A poem. Deforestation or great tool for forest management.
Good, Bad and Sometimes Ugly. (a poem with comments)
Creation of Jekyll and Hyde,
monster on the loose,
biting,
chewing,
munching,
then gaily spitting out.
Eager varied taste-buds,
endless appetite,
sawing,
crunching,
dumping,
What’s it all about?
Hedgerows by the roadside,
wantonly cut to shreds,
to wilt,
to die,
to decompose,
methane and CO2 seeping out.
There’s no escape from it,
nowhere to hide.
Murder,
mutilation,
mayhem,
are what this machine’s about.
It’s running wild among our trees,
out of real control,
tree-tops,
branches,
baby twigs,
destruction beyond all doubt.
But Mother Nature’s not asleep.
She sticks to her plan;
from flowers
to fruit
to seeds,
little saplings start to sprout.
And yet a wonderful device,
A boon to forest hand,
stripping timber,
clearing windfall,
protecting power lines.
But abuse it carelessly and we have to SHOUT!
By RG Black, a tree lover not a tree hugger.
I love trees, always have done. Hugging trees is OK, if that’s your thing but a wee bitty airy-fairy for me. I was a forest worker for a time, as was my father. My mother’s brother was a Forest Manager; her grandfather was a sawyer. My father’s family were carpenters and coffin-makers who could also fashion small boats and violins. We need trees; we use trees. They are beautiful to behold in their natural environment and as slabs of timber. In the modern world, their growth needs to be controlled as much as it needs to be encouraged. They have also always been, since time immemorial, a source of fuel.
This wonderful, modern machine comes in several guises and names; manufacturers call them “boom-mounted chippers” or “forest masticators”, while people who don’t like them call them “tree-eating monsters”.
For me, the pros and cons are simple. They are invaluable for emergency situations where trees have been brought down by storms: on public roads and railways or houses and other buildings. Likewise, where there is potential danger in the future. They fit the bill excellently when there is a large area of woodland that has been damaged by storms.
On the other, hand they are too readily called on to hack down trees for house building or to make way for a swimming pool or other feature. Their use along the sides of highways is nothing short of hideous. My strongest gripe is that there is no coordinated thought goes into what happens to the mulch or chips that are produced and much of it is just abandoned on the spot.
In most jurisdictions, this material can only be used as biomass fuel if it has been previously approved. It is utterly crazy to allow a valuable commodity just to lie and rot to satisfy the demands of bureaucracy.
Where wood-chip and mulch are allowed to lie in piles, they create greenhouse gases. OK, I here you say, dead wood rots naturally anyway. But, with biomass fuels, emissions can be better controlled provided the material is stored and burned under the correct conditions. Most importantly, great piles of biomass, left unattended, are likely to burst into spontaneous combustion with the risk of pollution and forest fires.
As a young forest worker, I would have loved a shot at ripping up wood instead of laborious sawing; as a grey-haired, environmentally-conscious citizen, I’m more inclined to see these machines as uncontrolled tree-eating monsters. In the meantime, I think there are tons of biomass just going to waste.
Read my poems and stories in: rgblack.medium.com
