I observed tree growth facts from the decades of living in the forest reasonably well. Muskeg areas, peripherals spaces and well-drained slopes for comparative purposes. I saw the different orders of appearance of repopulating with trees , in a manner of speaking pine, then red cedar, sometimes yellow, spruce and the two kinds of hemlock with the late arrival of fir that occurs in the different kinds of drainage areas. I know that wolves don't like to share space with humans because people walking about in crunchy snow interferes with deer hunting. Rowing between Prince Rupert and Juneau one can compare the areas with real old growth from so much regrowth over the past century and human effects of development from roads and boats. The ecosystem is a contiguous fact with one thing- like barge and other boat traffic leaving influences in their wake. Pea plants grow along the shore in various places as do tall feral grains. Deciduous trees crowding in along the beach aren’t found in the interior.
People degrade the environment rather than improve it. They accelerate entropy. That's why wildlife declines, fishing collapses, etc. Puget Sound and the Willamette Valley are laboratory examples for the destruction of Alaskan environmental health. Washington and Oregon achieved that long ago. Without conservation and new ways of using theoretically sustainable resources the system tends to collapse. Maybe A.I. will find an optimal way to use sustainable resources someday that won't harm human prospects on Earth.
There are several stumps from logging in the Mill Creek days that remain- what 120 year old stumps of very large size. One can see what has grown around them in the time passed, is not too large. A hundred-twenty year old tree is what- two and a half or three feet in diameter? It is the concatenated affect of human work degrading-never improving the ecosystem is the problem. nature does not recover or evolve nearly so quickly. There is plastic on beaches from Wrangell to Farragut Bay where there is some Older growth forest rather nice to walk through. Wild forests are a major sink absorbing much CO2 and filtering out other impacts of human exploitation of the ecosystem. As the wild Earth vestiges perish and the ecosphere is treated as a farm there are a lot of subtle harmful losses of ecosystem services adversely affecting human prospects on Earth. People are not bright enough to manage the ecosphere themselves yet- God's provisioning of a healthy supportive ecosphere should be respected rather than erased.
Tourism is also a natural resource. Logging adversely impacts it as people don't spend thousands to see logging cuts. Long ago I thought of the northward exodus of people from California to Oregon, Washington, Montana and Alaska. Resumption of large scale logging will probably stimulate more destruction of the S.E. ecosystem and that will bring development of more roads and housing. Hundreds of thousands of aliens may move north too for cheap labor when Trump is gone and Democrats resume their policies. I believe forest conservation is the best way to keep S.E. Alaska somewhat wild. Not a lot of wild remains in the U.S.A.; people favor slaughtering it. Then the fishing gets even worse- https://www.udio.com/songs/m2Ew6wpxksuzVEJ9dXTTju
-There were more comments and then the inevitable personal attacks started. I wrote the following in reply to one.
I simply expressed my dissent on logging. Ecospheric destruction seems like a low-IQ kind of venture in the present situation on Earth. On public issues and matters of public governance everyone has a right to provide their opinion. That is a part of democracy that the nation fails without. The strength of western civilization is in the diversity of opinion. People listen to themselves and if they choose, learn the opinions of others; sapere aude.
Anyone with some education ought to not be silent and let the bottom of the barrel dominate things without anyone saying bad ideas are bad. You may regard political free expression as hypocritical. So might the Klan, fascists of various sorts and organized crime. Democrats in social media often make personal attacks on people they don't identify as one of their own kind rather than address issues. I have other writing to do yet will defend myself so long as people attack even on onerous subjects. A certain segment of Wrangell is intolerant of political pluralism in regard to opinions. They keep running on forever if someone posts something they don't like. Everyone who lives in the borough should expect some measure of fiduciary equality of interest and resource investment by the city.
