These kids father is in the US Navy...Bangor Base on the Pennisnula and we have driven around the entire thing several times, and before I contracted cancer and had to have radical surgery two years ago, had hiked into the areas.
The only full clear cutting going on is for residential or commercial development. Not for harvesting and logging. Some do the harvesting by section, some do it by selective cutting. But they all preserve entire sections and then plant and grow more where they have cut.
That’s what we saw on the Olympic Penninsula...and we looked.
Are there violaters? Yes, probably so, but no one here says that is a good thing. And those who do will not be in business long.
Most serious timber companies have been around a long time precisely because they are good stewards.
Nice try though...but you should have asked where three of these kids spent the last 8 years with their Dad in the Navy. He’s still in the Navy, but was recently inducted into an Officer program where they are sending him to school and they came to Idaho six months ago as a result...so we had quite a bit of experience in the very place you used as an example and we did not see the “miles and miles” of clear cut by timber companies you describe.
I have posted our trips...Google US Navy Reserve Fleet Bremerton and you will find one with lots of pics.
Bangor is a stones throw from my spread now and I was on the Connie in Bremerton back in 74. Know the area well.
The notion the timber companies 20 or 30 years ago operated with the slightest bit of forward thinking is laughable. If you aren’t seeing the result of this cut and run policy you aren’t looking. I know a few families that still own huge swaths of timber property on the sound. When ever the subject comes up, they comment on how shortsighted everyone was in the old days. There was zero replanting, huge mudslides from too much cutting, etc.
By “private” I assume you mean lands held in trust by outfits like Pope et al. These trusts consist of both public and private. These days they are better stewards. It’s debatable whether this change of heart is the result better heads prevailing or heavy-handed government policies.
Regardless. It doesn’t matter who cut where. The fact is huge areas look exactly as I describe. Even a child can see that. And even a child knows there were more trees around 300 hundred years ago.