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Edited on Mon Nov-08-04 12:20 PM by 69KV
...is the place to find the answer.
There are more *trees*, that is true.
However, there is far less old growth forest, measured in acreage, not by the number of trees.
The main reason there are more trees is because of wildland fire suppression, which started around 1915 because of a government program - the U.S. Forest Service - led by a Progressive (big-P, Theodore Roosevelt's party), Gifford Pinchot. From 1915 until the 1930s it was still pretty disorganized, usually the local forest ranger would show up at the local tavern whenever there was a fire, and everyone would put down their drinks and be hired on the spot to fight the fire.
The organized fire suppression efforts we still have today trace directly back to the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs. After the CCC was disbanded at the start of WWII, the Forest Service, Park Service, and BLM organized their own seasonal fire crews to replace the CCC boys, and things never went back to the disorganized pre-CCC days.
Before fire suppression efforts, usually a fire would sweep through a forest every few years and clear out the excess fuel, downed wood and so on. Depending on the type of forest, there would also be periodic stand replacement fires which would clear out the entire stand of trees. Even those fires never burned the entire forest. That is a popular misconception. Instead they burned in a mosaic pattern.
The end result of those periodic fires was fewer trees. So we have more trees today, but the important thing to keep in mind is it's because of higher density forests. Ponderosa forests for example now have 5 to 10 times the density of trees per acre than they used to before fire suppression started.
We now understand more about ecology and how fire plays a necessary role, so fire suppression is being targeted around residential areas now, while prescribed burns are being used to replicate the role that natural fires used to play.
There's a good book (very long) on the whole history of the subject - "Fire In America" by Stephen J. Pyne.
But if your RW friend wants to know *why* we have more trees, tell him. Progressives, and Democrats, that's why.
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