People who think Juniper trees, what we call Mountain Cedar around here (and the cause of many allergy problems), aren’t native to Texas need to go back to school. Totally native. They were here long before people were. Yes, even the Native Americans. Additionally, anyone believing that removing all eight-some-odd millions of acres of these trees in Texas is a good idea are, in a word, daft.

Hey, I hate the things too. It doesn’t exactly make me happy when a really bad pollen season comes along like it did this year. So yes, I understand the “kill them all” sentiment, but the removal of all these trees is completely stupid. It’s not like it hasn’t been thought of before, and many ranchers did remove all their “cedar” trees back when I was a kid. Many of them discovered that without these trees, some other things were lost … like good deer hunting. Not to mention the general devastation of the ecosystem, and the fact that people who clear-cut the offensive trees then found their Oak trees dying from wilt leaving them with no trees at all on their property. In Texas, you do not want to be without some trees of some kind.

Besides, then it will be the native grasses, flowers, and other pollen producing flora causing problems. I guess they’d like to remove all of them too? Sure, why don’t we just strip all of Texas of everything that gives people allergy problems? Sounds like a great plan, right? You know, some people are allergic to Oak trees too, so hey … let’s get rid of them as well! Ugh.

Humans (or perhaps just Americans) will never learn to live in their environment without utterly destroying it will we?