Phil Winkler wrote:If that is happening in Tennessee in this day and age somebody is dropping the ball. The Pacific Northwest has been practicing conservation minded clear-cutting for decades. Surely there is an agency that can be contacted and the regulations reviewed?
Until recent years, the paper companies clear cut and then replanted pine trees. It left an ugly barren area for a few years until the seedlings grew,
but trees did come back. Not a deciduous forest but still trees.
Then due to more requirements by our government and increased taxes the paper companies decided they would be better off selling off most
of their land. So they have. They are now getting around new rules and taxes by making timber contracts with private landowners who bought
their land. So now the paper companies get their wood and leave the taxes and replanting up to the new landowners. Clear cutting is
not pretty, can cause landslides, increases heat gain and loss (which creates deserts), reduces oxygen creation, etc.
Paper companies sold thousands of acres here in TN. Conservation groups, the state, hunting clubs and developers have bought up much of it.
The bottom line is that access for caving has just about dried up on those previously accessible thousands of acres. Everyone that bought up
that land has for the most part reduced access far below what it once was.
For preservationists, this it great. For the rest of the world maybe not so great.