| John
Muir on the need for National Forests |
David
Yarrow |
| February
17, 2003 9:24 PM |
Subject: John Muir on the need for National Forests
The outcries we hear against forest reservations come mostly
from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale. They
have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any
impediment to forest robbery is denounced as cruel and
irreligious interference with 'vested rights,' likely to
endanger the repose of all ungodly welfare. Any fool can destroy
trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would be
hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their
bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few
that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much
towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests.
During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of
old trees" tens of centuries old" that have been
destroyed. It took more than three thousand years to make some
of the trees that are still standing in perfect strength and
beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierras.
Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's
time and long before that God has cared for these trees, saved
them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining
tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools”only
Uncle Sam can do that.
John Muir, 1897
naturalist, writer, founder of the National Park System
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