if they cut all the trees they destroy the habitat and leave all the
birds, insects, & other animals no place to live -- heathen thugs. but
if they don't cut all the trees at once, they leave trees to seed and
continue to spread invasive species to continue to destroy the native
biota and run amok, ruining the native habitat -- mindless thugs. I
have spent hours siting as a "witness" while your elected
representatives humiliate & berate me for implementing the laws they
passed, or making choices just like the one you are discussing. I would
be interested in a serious discussion of how such choices should be
made, and what in fact you do expect from us who "are guvmint," perhaps
starting, just for the sake of argument, with the premise that we are
not utter fools but perhaps seeking balance the kinds of either/or
decisions discussed here. and if the issue is not "bothering to put
anything else out there in their place" perhaps you can elect
representatives who tax you sufficiently that such is an option.

just a bit of steam from one who has spent 28 years seeking to do your
bidding, with the constraints and resources your elected representatives
afford me.

I look forward to the discussion, but know there will be flaming. it
comes with the job -- that's okay.

chris kessler
falls church & seattle

Brett Wolfe wrote:
> Hi Dennis, et al.,
>
> Something similar happened at the San Joaquin River NWR outside
> Modesto, CA a couple years back. They had a huge amount of Tobacco
> trees on the property and just cut them all down at once, without
> bothering to put anything else out there in their place.
> Unfortunately, this has had a huge effect on the Black-chinned
> Hummingb irds that had been there in the thousands while the Tobacco
> trees had been there, feeding on the flowers. I'm assuming some were
> able to move elsewhere, but considering the overall lack of habitat in
> the CA Central Valley (it's all ag land), most of them probably
> starved or died sooner than they otherwise would have. Very few
> Black-chins to see unless you had a feeder out in that area. Sad that
> our government employees, whose salaries we pay, aren't any more
> foresighted than that. To be expected I guess, they are guvmint.
>
> Brett A. Wolfe
> Seattle, WA
> m_lincolnii at yahoo.com <mailto:m_lincolnii at yahoo.com>
>
> */Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>/* wrote:
>
> To follow the Russian olive thread, I was shocked when I arrived
> at the Dry Tortugas last spring to find that the National Park
> Service had cut down all the Australian pines (Casuarina) on
> Loggerhead Key. Loggerhead is the largest island in the little
> archipelago and the one that usually has the most migrant birds on
> it. Casuarinas furnished a woodland on that key that provided
> habitat/cover for lots of tree-dwelling passerines and was usually
> full of birds during migration when I visited there years ago.
> There are no other trees of note on the island, just shrubs and a
> few scraggly small trees. Because it's not native, Casuarina had
> to go, another reduction in usable bird habitat because of a
> knee-jerk reaction. Worse, the NPS was talking about cutting down
> some of the large trees on the parade ground within Fort Jefferson
> on Garden Key because they're not native Florida trees. There
> aren't that many trees there, and every one serves as important
> habitat and presumably food sources (leaf-eating insects) for
> migrants, but the park service has its protocol, and it must be
> followed to the letter, much like worker ants. It's hard to
> understand the reasoning of people who think only in absolutes.
> -----
> Dennis Paulson
> 1724 NE 98 St.
> Seattle, WA 98115
> 206-528-1382
>
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