Site Discussions

This is great!  I teach AP Environmental science and plan on using your article as required reading.  I am glad some people still understand.  Capitalism is not politics, it is free enterprise evolution.  Well done.  May I have your permission to use this in my classroom?

Interesting riff, Dave. I was with you up to paragraph 4, where your analogies threw me off. The apex predators are, as you say, the developers and biomass industries who would liquidate the forests if it were profitable and legal to do so. That’s their job in a capitalist system—short-term profits for investors rather than good jobs or sustainability. It seems to me foresters, with their long-range perspective, deep understanding of forest ecosystems, and appreciation for the importance of maintaining balance in the system, including with harvesting activities, are not so much lords of the manor as gatekeepers—thanks mainly to the regulations giving them a degree of authority within the forest industry. In a true “free” market, you would have neither foresters nor regulations, only robber barons.

Seems to me our capitalistic ecosystem would work better if we had the equivalent of “foresters” managing all our natural resources for long-term sustainability and economic equity between workers and investors. Instead, all we have is a flimsy patchwork of regulations—but thank goodness for those!

Hi Dave—

What a fascinating comparison! 

Unfortunately another analogy from the former Soviet Union may be emerging.  The USSR planning authority designed many “one product” cities.  A soap factory here, a ship-building plant there.

With the reforms, the inefficient, dinosaur-like city-plants were opened up to foreign and domestic private competition.  Many of the plants failed and so did many of the cities.

Fast forward to another analogy.  A new name for inefficient, non-economic businesses is “stranded assets”.  Think PSNH’s old generation plants.  Or what many people are saying about oil companies (the oil in the ground will no longer be economic to remove if carbon externalities are priced in, and the companies will have no value).

Who pays for stranded assets?  For PSNH, the public gets hit with the bill.  For oil companies, losses in value will likely be borne by the owners (shareholders).

If the Northern New England wood industry proves unable to transform so as to maintain profitability and becomes a stranded asset, where will the loss fall?  Will the losses be socialized and redistributed to any significant extent?  If not, should timberland owners look to the increasing risk of disappearance of many wood markets and cut and sell what they can now?

The public already supports the industry with biomass subsidies.  Will the public appetite for paying for stranded wood industry costs continue?  Are there any sound proposals for other future paths to avoid USSR-like results?

Tough questions…

We have luna moths all the time but I never knew what the caterpillar looks like. Now I know why we have so many of them and where they are coming from. Excellent site.

Thank you for the post. Good to know I’m not the only one blown away by nature’s endless surprises. I took a picture of the unknown, fabulous moth and hustled inside to search for the type. Now, reading this prompts me to go back out to the garden to take a closer look at the primroses themselves.

Jeff performs work for the company that I work for and I can’t say enough great things about him.  He is the best at what he does and when he fully retires the industry will lose the best mind it has.

Thanks for sharing this useful information about pest control. Spraying pesticides by planes, trucks or by hand is a common method of pest control. But is important to have proper knowledge of all the pesticides as some pesticides may cause health problems, as well as harming wildlife. For more help you can call professional pest control experts.

Richard- try removing half of the vines to give the other half a chance to mature.

This is my first year attempt at raising Silk Moths. They have come full circle and just spun their cocoons. I have a question, many of them clumped together in twos and threes to spin their cocoon connected to each other. Is this normal?  I have only ever seen single cocoons before.

Opossums allegedly came to the Pacific Northwest when a soldier from Virginia was homesick, so his parents sent him a mated pair.  When he was transferred, he let them loose.

They are also helpful in the garden, as they eat slugs, snails, and even mice.  I am raising two who were orphaned, likely when their mother was hit by a car, and rescued a third in the middle of a highway, near the middle of nowhere.  The wind shear as I passed over her originally caused her to grip at the road, cutting up one paw quite a bit, and her tail.  I took her to a friend who is nursing her back to health, and spoiling her rotten (not that mine aren’t spoiled, as well).  I hate that people think they’re dirty, nasty, disease-ridden vermin and don’t think twice about not just running them over, but going out of their way to run them over!

I rescued a wild chippy from my cat and it has a neat tidy little cage with a hay base in which is makes burrows and I have a bowl full of seeds and a glass of water for it, and the things I noticed were that it uses paper towels to hide its bowl of food [I am guessing its a form of camouflage?] AND [now THIS one REALLY blew me away] it all on its own learned how to fold a paper towel neatly into 8 layers [ 3 folds = 8 layers ] and set it in one corner as a bathroom of sorts.

When I take the dirty one out, I just put a clean paper towel in there and it [again] folds the paper all on its own and puts it right back in the same corner.

Are there any studies known to have been conducted on just how intelligent these little critters are?

We have lots of shrews up this way…myself and other households find drawers and boots stuffed full of dog kibble!  They tour the kitchen and dog dish whether we are there or not, at all times of the day.  I caught one easily by putting a dog kibble in a mousetrap.  Interesting to me, our Blue-Heeler/Husky cross dog kills mice, squirrels, groundhogs, even houseflies in a flash…but she shows absolutely no interest in these shrews strutting in plain sight, decimating her food supply.  I cannot smell the shrews, But do you suppose it is smell that is deterring our dog?

As long as the crayfish are coming from clean water that you can catch and eat fish out of then you are fine to eat them.  Do not eat them from any questionable water as they feed on anything including dead plants and animals/fish. 

As a big fan of this fascinating rodent I loved your article! I work at a high elevation state park in VT and campers this year have been harassed by young reds stealing food, running up legs, scampering off with kids’ small toys, and chewing holes in tents. There are more than I have ever seen, and they are certainly bold!

I really would love to know how all of these squirrels were able to get into your car…. Just how many did get in?!

I just watched a robin attack and continue to shake a wooly bear caterpillar against a sidewalk even after it was obviously dead.  It seemed to be working the wooly hairs off, then he ate it.

Wildfires may not be as much of a concern in the northeast, but they do occur. Firewood placed on or under decks against a house or outbuilding are a leading cause of houses lost to wildfires. Embers may fly miles ahead of a fire and land in all of nooks and crevices of a woodpile which will burn up not only your woodpile, but your house. during the active wildfire season no firewood should be placed on or adjacent to a structure.

Interesting, Elise! You lead an adventurous life!

We built a pole shed using fir logs in a hurry when we didn’t have time to peel them first.  Once done it was too easy to get busy with other tasks and not get on with the peeling.  Four years later bug activity has taken hold and we are now peeling.  Are we too late?  Will treating and sealing the logs once peeled preserve them?

Robyn Nichols

Bees would normally after they have been removed from a particular area return, sometimes within a month or two, sometimes once a year or even after 6 years. Difficult to say. It would depend if the particular area is in the “flight-path” of a particular hive in the vicinity. It would also depend on the scout bees how much they like the area and if they find it secure enough.

If you have left the hive on the tree outside, you would have had a better chance of getting a new hive to settle there…..BUT they would sometimes move to a total new area as e.g. of your houses roof, even though you had a hive in one area before. Bees are “Nature” at its best, but sometimes also at its worst because they may overlook “good” places as we would like to believe, but they think/reason differently.

The bees in your tree that left might have been disturbed by something and or queen might have died, disease might have rendered the hive useless and or the temperature “got” to them. It is not a good place for the bees to have a hive outside, they use all their energy to keep the hive at a constant 34-35 degrees C for the brood (babies) to hatch etc. and constantly having to cover the hive with propolis to try and waterproof it…...and many factors could have been the cause of their demise.

Hope you find new hive settling in your area soon
Rietha the Honey Bee Lady in South Africa