Sigh, my last comment John. It is pointless trying to nail jelly to a wall.
John Foster wrote
> Chris,
>
> NZ has to import tropical hardwoods because it is a temperate country.
No john, our imports of tropical timber/furniture have gone from almost
nothing a decade ago to $100 million (or is it 200 - can't remember). We
didn't use to import much because we used decorative timbers that were
native to NZ. So the point is - pause here - the tropical timber import
rise is correlated with the decrease in NZ native timber harvesting. IE the
ceasing of sustainable management of Timberlands has forced the furniture
makers to import from these countries. Given that the source is unlikely to
be sustainable, the ceasing of a sustainable operation in NZ has encouraged
an unsustainable one overseas. Is this thesis now clear to you? Jim T
seemed to grasp it pretty quickly, and I confess I thought it was pretty
apparent.
[snip lots of irrelevant stuff about NZ's latitude, strawberries, japanese
maples, palm trees etc. - but no bears or caribou, which was a shame]
> Chris:
> > CP: Dear John, NZ is importing tropical hardwood timber to
> substitute for
> > the equivalent grades of timber that were being sustainably
> managed in NZ.
> > MDF is not the issue. We make heaps of it here. The furniture imports
> are
> > not MDF. Cappice?
>
> John:
>
> Is this a mispelling? Caprice or Coppice, I don't understand. I can prove
> that NZ imports MDF furniture. Every darn computer desk is made of the
> stuff. Don't pull too hard on the handles or they will come off.
> It is junk
> after five years.
CP: I quite agree, MDF is crap. Which is why people like to have decent
solid furniture. They used to like it in rimu. Now it is getting harder to
find. So - John - they DON't go and find some imported MDF (and no doubt we
import some of the stuff - trade is like that - sometimes Newcastle probably
imports coal), they go and buy some decent wood - either from Northern
temperate countries - or SE Asia. Do you get the point yet John.
> > > John:
> > > Mor humus is usually found on cool to cold humid soils.
> >
> > CP here: And tropical and temperate rain forests (eg NZ indigenous)
>
> John:
>
> I have neve seen a mor humus form on any tropical soils. Temperate soils
> yes. Give me the evidence that there are mor humus forms in the tropics.
Go have a look John. Many tropical forest soils have a thick mulch layer on
top of a relatively nutrient-poor mineral soil. Though this is another
irrelevant red herring which you seem fond of.
And as for your comments on the modeller who claimed Timberlands models were
wrong - he was due to be roundly refuted in the resource consent hearings
(which - REMEMBER - they didn't want to come to) and was technically
refuted point by point by a counter-article in the NZ J Forestry. Look up
Euan Mason (author), probably some time 2000 (May issue perhaps). The model
assumptions used by the zoological modeller (who Forest & Bird society
employed initially) - assumed that fecundity DECREASED with gap creation,
when for TREES it does the reverse. IE kill lots of bambi's mothers and you
get lots LESS bambis next season (a zoological assumption which is quite
correct). Create gaps (and these are small gaps) in the canopy of a forest
and you get MORE seedlings. Not only more seedlings, but diameter growth on
remining trees increases. Additionally, an assumption was made that any
harvesting would be additional to mortality instead of subsumed within it.
So the forest model was being cut at an assumed 150% mortality instead of at
50% (which was the target used by Timberlands to ensure a slop factor). At
150% mortality, pretty soon you get no forest. So the model assumptions he
used ended up with no canopy - which was counter intuitive to foresters who
knew that you have trouble getting Nothofagus NOT to regenerate. Change the
assumptions and you get a quite different forest. Additionally he ran the
model for 400 years or so as though everyone who manages forests is
completely thick and wouldn't monitor the results of management action
(adaptive management). His virtual forest ended up looking like a savanna.
As anyone who was worked on the West Coast knows - a savanna is the very
last thing you would ever get. But still some politicians and your mates at
NFA got stuck into it - but they still killed the resource consent process
John. If their evidence was so good why not subject it to a little rigour.
One comment summed it up. It went something like - "I wouldn't have passed
this if it was an undergraduate paper in forestry science." Then they come
back and say - where is the proof that you can subsume mortality?, to which
you point out the various forests in the world that have been managed in
something like sustainable yield levels for up to 400 years - and some quite
happily without the later technical input for hundreds of years before
that - as well as the work of various forest ecologists and foresters -
which they then refuse to give any credibility - the usual dishonesty of
motives.
But of course, under their premise sustainable management CANNOT be done.
It is an unachieveable goal. The depressing corollary being that we either
all get off the planet because we have no place here, or we shop til we
drop - the Dichotomy of nature as Madonna (a virgin to worship) OR a nature
as whore subject to selfish utilitarian commerce. They see no chance for
the middle ground. Their ethics allow ONLY human removal OR human rape.
Leopold's vision doesn't get a look in - nor Jackson's, nor Berry's. Either
way - the dichotomous (nature as either Madonna: Whore) view of the world is
a soulless "vision" to which so many preservationists seem to adhere. It is
a vision of despair rather than hope. I am sad to say that people like
you - who call yourselves environmentalists - and purport to care about a
sustainable future - depress the hell out of me. Just so much jelly, and so
much focus on the perceived problems and judgement of anyone who touches
nature, however lightly, rather than any real examination of solutions.
But no doubt you will respond with your "informed" sources - and I'll just
keep saying that it would have been possible to have this debate exposed to
critique BUT for the actions of SOME people who didn't want to. They prefer
to snipe from the sidelines and utilise all the substantial PR and media
skills they seem to have.
This is Chris Perley, signing off.
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