Logging old-growth is a sham issue

Washington Times ^ | 8/28/02 | Tony Blankley

[kattracks]

There is little more revelatory to us Washington armchair, journo-politico, all-purpose, television/newspaper, expert, pundit/columnists than actually to talk with a fellow out West who works in an industry we just write about. I recently had correspondence with a man who, right up front, called himself "just a fat old logger now working on a farm." Well, as just a fat old lawyer now working on TV and a newspaper, I liked this fellow right off. I feel more comfortable around people who use ab crunchers to keep the refrigerator door open, and who get a six-pack at the liquor store, not a gym.

[1tin_soldier]

And yet another enviro-liberal lie comes crashing down. TIM-BERRRRRRR!

[GVnana]

Well Duh. I guess it's not obvious to Easterners. Logging (when done prudently) helped the forests by thinning them and reducing fuel build-up. Somehow we Westerners can't convince the beltway enviro-wackos that the West is arid. We haven't allowed natural burns for a century because they wasted too much resources. (Let me explain for my damp Eastern deciduous forest bretheren: Fires start naturally, lightning strikes mostly. In natural forest, the fires burn ground fuels, brush, small trees, but never gain the intensity to burn larger trees and eradicate the entire forest.)

Now we have dense forest--in some places 10X the natural density-- and they go Poof! Thus we have the West's plague of catastrophic wildfires. And we can't even get timber out of the deal.

[glock rocks]

old growth ping.

[madfly]

ping

[knarf]

"Now we have dense forest--in some places 10X the natural density-- and they go Poof! Thus we have the West's plague of catastrophic wildfires. And we can't even get timber out of the deal."

Are you saying that the lumber industry re-plants too close and are, therefore, the cause of these catastrophe's?

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

All that old growth forest that burned down is a travesty. I assemble furniture. My plant is struggling because we can't get our hands on hard wood. We have to use pressed wood, while China was shipping hardwood over. I've heard that Bush is blocking Chinese hardwood and feel seflishly lucky. Freegards....

[madfly]

ping

[WaterDragon]

Fantastic article. And absolutely true.

[hedgetrimmer]

Well whaddya know? The enviromentalists are lying. Who'd a thunk it?

[Carry_Okie]

Are you saying that the lumber industry re-plants too close and are, therefore, the cause of these catastrophe's?

There are a lot of reasons for this density and they vary with the type of forest.

Redwoods, for example, resprout from the root crown. Cut one and you can get 20 growing off of and leaning away from the sides of a rotting stump. Not exactly structural, is it?

Here are some photos (source):

They need thinning, don't they? Contrary to the stories you hear from the fire-retarded, they burn too.

Pines and fir OTOH drop enormous amounts of seed. Their needles are acidic and retard the growth of competing plants. They also suck up the water. A forest of older trees will soon be overpopulated with juveniles as this photo suggests.

That was the Rodeo/Chediski Fire in Northern Arizona.

Clear cutting can induce an even-aged and over-populated forest, as can a fire. It is usual to plan to thin after either replanting or regeneration. If that thinning isn't done, what happens?

Clear cuts are not necessarily a bad thing, although they are ugly. There are occasions where selective cuts cause the trees to fall because each specimen has higher wind load. The phenomena is called "blow-down." How one should harvest trees depends upon the circumstances. That's why centralized control systems like government can't deal with all the competing considerations in management decisions.

Here is a photo of a forest that was selectively logged, again after the Rodeo/Chediski Fire:

Industry plants forests with an expected harvest date in mind, as did the Forest Service. That means they plan a spacing for the trees with perhaps a thinning in between to account for yield on establishment. If one goes beyond that harvest date, an even-aged stand starts to crowd.

The real cause of overpopulation was that the USFS and everybody else was planting for high production. It was a fad back in the 50s and 60s. They succeeded. It was mismanagement then as it is now. If we were to thin the National Forests as they should be, lumber prices could not cover the cost of removals with the current overhead of paperwork. The industry knows that.

Crowded forests are a problem for the entire watershed because each tree consumes large amounts of water. The effect is large. Overcrowded forests dry up streams and destroy fish habitat.

It's a competitive ecosystem out there, locked in mortal competition, something environmentalists don't seem to understand.

The big problems with forests aren't (IMHO) as much related to forestry as they are to the forest ecosystem as a whole. A meadow is nature's first responder to a fire, supplying the seed to cover the bare ground. Meadows, once lost, are difficult to recover. Meadows are a principle store of biodiversity and are also natural firebreaks. Firefighters use them and bring their equipment through loaded with weed seed. Weeds take over them rapidly and the seed from trees that had encroached the meadow sprout and spread further. We are losing meadows in the Pacific region. It's a real problem.

