[HN Gopher] US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growt...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees,
       without logging ban
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2024-06-23 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.opb.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.opb.org)
        
       | lukasb wrote:
       | The rationale that a certain amount of logging to thin forests is
       | beneficial is correct. I don't know the details, or how they'll
       | administer it to avoid excesdive logging, but at least in
       | California we have almost 3x as many trees per acre compared to
       | pre-white settlement: https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-
       | paradise-fire
        
         | Firerouge wrote:
         | Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic.
         | 
         | A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees
         | per acre, but be the most useless forest.
         | 
         | I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a
         | substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and
         | ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.
        
           | greenie_beans wrote:
           | "basal area" is the term you need and now i'm curious what is
           | the typical basal area for an old growth stand?
        
             | capitainenemo wrote:
             | http://talltimbers.org/wp-
             | content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a... I found this, where
             | they do note the number of trees has gone up markedly. They
             | note the critical role of low intensity fire.
             | 
             | I doubt selective logging can replace regular burns, but
             | unfortunately there's a great deal of opposition to doing
             | that. Mostly by people living in those fire-prone areas.
        
               | greenie_beans wrote:
               | lots of the public are very ignorant about ecologically
               | sound forest management, unfortunately. "save the trees"
               | is an effective emotional argument. i was once one of
               | those people, but then i learned
        
               | neom wrote:
               | I spent a couple of years consulting to earthforce.io
               | (they make forest management software)- before I started
               | I thought I understood forestry, boy how wrong I was, how
               | little I knew!
               | 
               | For those interested in learning the basics, this is a
               | pretty good playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li
               | st=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWV...
        
               | mistrial9 wrote:
               | where is the Board of Directors, owners and investors of
               | Earthforce.io declared in public?
        
               | zie wrote:
               | Unless it's a public company/non-profit they don't have
               | to make any of this information public in most(all?) US
               | states. Usually all you have to do is make public the
               | name of the company and the registered agent(typically
               | the lawyer you hire to receive legal notices for the
               | company).
               | 
               | They appear to be a private company:
               | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-
               | technolo...
        
               | greenie_beans wrote:
               | that seems like a cool job! do you think they still hire
               | freelancers? i'm looking for freelance work and i'm very
               | interested in forest management but don't have a forestry
               | degree, i just own some land.
        
               | mistrial9 wrote:
               | Instead of "us versus them" statements, I encourage
               | vigorous examination of presuppositions. The urgency of
               | the situation could not be more obvious.
               | 
               | The claim "the public is ignorant" is oft repeated by
               | industry-friendly experts in all levels of academia and
               | government. But the policies of the experts have been an
               | objective disaster in the US West. You appear to promote
               | science that is invalidated in real time.
        
               | greenie_beans wrote:
               | i get what you're saying, but that's not what i'm saying.
               | 
               | state and national forests are a shared natural resource
               | owned by the public, therefore the public has input over
               | these things, sometimes overriding the science. a lot of
               | the "objective disaster in the US West" is due to these
               | policies that are informed by a public who only wants to
               | save the trees.
               | 
               | i'm talking particularly about non-old growth stands
               | where the forest needs to be thinned, but it hasn't, like
               | in the west. old growth stands are a whole 'nother thing.
               | here is one such example where this old growth debate is
               | happening with public input in vermont:
               | https://vtdigger.org/2024/01/18/logging-versus-old-
               | growth-pl...
        
               | mistrial9 wrote:
               | It is very difficult to cover all the angles in a few
               | short comments. I disagree that "the public who wants to
               | just save trees" is the responsible party.. it is more
               | complex than that.
               | 
               | >policies that are informed by a public who only wants to
               | save the trees
               | 
               | I can give citations for a dozen extensive studies and
               | workshops, some years in the making, alongside more
               | recent research papers from California academia. The ones
               | I know of mostly originate in the University of
               | California system. Actual policy as implemented is
               | informed by those studies but not dictated by them.
               | 
               | Due to the rule of law, actual policy on the ground in
               | the last forty years is divided in practice by the owners
               | of the lands. In California, most of the "public" forest
               | lands are owned by Federal agencies. The "desire to save
               | the trees" conveniently dovetailed with a Federal
               | obligation to maximize commercial value of National
               | Forest timber. The combination of those two, different,
               | policy groups resulted in what has happened in the last
               | ten years.. that is, overcrowding of trees, disease,
               | massive die-offs, and catastrophic wildfire.
               | 
               | Another crucial point.. the pine trees of the low Sierra
               | and North-Eastern California are not at all in the same
               | category as the Coastal Redwoods, or South Sierra old-
               | growth. yet this discussion here seems to make no
               | distinctions.
        
