This is the only timber industry argument that really has any validity. Nobody wants to see people put out of work. Many Red Cloud Thunder activists come from timber families, as a matter of fact. The last thing we want to do is deprive rural people of their livelihoods.
That is why the hypocrisy of the big timber companies like Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific, and Roseburg Lumber is so ironic. Oregon could have had a sustainable, labor-intensive forest products industry, if we had managed our timber carefully. Instead, these companies cut everything they could get, as fast as they could. At the same time, they automated their operations to such an extent that they could increase their harvest while reducing their labor force, and all the while they managed to blame environmentalists for the layoffs!
Now we have come very near the end of the timber, and the timber jobs appear to be going by the wayside no matter what anybody does. The only hope we have now for employing the timber community into the future is to switch gears and start land and stream restoration. The days of traditional family logging are over, like it not, because the trees are gone. The only decision we have left to make is whether or not we are going to sacrifice the very last patches of natural forests, to sustain a dying industry for a few more years. If we preserve these scattered islands of old growth, then we will have templates from which to study and rebuild our ecosystems. If we cut them down, we will have nothing but sterile tree farms to go from, and our restoration efforts will be that much less likely to succeed.
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