interesting web site

So what’s your take on the site?
They do have some pretty good photos of various areas.

The tar sands fight has been going on here for a while but IMO the David and Goliath analogy is even too weak to demonstrate the difference in money to be thrown at this. More like a flea on David’s back vs an army of Goliaths.

Funny there was an article in Aububon addressing the “new” corporate environmental awareness – but I’m not seeing it.

And the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) seems reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s marketing back in the day. Tell the public “it’s all good.” enough times and they’ll believe it.

we have a group “somewhere” called friends of the maine woods. if you don’t agree with them i guess that makes you an enemy of the maine woods. regardless, the wealthy “berts bees” lady just bought 70000 acres of woodland to the north and east. its private property and she can say and do what she pleases with it. and that means no logging, no hunting or fishing, no four wheels or snow machines. ok, but now she and her group wants the feds to create a national park with it at a maintenance cost of about $40000. per year to all of us.
the logic is millions of people will come visit her mosquito infested bog and leave money for the locals.
the only thing people do up there is cut wood. hunt and fish. and snowmobile. and it makes them a living. she wants to put them all out of work, so who cares? a bunch people from away, far away, who think they are doing the right thing by saving this land from what? trust me, its not threatened. but there you go. a little money, and some nice pictures, and we have a national shrine to some wealthy woman who likes going around telling others how they should live. share some of the money with them, that might help rightoff.

Thanks for posting that Tim, it was interesting. Hey Mitch next your going to tell me she moved there from Massachusetts. If nothing else at least she is willing to put her money where her mouth is. The most of the trouble started when we began importing pulp from overseas. Disgusting as it is they can ship pulp here from places like Indonesia, china, and the Philippines cheaper then it can be produced in Maine.
~Tom

I forget the guys name but I heard a professor from U of Vermont speak about energy and oil. It was the same guy who wrote the book “reading the forested landscape” he had a lot of great points. Actually it radically changed my way of thinking. I’ll try and find his info. I basically now believe all the worlds problems are connected to oil. Not that I have changed my behavior, but now I know how dumb we all are about it.
PhilG, I have been the forester responsible for green certifying several properties and I can tell you the only difference between them and any other is about 30 pages of paper. Massachusetts has super strict harvesting laws though, almost every harvest here meets or exceeds the criteria. That may not be the case elsewhere. I am putting together a sawmill now and hoped to produce green certified lumber but the fact is no matter how good a job I do harvesting I just cannot afford cost of the green cert label. My take as a boots in the woods forester is that it is merely a marketing scheme. Like I said though in areas where the laws are more relaxed it may actually be a higher standard.

I used to go to those meetings too, but finally had to stop. Being a forester isn’t just what I do, its who I am. I would get so pissed of it would take a week to think about something else. I just take it too personally. I finally realized that you can’t reason with somebody who is unreasonable.
Most if not all of the guidelines required for SFI green cert are already law in Massachusetts therefore I think all Mass. timber should be certed. But that is not the case everywhere. In places where there is no laws or regs concerning things like harvesting in wetlands, erosion control on slopes, or stream crossings then yes SFI cert would indeed mean that they were held to a higher standard.
I decided a long time ago to do the best work possible on every job, I go to bed at night and sleep well knowing I did the right thing for the forest. I don’t need 30 extra pages in a clients folder to validate my work.

I realized today that this discussion has been about SFI Sustainable Forest Initiative, while the green certification I have worked with is FSC Forest Stewardship Council. Not sure of the exact differences but figured it worth a mention. FSC does random audits I suppose, if the bad guys were lucky and didn’t get audited they could get away with bad forestry and a green label.
As far as not following State laws, some laws fly in the face of common sense and good forestry. So you could say in certain instances I don’t follow them either. Doesn’t mean I am a bad forester. When dealing with things like forestry that is both a art and a science you can’t pass laws that cover every possible situation.