Have you watched "Never Cry Wolf" recently?   I suggest that you watch it and think hard about the message at the end, where the wolf studier gives up the study, the staring long and hard at wilderness and nature, as he realizes that he need to be the wild person that he is, and to leave the other wild things alone, to let them go and not watch them go.

The message I get from watching that movie exceeds my ability to articulate. I think you will get that message in its depth if you watch it now and think again about your ideas about whether it's ok to stare long and hard at wilderness and nature. 

Namaste,  Rob. 

And thanks to Isabelle for posting this here.  Despite my satirical response, I think it's time to stop seeing forest as a commodity.  There may be commodities that we can harvest from forests, but the harvest must be gentle enough that when we are done, the area still looks like forest. 

Isabelle, I will direct your attention to this report by those environmental radicals at the World Bank. Here are some excerpts: 

Development Actions and the Rising Incidence of Disasters
 
Which Disasters Are the Fastest Growing Problem?
While natural disasters are increasing overall, as noted above, two types—flooding and wind torms— are increasing much more rapidly than
the others (figure 1-3).

Their number is increasing dramatically, with an annual average increase of at least 5 percent. To some degree the two types of events go hand in hand. Tropical storms can cause flooding, and flooding is frequently triggered by unusually heavy rains — which are not always from “named” storms. And not only are tropical storm disasters
up; extreme weather events (that is, unusually heavy rainfalls not caused by  cyclones or hurricanes)8 also are more frequent. Moreover, the damage caused by extreme weather events, flooding, and wind storms has also accelerated.

At some point, when we experience a "hundred year" rainfall/floold every ten years, this flood has to be recognized for what it truly is:  a ten year rainfall/flood event.  Failure to take changes in weather into account when planning land use puts us all at risk.  

This report says the increasing incidence of storms of a certain level severity has increased about four fold in about forty years.  This is just the storm severity, it is not the economic measure based on population growth in dangerous areas, simply nastier, more destructive storm.  The global warming models predict this increasing weather severity.  Droughts, freak snowfalls, heavy rainfalls, windstorms - these are all predicted by the global warming models.   

Based on the global warming science, I will suggest that you are incorrect to state that this storm was a little out of the norm.  I suspect this recent storm was the kind of storm that we will see every ten to twenty years now based on 1996 and 2007 storm events. 

I hope that DNR will plan accordingly, but I am not optimistic that appropriate land-use plans can be developed if they mandate economic impacts related to lower forest harvesting. I also hope I am wrong about that.