In 1995 as Editor of the Michael Reagan Monthly Monitor, I interviewed Keith Butts, who grew up in the Oregon woods where his father was a logger and then spent 40 years in the U.S. Forest Service as a ranger. He said he was involved in four different theories of forest management in those 40 years.
In the 1950s, U.S. Forest management regulations required taking down any tree that would not live another 20 years. In the 1960s, regulations changed and entire blocks of trees were removed if 50% of them would not live another 20 years. Marketable trees in a block would be taken down, and the remaining saplings would be left to grow.
In the 1970s, Butts said, "Forest Service management decided to start clear-cutting." The Sierra Club and other environmentalists blame clear-cutting on the logging industry. However, according to Butts, the clear-cutting regulations imposed by the Forest Service were vehemently OPPOSED by the logging industry!
"In the 1980s, supervisors began ordering roads closed to keep the public out of the woods." Butts said. "In the 1950s, the forests were managed for the benefit of the taxpayers and actually financially sustained themselves. (Today everything in the woods can be used. Nothing needs to be burned. Portable chippers can be brought in to chip up the slash (branches and underbrush) for wafer board that is used for building. Keeping the underbrush under control would prevent the worst damage of wildfires and fire storms that destroy millions of trees, millions of dollars worth of property and sometimes kill firefighters.
"We are now either burning on purpose or letting wildfires consume millions of acres of trees, yet the Black Forest in Germany has been preserved for hundreds of years by good management that picks up every fallen branch to prevent fires."
Sadly, the voices of those who actually knew the forests were in danger never had the dominant media tell its side of the story, so we are left with city-bred environmentalists like Al Gore keeping loggers and portable chippers out of the forests, while the underbrush continued to grow.
Some good info passed on here; anyone have any info on the Black Forest practices?
Anyway, I've been in the Black forest. UGLY!!! German forests look like row crops. Squares of trees planted in rows, all the same size and nothing is underneath. With all do respect to jaq who doesn't want to hear about biodiversity, the Black forest could use some.
Honest loggers are very much against clear cutting...OR leaving nothing but a bit of polewood every twenty yards in order to get around EPA regs. Many of us consider it "wood butchering" and the epithet "wood butcher" denotes a dispicable pig (my apologies to the pigs)
Sadly, there are wood butchers out there...but their greatest enemies are not the treehugging preservationists...THEIR GREATEST ENEMIES ARE THE HONEST LOGGERS. The stupid treehuggers just get in the way and muck everything up.
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!