To our friends of the forests,
I wanted to try to summarize our struggles to come to grips with the extraordinary changes that have taken place in our neighborhood, Chinsegut Nature Center, and throughout the forests of Hernando County, the State of Florida and the United States. If you camp, or travel, it would be difficult if not impossible to miss the “prescribed burns” taking place in all our forests. Every time we drive past Chinsegut Nature Center, there is more destruction, hotter and deeper burns, more loss of hardwoods, and the understory. We’re told that it’s necessary for a long list of reasons. My mind reads their research, but my heart refuses to listen. Common sense says that destruction of dozens of species of trees, of bushes like the sparkleberry ( blueberry family) and beauty berry, of animals that can’t escape the destructive, fast-moving fires, baby birds trapped in nests who are burned alive…that this is wrong on a level that transcends the rhetoric.
After 35 years in this neighborhood, we’ve watched the transformation of a once beautiful mixed hardwood forest, teeming with life and beauty and a welcoming canopy of shade, become a pine tree wasteland, hot and desolate. Now, there are 66 hardwoods slated for removal that provide most of the shade at the nature center facility. Most of these trees are Laurel Oaks, an annual hardy producer of acorns for over a hundred species that depend on high quality protein. These include white-tailed deer, turkeys, scrub jays and blue jays, gopher tortoises and the threatened mice that live in their burrows, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, opossums, quail and wood ducks to name a few. We are asking for a stay of execution for these trees. If you would like to see what the entire Conservation area once held, there is a remaining section to the southeast that you can hike. We also hope and pray that this small section will remain controlled by nature only. If you need further convincing than just your heart, I’ve footnoted with a few great scientific sources. Just enter pros and cons of “prescribed burning” to do your own research and get both sides of the story.
There is a website called Once a Forest . This website spoke first to my heart, and then to my mind. They provide research and common sense to show that the “prescribed burn” theories can be shown to be false. There are resources there that say that what most of us believe in our hearts is indeed true; that the burning is not only unnecessary, but that the systematic destruction of our hardwood forests is for the benefit of the huge corporations controlling the paper pulp and lumber industries. They have lobbyists instrumental in federal and state legislation that support the practice of making it easy for these industries to have access to OUR FORESTS with the least expense to the corporations. We believe the Park Sevices should be properly funded and encouraged to preserve our forests; all of the trees that grow in all of our nation as well as in Florida. The Florida State Parks are currently under pressure from Governor Scott, to open their gates to pine harvesting, hunting and cattle grazing as well. We have personally witnessed increased prescribed burning inside of our state parks and county parks. This should be eliminated.
We also believe that our State Forests and Parks have been low-budgeted by the State so that they have been forced to rely on tree sales to keep their jobs and facilities open. We need to support them appropriately, and reward them for saving, not exterminating trees.
Witness locally in Hernando County, the selling off and clear-cutting of pine trees that goes on in the Withlacoochee State Forest. They actually advertise these sales in the legal notices of our newspapers. We’ve seen the loaded -down log trucks hauling pines out of our woods. We’ve also witnessed this practice in the Apalachicola State Forest. The number of loaded logging trucks coming out of there is alarming.
When we talk individually to nature group members, including some from the Environmentally Sensitive Lands support group of Hernando County, they privately say that they hate the burning but don’t speak out against it as they are ridiculed or reviled by their fellow members. They view it at best, as a necessary evil. But what if the “necessary evil” could be shown to be not necessary at all? That is my challenge to you all. To find the truth and find the courage to speak out to SAVE OUR TREES and OUR WILDLIFE!
Shirley & Pat Miketinac