Those are real common sense issues! We have taken great strides to manage and regulate logging on public lands in the last 50 years. If you really read these EOs and you have any idea how government works, you will understand that those EOs tend to circumvent some or maybe more, of the regulating bodies that have been in place for many years. Some of these reporting agencies have been left with less staff to respond to the EOs. Yes, we need logging, no question about that. But we need to recognize the “science” that allows decision makers to ensure that we properly regulate the industry. No matter what the argument is, we need healthy forests to keep hunting and fishing, it’s that simple.To be specific. What you are suggesting and the straw man arguments you make regarding harming fish and hunting is EXACTY the tactics that have driven the last 50 years of industry destruction. and to what end I ask ?
Deer/ elk / fish populations have fallen harder under this management . Tree topping, moonscape making fires have increased exponentially, and entire swaths of rural areas have been left with no way to support themselves save service industries to yuppies who vacation from the cities.
The Unrealistic thing is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I for one am willing to say this has been effed up for 50 years and I’m done , log it , mine it, use it , but make sure we take care of it. In 50 more years we can come to the table and compare.
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Status of research
Within the Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s (NWFSC) Watershed Program, scientists are study-
ing the degree to which freshwater habitats affect abundance and population growth of salmonids in
order to assist in developing rational recovery strategies for listed salmon species. Ongoing research
projects include studying the degree to which stream side buffers of different widths effectively protect
stream ecosystem processes from logging, and examining the effects of different land-use protocols and the presence or absence of juvenile salmonids on food web dynamics in small streams.
In addition, various stream side buffer treatments are being evaluated with respect to the survival and growth of trees and understory vegetation retained in buffer zones. Additional aspects of the research entail monitoring the impacts of fine sediment deposition and bed scouring on chinook salmon redds (i.e., the spawning grounds or nests of the fish), evaluating the relationships between coarse-scale habitat, land-use characteristics, and salmon populations in three large watersheds (the Snohomish River basin in Washington, the Salmon River basin in Idaho, and the Willamette River basin in Oregon), predicting relative salmon abundance in areas lacking fish data, and determining how low numbers of spawning salmon affect nutrient dynamics in streams and the productivity of salmon populations in the Snake River basin.
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