Old photos hold key to environmental changes--Interesting Photos

[mbryson]

{stolen from Alan Taylor}

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2588851

http://extension.usu.edu/rra/


Thanks to John Borg-
------------------------

Old photos hold key to environmental changes
<http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2588851>

There's a good story in today's Salt Lake Tribune about using
historic and current photos to qualitatively view changes in
range health. The USU website is listed in the story, but for
convenience, here it is:

<http://www.extension.usu.edu/rra>

I've often referred people who complain about "loss of roadless
areas" (and everything else... you know, the perpetually
appalled set) to a kiosk at Temple Fork in Logan Canyon. This
kiosk was installed a few years ago, and has historic photos
of the Temple Fork area, the old sawmill area in particular.
The Temple Fork saw mill operated from 1877 to 1886, when it
burned down. In the 9 year span, the mill produced over 2.5
million board-feet of lumber, 21,000 railroad ties, 900,000
lath, two million pickets and assorted other products.

Photos on the kiosk show an area that was sheep grazed to bare
ground and almost completely clearcut. Now you can hike, bike,
or ride a horse up the the old mill site and see the
difference. With the WCNF Revised Forest Plan (2003), this
area (which had practically looked like a moonscape 120 years
ago) was designated as a new Inventoried Roadless Area. I'm
assuming this was done so the perpetually appalled set could
complain about how the "pristine roadless area" is being
destroyed by cattle grazing and ORVs, and chant the roadless
area mantra: "once they're gone, they're gone forever".

What I find most interesting is that all of this dramatic
recovery was accomplished before restrictive management
changes of the Clinton years, without ever being a roadless
area, and without any of the "needed" restrictive management
direction changes of the Revised Forest Plan.

John

 

[Spork]

Nice pictures. The Mine one was kind of suprising.
http://extension.usu.edu/rra/html/Tour/Mining.html

 

[jamesgeologist]

I don't have any photos to back this claim, but at least half a dozen drilling locations I have been on in the last five years have been reclaimed to a condition as good or better than in the photo (HERE) That is 21st century programs aimed at reclaiming drilling locations faster and doing less damage in the first place. Honestly, anyone working in the oilfield would tell you that the worst environmental enemy is dust. Dust is carried by the wind over long distances kicked up by the vehicles that service the rig, not the rig itself. I bet half of you out wheeling have come across a dry hole marker and didn't even realize there had been a drilling rig in that spot!!

 

[Tacoma]

when my wife's family comes out here, fresh from Long Island and full of leftist baloney, I take them to see all the ruins of mining towns that have disappeared in the last 50 years.

The idea that man is somehow horribly scarring the landscape forever is ludicrous. I don't take them to see Kennecott though....