Check the price for a 2x12 at your local building supply store. You will understand why most floors these days are made of trusses made from 2x4s. You will also understand why loggers salivate at the prospect of cutting old growth. It's simple greed.

Check the price for a 2x12 at your local building supply store. You will understand why most floors these days are made of trusses made from 2x4s. You will also understand why loggers salivate at the prospect of cutting old growth. It's simple greed.

A quick check of my local Home Depot website puts a 20-foot 2x12 at $.56 per board foot and a 10-foot 2x4 at $.62 per board foot.

It may be true that loggers would prefer harvesting larger trees as opposed to smaller trees, but to call loggers greedy is unwarranted. There's much more factoring into lumber prices than most of us know.

Floor trusses are more desirable than solid lumber for many reasons. They are lighter, stronger, and can span longer distances. They accommodate other trades better, such as electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. They are far more stable (stay straighter and less problematic) than solid lumber.

But getting back to the crux of the article...trees are a renewable resource and as such need intensive and proper management - proper being the key word.

It would not be difficult to identify and mark the trees that we do not want cut versus the trees we want removed. I'm guessing the USDA does that now in the US, as logging is highly regulated.

If you wish to make the environment more suitable for old growth timber, proper thinning is mandatory. The only place that happens is on private land - go figure!

To continuously blame man (via AGW) for every forest malady is a shameless cop-out.

Logging is highly regulated because if it wasn't the companies would have driven everything extinct.

Just look what happened to the Sequoia and the Louisiana Cypress. If not for the government stopping it, they'd be totally extinct, and they may well be headed that way anyway.

The first thing man does when he finds a new type of tree is cut it down.

Industry vs. Forest is like that adage about facing a horde of assassins. You have to be lucky or win every day, they only have to get lucky once.

Likewise, the eco-minded have to win every battle, every day to preserve a tree, but a big agro-business only has to win one legal battle to have it cut down and it is gone forever.

I rented a townhouse apartment by an area of woods that was always supposed to be woods as it was technically wetland. When they ran out of development room they changed the legislation so that wetlands could now be drained in that county to put up a poorly built subdivision. Even if you could change the law back, the damage is done. No more woods, no more streams, no more wetland.

When they ran out of development room they changed the legislation so that wetlands could now be drained in that county to put up a poorly built subdivision. Even if you could change the law back, the damage is done. No more woods, no more streams, no more wetland.

I've seen this so many times it's just saddening. Time and time again the developer wins and the environment suffers. If some land isn't under some sort of Federal protection, rarely will it be left un-attacked.

Without protection, the only way to influence the developers is to fight back with a people movement. Employ the Sierra Club, Historical clubs etc. Go all Greenpeace on the mofos. I've seen it work on occasion with enough out cry.