Good job Jeff. (I live a couple of hundred miles north of you)
Moe, I have to take issue with your timeline and the really broad brush you paint with. I seriously doubt you can show me a clear cut in western Washington from the turn of the last century that still looks like a bomb went off - unless it’s now part of Seattle or other such place. Certainly the monster old growth won’t be there, and the species may be different, but it’s hard to keep trees from growing over there. Back about ‘75, my silviculture class visited an 8000 acre clear cut on timber company ground near Shelton. It was that big because it was cut in the early ‘40s to feed the war effort and it came back in alder. As it was a top site for Douglas-fir, they cut off the alder and were in the process of replanting it. The slash was so thick they had to cut paths through it to plant. It was so deep (8’ in places) that you couldn’t see the planters. This isn’t to say there weren’t abuses. There are plenty of examples of “cut out and get out” from the early years, but there were many examples of good stewardship as well.
Rl, your post of the chart about government ownership is one that folks really like to harp on. What must be remembered is that when much of that ownership was laid out, nobody else wanted that land. People like to point to Nevada. Good grief! You ever drive across that country? Much of south Idaho is similar. There’s few trees and not much grass. A rancher needs 10-40 cows to make a go of it (that’s a cow with a mouth 10’ wide and moves at 40 mph to get enough to eat). Move north in Idaho, and you have plenty of trees, but most of it stands on end so much that you can’t economically harvest it. Most of the ground that can stand commercial harvest has been cut, much of it numerous times, and, until the unfortunate spate of overboard environmentalism, provided a good income for the area. People like to whine about how much better the state or private would take care of these areas, but think about it. They are already subject to the same regulations that constrain the feds (although they certainly would have more incentive than some agencies) and what will they do when fire season hits? Even now, when a fire gets too big on state or private ground they throw up their hands and ask the feds to take over.
Well, enough of my rambling and ranting for the night....
Thanks for the focus on that, Old Forester...I will say I was focusing more on mining and such rather than forestry with my eye on that map.
I have been there, and I know what you mean.