On Thursday, September 14, the Daily Egyptian editorial staff took a dramatically emotional, adverse position against the professions of forestry, ecology and environmental diversity. So-called tree hugging environmentalists are in fact tree-hugging preservationists! If we wish to only preserve a forest in a totally natural state then there is little need for employing anyone in the US. Forest Service of the SIU Forestry Department. The concept of maximum sustainable yield becomes a myth and bio-diversity a joke. To preserve an entire forest would necessitate the degradation of countless habitats for countless species of plant and animal life that require diversity to survive ( i.e. save a few at the expense of many). The analogy of dragging dead trees out a logging road to dragging corpses down a murder trail elevates a tree to considerable social status. Extremists typically have tunnel vision and seldom ever see the forest for the trees. For a forest ecosystem to have an abundance of plant and animal life it cannot be stagnant. Only a self-proclaimed authority would think otherwise! I doubt if anyone can tell you how many thousands of products are manufactured from wood.

Are you telling me we should forsake all those products to save all trees which will eventually die anyway? Do preservationists see a difference between a dead body dragged down a logging road in California versus in the Shawnee Forest? Do they in fact not use any paper products made from the dead bodies in their everyday life? I have an appreciation for those who oppose hunting and fishing when they also do not eat meat from a grocery store. I firmly believe that anyone who opposes the cutting of any tree under any circumstance and has any facsimile of integrity should seriously question their right to reach out for a single tissue of toilet paper for the remainder of their entire life! Most informed environmentalists perceive the threshold above maximum sustained yield as waste. In other words, if you do not use the surplus, it will eventually rot.