Plant a tree/cut one down!

"My friend Gregory and I went back up to the redwoods last Friday to document the horrors we had seen the week before. To us, these tree carcasses provide a shining symbol of our own demise. The beginning of the end, if you will. Humans in the future will look back at this time period and wonder how we could have been so careless and stupid. These trees help keep us and the whole planet alive."

Lisa Rein's site has recently mentioned the atrocity that is Northwest logging in the United States and how the lumber companies are presently able to cut down, essentially whatever trees they like as long as they own them. The issue of the harm to the environment and to national heritage through logging prompted the introduction of a California Senate bill - SB 754 - designed to "prohibit (1) cutting or causing a substantial probability of significant harm to any heritage tree". Trees are the most beautiful things in the world and the trees of Northern California are especially sacred. Their age and majesty reigns over all others whilst their height awes one at every sight. Driving around California, seeing lumber trucks in front is commonplace, but every time, heartbreaking. The bill didn't pass the senate, but looking at what it could have done, would have done is still important if only for our education and in a hope that one day, a bill like this could be introduced once more.

(a) Most of California's original old-growth forests have been cut down.
(b) Currently, no state or federal statute bans the cutting of most old-growth trees in the State of California.
(c) California's remaining old-growth trees are a unique natural treasure. California tree species include the tallest, largest, and some of the oldest living things on Earth. Some California tree species live to be thousands of years old.
(d) Numerous threatened and endangered species depend upon ancient and old-growth trees for their survival.
(e) Old-growth trees and mature forests store more carbon, a component of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, than young trees and tree plantations do. Some California old-growth forests sequester more carbon than any other forest type on Earth, reducing global warming from industrial and other emissions.
(f) Most of California's surface water originates in forested areas.
(g) Old-growth forests are a rare and threatened forest type. Individual old-growth trees are building blocks for restoring natural forest structure and maintaining ecological diversity.
(h) People from all over the world come to California to see our heritage of ancient trees, which benefits the economy of California

Lisa Rein's logging video + blog
SB 754 Didn't Pass
Ancienttrees.org