“Is total ecosystem obliteration bad for wildlife?” muse the ecosystem-destroyers (time to #DebunkTheJunk!)

From NCForestry.org, “The Voice of Forestry in North Carolina” (and incidentally the home to some of the largest wood pellet factories in the world,) we get this educational gem:

Time to #DebunkTheJunk!   We appreciated the words of Andy Wood, Director, Coastal Plain Conservation Group, in North Carolina:

“Some of what is missing in the forestry poster’s text include the forestry practice of using herbicides to remove all the glorious plants the forest industry doesn’t want competing for space and nutrients with their monoculture of desired trees. Plus, today’s clearcutting is conducted with heavy equipment weighing 25 to 50 tons each, rolling on large tires that, throughout the clearcut process, crush just about every square meter of land, including wetland, leaving deep ruts lined with the smashed remains of whatever plants and animals were in the tire’s path. Forestry is seldom conducted with the goal of benefitting the environment, let-alone wildlife. It is an extractive industry that operates with the goal of maximizing financial return on investment. Sure, there may be a few years after a clearcut when weedy plants are present in the landscape but, in the guiding principles of forestry, those weedy plants that benefit wildlife are simply weeds to be removed for the sake of the crop. The proverbial bottom line in this matter has to do with habitat loss in general and harms to biodiversity more specifically. Forestry, the growing of trees to produce a product, is a requirement for our species’ wants and needs. This poster is simply intended to assuage our conscience, to buffer our cognitive dissonance, the discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other; discomfort that the forestry industry worries might stimulate an innate sense of societal empathy, leading to speaking out against harms our behaviors create, including harms resulting from bending forests to our will. So, with all due respect, in answer to the question, is clearcutting bad for wildlife, the answer is observably yes. More to the point, the fact of it is evidence that our species is exceeding the natural carrying capacity of our Starship Earth.”