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New Jersey. Logging Bill. S1085. Science versus Profit. Raping the Land.


Logging Bill S1085, it worries me. I have this image in my head of denuded hills, smoky tractors and heavy transport trucks, wild animals scampering for cover, an open canopy, and reclining state legislators fattened up by lobbyists and with huge smiles on their faces.

On Thursday, March 8th, the NJ Senate Environment Committee will hear S1085 and so it has become extremely important to CALL the committee members' respective offices and urge them to defeat the bill. Stand up and be counted. Your state needs you.

According to this ARTICLE, logging NJ's public lands will ruin the forests rather than make it healthier. Not surprisingly, it would take a knowledgeable person on the environment to explain things to lay people like us. I have no trouble in understanding that cutting mature trees, destroying the natural canopy of the forest, will allow invasive species to thrive on the forest floor while the deer eat up the saplings of the very hardwoods that are expected to replace those that were cut down. On the other hand, I am leery of the government's position that Mother Nature is not doing her job and it is imperative that commercial logging companies go in there and do it for her. This is the very core of the government's argument for S1085. Of course, who else will be the representative of change, the self-proclaimed saviour of our woodlands, but the special interest groups that have drummed up the shady science and who have been lobbying Trenton for years.

Wouldn't you see red flags when more than 100 scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists (MA, USA) spoke out against S1085? It has also been reported that twenty leading scientists from universities in New Jersey and New York oppose the bill. I am afraid that our legislators will not listen to those who know the science. There is an old saw that tells us that when two or three of our friends tell us that we are drunk, it's best not to argue but to sit down. Our legislators better listen.

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