My response that was originally a PM.Joseph Jenkins wrote:Being from Alabama, a much less environmentally friendly state than Florida, I can't help but completely disagree with this statement. Our heavy harvesting of pine pulp wood (especially in the coastal plain) and subsequent pine plantations has negatively affected our biodiversity. Historically, the average age of our trees in the southeast were 200-400 years old with under stories open enough to drive trucks through. Now, due to the mass planting and harvesting for pulp wood, our trees are an average of 25-35 years old. This does not allow for large fallen logs, root balls, tree hollows, and an open under story that is characteristic of older stands. This has probably been a leading factor (in addition to fire suppression) to the declines in countless species including gopher torts, indigo snakes, red cockaded woodpeckers, eastern diamondbacks, etc. I would agree that there is plenty of slash to be cut, but it is only getting replanted with more slash or loblolly pine. In addition, it matters less what species of pine is most common in an ecosystem. What matters is the age of the stand, because this affects the fore-mentioned structure of the stand.simus343 wrote:That's a lot of paper to print 20 copies, but, working with wildlife and ecosystem restoration and management in the southeast I can say this and back it up - cut down the trees! There's plenty of paper-grade slash pine to go around!
So, for the sake of our wildlife and our herping conquests, I say reduce and recycle. There are a number of paper plants running that now process only recycled paper in the US, and I imagine many more would open if we would just recycle more paper. This will cause a drop in the pulp tree prices, causing managers to allow their stands to reach older ages for lumber.
-Joe
I suppose I could have worded it better. Where I work, on 56,000 acres of private conservation land, the land use to be Slash Pine Plantation. We are gradually cutting down all of the slash and replanting longleaf. Slash doesn't create the extensive root systems historically used by many herps to the SE United States. It does decay faster, but at such a rate that moves into and past its "herp stage" for a majority of herps rather quickly. Dead Longleaf lasts longer and provides better and longer lasting micro-habitat for herps. As the land I work on as well as adjacent conservation lands are working to restore the Longleaf-Wire Grass ecosystem, hundreds of thousands of slash pines are being cut down, all good to be used for paper pulp and not much else.
The problem/not problem based on how an individual looks at it is, the paper mills near here are basically overwhelmed at the rate we have been cutting down slash these past years and don't want all of the extra slash we have just sitting around. (edit: not to mention the other tree farms selling to them). The don't want to pay for the transport of the trees and neither do the people cutting them down - it costs too much for the budget many NRC areas have to work with. So, we pile the trees up, and make habitat. Then comes the inevitable prescribed burn to start restoring the understory. There is too many slash piles that are also too large, to check to make sure there is no trapped wildlife, herp or anything else. In these large piles we have found on the land I work on, collectively hundreds of dead animals after the fires from Diamondbacks to Armadillos, cooked alive with no Gopher Tortoise burrows or other areas to retreat into - as a result of the old pine farm. So by not taking our extra slash to make paper or something else, we end up creating unwanted death-traps as we work to restore their habitat.
I also didn't mean take from pine farms, there is plenty of slash being cut down to restore habitat in parks throughout the SE.
The original deforestation devastated our wildlife, after that it was not able to recover. Now as more and more places work to restore the original fire-dependent ecosystem, slash pine is being cut to restore historical habitat.
So, this isn't to disregard what you said, as I complete agree that pine farms (except the ones that provide Pinus palustris grass-stage for reforestation ) should not be supported. I am just explaining a pro-ecosystem restoration view point of paper production that I have gained from working in Natural Resource Conservation.
- end response
So this seems like it could be a good conversational topic and bring up some good thoughts, ideas, and insight - so, feel free to write up any thoughts on this that you all may have .