Political Quotes

“when the Spanish explorers surveyed Florida in the early 16th century, this is what they saw: Massive pines, measuring two to three feet in diameter that climbed into the skies over 100 feet. This was the landscape of the Apalachicola National Forest. You could walk through the forest, especially early in the day as the morning fog was rising, look up and see these silent giants create a dense canopy overhead. Some likened the forest's natural beauty to a cathedral of trees. The sheer enormity of these tall stately trees was magnified by the close cut landscape of wiregrass on the forest floor. This pattern of tall stately trees and lawn like underbrush, as the first Spanish explorers described this impressive habitat, was common throughout the southeast of North America--over 90 million acres of pines and wiregrass. Today, all but a fraction of these acres of the longleaf pine ecosystem have been destroyed or altered. The forest character has been transformed by thick palmetto and other growth from that which was encountered by Florida's earliest settlers. Why? Because of fires, or more precisely--the absence or containment of fires to protect businesses and their property. Natural fires created by thunderstorms are part of nature's cycle. The longleaf pines and wiregrass have natural qualities which allowed them to survive the fires while other plant life perished.”