Conservation

National Public Radio has a well-balanced two-part story on conflicts among conservationists, landowners, loggers and the Corps of Engineers over logging of baldcypress, Taxodium distichum. Like its close relative coast redwood, baldcypress regrows rapidly after logging and is a good candidate for sustainable forest management. However, since the last round of logging in Louisiana abot a hundred years ago, the hydrology of Louisiana has been radically altered. Today, the cypress swamps do not have a seasonaly dry period. Mature cypress does fine in standing water, but seeds require exposed soil to germinate. Logging now may result in conversion of the swamps into marshes, which lack trees.  The conflict is not over whether the cypress should be logged - they are on private property and most conservationists support the landowners needs to log their property. However, they argue that logging should be delayed by ten years or more to allow time for an ambitious project to restore the original hydrology of the region.