When To Chop A Tree

If a Tree Falls in a Forest, 364 Days a Year, Does Anyone Hear It?

One day a year we celebrate Arbor Day by planting trees, then we have the other 364 days that aren't Arbor Day. (We'll disregard Christmas, the sort of a pro-logging holiday.) Of course the general mood of the world is plant trees. Plant trees to keep the cities shady, plant trees to keep the forests thriving, to provide shelter and food for birds and bugs and animals, and to capture CO2, which in turn helps reduce global warming. Saving trees is the choice of the day, the prudent much ballyhooed choice. But day in and day out, people are compelled to cut trees down.

Brazil's rate of deforestation increased last year despite efforts to stop illegal logging. The rate of deforestation in the 1990's was 7,000 square miles per year. Starting in 2000, the rate was ~9,500 square miles per year. Then the rate seemed to decrease in the last couple of years until the last 5 months of 2007, when loggers cut 7000 square miles. What happened?

The environmental minister told the Financial Times in last week's article, "Brazil takes battle to the Amazon", that the rate of deforestation had temporarily decreased because of government crackdowns and the arrests of corrupt officials. Brazil is in the midst of renewing its forest protection efforts.

But some say that Brazil's deforestation due to illegal logging results from a more complicated mix, including public policies and populist local politicians which encourage logging. Others tie the rate of deforestation directly to commodity prices. According to this account the recent rise of illegal logging occurred when farmers, especially cattle ranchers, cleared land to meet the demand and to profit as food prices rose. So we can see that arguably, rising food prices might be a reason to cut down trees.

There are many other reasons why people fell trees besides for food. In each case there's a logical, rational reason. Here are some recent examples:

• To Protect Your Truck: A mailman in Vancouver, Washington hacked at more that 30 fruit trees along his route because the city wouldn't trim them and he wanted to protect his truck.
• For Your Solar Panels: For six years two neighbors in Sunnyvale, California engaged in a legal battle to resolve whether a resident who wanted solar panels could force his neighbor to cut down some redwoods. The 30 year old Solar Shade Control Act outlines the rules governing neighbors trees and solar panels.
• For Aesthetics: Every so often a corner estate gets sold and the new owners begin refashioning it as their home. First the old toilets get discarded curbside. Last, despite the opposite trend in places like Miami and LA to replace non-native palm trees with shade trees, in some neighborhoods in California quixotic homeowners owners replace shade trees with exotic palm trees. Tequila sunrise in hand perhaps. I've seen this happen.
• To Confront the Rebels: The president of Chad cut down "centuries-old trees" so that the leader could "be adequately protected". Said one bicyclist watching the trees fall: "When I was a child, soldiers used to stop us touching the trees...[n]ow they are being destroyed."

While Chad acted in the name of terrorism, the US for some reason didn't deploy that reasoning when it moved forward to develop its national forest areas. Last week the state of California sued the U.S. Forest Service, which wants to open more than 500,000 acres of California national forest for roads and oil drilling. The state wants to keep these forests free of roads.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown told the Los Angeles Times "I find it kind of ironic that the federal government won't let us clean up our cars and they now want cars going through these forests." California accuses the Forest Service of violating the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act by moving ahead with development plans and disregarding the state's laws. California enacted a moratorium on road construction in "pristine areas of its national forests" in 2006, according to the LA Times. But sometimes federal governments make the National Forests earn their keep, come hell or high water.

And so each new day gives a fine reason to chop a tree.