This is the problem. Do we have to manage forests? I suppose we do to stop people illegally logging, but it doesn't. Why do humans think they can manage forests? Just manage what is human things, manage the people who are illegally logging.
By all means build houses but don’t bulldoze forests to do it. In fact build houses that fit into the environment and realise that nothing is forever and can be lost. If building a house in a forest, get ready for forest fires. Prepare to leave or fight. Prepare to rebuild, prepare a place under the house to protect yourself when the house above you burns to the ground. That may not, but will probably happen at least once in a lifetime. Certainly in Oz.
Trees and understorey gets burnt, why should human dwellings not be burnt. Protecting the things one needs is not a bad thing, but that doesn't mean cut down all the trees that could burn and in so doing torch the dwelling one has chosen to build. That's like shooting your neighbour before he shoots you, he may not, but by shooting him you ensure he does not. Forget the trees right to live and forget your neighbours right to live.
All animals stand the chance of losing their homes and their lives in certain situations. That's how the world goes round. A house built in a forest with as little disruption to the area chosen as possible. With the home build a human survival capsule and be ready to lose the dwelling. Be prepared to rebuild it the dwelling. If a place is prone to floods, other strategies will need to be applied.
Manage what we build and create without too much expense loaded onto the natural environment. Leave nature to look after the things with which we have no business interfering.
Another of the problems that we face is that if anyone steps out of the mainstream they are considered at the very least foolish, but generally stupid. Like throwing rubbish in the ground, it's the wrong thing to do, but everyone does it so how can we not doing it make any sort of difference? The slipstream that carries everyone with it is powerful, made up of peer pressure, comfort and many other factors that drag us along with the crowd. The herd has a very strong pull on the individual.
To be different, to be the one who changes and makes changes usually needs a complete rethink, a makeover in fact. Not so easily done. To jettison some of the ideas that were and still are being taught in schools and indoctrinated into those who wouldn't dare to go against the “norm”. To actually think and be a little less selfish and a bit more considerate of everything, not just human beings. Simple. Not for most people.
Something that Kahlil Gibran said: They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. --Kahlil Gibran
This isn't the “norm”. Neither is trying to keep a tree or trees from being cut down so power lines can go along that path. Yet it happens. The power lines can be redirected away from the trees, but destruction is easier than thinking, designing and building, so “just bulldoze whatever gets in your road” seems to be the credo of the greedy and those who think they are serving progress, which they automatically think is good. [sigh]
It's happened, where the trees were going to be saved and some “hero” came during the night and cut them down. Hundred year old trees, and those that heard the chainsaw working stayed inside and didn't look out so they couldn't let slip who did it, or looked and didn't speak of it because they just wanted the power lines up so they could have electricity a little earlier after living all their lives without it. Then they signed up to a drip feed that slowly sucked then dry.
The buildings that we see going up, and yet few if any think of the quarries that supply the bricks, mortar and plaster, iron ore and coal, the forests cut for woodchips and cut down to allow access to the areas where the stone for building can be found. People say these buildings are great monuments, and they are of course. Great monuments to human stupidity, but then that's stepping out of the mainstream to suggest something like that.
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