               | greenie_beans wrote:
               | i think we are saying the same thing yet somehow talking
               | past each other
        
               | seadan83 wrote:
               | "save the trees" is probably better re-labelled as "save
               | the old growth trees". Would you agree?
               | 
               | Would you consider tree farms as ecologically sound?
               | (I'll note those are intentionally over-planted,
               | homogeneous, and burn like crazy)
               | 
               | Which key facts caused you to change your mind?
        
               | greenie_beans wrote:
               | > "save the trees" is probably better re-labelled as
               | "save the old growth trees". Would you agree?
               | 
               | yes, we should most certainly protect old growth stands.
               | they are very rare in the forests that i'm familiar with
               | in the US east, and maintaining that ecology overrides
               | any economic benefit gained from cutting the trees, imo.
               | i'm in no way advocating for cutting down old growth
               | stands, my comment was more in response to how we manage
               | the forests that came after we cut the old growth.
               | 
               | > Would you consider tree farms as ecologically sound?
               | (I'll note those are intentionally over-planted,
               | homogeneous, and burn like crazy)
               | 
               | this depends on how the forest is managed. monocultures
               | are bad and diversity is good (though a lot of stands
               | have predominant species, naturally), forests need
               | disturbances (whether through thinning or fire or
               | naturally), etc. but a diverse forest can still be in
               | rough shape. i'm getting at the edge of my knowledge
               | fwiw.
               | 
               | > Which key facts caused you to change your mind?
               | 
               | i bought forest land and learned as much as i could about
               | forest management, so there is too much information to
               | list. i can share books if you're genuinely curious.
        
           | seadan83 wrote:
           | I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x
           | trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too
           | much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess"
           | trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to
           | bottom.
           | 
           | OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are
           | planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not
           | trees.
           | 
           | There is a line of thought, which honestly I think comes from
           | the timber industry, that growing trees are a bigger carbon
           | sink than existing trees. They do argue that the tree farm is
           | actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely
           | skeptical of that claim. Particularly skeptical because the
           | trees in tree farms are so unhealthy, the total amount of
           | green vegetative surface on them is confined to a small
           | canopy and has no vertical depth.
           | 
           | In comparison, old growth vs tree farm is night and day for
           | ecology. Tree farms are very dense, rodents thrive in them
           | but not necessarily much else. Old growth OTOH is generally a
           | pleasure to walk through.
           | 
           | > I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a
           | substantially better forest
           | 
           | There's indeed a mixture of ages unless we are talking a tree
           | farm. A tree farm is a mono-culture with trees approximately
           | the same age all growing like Q-tips together.
           | 
           | Old growth trees are fire resistant. The younger ones trees
           | get overshaded and don't grow, or they burn down before they
           | get tall enough. The young trees that do survive, they go on
           | to become the next generation of old growth trees.
           | 
           | (My experience on the subject: extensive time camping &
           | bikepacking in Northwest forests, I've traveled through a
           | several thousand miles of northwest forests in the last 10
           | years)
        
             | parineum wrote:
             | > They do argue that the tree farm is actually better
             | because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that
             | claim.
             | 
             | One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted
             | per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a
             | non-farm environment pretty easily I would think.
             | 
             | Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and
             | your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist
             | thought.
        
               | pineaux wrote:
               | I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on
               | the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as
               | they get older. It actually accelerates. This article
               | corroborates that:
               | https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914
               | 
               | Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down.
               | 
               | In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition.
               | The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment.
               | They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that
               | ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting)
               | within a few decades.
               | 
               | Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal
               | situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I
               | would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead
               | trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality
               | old growth wood.
               | 
               | This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I
               | do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a
               | bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options
               | without weighing the properly), it is generally based in
               | science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are
               | usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...
        
