Reply #19: "thinning forests" isn't profitable unless it's done that way, see? [View All]

That's the beautiful irony of the "thinning forests" bullshit.

"Oh, we'll go in and clear out some of those thickets, remove the underbrush, and you won't have any problem with forest fires."

I've seen it a hundred times in Oregon, I swear. And they're right: the second- and third-growth thickets NEED to be thinned out, because the dumbasses who replanted them put them way too close together to begin with. But you can't make any money from selectively thinning the "pecker poles" and clearing the scrub, well that's a losing proposition.

So the timber company gets to mix in a few clearcuts, some oldgrowth, and a subsidy or two with their "thinning operation", to make the shareholders happy. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.

And then, if they do it just right, entire hillsides erode into the rivers below, leaving a barren bedrock moonscape where they used to have a forest. No more forest fires tho, BECAUSE THE LOGGERS PUT THE FOREST INTO THE RIVER.

Humans are too stupid to be a dominant species.