Do you think the US will actually log its national parks?
I'm looking across at the olympic peninsula right now from victoria right now and it really just settled in for me that losing that might actually be possible.
I would literally be willing to die trying to save the hoh rainforest.
Am I overreacting here?
Yes.
Trumps tariffs hit Canadian lumber.
This causes fake crisis in lumber prices.
Trump leases land to us lumber companies who now sell lumber.... Remember it's more expensive than what Canadian lumber costs, but Trump handled that with tariffs.... Now us lumber is artificially cheaper than Canadian.
= Trumps rich friends profit while Americans pay more for lumber and lose national parks
Do I think this administration is stupid enough to do something like that? Yes
Do I think this administration would do something even stupider, more corrupt, or evil than your question? Also yes
No you aren’t overreacting. Republicans have been running on some version of this for decades now.
I'm not so sure that the issue is mainly logging. I thought that they're selling them off piecemeal as conclaves for the ultra rich.
The current administration wants to cut for timber, dig for minerals and metals, and in places where this isn't possible or have been completed, build "Freedom Cities" where corporations rule like nation states. Free from regulation and oversite. Their whole plan is tremendously fucked for the common American.
Ah, like the cities in The Parable of the Sower.
As an American I confirm that, as a whole, we're pretty goddamn stupid.
So yeah, I could totally see this happening.
Probably not actual national parks: even the current administration can’t be that depraved, can they?
However there is even more national forest, national monument, and blm land that already may be managed for resource extraction. Odds are, they’ll just open wide
even the current administration can’t be that depraved, can they?
Every time I ask myself that, the answer turns out to be "yes"
Only if it’s for the sake of destruction and cruelty, there’s more wood than we could possibly use on national forest and BLM land. AFAIK they’re only talking about national forests for now.
Yes I do. But I think the logging will mostly take place in the unvisited and ecologically important part of parks while the part of parks intended to receive visitor will remain "pristine" until the whole ecosystem collapses when the wildlife die off.
As a Canadian looking in, I honestly believe they will. They've already done worse things and gotten away with it.
You mean like genocide, slavery, and being the only country in history to use atomic bombs against another country?
Aside from nuclear weapons you are describing practically every nation state since ever, especially post Industrial Revolution. To the point that the argument is useless. The US is just as bad as Britain, France, Spain, the Dutch, the history of the Russian empire, Japan, china, the current state of many African counties etc etc!
It’s also worth mentioning how the US is such strong allies with the very country they dropped a bomb on and helped with reconstruction through and beyond the Meiji era and continued to be an ally to Japan…
No one anywhere near this thread is advocating for those thing so what are you getting at other than saying boo! ghosts!? Sooo…
Interestingly they haven't logged the alaska panhandle and I bet that's the first to go. Best trees in the entire world
Let's be real, has Trump ever been to a national park? Like really been to one and not just popped in for a speech or photo op? Has he ever, in his entire sad life, been on a fucking hike? Been farther than 500 ft from the next nearest human? These places aren't even real in his mind, they're just concepts. It's impossible to really imagine consequences to actions against concepts. He'll absolutely make our parks private property if given the chance. Don't like it? Too bad, go get rich and buy your own national park, nobody's stopping you.
I hope he and Elon live long enough to end up in the bread lines they're going to cause.
He can’t even walk twenty feet onto a golfing green. He drives his cart five feet from the ball and gets out.
I live in the Allegheny National Forest area, of Pennsylvania and it's regularly logged. I could even buy a permit to cut my fire wood from the forest if I wanted to. But it's all done in a relatively responsible way. There is no clear cutting, and I could only take a certain amount of trees for personal firewood use. They log for forest management, the same way they have controlled burns.
If you have a local forestry service, or some sort of similar organization, go talk with them. Ask them what the current policies, practices and plans are. Ask them if they anticipate any changes based on the new Republican Administration and plan any actions based on that information.
I'm nervous about new gas wells around here, but Pennsylvania has a process where you have to request a permit and it's only good for one year, and they post the latitude and longitude of all the permit requests they get. So at least I have access to that information.
I suppose I am referencing a national forest and you are referencing a nation park. There are differences there for sure, so this might not be as applicable as I thought.
Are you overreacting? No. Start spiking trees if you want to save them.
This.
We should collectively use necromancy to resurrect Teddy Roosevelt to beat the shit out of the current administration.
Instructions unclear, his corpse now has a hickey.
He’ll really try. It’s up to us to stop him.
anyone who wants to seriously resist this should start preparing for it already or finding ways to support those who want to be more active about it if they cant afford to do anything themselves.
The US isn't doing it, one small group is and nobody's stopping them. Subtle difference, I know.
It’s worse. I seem to remember that the US has lithium deposits in a national park somewhere.
