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Small things amuse small minds!!

   

A true sentiment.....

   

All that is proof of is that the governments of the last twenty years didn't know how to combat the pine beetle or didn't do a good enough job. To honestly think that a government would devastate it's own tax base to spite the indians is paranoid thinking at the highest extreme.

   

biblical cretin? donny?

   

[font=Comic Sans MS] Hey they needed to fast track to get the wood! And what I know is that forest service workers were spreading the beetle by phermone traps and I know of a person who also mentioned that they know of workers how who were flying in choppers also spreading the beetle....all this occurred since the early 1990s and now the beetles are out of control[/font]

   

You don't know this, you've made it up in your head. Try thinking about it logically for awhile.

   

You have articles to back your story DM?

All I read is thoughts you think are true. Hell, for all you know, I might have spread it!

   

Canadarc is even now checking himself for a pine beetle infestation

   

* check, check, double check*

Uhhh, guys...... How small are those pine beetles???

* scratch, scratch, scratching *

   

Brenda.............. did you spread them....... .....

   

[font=Arial] It is called Skullduggery...and you have to admit that "rightwing-thinktanks" dream up of all sorts of strategies to screw the indians. I met a person who said they were hired by the government and they're agenda was to impede FN's people. I believe it! The pine beetle was used as an excuse to barge into areas without consulation or environemental assessments. It backfired! You don't have to believe me and I don't care. All I know is that they blew it big time[/font]

   

This article appeared in the PG Citizen on Thursday, Aug, 2, 2007. Note some of the wording!

Rush to harvest hurting lodge
Tourism industry clashes with forestry in beetle-ravaged Tweedsmuir Park

(News) Thursday, 02 August 2007, 11:04 PST
by MARK NIELSEN Citizen staff

As the owners of a lodge on the eastern gateway to the vast wilderness of Tweedsmuir Park, Elisabeth and Joe Doerig know only too well the effect the mountain pine beetle has had on the province's forests.

After all, Tweedsmuir, the largest provincial park in B.C., was one of the hardest-hit areas when the insect's spread began.

Over the past eight years or so, the Doerigs have had a firsthand look at how the bug has turned vast stands of the tree from a healthy green to a sea of red then grey, as the pine succumb to the beetles' attack.

But the bigger concern for them is the effect the extensive logging sparked by the bug may have on the qualities of the surrounding forest. The Doerigs rely on the area's natural attributes to draw customers to Nechako Lodge and Aviation, nestled on the shore of Knewstubb Lake about 200 kilometres west of Prince George.

Elisabeth Doerig says she doesn't oppose logging, but wants to see a better balance between the needs of the forest industry and the tourism industry.

"I think that people forget the forest has other uses; it's not just timber," she said. "It's recreation, it's wildlife, it's ecosystems and that got a bit forgotten in this panic to salvage the timber."

She said the harvesting, triggered by a threefold increase in the annual allowable cut, has resulted in noticeable increases in road-building, log-hauling and harvesting in her area.

Harvesting has not yet encroached on Knewstubb, but Doerig remains worried.

"The immediate viewscape we were able to preserve through a lot of hard discussions . . . but further away in our operating area certainly there are clearcuts," she said. "There was logging before the beetle but it has just increased in number and intensity."

It's a concern shared by enough tourist-oriented businesses to prompt the Council of Tourism Associations to recently submit a proposal to the provincial government for taking tourism-related values into greater consideration.

"If you've got 95-per-cent beetle-killed trees in an area then it makes sense to salvage that area," COTA president Peter Larose said. "Our primary concern is salvaging of green timber -- timber of different species or hasn't been impacted -- and these are getting included in the increased harvest rates."

Larose said it appears safeguards included in land and resource management plans are being overlooked in the process of logging beetle-killed pine.

"We have these massive clearcuts across the landscape, so there is some logic in leaving intact some of the pine stands that have been impacted and allow for some of the understory to green up.

"It's hard to get a balance, but we just feel the tourism industry is getting the short end of the stick, and a bit unnecessarily in some cases."

COTA makes several suggestions regarding government policy on the issue, but they all boil down to greater acknowledgment of tourist-related values in the process of deciding where harvesting should take place and how it should be carried out.

When she looks out on the surrounding hillsides, Doerig sees plenty of grey trees.

"But it's not a dead forest, it's a forest with dead trees in it and you see a lot of undergrowth that has exploded," she said.

"As soon as the needles come down, it allows the light to come down and the seedlings to burst up. It's just a transition phase and certainly in the view of nature-based tourism it's something we can sell."

   

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