New Tree ordinance is harmful to even the trees....

2005-06-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Information from someone who SHOULD know...
an excerpt from a letter to the Township Board....

RE: Article 11 Land Clearing

Dear Gentlepersons;

I am a Registered Professional Forester working in the lower peninsula of Michigan. I respectfully request that you reconsider Article 11 Titled: Land Clearing as it is currently written. It is clear that your wishes are to protect and enhance forest communities located in Brighton Township. However, I feel what you are proposing “no touch” could result in having over crowded forest communities, creating potential fire hazards, and/or forest subjected to heavy insect or pathogen infestations. Using your replacement tree strategy, cost would be too high leaving landowners with little choice but to leave forest health and management to natural occurring events. This type of management philosophy seems to be very shortsighted relative to the protection of long-term forest health. The U.S. Forest Service used a “no touch” management philosophy on its forest over the past 20-30 years. One only needs to look at the amount of destruction occurring to our beautiful national forest as a result of letting nature take care of it self. Million of acres are being over run by fires and insects all because we have allow forest stand density levels to become to high. With this approach no one benefits. They have since changed their management philosophy and are now beginning to make head way on forest health and protection.

I feel for Brighton Township a more prudent approach is to set minimum stocking level standards that must be in place prior to removing any trees. This of course would very by site class, based on site-specific criteria. Other protection standards as defined by environmental protection agency (s) would also be included in the plan. This would allow for tree harvesting within the forest once stocking levels were reached or exceeded but would not allow harvesting to go below acceptable stocking levels. This would insure a healthy productive forest and at the same time allow for other compatible uses to occur simultaneously.

Finally, another concern you must consider as a result of not being able to harvest timber in Brighton County is that society as a whole loses. That is forest products derived from forest growing in Brighton Township now have been removed from our nations supply of lumber. Each time we remove portions of our timber supply from the U. S market we have a greater dependency on other countries to supply us with our building materials. Most of the countries we get lumber supplies from have very little knowledge or are uneducated regarding sustainable forest management. This is readily seen in the destruction of the vast rain forests of South America and the Philippines, where clear cutting without replacement is the order of the day. Total ecosystems are affected and changed forever. As long as the US demands lumber 3rd world countries will continue to supply it with little concern to the impact on its environments. The timber currently growing in the United States if correctly managed, is more than enough to supply societies needs well into the future. However, shortsighted planning such as what the Forest Service has done and Brighton Township is contemplating continues us on the path of potential worldwide damages to our ecosystems. By adopting Article 11 you have decided and are willing to import your building material needs and export your environmental problems.

I hope this is thought provoking at least to the extent that you begin to think of forest health and society’s forest products needs as a function of sustainable managed forests.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Carl E. Hayward
RPF #3301045983

Brighton Township Happenings

New Tree ordinance is harmful to even the trees....