500+ year old forest discovered

[JimGo]

...and you'll never guess where! It's in VA!!!
Click here to read the story


I'll keep my political commentary to myself.


Here is a series of still pictures that were put into a video from the forest.

Hmmm...how many pen blanks do you think we can get from "Big Mama"?

 

[fuzzydog]

Jim, I had the same thought about the pen blanks, but then I decided there are some things better off just left alone.
thanks for link it was worth the time to check it out.
David

 

[Dario]

You know how I love wood and collect some but I agree with David and really hope/wish they leave those trees alone. Bettre yet, leave the forest alone.

Interesting (I assume) cypress knees on those footage.

 

[JimGo]

I agree about the forest. Dario, that's the first time I've actually SEEN cypress knees - they're pretty neat! I'd heard Lou talk about them before, but didn't know what they actually were.

 

[Dario]

Jim,

I actually wish those forests be not found until we can better care for them.

Odd as it may seem, we have lots of giant cypress here in San Antonio especially along the river and at the Parks and they do have knees sticking out like that. Maybe I'll do a community service and remove some of those "trip hazard" LOL [}] You think the Park Police will buy that? []

 

[gerryr]

That is simply extraordinary and impossibly beautiful I certainly hope that it can be rescued from International Paper and preserved forever so kids a 100 years from how can see what a natural forest looks like.

 

[JimGo]

Gerry,
The really interesting part is that International Paper has owned that land for YEARS! They were actually the ones who clued the state into the fact that the forest even existed. Gotta respect a paper company that's willing to do that!

 

[gerryr]

True, but I still don't trust them.

 

[Draken]

Heck, I'd be willing to take a branch of Big Mama, one that falls off naturally, of course. Pretty cool find, I do hope they can preserve it, but now that the news is out, may be hard to keep the curious and others away.

Cheers,
Draken

 

[Jerryconn]

That is simply awesome! I go down through that part of the state all time I never knew anything even close to that was there. When I was a kid people used to sell cypress knees as decorative items I think my mother still has one in her living room.

 

[pete00]

i guess "holly mama" means a lot more now.....[]

 

[Ron in Drums PA]

Thanks for sharing that with us Jim

 

[loglugger]

It is awful hard to find something that someone has paid for and owned for a long time. To them it wasn’t lost. Now that the public knows what the owners have well they want to take it over.
I can kind of agree with some that has been said here, but has anyone thought of the land owner. In this case it is a timber co. that holds title and might be willing to give it up. In Oregon and other places the where land owners, the mom and pop that was planning on retiring by logging a few trees they took care of and watched grow for 40 to50 years now they find out OH NO you can not log any of them, someone from NY or maybe DC or the public might want to look at them. Maybe a Owl might want to live there. So there they sit still taking care of THEIR TREES for the owl that might come along or someone in a speeding car might look at.
You might wonder why lumber prices are high when there are millions and millions of board feet of logs laying on the ground rotting in our nations forest that could be logged without harming the environment. If all people grew up with a understanding of our forest they would understand what a terrific waste this is, never to be reclaimed.
Bob

 

[ilikewood]

Hey Bob, I ended up in Idaho because of that owl (spotted)[]. I worked in a cellulose research facility for a pulp and paper company that couldn't log their forests anymore. So naturally, the first thing companies always cut is research when things get hard. Luckily, I saw the writing on the wall and bailed early and came to Idaho.

I'm glad these old trees have survived and actually ARE old. The environmentalist get away with what they do by reclassifying trees as old growth when they have already been logged 2 or 3 times. Let's just keep these trees around because they really are the definition of "old growth".[8D]