Quotes About Clear-cutting

on for the rest of my life." That evening, Virgilio joined us at dinner. I asked him about the clear-cutting that checkerboarded the jungle we had flown over. He was shocked and concerned by what he'd seen. He said we had found the site in the nick of time, before deforestation and

Ancient forests that took millennia to evolve are called "decadent" or "overmature," so clearing them is justified by the notion that they are finished or at an end. Sometimes the forest industry labels such forests "wild," and what is planted and grown after it has been clear-cut is called a "normal" forest. We define things in terms of human utility, not in any way that makes ecological or even biological sense.

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do.