Wild Nature

Wild Nature 8 comments

Mt. Lemmon Forest Colors — Image by kenne

WILD NATURE is not a crop but a cathedral, and a single old-growth forest is a databank containing more info than any legions of supercomputers could hold. Forests belong in a Department of Climate Defense, a Department of Homeland or of Global Security, a physical and spiritual Department of the Interior. So why is the U.S. Forest Service housed within the Department of Agriculture? It’s a relic of an earlier era of convenient ignorance, when we were told that animals do not feel pain, and that forests were just crops of fiber that could be farmed like corn. How did DOGE’s whiz kids overlook this fiscal and silvicultural mismanagement?

Forests absorb about a third of the world’s annual carbon emissions globally — but older trees absorb far and away the most. Our old and mature forests are an enormous asset in this planet’s climate portfolio. And yet the Forest Service is still working to clear-cut old growth. In the West, 75% of the agency’s current proposed timber sales are at least a mile or farther from the “wildland-urban interface” — the small towns and villages in harm’s way from the dragon breath of global warming. — Source: High Country News in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network