What we are seeing are the misbegotten fruits of the socialization of forests that started in the time of McKinley. The way things are going it WILL get worse. It's a structural problem that will only be cured when government gets out of the land and resource management business.

There is an alternative to civic environmental management.

[tubebender]

This story is prettty ironic as this week Pacific Lumber is auctoning off the largest sawmill in the world as they have switched to small logs over the years. The only independent saw mill left here (there were over 500 mills in Humboldt county at one time) is running on logs barged here from Ore, Wash and NEW ZELAND. There are no veneer mills left in Calif as they require large clear logs.

Carry Okie is right about the large timber companys not wanting any timber from the USFS because it makes their trees more valuable.

The photo of the clump of Redwoods in COs post looks just like the trees in my front yard that are doing thousands of dollars damage to the foundation of our home. My grand son and I spent the last two weeks digging up roots and cutting a three foot section out to slow the destruction.

Humboldt County is the number one timber producing county in Calif and our economy has been in the tank since the late 70s.

[GVnana]

Are you saying that the lumber industry re-plants too close and are, therefore, the cause of these catastrophe's?

No. Of course not. I guess this is why this issue is so easily misunderstood.

Wildfires are a natural occurance. Over the many millenia, the forest has adapted and used fire. Some species will not (Sequoia, I believe for one) propagate without the seeds getting the heat from fire to open.

The problems of logging and forest preservation have overlapped and complicated things. In a natural forest, with a "natural" ratio of trees to land, fires are actually beneficial to timber because they eliminate smaller fuels. But for most of the 20th century, fires were not allowed to burn naturally. And, as civilization encroaches, fire is a threat to surrounding properties. So we have huge sections of dense forest which--when fire inevitably comes--are entirely reduced to ashes.

Logging provided some benefit by introducing access roads and thinning forest growth which reduces the overall fuel supply. Clearcutting and replanting, obviously, provides no benefit to a "natural growth" forest, but it became the most economically feasible method of timber harvesting. The timber industry would argue that this practice became necessary by competition from foreign sources of wood.

[marsh2]

Siskiyou was also a timber-dependent county. It still has production, but that is mostly coming off of Sierra Pacific private lands in South County. Fruit Growers (Sunkist) has been stopped in their tracks in the west county by spotted owl and salmon rules - so much that they tried to sell their lands and no one would touch them.

The western county is mostly US Forest Service managed lands and nothing of substance has come from them in a decade. There is extreme poverty in these former timber-dependent communities like Happy Camp, which are poised to be torched as a consequence of paralyzing environmental regulation.

This is so ironic as county fathers actually invited and solicited the feds to create national forests in our west county to PROTECT THEM and the VALUABLE TIMBER from forest fires that were occurring at the turn of the century.

[GVnana]

I've heard that Bush is blocking Chinese hardwood and feel seflishly lucky. Freegards....

I'm not sure how much the West can help you with hardwood since most of the forest we're talking about are Redwood, Cedar, Fir and Pine--superb building materials, but not great for cabinetry. I'm not aware of any large-scale Oak harvesting. Most Oak and Madrone (there's a wood you won't find in the east!) cutting in my area is done by firewood vendors.

[GVnana]

Humboldt County is the number one timber producing county in Calif and our economy has been in the tank since the late 70s.

Over the last six months Sierra Pacific has been completing a private land timber harvest in my area (Nevada County, Sierra Foothills). I see the trucks on my commute. They are pulling some 3 ft. diameter Doug Fir and Redwood mostly. Trucking it 60 miles to a mill in Lincoln.

When I was a kid in this town, there were seven active mills in my immediate surrounds. The loggers took the trucks out before daylight. By 9 at night, you could hear a steady drone of trucks hauling planed lumber down the grade into the Central Valley to market.

The mills put-out a lot of smoke, but they also provided honest work and industry. I have to say, I miss them.

[blackie]

Right-on !!

Stop the attacks on our Freedoms by the wacko, extreme left-wing, lunatic fringe, dirt worshipping Green Jihadist, enviro-nazis terrorist's and their toadies in the media !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

FMCDH !!

F.I.R.E. !!

[blackie]

FIRE!...Bump !!

[WaterDragon]

bttt!!!!!

[rollin]

You must be from the East to be able to make that assumption.