The Department of Fish and Game also opposes it.
Well, the SF Chronicle article that Nametag linked has this quote:
I really don’t know enough to judge the merits of this change, compared to the logging that the Bohemians have been doing on their land since 1984. But, it’s a bit unfair to characterize this as something they’ve suddenly started doing, when you consider that even if they completely log to the extent of the new plan, they’re simply going to approximately double the amount of wood brought out on a per anum basis.
That may well be unsustainable logging. Though, I wonder how the various State agencies reacted to the other permits that had gotten approved in the past.
Sometimes State agencies make decisions for reasons that have nothing to do with scientific data. ISTR that California banned those ‘glow-in-the-dark’ fish, even after spending a signifigant chunk of cash on an Environmental Impact statement. The reasoning I saw on CNN from a spokesperson was that they saw no reason to allow ‘artificial’ species into the state.
Which explains why California has lime groves, Haas avacado groves, lots of mules, and other purely natural species.
OtakuLoki Keeping an artificial species out of the state isn’t an unreasonable idea. Invader species are a huge issue all over the world. You never know what impact an invader species will have on the local environment.
If you are interested in just how crazy the impact of invader species can be, look up the spread of Argentine ants. In areas where they are not indigenous huge colonies spread as they are not buffering against each other. So one colony can be thousands of square miles. They have a huge infestation in Melbourne Australia, from Italy to Spain, and I believe in California.
mswas, normally I’d agree with you.
But, first, essentially we’re talking about zebra fish - which I’m sure are already in aquaria all over California.
More importantly, though, the environmental impact study came back with something particularly strong: No potential impact.
If you look through the linked article there’s a quote that I think is pretty telling:
I’m well aware of problems with invader species. I grew up with Gypsy Moth caterpillars, for example. Cane toads, and rabbits, in Austrailia are two more vivid examples. But when you’re being told by the experts in the field that there’s no potential for impact, because essentially the same species has found it impossible to reproduce in the wild for 50 years - to ban the ‘transgenic’ version seems a bit… over eager.
FTM, if they were going to go with the neo-Luddite reaction, why bother spending money to justify it? Certainly, that way, people like me wouldn’t have the ammuniation to say that they wasted money on it.
I’m shocked, shocked I say that you know what kind of stuff is “often featured in conspiracy theories.”
Forestry professional checking in here with some numbers that may be helpful. I have a friend whose family owns some redwood timber near San Francisco. It’s all second growth, as the family bought the land in the 1920s after it had been completely clearcut. They have roughly 30,000 board feet of timber per acre on average.
The club in question wants to cut 1 million board feet each year. Let’s figure that they have an older forest with 50,000 board feet to the acre. This is 20 acres per year. Assuming their acreage figure (2470) is correct, that means they’ll cut through the entire tract in 123 years.
If we run the numbers with the more conservative 30,000 board feet per year, we get a figure of 33.3 acres per harvest event and a total harvest of the tract in 74 years.
In both cases, the acres they harvest first will have large trees on them 123 years and 74 years later. I base this opinion on my looking at photographs of my friend’s land and the condition of the property in the 1990s after 70 years of regrowth from the clearcut in the 1920s.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of chopping down 1,000 year old trees, but I don’t get the impression from the article that the club plans to do that. They have a consulting forester and have a respected consulting forestry professor. It’s easy to find people to quote in articles who don’t like forestry practices due to the potential negative impacts on water quality and wildlife - - **IF ** the harvest is done poorly.
Count me among the few in this thread who are finding it hard to get outraged over this.
I’ve got all of Robert Anton Wilson’s books! 
Actually, logging does not necessarily (or even often) mean cutting down “forests.” You can cut trees and preserve (and even enhance) a forest.
Actually, they can’t. States have a variety of laws that limit logging on private property.
Can you give us some more details on how you come up with that number? I live near the coastal range in CA, and I’ve been to quite a few redwood forests. The trees grow in very dense clusters, so that number seems way too low. If we’re actually talking about redwood forests, I can easily imagine there being hundreds of trees per acre.
I freely admit I let my knee jerk far too precipitously on this matter.
The 30mbf/acre number comes from discussing my friend’s management plan with him and with his consulting forester. They say they have on average 30mbf per acre, and I have no reason to doubt them. The photographs of their stands show numerous stems per acre and the clumping type growth you describe, due to the redwood’s stump sprout regeneration.
As far as calculating the amount of board feet in a tree, keep in mind that you have to deduct for the bark, deduct for kerf (the width of the saw blade and a little more for the “wiggle” that the saw makes). Also, the sawmill cannot use every inch of the tree - - just the lengths that make whole logs. In the South, saw logs are 16’ long; in the West they can be up to 32’ long. I’m not sure about the West, but in the South the minimum smaller dimension of the log has to be 12". Smaller than that you cannot get usable lumber. So if you have a loblolly pine tree in Lousiana that has 38’ of log that is around 12" in diameter, you don’t count the board feet in the 6’ length you cannot use.
Also, you have to keep in mind that the three main systems for estimating the board feet in a tree - - Scribner, International, and Doyle rules - - take into account the waste that occurs when you convert a conish/cylindrical/mostly round thing (keeping in mind that trees taper) into rectangular boards. This waste includes slabs, edges, and ends. So you cannot just take the average diameter and total tree height and estimate the volume of the tree and break that into board feet, and then multiply that by the number of trees per acre to get a total. The system is designed to estimate the amount of usable product in the stand, in other words, not the total amount of woody biomass, since the sawmiller isn’t going to pay for the parts of the trees he/she cannot make into boards and sell.
Of course, I’ve not been to the particular site described in the article. They may have a densely stocked forest with more than 50 mbf per acre. I purposely chose conservative numbers to point out that harvesting 20 acres per year is not the environmental catastrophe that some people might think it is based on the article.
If anyone on the boards is an expert in western forestry, as opposed to my experience with southern forests, and would like to jump in and stamp out any ignorance on my part, I’d be obliged.
Is that the total in an acre, or the total that they take out each year?
I gave a cite for doing that upthread.
I don’t know how much they cut in a year, and it would be rude for me to ask, given I can find out what stumpage prices are and basically determine their net profit per year.
They have stated to me that they have, on average, 30,000 board feet (30mbf) per acre. Some acres will have more than 30mbf, others will have less.
From your link, the target group for the exercise is sixth through eighth grade, and the lab is designed to give them experience applying math priciples to real life applications. Nothing in that lab procedure describes how foresters, loggers, and sawmillers actually estimate the amount of board feet in a tract of timber.
I don’t want to get into a discussion of how to cruise timber here, but it’s not at all like the procedure described in your link. Here’s another more comprehensive link. Keep in mind it focuses on southern forests and describes a minimum diameter tree smaller than I described upthread. Pay particular attention to the section on measurement of standing timber and note the illustration that shows how much of the log is not suitable for making boards.