[pct-l] National forests

[wpsnotebook at charter.net (Richard Woods)]

That's right, follow the money.
The active concept here is sustainability and recoverability.
Fact: clear cutting is not a sustainable method of using a 'renewable' 
resource.
Fact: clear-cutting leaves behind much more flammable secondary growth 
that takes over, crowding out slower growing seedlings. The trash left 
behind remains as a fuel load which also invites further burns and 
usually more than doubles the damage caused by natural wildfires, while 
providing about zero recreational use. Fire suppression in healthy 
forest leads to higher fuel load accumulation, leading to hotter fires 
which sterilizes the forest floor, requiring generations to recover. 
For a convenient example, walk south on the PCT from Reds Meadow. It's 
not far to a burn area where this occurred. Twenty years and the ground 
is still mostly bare. Even the standing snags aren't decomposing 
naturally.
Fact: a monoculture forest, planted to 'recover a clear cut area, is 
not a healthy forest in any long-term sense. It provides no natural 
habitat for anything resembling a diverse ecology. It is much more 
susceptible to disease, and only serves to remove even more nutrients 
from what remains in the soil.
Fact: Snags, downed trees, secondary growth in canopy openings left by 
windfall, and open meadow in alternating patches are all features of a 
healthy habitat.
Fact: healthy forests can remain healthy and even be improved when 
selective logging practices are applied in them. This requires 
supervision and accountability.
Fact: accountability of commercial operation's impact on public 
resources has been sadly lacking in too many instances. Supervision has 
been undercut by restrictions and staffing shortages.
Fact: corporate logging operations do not create local jobs, rather 
they remove the 'sustainable' resources of local communities as quickly 
as possible, send the profits elsewhere, leaving smaller operations 
with nothing for the future.
Fact: Local residents (and loggers) are left with bare hills, and 
recreational use drops to almost nothing, further impacting local 
economies with a loss of tourism. Local operators start clamoring for 
access to protected stands because that is all that is left for them.
Fact: water quality downstream of every major cutting operation 
degrades, except selective logging where impact is minimized and 
monitored.
Fact: logging operations preclude almost any other multiple use over a 
wide geographical area, including grazing, hunting, recreation. Mining 
operations don't care. The trees just get in their way. Access roads 
are a boon.

Requiring recovery to a near natural state sends jobs overseas where 
requirements are lower or non-existent. We get to keep our trees, while 
some third world nation gets stripped bare.

Message: 11
Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 01:38:11 EDT
From: Hiker97@aol.com
Subject: [pct-l] New Rules for Our Forest?
To: pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
Cc: carolwbruno@yahoo.com, J.Hannah@marelich.com
Message-ID: <a3.732ca4ef.2fadae43@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

I have always had the opinion that the more trees the better and down 
with
clear cutting.  But I have to come back to reality.  I know that 
pictures of our
forest and national park backcounty 100 years ago show a lot less tress 
than
the same pictures today.  There were a lot more open spaces and meadows 
back
then.  Ever since humans have started to "manage" the land, things have 
gone
wrong -- especially with fire suppression.

I wish there was some way to selectively cut trees out of our forest 
lands
(including national parks) to get the balance back to what it was in 
the old
days of 100 or 500 years ago.  I have no idea how this could be done.  
But I bet
you would not need clear cutting for lumber anymore.  And all our 
lumber needs
and jobs would be accommodated.  It seems trees have become weeds in 
many
places.  I wonder what the PCT trail country would have looked like 500 
years
ago.

Just a random thought from ignorant Switchback.  Thanks.

Did you know that the Tahoe Basin was almost completely logged over to 
support mining operations in Nevada? Took over a hundred years to 
recover.
Did you know that almost the entire San Francisco Bay Area west of the 
Oakland hills was a coastal redwood forest, until it was all cut down 
for firewood during the gold rush?

I'm the grandson of a forest service supervisor, back when there was a 
cadre of 'timber cruisers' who marked specific trees for harvest each 
year. The future and the health of the forest was in their hands, and a 
logger who cut reserved trees usually lost his license and sometimes 
went to jail. In the forties, corporate lobbyists got the concept of 
selective harvest removed from National Forest directives in favor 
(theirs) of harvest quotas from designated tracts. Drive down a highway 
in Oregon or Washington and you don't see clear cuts near the roads, 
that's designated as regeneration area, coincidentally screening the 
bare hillsides from public view.

There is another effect we all can see.
If you're old enough, you might remember when you could walk into any 
lumber store and buy clear straight common 2x4s and knot-free trim. Now 
you pay a premium for quality that was considered firewood only 30 
years ago.  Now 'manufactured wood products' are popular, because 
corporations like Boise Cascade can take the trash thats left from two 
generations of scalping the National Forest of the big trees, and still 
make a buck. Corporate interests also got the national building 
standards changed to allow manufactured products. Not knocking all 
manufactured products, many are much better than stick lumber. 
Engineered I beam OSB floor joists are a fine example - strong, stable, 
consistent quality, and long lasting with proper installation. But if 
you want natural wood, without a lot of knots you will pay a premium. 
Clear wood takes a long time to grow.
Why are we importing timber from overseas? The forest left from 
corporate 'sustainable harvesting' is too young, too small and too weak 
to provide much more than paper stock. We have far out-stripped the 
forest's ability to recover naturally, and have no patience for natures 
pace of regeneration. Cut the big ones here, or drag them in from 
somewhere else.
The definition of the term 'sustainability' has been conveniently 
interpreted by corporate lawyers in favor of commercial, not public 
interests. Follow the money.


Mo Jo