               | chimpanzee wrote:
               | > One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood
               | extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the
               | trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would
               | think.
               | 
               | Old growth has a far deeper and broader root system which
               | is a relatively permanent and ever increasing store of
               | carbon in relation to farmed new growth. Roots and stumps
               | of cut new growth are sometimes extracted and used for
               | biofuel, transferring that carbon back to the atmosphere
               | immediately. At best they are left to decompose or
               | converted to mulch and biochar. But the growth process
               | has been halted and no further carbon sequestration will
               | occur. Any further human processing will itself release
               | additional carbon.
               | 
               | Old growth is itself a habitat for other carbon stores.
               | New growth...not really.
               | 
               | Old growth is a habitat for animals which themselves
               | assist in the storage of carbon through indirect means
               | such as pollination and defecation. New growth...not
               | really.
               | 
               | This is just the tip of the iceberg and what I could come
               | up with quickly off the top of my amateur-
               | environmentalist head. It's complex. A simple estimation
               | of wood tonnage is not going to account for the
               | complexity of the system at all.
               | 
               | > Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive
               | and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist
               | thought.
               | 
               | Nice.
        
             | partitioned wrote:
             | I mean if you're turning carbon into wood and then turning
             | that into buildings that's good right
        
               | chimpanzee wrote:
               | If the building would be built anyways using more
               | destructive processes or materials, then _perhaps_.
               | There's no guarantee that the building would have been
               | built though. Sure _most_ would probably be built
               | anyways, but at some point the different costs would
               | affect the supply and demand at a macro level.
               | 
               | Nonetheless, it's ignoring the entire carbon-
               | sequestration system that the tree enables. What
               | percentage of buildings are a net carbon-sink (including
               | construction, use, maintenance and eventual demolition),
               | or improve the naturally occurring carbon-sequestration
               | process by merely existing? Any? I really don't know.
               | It'd be cool if we were constructing such buildings, but
               | I doubt they'd be as efficient as just leaving old growth
               | forests alone.
        
           | adolph wrote:
           | The statistical trees per acre reminds me of:
           | 
           |  _If the utilitarian state could not see the real, existing
           | forest for the (commercial) trees, if its view of its forests
           | was abstract and partial, it was hardly unique in this
           | respect. Some level of abstraction is necessary for virtually
           | all forms of analysis, and it is not at all surprising that
           | the abstractions of state officials should have reflected the
           | paramount fiscal interests of their employer. The entry under
           | "forest" in Diderot's Encyclopedie is almost exclusively
           | concerned with the utilite publique of forest products and
           | the taxes, revenues, and profits that they can be made to
           | yield. The forest as a habitat disappears and is replaced by
           | the forest as an economic resource to be managed efficiently
           | and profitably. Here, fiscal and commercial logics coincide;
           | they are both resolutely fixed on the bottom line._
           | 
           | "Seeing Like a State" Jaces C. Scott
           | 
           | https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-.
           | ..
        
           | akira2501 wrote:
           | > substantially better forest
           | 
           | Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?
        
             | pineaux wrote:
             | Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be
             | more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very
             | diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older.
             | Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to
             | gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a
             | growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they
             | grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange.
             | There is an optimal size/m2 of course. Tree farms have ROIs
             | and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of
             | these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and
             | a payday at some point.
             | 
             | Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more
             | diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks
             | and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.
        
         | joe_the_user wrote:
         | The thing is that, yes, development in wildland areas has
         | produced scraggly areas that are not good ecologies but are
         | serious fire dangers.
         | 
         | But logging isn't the answer in the sense that logging
         | companies have no interest in just taking small trees - they
         | have no economic value.
         | 
         | I live in one of these areas, btw (Nevada City). There are lots
         | of stick-like trees, lots of scotch broom, lots of flameable
         | underbrush. Removing that by logging is extremely expensive
         | unless you do something like clear cutting, which uses a
         | titanic lawn-mower thing. Cutting a single tall but thin tree
         | requires a professional.
         | 
         | Really, there's no solution for a situation of houses spread
         | through the urban-wildland borders. The logging companies claim
         | the fuel build up is the from logging restrictions but they
         | will always claim that - actually, logging is no longer
         | profitable in California because most large trees are gone,
         | home owners won't let people clear cut and even clear cutting
         | isn't economical given foreign competition and society's
         | decreased use of paper.
        
