Zz Us Government Tree Killers Poem by Saiom Shriver

The US Forest Service is blaming the Rim fire which destroyed 15,000
acres last year on a hunter's illegal campfire. Perhaps that is so
and perhaps as has happened several times, arson is set by logging
companies so that they may do lumber 'salvaging' at firesale prices.
Now the US Forest Service wants to let timber companies 'salvage'
at the very edge of Yosemite park.

The plan has received much opposition.
In the past the USFS has actually set 'controlled burn' fires which
often went the other way than the ostensibly planned one because
of the wind, once again giving not a windfall but a firefall to
the timber companies, while animals, birds, frogs and other creatures burned alive and their habitat was destroyed.

The US is a land of skinny trees... with the exception of the oasis
of redwoods. India has trees 2 millennia or more old. England has
protected many of its millennial oaks. Thailand has banned logging.

But the lumber-driven policies of the USFS and the Department of
Interior, the failure to give financial incentives to wood alternatives,
the many compulsory mowing ordinances, the unregulated use of treepaper
by metropolitan newspapers... are some of the many enemies of trees.

The average tree evaporates 40 gallons of moisture into the water daily, reported
Bayer Webster of the NY Times. This evaporation becomes mist, then clouds
and finally rain. Without trees, there are drought, fire, and violent weather.