Instead of "us versus them" statements, I encourage vigorous examination of presuppositions. The urgency of the situation could not be more obvious.
The claim "the public is ignorant" is oft repeated by industry-friendly experts in all levels of academia and government. But the policies of the experts have been an objective disaster in the US West. You appear to promote science that is invalidated in real time.
i get what you're saying, but that's not what i'm saying.
state and national forests are a shared natural resource owned by the public, therefore the public has input over these things, sometimes overriding the science. a lot of the "objective disaster in the US West" is due to these policies that are informed by a public who only wants to save the trees.
i'm talking particularly about non-old growth stands where the forest needs to be thinned, but it hasn't, like in the west. old growth stands are a whole 'nother thing. here is one such example where this old growth debate is happening with public input in vermont: https://vtdigger.org/2024/01/18/logging-versus-old-growth-pl...
It is very difficult to cover all the angles in a few short comments. I disagree that "the public who wants to just save trees" is the responsible party.. it is more complex than that.
>policies that are informed by a public who only wants to save the trees
I can give citations for a dozen extensive studies and workshops, some years in the making, alongside more recent research papers from California academia. The ones I know of mostly originate in the University of California system. Actual policy as implemented is informed by those studies but not dictated by them.
Due to the rule of law, actual policy on the ground in the last forty years is divided in practice by the owners of the lands. In California, most of the "public" forest lands are owned by Federal agencies. The "desire to save the trees" conveniently dovetailed with a Federal obligation to maximize commercial value of National Forest timber. The combination of those two, different, policy groups resulted in what has happened in the last ten years.. that is, overcrowding of trees, disease, massive die-offs, and catastrophic wildfire.
Another crucial point.. the pine trees of the low Sierra and North-Eastern California are not at all in the same category as the Coastal Redwoods, or South Sierra old-growth. yet this discussion here seems to make no distinctions.
The claim "the public is ignorant" is oft repeated by industry-friendly experts in all levels of academia and government. But the policies of the experts have been an objective disaster in the US West. You appear to promote science that is invalidated in real time.