Bio-diversity

As avid readers of this blog - both of you!! - noticed last week I have not posted any comments for one entire week The reason for my being off-line was due to a grouse (birds that look like forest-dwelling chickens - except grouse meat tastes much better) hunting trip in Northern Minnesota with my brother.

Clearly I need some professional counseling because while we walked through the forest land in search of grouse I could not help but think of the very mis-guided Al "Save Mother Earth" Gore!!! I thought about Gore during a conversation my brother and I had with a US Forest Service Ranger regarding which areas are best for grouse habitat so we could focus our hunt. The ranger informed us that grouse thrive in "recently clear cut logging areas.........." What, how can that be possible? We let people log forest lands and the net result is that more grouse are able to reproduce/thrive by feeding on the young aspen tress that are able to grow once the old growth trees are removed by the loggers. Just imagine that by simply harvesting a useful product like trees to build homes and offices which spur further economic growth we get the added benefit of more bio-diversity via higher grouse populations. Another benefit of this logging that I would add that the ranger did not mention is that the clear cutting also helps prevent/manage forest fires by removing "fuel" from the area.

So the obvious point here is that we do not need activists who advocate highly centralized government control over the environment such as Al Gore does. In fact we need the complete opposite -- hunters like my brother and I who spend our money utilizing the great outdoors because it is people like us that have a personal, vested interest in ensuring we maintain environmental quality.

The hunt for smaller government continues.

Todd