Overgrazing, Overfishing, Overlogging
On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek
Overgrazing, Overfishing, Overlogging
Chronicles of the Essays variety tend to be purposeful fabrications because they are unlike ones that relate a story, a past adventure, or even a recent dream. Essays by the Footloose Forester usually incorporate a few strands about the web of life that, in his mind, celebrate the continuum of nature. Our human histories of periodic overgrazing grasslands, of overfishing the oceans of the world, and of overlogging forests everywhere are object lessons about our collective nearsightedness and rapacious inclinations as human beings.
Left alone, the grasslands of the world tend to perpetuate themselves, thanks to the germane combinations of favorable climates and other ecological and edaphic factors. With the interventions and depredations of man, however; vast swaths of formerly native grasslands have been decimated and altered. Such is the legacy of the lands that were part of nature’s continuum. Although an altered continuum through time continues to recognize the original habitats of both land and seas, altered habitats have a distinctly human signature. Overgrazing has led to range wars and we all are aware that the wars are not the fault of the grasses but of the frail humans who coveted them.
Overfishing is entirely the fault of the same irresponsible and greedy humans who never seemed to have enough to satisfy their hungry bellies. What they harvested from the seas that was beyond their dietary needs, they sought to barter, trade, or sell inside and beyond their communities. The presumably “free goods” in the terminology of economists, came at a cost of reduced stocks of fishes, crustaceans, and shellfish. Only when it became evident that the resources of the sea were being depleted, from all the oceans of the world, that heretofore thoughtless humans felt a need to manage what they had. And although humans did not eat grasses directly, the absence of management in range and grasslands also had decimation and depletion as consequences. The same can be said about our depleted forests, although the management record of reconstituted forests is much better than for grasslands, and especially for marine resources.
Despite sensationalistic press reports to the contrary, deforestation does not occur apace in most countries and because we as rational creatures are able to see and judge our conservation efforts in real time, we ought to accept the idea that management of our natural and renewable resources is a worthwhile investment for posterity. True, overlogging is part of our history but overlogging was never going to be a perdition of complete loss. Trees, above all, are renewable resources. Sound management of all resources in the continuum of nature is a wise path to follow.
Grasslands and forests are two of the most important biomes in the world and they are under the jurisdiction of each country in which they occur. The vast oceans that contain renewable resources must be administered by collective laws and an acknowledgement of the continuum of natural laws.