Conflict of Interest? A recent Follower’s comment is worth sharing:
“find it interesting that we can put in critical areas ordinances with buffers on our creeks, rivers and wetlands and as long as you get a forest practice application you can get around all of those buffer requirements.”
If the State decided to put in coffee shops and compete against Starbucks, if it decided to build airplanes to take on Boeing, if it hired truck drivers to compete with Amazon … and then had the power to “make the rules” either a) these giant corporations would be compromised or b) the State would adopt their practices and be coopted. Over time, it
would be one or the other. “So, who guards the guards?” This lesson has only 1 URL reference, it takes 3 minutes to watch. In Washington, the State and Federal governments own ~1/2 of all land logged. Fly over the area east of Centralia and Chehalis or the DRN land of the Stillaguamish and Snoqualmie Valleys … or in Oregon, the slopes east of Corvallis and Eugene … and you see clear-cuts like those found today in British Columbia (video) where the public owns 90% of the forests. For all these clear-cuts, think government-applied herbicides and pesticides. This lesson’s photo is that of northern California; think redwoods, property of the family who owns the Oakland A’s. Who are we to complain about Eastern private property owners destroying diversity and causing the extinction of plants and animals … when we ourselves are the exploiters, when we wash the slopes of publicly owned lands with poisons that drain to the sea? Canada should control the toxins it washes down the Georgia Strait into Puget Sound … but again, if the State of Washington DNR is washing its hills and poisoning the Sound’s rivers and fiords (Hood Canal), who are we to suggest anything? State and Federal governments should get out of the logging business. Government should govern, not serve coffee, build airplanes, nor log our hills.
The U.S. Federal Government owns approximately what percentage of the West?
Comments, content, questions appreciated; email bb@plc215.org
Copyright © 2024