20K Acres Per Year Of Cypress Destroyed To Make Mulch, Razing LA Storm Barrier - M.J.

[hatrack]

EDIT

Like a Great Wall rimming the coast, cypress forests in the Atchafalaya and elsewhere in Louisiana are the single best defense against hurricanes—magnitudes stronger, more enduring, and cheaper than any concrete or earthen levee. Their extensive root system spreads several hundred feet, weaving a tight lattice that serves as an anchor against high winds and storm surges. Hassan Mashriqui, a Louisiana State University professor of coastal engineering who creates computer simulations of hurricanes, told me that a stand of cypress just a football field in width can slash a town-leveling, 20-foot-high storm surge by 90 percent.

Which makes it all the more staggering that in recent years an entire industry intent on logging cypress has lawfully sprung up. Some of the timber winds up as boards for home construction or furniture, but most trees are ground into garden mulch. That's right: The last natural stronghold that could stop hurricanes from obliterating southern Louisiana is being pulverized into chips to adorn the very homes that the cypress would save from annihilation. According to the Louisiana Forestry Association, loggers are razing up to 20,000 acres of cypress every year. If the carnage continues apace, Louisiana's strongest barrier between it and an angry sea will be gone in fewer than two decades.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's totally insane, and that's why today Wilson regularly patrols rivers, lakes, and bayous in search of logging operations. He takes careful notes, snaps photos, and forwards the data to the local media, conservation groups, the Environmental Protection Agency (epa), the Army Corps of Engineers, and Waterkeeper's headquarters in New York.

His efforts have infuriated loggers, mill operators, and timber-beholden politicians who say they provide desperately needed jobs to poor counties. Wilson has been threatened, warned to watch his back. A few days before my visit, he discovered Luna, his sprightly seven-year-old Samoyed-German shepherd mix, in a crumpled heap at the end of his gravel driveway. She was dead—intentionally poisoned, his vet later confirmed. "Who do you think did it?" I ask Wilson early one morning as we bounce along a dusty back road in his double-cab pickup. "I have many enemies. Could be anyone," he says, then quickly changes the subject. "Do you like the Alan Parsons Project?" he asks, fumbling for a CD wedged between the front seats.

EDIT

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/louisianas-mulch-madness.html

[watrwefitinfor]

1. Thank you, hatrack.

[Cresent City Kid]

2. Yikes!

Coastal erosion was bad before, and I know from living in the area that there is a good degree of public awareness of the issue. Like Seinfeld says, "Who ARE these people?" I find it highly unlikely that any local entity would do such a thing.

[angrycarpenter]

3. There is enough cypress

on the bottom of the rivers and buried in bogs to last us for decades. Why they cut them down is a mystery to me. Here in franklin county florida we had already cut down our large, old growth cypress many years ago, and there is a ban on cutting any more, but many large logs are still pulled from the river bottom some of them hundreds of years old.

[formercia]

9. Old Cypress

When I lived in NC, I had a home on Albemarle Sound. We built a deck out of old cypress boards that were cut before the Civil War. They were weatherbeaten but the wood was better than new on the inside. Great stuff.
One of my in laws here in Maine made good money pulling old growth logs off the bottom of a lake where they sank during long ago log drives.

[Zachstar]

4. dead grass works MUCH better than wood mulch anyway.

So WTF are they thinking cutting down such trees? And more worrysome is the threats.


One benefit of high fuel costs I guess is greatly increasing prices on these produces and shrinking the budget to get them so hopefully their operations will slow down.

[pscot]

5. We are beyond stupid

Whatever hell follows, we will have earned it.

[Delphinus]

10. Well now, see,

not *all* of us are beyond stupid. It's just that those that are, really screw things up for everyone.

[pscot]

11. I disagree

We are all guilty. It's like original sin, or Milo Minderbinder's business model. Everybody has a share.

[depakid]

6. Some people never learn....

not even the hard way....

[Norrin Radd]

7. kr

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Trees don't vote. Fuck 'em. nt