'If A Tree Falls' Documentary

chris_girard

chris_girard

Treehouser
Joined
Jul 28, 2007
Messages
1,535
Location
Gilmanton, N.H.
I watched this documentary this morning about these eco-terrorists called the Earth Liberation Front. These guys were radical tree huggers in the 1990's who did some horrible things and didn't have a clue to how safe, productive forestry goes on.

In the documentary, it looks like they used some of Gerry B's footage from felling selective trees, but they portray it as raping the land. What a bunch of BS! Watch the trailer and see what I'm talking about.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/ifatreefalls/
 
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Boy, that sure looks like some footage from Jer's dvd's. Hopefully he can fill us in. If it is his video and this producer is using it out of context, than I would be pissed.
 
Chris, could you be so kind as to rephrase your 3 first lines of your first post, please.

Between English being a somewhat foreign language to me and your typing errors, I don't get what you are trying to say.
Since this has the making of a hot thread, I'd like to understand what you mean, before putting my oar in the water.

Epsecially since this is an area, where The Americans and me don't look eye to eye.
 
Chris, could you be so kind as to rephrase your 3 first lines of your first post, please.

Between English being a somewhat foreign language to me and your typing errors, I don't get what you are trying to say.
Since this has the making of a hot thread, I'd like to understand what you mean, before putting my oar in the water.

Especially since this is an area, where The Americans and me don't look eye to eye.
 
I think that back in the eighties when corporations like Maxam bought local timber companies, old growth was being unsustainably harvested just to satisfy shareholders. Did that make ecoterrorism justified. I don't thinks so. Did radical environmentalism produce results? Sure it did. That and American timber became less economical. There aren't a lot of good examples of resource management when profit motives enter the picture.
 
Yeah they used some of my clips in that movie. The agreement was the clips used would not be slanted against the timber industry. I was a little disappointed by the whole deal. But not much I can do about it now.

Never again.
 
Yeah, i suspect it was a good lesson for you, Jerry. You can't trust media types at all about that kind of thing, fulfilling your wishes for what you gave them. I have had similar experience, and the liberties they take can be quite upsetting. Try to get them to acknowledge the improper use, and it is another lesson in frustration.
 
Oh yeah. If any of us had done the crimes that guy did we would be in prison for life. Bane of the working class. The free loaders get off because they do it to save the planet. He'll be a hero.
 
Should folks be able to cut down every last bit of old growth timber as long as it is on privately held land? I feel sympathies both ways on this one. On the one hand folks should be able to make a living with the land they own. On the other hand old growth forests are a non replenishable resource. Farm trees where they've already been cut and leave the old growth alone as a seed bank and reserve of genetic diversity. We might need what's there someday in terms diversity and biochemicals, far more than the wood and the money we'd get for it.
 
chris_girard said:
and they didn't have a clue as to how safe, productive forestry procedures are done.
Click to expand...

Thank, Butch.

This was the part I didn't quite get.
To me, safe, productive forestry and the clearcutting of oldgrowth forests are two completely different things.

Safe, productive forestry is what we practice here, because the place has been populated so long, that we felled the last oldgrowth forests ages ago.

Clearcutting oldgrowth forest is what you guys do, because you want to make America end up looking as bad as Europe;)
 
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Sorry Stig that I didn't get a chance to fix my spelling and for my poor grammar. Writing wasn't one of my best subjects while in school, but I'm glad that Butch was able to fix it and make it a little more understandable.

Yeah, I thought that I recognized your camera work Jer...it was the best piece of work in the whole damn film. It's a shame that they didn't tell the whole story, but I guess we can't trust the media after all. At least they knew to come see you for some good action shots!

Heide and I watched the film yesterday morning and we were both bitching about how those assholes got off so lighty. You're right too, we would be in jail for life.
 
Sorry it was a bad experience Jerry. I haven't seen the vid and am not sure I can on my iPad.
 
In the movie the producer, Marshall Curry, seems to justify, in a somewhat cleaver way, the means of the ELF's actions to curb the logging in Oregon. Not just old growth. They were targeting all logging.

This seems to be the current trend in my local with the environmentalists. Since there is no old growth logging here any more per say. They are out to stop the second growth now.
 
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Boy, someone should try and educate these environmentalists in what good forest management really is all about. They don't have a clue from the sounds of it.
 
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A lot of them are over-educated idiots who haven't a clue as to what life in the woods is really all about.
 
Yah. Proper logging practices and logging in a sustainable way could much more easily be acheived if big business monopoly's weren't allowed to happen. You got individual's or publicly owned companies who are making thick off of supposedly 'crown land' and the excuse is that it drives the economy and provides jobs? It's a load of crap, it's another big business, big resource money grab from the average person. And it's gotten worse and worse to the point of where you couldn't hardly make a living around here anymore logging, it's a much tougher go anyways and a whole different mentality. More, more and more wood must be produced with less and less labor, talk about a recipe for accidents and fatalities.

If we could have true community forests and sawmills there wood be plenty of butter around for everyone's bread.
 
Well said, Justin. It's a tough call either way, and as much as I disagree with the environmentalist movements against the industry they have been instrumental towards many positive changes in forest practice. We just have to get the extremists out of the picture and reach a medium between both sides. If that ever happens it could be better for the worker bees. But 'if' is a mighty big word.
 
Aren't the extremists the ones who make the moderates look that much more attractive? I always thought Earth First helped the Sierra Club get a voice in Congress and in board rooms.
 
My friends in California sent me a wonderful book about the National parks for solstice. I'm chewing my way through it right now.
Seems to me that if it wasn't for "extremists" like John Muir, Teddy Roosewelt and Gifford Pinchot, there wouldn't me much left of the stuff that makes America beautiful ( to me anyway).

Also , show me one place in the new world ( and here I include Australia and New Zealand) where sustainable logging practices have been implemented while there was any virgin forests left to rape.
The new world approach to forestry has been to look at it like wood-mining.

Go look into the history of Weyerheuser for example.

I don't completely agree with the treehuggers and it irritates the hell out of me that they are such a bunch of latter day hippies, because it makes them so easy to dismiss. But wearing dreadlocks doesn't mean you can't be right.
 
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