Image # 3094
burned southern pines A destroyed southern pine forest in the Four Notch Wilderness, Texas. Forest destruction is one of the overiding issues of our time. The integrity of our forest ecosystems is eroding under the pressures of human resource use and misuse. The preeminance of clear cutting in industrial forestry works against ecological integrity management and adversely impacts long term soil productivity. Limited clearcutting is probably not a bad thing, but when it is used as the sole tool in forestry, it fragments forests, locking many plant and animal species on small "islands" of habitat.
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