” that parks are not healthy ecosystems because they are static and NOT diverse.”

The biodiversity increase often comes at the expense of species that are habitat specialists.
In my experience of the propaganda use of the ‘managed forest greater biodiversity’ argument, it is mostly used as a pernicious defense against establishing parks or other reserves and to justify industrial logging. Some folks in your blog community I expect will be aware that this kind of use of the “greater biodiversity” argument.

To read it anywhere triggers my anger about industry propaganda and my desire to flag it and some days, respond.

caribou, Canada’s boreal/foothills types, Alberta backstory:

http://cpawsnab.org/news/woodland-caribou-heading-for-extinction
http://www.albertafoothillsnetwork.org/home/little-smoky

This is an example of the impending extinction of a unique herd with 14000 year-old heritage for pulp/paper and of course, ‘greater biodiversity’ in managed forests. see research here:

http://www.unbc.ca/assets/bcparf/conferences/mark_hebblewhite_mcdevitt_et_al_caribou_mec.pdf

But the pulp for my newspaper I read today is from their home range. Like Chomsky says…we’re all compromised.

But mostly rather than logging, it is oil and gas and now tarsands finishing the job on herds across Alberta’s boreal, beyond the foothills herds, but more and more wolves getting shot as a useless interim measure that will only prolong the inevitable, if we keep enlarging ‘managed forests’.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/alberta_canada_energy_boom_places_wolves_in_the_crosshairs/2459/

http://www.desmogblog.com/blog/carol-linnitt

This ‘managed forests and greater biodiversity’ argument has had extensive use here in my home province of Alberta, Canada, to justify massive expansion of wide-scale multi-national pulping of boreal forests since politicians invited the Japanese multi the late 1980′s.

That increased biodiversity includes expanding the range of white-tailed deer beyond pre-industrial range… a generalist species, and the ongoing regional extinctions of specialized animals such as our boreal caribou.

A corporate logging manager once told me (1990 ) with great passion and great sincerity how terribly mis-informed I and other environmentalists were, and how unfair our criticism was to him personally, because I didn’t realize how many white-tailed deer were now living around his mill. And how he and his logging were actually doing such a great thing by increasing biodiversity. And he did have a forestry degree. Surreal. He was a transplanted New Zealander where of course they have impressive populations of introduced deer and impressive extensive plantation ‘managed’ forests.

This argument just got recent publicity in MSM here.

Two years ago a member of legislature argued directly to me in our legislature’s lobby that parks are not healthy ecosystems because they are static and diverse. True to some extent for small parks where fire is suppressed. Not for the scale of protection we discussed.

I was a part of this fight that is still being waged and being lost. Some of my friends have been able to continue the work. As I write this, I notice that my emotional regulation work is still a work-in-progress.

And hey, there’s hundreds of thousands of caribou further north in Canada. so what’s a herd or 20 loss…