Ouch. What would you do?

[iryshe]

I always liked this campground:

"The Forest Service says it has no choice but to cut down thousands of trees at a popular campground. The agency says the Lake Kachess campground on the eastside of Snoqualmie Pass is a safety hazard. But some critics say the cure looks a lot like a clearcut."

 

Forest Service: Cut trees or close campground

 

Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location

[+joedohn]

I'd close the campground (I know, easy for me to say never having been there) and leave the trees to meet their natural demise. Unless, some middle ground is available it sounds like the campground is going to be vastly and negatively altered anyway. Might as well leave such prodigious trees in place and then conduct a study on whether clearcutting such a grove is indeed the only solution to the fungus problem.

[+Gloom]

Seems to me that, like was mentioned in the article, selectively cutting trees would be better than clear cutting the whole lot. It does sort of propose a catch-22 type situation. The campground is there because of the old-growth forest that surrounds it. If you cut down the trees to save the campers, no campers will want to come to the campground.

 

As Joedohn said, I think it would be better to close the campground and not cut down the trees until a suitable solution is found. Cutting down the trees without examining all options is pretty drastic. Once the trees are down, it's pretty hard to put 'em back up. The only reason I can see for immediately cutting them down is if keeping them up allows the fungus (or what ever it is that's causing the disease) to spread quicker.

 

----

Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

[+6 Pack Rats]

Don't know what the best solution is but we will miss the campground.

[+misguided one]

Sounds like root rot to me. My father in law has a small tree farm next to a state park near Olympia. When we walk through the park he points out sections of the forest that are plagued by root rot. The only solution to the problem, he says, is to knock the trees over and expose the roots, this helps to keep the disease from spreading. Unfortunately you have to loose a lot of forest area to keep this problem from spreading.

[+RAD Dad]

The Fungus among us.....sadly the only thing they really can do, and must, is get rid of the infected trees, if they don't it will only continue to spread, and they will lose even more trees. It may be ugly for a while, but hey, the other option is to end up with a huge area of uglieness, caused by dead trees all over the place. Frankly I am willing to bet the safety issue is actually a secondary issue, rather than a primary issue, but one folks can better relate to, most folks probably don't understand why you'd have to clear cut an area to save an area.

 

ummmm....not sure what to say here....so ummm, well errrr, uhhhh, well I guess that's it.

[+skooter]

Are there caches in this campground that will need to be archived? Did an infected cache bring the fungus to the site?

[+Renegade Knight]

Cut down the tree's, plant new onces (if a 4' tree falls over on your tent who cares?) and keep the camp ground open.

[+MattandLaura]

considering I work for a huge forest company. I cannot answer this question

 

[+MattandLaura]

considering I work for a huge forest company. I cannot answer this question

 

[+IFR GPS]

You seem to be missing the whole point. The campground is the least of the worries. The trees are sick and deseased! If you do not cut down a few acres of trees now, then you could lose many thousands of acres or more in a few years, be it from windfall/rotfall, from preventative logging (to save the forest), or from forest fires(Because the trees were dead and rotten, creating a fire and fall hazard). I think the Forest Service is doing the RIGHT thing, even though I am sure that some folks will find a way to make it the most CONTROVERSIAL!

 

Remember that these old trees were once seedlings. They can plant new trees, and they too will grow back, and give the next generation a nice place to have a campground. Or, go out and find a way to enjoy this campground, with or without the trees:=)

 

Secondly, exactly what did this whole subject have to do with geocaching?