Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772–1834
In my last post, I asked a question about the reinstatement of wolves into the Western United States. From the thoughtful answers, I think we all feel about the same. We love the wildness of wolves and feel there should be a place for them. But we don't know exactly how it will work, what with our own species ever expanding.
I've come to distrust the charitable organizations that purport to support wild creatures such as the wolf, then spend much of their budget on administration and much of it on lawyers who sue the forest service for this and that. I read that the Forest Service spends forty to fifty percent of its budget defending lawsuits. Who wins besides the lawyers?
I'd been happily sending donations off to these groups and feeling pretty virtuous about it too, until we had a forest fire here a few years ago. Many pine trees were left blackened and dead, but standing. In that state, they could only become tinder dry and hazardous, but once cut, could serve a purpose, if only as fire wood. Nevertheless, some anti-logging group based in Florida filed a suit to prevent the removal of the dead trees. It was short lived, and the removal progressed. But I'm sure it cost the Forest Service dollars that could have been better spent taking care of the forest and the creatures therein. Now there's a new issue and expense for the National Parks and National Forest Services to deal with. The big scale growing of marijuana by drug cartels!
Oh dear...........this post ran away from me! As you may guess by the illustrations, I was going to speak to the issue of animals and their rightful place among us. I got carried away by the perplexities of Forest care and truthfully, no one has ever got that right. From the moment Teddy Roosevelt wrote National Parks into existence, well meaning managers have made one mistake after another. We simply can't replace Mother Nature!
Noah Did His Best to save them all!
It must have been a great relief when the waters receded..
Thanks for bearing with me! Next time I'll try to stay on track.....
