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HomeUncategorizedLetters to the EditorAn insane idea

An insane idea

Posted by Mark Chapman on April 11th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

To the editor:

Have you ever noticed when some­thing is oper­at­ing smoothly or sim­ply bask­ing in the sun, some­one will want to poke it with a stick?

On one end of this stick we have the county and state. On the other end we have four of our pris­tine, envi­ron­men­tal parks, Oys­ter Creek, Cedar Point, Amber­jack Slough and Char­lotte Flat­woods. Guess who’s doing the poking.

The county and state forestry want to “selec­tively log” these parks, then set them on fire, on pur­pose, so they won’t catch fire acci­den­tally. Makes sense to them.

These so-called “con­trolled burns” are about as pop­u­lar as the Corps of Engi­neers mis-management of the Ever­glades which is now under­go­ing $8 bil­lion of cor­rec­tive action.

Is it just a coin­ci­dence that these burns rou­tinely become rag­ing, uncon­trolled fires or is it because those in charge sim­ply don’t know what they’re doing? In addi­tion to the loss of wildlife just take a drive out River Road to see the charred, dead trees stand­ing as silent sen­tinels to this madness.

Now if this isn’t enough jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to leave our parks alone, con­sider this: A county expert says log­ging is nec­es­sary because the red cockeded wood­pecker prefers only eight to ten trees per acre. This con­tra­dicts a 1996 report that claims these birds pre­fer up to 120 per acre which is approx­i­mately what we have in our parks.

This whole sys­tem is obvi­ously flawed. What­ever hap­pened to com­mon sense and rea­son­ing? We need to pro­tect these parks, not destroy them.

George Rose

Engle­wood

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One response to “An insane idea”

  1. Amy Hibberd

    5 / 16 / 2010
    10:11 am

    Amen!

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