Wrap your head around this one: an environmentalist could go to jail for trying to trick loggers into cutting down more trees:
A Black Hills environmentalist who for years has fought U.S. Forest Service timber-cutting projects is facing federal charges for changing marks on trees in a timber sale near his home so that more trees would be cut.
Brian Brademeyer, who lives on a small private acreage inside the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve southeast of Hill City, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for the misdemeanor citation served on Jan. 31. He is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Veronica Duffy on March 15 in Rapid City.
Brademeyer admitted that he painted over marks on more than 20 pine trees on Forest Service land across the fence from his home in the summer of 2010. A Forest Service crew had marked the trees with orange paint so they would not be cut by a planned timber project. Brademeyer painted over the orange with black paint, hoping they would be cut as part of the Palmer Gulch timber sale. Despite that, he continues to oppose the Palmer Gulch sale, which is part of a larger forest management project in the Norbeck [Kevin Woster, "Noted Environmentalist Ticketed for Timber Sale Violation," Rapid City Journal, 2012.02.18].
From tree-hugger to tree-mugger?
My friend Larry Kurtz will likely say Brademeyer didn't go far enough. The pine beetles are enjoying a smorgasbord here in the Black Hills due to decades of fire suppression. If we don't want pine beetles, we need to get rid of a whole lot of pines. One way or the other, by beetle, logging, or fire, nature is trying to restore the ecological balance that our subdivisions have subverted.
KW and the RCJ have been deleting my comments that hold
KrustiKristi Noem accountable for her pandering to the Neimans and denying climate science.As to Brademeyer, he often confounds me beyond comprehension and has gone off on me in electronic conversations, too.
I'm don't agree with what Brian did, but you have to wonder a bit about the Forest Service's priorities in selecting trees. Why wouldn't the Forest Service want to open up meadows, which have been a declining resource in the Hills for several generations? Perhaps the beetles are doing this job better than loggers, but still, it does make sense to open gaps in the forest and reestablish meadows.
I used to look at these tree selections in timber sales in the 1990s and it seemed to me trees were selected for cut to enhance the cash value of the timber sale, not to improve overall forest health, and certainly not to enhance the local forest environment. Brian's actions here may be consistent with the belief that large-scale timber sales as done in the Black Hills are detrimental to forest health, but thinning is need and has a place in forest management. That has been the position of many environmentalists at any rate. Environmentalists have often supported thinning projects, but rejected timber sales that wanted to cut the more mature trees. It's a little hard to tell from the RCJ photo, but those trees look to be on the smaller side.
I've wondered, Donald, how much the thinning is being driven by market forces rather than sensible forest/wildlife management. Woster reported that the wildlife biologist making the original marks designated the larger trees to be left for wildlife habitat. But meadows are as important for wildlife as trees, aren't they?
Have you seen the images from Custer expedition in the 1800's? There were fewer trees than we have now.
Mr. Brian has much in common with General Custer and his main men Ludlow and Tilford. Especially Tilford.
The Black Hills is broken.
Prescribed fire after logging in unnatural forests like the BHNF is preferred. Wildfire Today is running a series on the lethality of wildfire smoke and the combustibility of lodgepole pine (not ponderosa).
Black Hills residents: if you do not have defensible space, do it now.
Breaking: wildfire loose in North Rapid: @wx_chip
""The level of logging on the Black Hills National Forest has been so excessive for so long that wildlife habitat is getting wiped out across much of the forest, and animals from land snails to northern goshawks to American martens have declined to the point where they may disappear," said John Persell, attorney with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance."
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/south-dakota-wyoming-intervene-in-lawsuit-over-forest-management/article_839e0d57-8dd9-56bf-9f1d-47f321bf5023.html