I think there's going to be incredible pushback, and I hope it's far more than some angry tweets. So far Trump seems to make big moves like this only to reverse or walk back what he said later.
So he could easily just make the suggestion but not take actual action for some time. Or use it as leverage to make other deals (change emmisions rules or the national parks get logged)
He would be wise not to mess with Teddy's parks
I see this sort of response from Americans over and over, and it makes me crazy.
"there’s going to be incredible pushback."
Great! Fantastic! WHEN??!?!
In short, he has proven over and over and OVER AGAIN that he is the single biggest enemy of the USA, and the single biggest threat to their continued existence. He is copying Hitler's playbook from 1933-36 almost to the letter.
And STILL I hear, "oh just you wait - things are gonna happen if he doesn't stop soon!"
What does it take to get you to realize that the USA is being destroyed by a traitor working for Putin? What will it take for your country to FUCKING ACT RIGHT NOW instead of saying "oh, just wait" again?
Why are Trump and Musk and their entire entourage not in chains, awaiting the death penalty on the far end of high treason charges?
What the fuck are you still waiting for?
All hat and no cattle. Empty threats and empty promises.
America has always been susceptible to bullshit artists and snake oil salesmen. Of course it had to end like this.
Thing is, you can’t take back clearcutting an ecological preserve.
Trump and Musk like to talk big and move as fast as possible. The trick will be to ensure that the resource extraction companies can’t take irreversible action as soon as Trump says something stupid, but still have months of paperwork to wade through so there’s time for Trump to be able to change what he originally meant by what he said/signed.
I’ve heard that it’s problematic to log them as there isn’t enough sawmills in the US to cover the given and they are all low on staff + those mills are standardized for those Standard sized trunks and not old-growth forest wood.
That doesn’t mean I doubt it but that’s some hope on the horizon
There's so much other federal land that can be logged before going for the tourist attractions. It would just politically look bad if they did. I'd say probably not.
EDIT: You know what, on second thought, I'm still surprised every day what this administration is doing so I could see them doing it just to show they can.
They will sell it to the highest bidder, likely foreign. That is the whole point of the "sovereign wealth fund". Trump and the Uber wealthy see it as an asset to plunder, who cares if Bahrain owns Yellowstone or you have to pay Bezos to fly over the Amazon Canyon? The future is amazing!
I think every single acre of public land will be gleefully giving away to billionaires yes.
Sold off to pay for the crypto pump and dump he’s setting up.
Which is just gonna make the billionaires even more wealthy.
god this is a sad thought
Doubtful but all other public lands yes.
I hope it doesn't happen, but logging doesn't work exactly like the lorax. They need to ensure a future to the industry, so they'd do chucks and replant. No, it's not the same as it would have been, but it's at least less devastating than strip mining the Grand canyon.
Well, it depends. On short leases, it does work exactly like the lorax. They just clear cut that shit as hard as they can to maximize how much money they can make on it. Montana and some other northern states eventually figured out that you should set these companies up with 100 year leases that pierce the corporate veil, so that even if the company strip cuts the plot and declares bankruptcy, you can go give the owner a big fat financial wedgie for the next 100 years. I think it's a pretty smart solution, and from what I've heard, the companies in these arrangements do pretty good forest management.
Even if they replant, that doesn’t undue the ecological harm. Look at what happened when palm oil started to show up in everything. They cut down all the natural habitat (rain forests with lots of old growth!) and planted tons of palm trees. It killed all the wildlife, but to an uninformed person, it still “looked” like nature. And the fact that they were replanted (so it wasn’t just stripped bare) was a facade that made it not seem bad.
Old growth doesn't work like this. Logging companies are constantly trying to take bigger swaths than they're allotted because there's no active enforcement leaving orgs like BARK OUT et. al. To do the ground truthing and sue in court, often after the damage is done.
Often logging companies want this wood because it's much higher quality than second growth. The dense wood is a higher grade and sells for a higher premium. If you've seen wood in an old house versus modern you'll notice the ring structure much more tightly packed and less knotting. It's much stronger.
Here's a maps image of old growth in the mt. Hood wilderness:
And here's the Oregon coast range:
notice the patchwork? That it's roughly 1/3 unplanted clear-cut now?The first image is 100% old growth in a national forest. The second is 0%, in mostly privately owned land owned by logging companies or less so under BLM/FS. Patchwork logging doesn't sustain biodiversity. Replanting is almost always done with a monoculture of trees that make logging easier in later harvests. These second growth forests hold less water, sequester less carbon, and are less drought resistant. This in turn makes them more prone to wildfire, flooding, erosion, and desertification. They are also less food abundant so they can't sustain as much wildlife.
Most of western Oregon looks like the second image, and the old growth is only 10% of the original area nation wide. We don't need to log old growth at all. There's plenty of second growth. Just manage it.
E: structure
Yes.