Ecology And Forestation
Trees have been with us since the beginning of time. We have been using
its
products for just as long. They have been used to fashion weapons, used
as
wheels, used for us to write with and to have something to write on.
Most
importantly they have been and continue to be used to provide shelter
for us. I
feel trees are an important resource for us and to stop using this
important
resource would be an injustice to society. Trees are there to be
admired and to
help our ecosystem survive but they are also there to provide
for the things we
need in life. An important example of how trees are helping
people in
extraordinary ways in by the use of tree products as cancer drugs.
According to
Sally Christensen, "taxol is created by using three one
hundred year old
pacific yew trees or roughly sixty pounds of bark." Taxol is
very helpful in
fighting ovarian cancer when conventional methods no longer
work. This drug has
been responsible for saving many lives (Christensen 552).
Christensen herself
was saved with this drug. Sallie Tillsdale calls
Christensen very selfish for
killing trees to help save herself. She says it
is people versus trees. I feel
it is life versus life. If a few trees have to
be cut down so a person can go on
living then this is a choice that I as a
person am willing to make. No one is
going to tell me that I cannot have a
chance at life because a group of
environmentalists say that is wrong. It is
quoted by Walter T. Stace, "If a
man’s actions were wholly determined by
chains of causes stretching back into
the remote past, so that they could be
predicted beforehand by a mind which knew
all the causes, it was assumed that
they could not in that case be free." One
of the main needs of lumber is for
building homes. This need skyrocketed after
the 1950s. The need for new
housing was tremendous and the need for lumber just
kept growing. The need
for lumber dramatically increased when people wanted
shaker style roofs, wood
flooring and wood siding (Robinson 25). Today things
have changed slightly.
Now we use vinyl siding for our homes. So that has helped
a little. But we
still need to frame a house so that it will stand up and at
this point I do
not know of anything else that will get the job done. Some
people don’t care
about the forests at all; my sister is a great example. She
has a 3000 square
feet house that probably took a great amount of trees to
build. She has hard
wood floors throughout her house and wood cabinetry
everywhere. I am sure
when there is a meeting of Tree Savers USA my sister will
not be there.
Traditional conservation has been focused on setting aside land in
remote
parts of the country as conservation projects. My question is what
happens to
the rest of the country? Land is set aside for bird, wildlife and
land
conservation, but we allow the rest of the country to be a dump. Canada
for
example, only sets aside 1.3% or 50,060 square miles for conservation
efforts
(Jacobs 77). Our numbers in this country are probably not far off
from that.
What we need to do is set aside more land to be used for
conservation. Then
maybe all of the tree preservation people will get off our
backs about using up
the trees. If they know that a certain amount of forests
will be set aside
filled up with trees that will never be used commercially
then maybe we can go
on building and healing in peace. What we need to do
with land conservation
projects is keep them away from the big cities. We
need to create buffer zones,
a buffer zone is a area of land between the city
and the conservation area that
creates a semi-natural area that will help to
protect the conserved area from
undue stress (Soule 813). When this method is
used it may make for a more
healthy, conserved area. Why would anyone who is
driving around want to
encounter a city and then almost immediately after
leaving the city encounter a
preserved area? There needs to be an area of
transition that would be healthy
for the area and also pleasing to the eye
for travelers. One holiday that I feel
celebrates forestry is Arbor Day.
Arbor Day is about planting trees to help put
back the trees that we used for
other purposes during the year. When I was a
child attending school every
Arbor Day I received a seedling to plant in my
yard. Sometimes the seedling
died but other times it survived and flourished.
Some kids probably threw
their seedling out when they got home I on the other
hand, always planted
mine. Anyone can join to celebrate Arbor Day. You can mail
$15 to the Arbor
Day Foundation and they will send you back ten confer seedlings
to plant in
your area (Willis 31). So as you can see forestry is nothing to joke
about
and many people take it very seriously. I feel that trees are very
important
to our lives but sometimes you can go a little too far and not realize
that
we need trees to survive also. What would we write on if we did not
have
trees? I can’t see using a chalkboard all of the time to communicate. Or
this
paper you are reading from? Actually, I might be glad if I did not have
to write
this because paper was banned. Go into Staples sometime and look at
all of the
reams of paper they have stacked up and think of all of the trees
that were
sacrificed so you could read all of your students papers. Don’t you
feel bad
now? But there are also other things to consider. Right now it is
raining
outside. Without the use of wood to build my house I would be very
wet. So I
have come to the realization that we need wood whether we like it
or not, so
people protesting its use are never going to get very far, so
please just stop
and let me use my
paper.
Bibliography
Christensen, Sally Thane. "Is a Tree Worth a
Life" Current Issues and
Enduring Questions. Ed. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo
Bedau. New York: St. Martin’s
1999. 550-552. Jacobs, Peter.
"Environmental Planning and Rational Use"
Sustaining Tomorrow. Ed.
Francis R. Thibodeau and Hermann H. Field. London:
University Press of
New England, 1984. 77-85. Robinson, Gordon. The Forest and
the Trees.
Washington DC: Island Press, 1988. Soule, Michael E. and John
Terborgh.
"Conserving Nature at Regional and Continental Scales-a
Scientific
Program For North America" BioScience. October 1999. 809-815.
Stale, Walter T.
"Is Determinism Inconsistent With Free Will?" Current
Issues And Enduring
Questions. Ed. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau. New
York: St. Martin’s, 1999.
707-715. Tisdale, Sallie. "Save a Life, Kill a
Tree?" Current Issues and
Enduring Questions. Ed. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo
Bedau. New York: St. Martin’s,
1999. 553-554. Willis, Monica Michael.
"Your Forest Today" Country Living.
March 1997: 30- 31.