         | sitkack wrote:
         | Old Growth forests are already thin.
         | 
         | The tree density is large because they are all thin and likely
         | to burn.
        
         | goda90 wrote:
         | Better than logging would be to pull trees down and leave them
         | in place on the ground: https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE
        
         | zdragnar wrote:
         | Where I live, the state government agency in charge of forest
         | management will prioritize specific trees. Oak wilt, emerald
         | ash borer and other diseases and pests mean that removing some
         | trees is healthier than letting nature take its course.
         | 
         | Additionally, they'll open up larger sites to thin out
         | overgrown young growth, though they'll pre-mark what they want
         | taken down in both cases.
        
       | _DeadFred_ wrote:
       | The Federal government made a deal with forrest communities. We
       | will have national forests that you won't get any property tax
       | revenues from, but you will get revenue from the forestry,
       | mining, and other economic activity on that land.
       | 
       | Then the federal government shutdown most economic activity, and
       | local communities had to shutdown their schools and other
       | government functions (while at the same time losing their lumber
       | mills). Of course no one that mattered cared because it only
       | impacted 'flyover people' and coastal people don't care if they
       | break their commitments (in the form of the federal government
       | that represents them).
       | 
       | I'd love to see sometime in my lifetime the feds get held
       | accountable to keep the promises they made in the past that they
       | just stop keeping, while the feds use the full force of the law
       | to ensure THEIR side of the deals are kept up.
        
         | seadan83 wrote:
         | Which 'deal' specifically, could you provide a link so we can
         | read more?
        
           | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
           | Anytime a post references the "feds" in such an ambiguous
           | way, it seems like a flag for potential misunderstanding.
        
           | bpodgursky wrote:
           | You could look up the original Bureau of Land Management
           | charter by congress, which does in fact mandate that the
           | BLM's charter[1] is to manage federal lands with the goals of
           | sustained resource yield:
           | 
           | > The Congress declares that it is the policy of the United
           | States that goals and objectives be established by law as
           | guidelines for public land use planning, and that management
           | be on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield unless
           | otherwise specified by law.[4]
           | 
           | They are managed to balance interests to ensure long-term
           | needs, not cannot simply declare that timber, minerals, etc
           | are off-limits:
           | 
           | > The government must consider "a combination of balanced and
           | diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term
           | needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable
           | resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range,
           | timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural
           | scenic, scientific and historical values."
           | 
           | The deal was very explicitly that federal land was to be
           | managed to avoid a tragedy of the commons with regards to
           | resource extraction. Resource extraction was one of the
           | primary goals mandated by congress and no, they cannot simply
           | decide they don't want to.
           | 
           | [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Land_Policy_and_Managemen
           | t_A...
        
         | BurningFrog wrote:
         | Outside of cities, the main ways to make a living is using the
         | natural resources. Logging, mining, farming etc.
         | 
         | Laws are made by city people, who think of work as something
         | you do sitting by a desk. They see the countryside as a nature
         | reserve to keep beautiful for their vacation trips. So they ban
         | most commercial use of natural resources.
         | 
         | This is part of what makes rural communities poor and desperate
         | societies, surrounded my massive wealth that they "own", but
         | are not allowed to prosper from.
        
           | lantry wrote:
           | yes, poor people prosper when international megacorps pay
           | them minimum wage to chop down all their trees. the corp
           | keeps all the profit, and moves on when the trees are gone,
           | and usually leaves a bunch of pollution behind. That's why
           | old mining towns in the appalachians are so prosperous!
        
             | MSFT_Edging wrote:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FuTiGdN-i8
             | 
             | Relevant tune
        
             | akira2501 wrote:
             | > and moves on when the trees are gone
             | 
             | Is that how the timber industry works?
        
