just wrote to Rayonier Hunting:

"Hi! I'm contacting you because the Rayonier Timber doesn't have an email contact, only phone, and this might be a message more along your line.

Rayonier Timber is clearcutting right into a stream area, right behind a town, with eagle habitat along the river. In the past, clearcutting near towns has driven out the resident cougar, with subsequent human/animal interactions that proved lethal to the animal.

The town is Clallam Bay. A photo the area can be seen at http://www.sekiu.com/

The point you see on the left of the picture, on the cliffs has at least two live eagle nests, and is a nesting area for other base population predators, especially along the Clallam River and another wetland stream, where eagles regularly fish and share the area with other fishing birds and animals, including otters, both river and sea.

With timber sales to Japan up in the area, just checking to make sure Rayonier knows about the habitat, and the repercussions involved in cutting that close to a town. Use lines get fudged when there's cash to be collected; a major park tree was stolen up here by unaffiliated loggers to try to get on the tv show "Axmen."

And I do fish, and enjoy a bit of venison now and again - but no hunting or fishing can survive habitat collapse, especially along a wildlife stream. This is also an Audubon area, which holds out a future for local kids in tourism, which benefits from the same forest conditions as hunting. We've recently had a suicide of a promising young man, and other kids are using drugs to repress pain. They need help for a real future.

I write as growing up in the tree-pulp industry in Everett/Mukilteo - that didn't pay any attention to its resources.

Donna Barr
CC to Transition Port Angeles"

3 comments:

Glenn said...

Of course he covered his face. Your reputation precedes you, Donna.

Glenn

Donna Barr said...

Oh, I doubt he knows who I am. It's more probably alimony or warrants. I'm not saying that's what it is - or whether the cut is monkey busines,s and he knows it - but he knows enough to cover his face, and that just sets off alarms.

Glenn said...

And people know they're doing wrong, though they put a brave face on it; even if it's technically 'legal'.

Glenn