0
Not so many years ago the immense fires that blackened the dense forests on the Bitterroot Mountains would have been labeled a severe disaster, millions of board feet of timber down the drain. Many of the trees that were salvageable would have been quickly logged.
But in this land of the environmentally savvy, the management of the publicly owned forests is under a microscope. The biological toll that logging can take on a landscape is well known, a toll that is especial!) Harsh on a forest hit hard by high-intensity fires. So in its struggle to cut and sell trees burned in the enormous fires of the summer of 2000, the United States Forest Service finds itself trying to convince environmentalists that Hublot Replica careful logging is not only benign,cartier love ring rose gold, but critical to the forests' recovery am protection. The service, which is responsible for both forest health and selling timber, has proposed salvaging 176 million board feet of ponderosa pine other trees - more than three times as much as would normally be sold in the area.
Environmentalists, however, are not buying the notion that the forest must be logged to save it, at least not on the scale the Forest Service proposes They challenged the sale on a procedural issue, and in early January a federal judge agreed and stopped the project. On Jan. 16 the Fore Service said it would appeal, and asked the judge to allow five "emergency sales to go ahead.
During "the Ninth Five-year Plan" period (1996 - 2000), thanks to the recognition of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, China's environmental protection undertaking achieved tremendous headway: the tendency of the country's deteriorating industrial pollution was brought under preliminary control, the environment quality in some cities and regions was somewhat improved, and the protection and construction of the ecological environment were strengthened, thus making positive contributions to expediting the sustained, rapid and sound development of the national economy and social progress, and laying a solid foundation for environmental protection in the new century.
One of the most controversial parts of the recovery plan for the burn< area may be the Cartier Replica Watches potential for damage to the soil. Forest Service officials any damage will be minimized by restrictions that allow logging only on frozen and snow-covered ground and by using techniques like helicopter and "Skylab logging that keeps heavy equipment and dragged logs from disturbing soil. B Ken McBride, a forest soils scientist with the Forest Service, who has study soil conditions on the Bitterroot National Forest since 1988, argues that the protections don't go far enough and that the logging could cause lasting damage. "The organic layer is gone and the soils lose their ability to grow plants," he said.
Efforts must be intensified to close down and suspend the production of small enterprises that use backward techniques, cause serious resource wastes and pollution and fail to achieve the specified economic scale. In industrial pollution control, we should combine technical renovation with clean production, and integrate the raise of the quality of economic growth and the reduced load of contamination, so as to realize increased production and decreased pollution. For urban environmental protection, major efforts should be exerted to come to proper grips with readjusting the energy structure, with the emphasis placed on solving the problems concerning water, air and garbage pollution. We should continue to boost the construction of model cities that distinguish themselves in environmental protection. In the prevention and control of agricultural pollution, we should combine readjustment of the agricultural structure with the control on agricultural contamination, vigorously develop ecological agriculture,cartier love necklace price, build ecological demonstration areas, and reduce surface and source pollution.
Published at Sooper Articles - Submit Free Articles