             | cscurmudgeon wrote:
             | I think you are unintentionally proving their point. We
             | tightened regulations and have just exported pollution to
             | dictatorships (e.g., CCP). If city folks just do local bans
             | without similar import bans, what is the point?
             | 
             | > yes, poor people prosper when international megacorps pay
             | them minimum wage to chop down all their trees
             | 
             | Or, why not let the poor people decide for themselves? In
             | your story, the only illegal thing the megacorp did was
             | pollution. Why didn't existing laws address that?
        
       | 486sx33 wrote:
       | Old growth trees are the best, tightest grain, toughest wood,
       | they've stood the test of time. These are most desirable and we
       | should take advantage of them, but for useful purposes , not
       | firewood or chipwood or other crappy "products".
       | 
       | We need a real sustainability plan which reuses that land for
       | trees again, but not garage fast growing genetically similar
       | trees. We need to promote genetic diversity
        
       | wavefunction wrote:
       | The logging ban also has the effect of preventing road
       | construction and other ancillary development that always seems to
       | follow. I think there is value to the logging ban beyond just the
       | direct effect on trees.
        
         | TheChaplain wrote:
         | Road construction is afaik used to make traffic/transportation
         | more effective, so not doing so seems like a gigantic waste of
         | resources in a growing society.
        
           | poorman wrote:
           | There are vast amounts of land in this country that only have
           | roads and infrastructure because of logging and mining.
           | 
           | Anyone who spends any mount of time outdoors at any longitude
           | west of Denver, is sure to drive down these forest and mining
           | roads when camping. Not to mention, these roads often open up
           | access to lands for new towns and communities. And, as we are
           | approaching the season, these roads are used for emergency
           | services and additionally the maintenance of forests through
           | controlled burns and the prevention of further spreading
           | wildfires.
        
             | tbrownaw wrote:
             | > _Not to mention, these roads often open up access to
             | lands for new towns and communities._
             | 
             | That would be the "other ancillary development that always
             | seems to follow" that the GP comment says there's value in
             | preventing.
             | 
             | There a line of thinking that says that humans are evil and
             | there should be less of them and those that remain should
             | be confined to a more limited area.
        
               | mistrial9 wrote:
               | > humans are evil
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
        
       | doubloon wrote:
       | Imagine if there was 'old growth internet' and the federal
       | government forced big tech companies to preserve big chunks of
       | it.
        
         | ohmyiv wrote:
         | I don't understand your point. Internet and forests are
         | different systems. They both have different uses and different
         | types of management. It doesn't make sense to me to compare.
         | Could you expand more?
        
           | soultrees wrote:
           | I think the OP is making a point that we should resources as
           | The Internet Archive as services that are in the best
           | interest of the public.
        
             | ohmyiv wrote:
             | Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, theyre right about
             | that. Thanks!
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | I mean we do have "old growth standards" that are legally
         | mandated in the tech industry... EU mandates for USB micro-B
         | and usb-C are an example, as are PCI standards and similar
         | security standards around banking endpoint security etc.
        
       | poorman wrote:
       | People often forget the original purpose of these state forests
       | was to harvest the timber and pay the teacher salaries as part of
       | the Oregon Common School Fund... As the great great grandson of
       | Francis Elliott (Oregon's first state forester), I have been
       | reminded of this by my family many times over the years. I'm
       | unsure of it's purpose today, but I suspect the teachers wouldn't
       | mind the extra pay.
        
         | tallowen wrote:
         | I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind
         | of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of
         | the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the
         | Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago which
         | impacts the hydrology of the basin in a negative way for the
         | purpose collecting drinking water.
         | 
         | I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often
         | leads to indecision which is certainly it's own drawback but I
         | think these choices are not without tradeoffs that should be
         | acknowledged.
        
           | poorman wrote:
           | I'll admit I'm not up to speed on the affect of the
           | aggressive logging of Seattle on the hydrological cycle. From
           | the little time I've spent there, I managed to gleam one
           | small fact, that by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system
           | was dumping up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget
           | sound (per day).
           | 
           | I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of
           | hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation and
           | precipitation of that alone would have an impact on the
           | nearby watersheds used for drinking water.
        
