[jyounker]

In the last 150 years over 97% of old-growth redwoods have been cut down. We are now arguing over the last (less than) 3% of redwoods.

That's about 0.6 of the original coverage % per year. Assuming the historical rate, if not restricted, that's five years to clear out the remaining old growth redwood.

Modern logging methods become ever more efficient, which means that without legal restrictions we could log out all old-growth redwoods in less than five years.

What rural communities are coming up against is not fundamentally a legal restriction, but a resource limit. It just so happens that this resource restriction is being reflected in legal restrictions before we loose all of our old-growth forests.

No matter what happens those jobs are going to disappear. They are either going to go away in our lifetimes, and there will be old growth redwoods, or they will go away a few years later and there will be no old growth redwoods.

That's the reality.

If we want to keep those jobs alive and still keep redwoods then we have one option: outlaw power tools while limiting the number of loggers.