             | Arainach wrote:
             | You'd be mostly wrong. The Sound is salt water and not a
             | source of drinking water. Other bodies of drinkable water
             | flow into the sound, not out of.
             | 
             | Pollutants don't evaporate with water. They're left behind.
             | Acid rain was from pollutants in the air mixing with water
             | droplets.
        
             | loeg wrote:
             | > by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system was dumping
             | up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget sound
             | (per day).
             | 
             | Seattle started building water treatment plants in 1961 and
             | they entered service throughout the 1960s:
             | https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/waste-
             | services/wastewate...
             | 
             | Meanwhile, Victoria, BC (Canada) continued to dump raw
             | sewage into the ocean until _2021_ :
             | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-
             | sew...
        
           | loeg wrote:
           | > logged 100 years ago which impacts the hydrology of the
           | basin in a negative way for the purpose collecting drinking
           | water.
           | 
           | Can you elaborate on the problems?
        
         | beaeglebeachedd wrote:
         | Very common scam. Introduce revenue source, say "it's going to
         | the schools/teachers." Do that for a bit, defund the prior
         | source of cash so the teachers are at what they were before.
         | When it's time to run the next scan rinse and repeat. Seen it
         | done with about every new tax introduced. Teachers still get
         | paid shit and other taxes either barely move or go up.
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | I'm not trying to be shitty, but what other examples do you
           | have? I don't know about that.
        
             | webstrand wrote:
             | Another example would be various gas taxes were supposed to
             | be for the maintenance of roads but now a fair portion of
             | the revenue is diverted for other purposes. It depends on
             | the state.
        
             | mminer237 wrote:
             | The lottery is the big thing.
        
             | blululu wrote:
             | The lottery is another example where tickets allegedly fund
             | education. The reality is that most of a state's budget is
             | set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. From
             | an accounting standpoint you can't really target a specific
             | program for additional funding under these circumstances.
        
               | mburns wrote:
               | >The reality is that most of a state's budget is set
               | holistically and paid for out of the general fund.
               | 
               | Isn't this just conflating states that do that with other
               | states that don't?
               | 
               | Oregon keeps the general fund and the lottery fund
               | separate, 53% of the lottery fund goes to education (the
               | rest to other voter-approved programs).
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | No because you can cut funding by slowing the annual
               | increase from the general fund. Be that for inflation or
               | just population growth.
               | 
               | Year 0: general fund hands 100m to schools.
               | 
               | Year 1: General fund hands 101m / year and lotteries add
               | 10m to that yay! 111m for school, or except 'inflation'
               | was 2% so it's more like 109m.
               | 
               | Year 2: General fund hands 102m / year and lottery adds
               | 10.2m, 'inflation' was 2%. So adjusting for inflation
               | Schools get ~108 million and general fund only spends
               | ~98m.
               | 
               | Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the
               | equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
        
               | mburns wrote:
               | Backdoor defunding by not adjusting for inflation is
               | definitely a thing but that seems like a separate issue
               | from what I was responding to re: where the funds come
               | from and if they are kept separate, not how much should
               | be spent in total.
               | 
               | > Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the
               | equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
               | 
               | The lottery picking up the slack so that the general fund
               | doesn't have to do all of it is the whole point.
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | > The lottery picking up the slack so the general fund
               | doesn't have to do all of it is the whole point.
               | 
               | That's identical to the lottery just putting money
               | directly into the general fund. Unless the funding source
               | results in an increase in total funding this stuff is
               | pure theatre.
        
           | loeg wrote:
           | I'm not sure I'd call it a scam. It certainly takes advantage
           | of the fact that voters don't seem to really believe (or
           | understand) that money is fungible.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | The state CSF forest is like a gnat in the eye of the national
         | forest. They only own 40k acres, while the USDA/USFS
         | administers 16 million acres and BLM administers another 4
         | million acres.
        
       | floodedburner wrote:
       | Needs a map showing National Forests and old growths. I mean old
       | old growths, not the tree that was too cragy to turn into boards.
       | Otherwise I am guessing there are not huge swaths that overlap.
        
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