Conference rdvax::grateful

Getting into work late has its advantages.  This morning at 10:30 Bob Weir was
interviewed on CNN for his and Wendy's children's book.  They talked about the
plot of the book and then talked a lot about the logging industry.  Bobby was
upset that the industry has been propagandizing clear-cutting by saying trees
will grow back after the cutting.  Bobby claims that is not true.   He talked
about a bill in the Senate that he is against.  He also explained why the Dead
is not a political group - they are musicians and that is all they should do on
stage.  Sorry I don't have much more detail. I wasn't glued to the TV.

adam

    re .-1
    
    He's very wrong.  90% of New England was deforested 100 years ago (ever
    notice how small in diameter the trees are -- there'll all young
    growth) and now the forests are chokingly thick.  There's a lot of
    problems with present clear cut operations, but the forests not growing
    back isn't one of them (the quality and species of new growth is one
    problem).  All things considered, clear cutting is probably the best
    method of harvesting timber.  The big problem with Northwest logging is
    greed.
    
    IMHO, it's a shame that we can't effectively manage trees, one of our
    very few renewable resources.
    
    Jamie

    >There's a lot of problems with present clear cut operations, but the 
    >forests not growing back isn't one of them.

    In New England, they grow back fast. In Colorado for example, some 
    clearcuts there have been barren for well over 100 years (right, rfb?). 
    It depends on the climate, soil, etc.
 
    - Gerry

    right you are Ger, clear cutting IMO is the worst way to harvest trees. 
    And the type of tree, strength, ability to weather 
    sicknesses and insects, etc.change with clearcutting. 
    Selective harvesting for NEED is the way, not
    cutting thousands of acres, every single tree. 
    Also, alot of the clear cuts doen here by the miners were not hand
    re-planted, advocates of clearcuts say that's the way to manage. 
    
    One of the fathers of Colo Springs, Palmer, clearcut the ENTIRE Black
    Forest (N or the springs) for railroad timber in the late 1800's. The
    trees (pondarosaPine) that grew back are so close together the peopel
    that live up there will NEVER elimanate the mistel toe infestation. 
    BTW Ger, the east section of Hoosier Pass (Tumbledown area, T!ng, you
    flew kites with us on the west side) was just
    declared an endangered eco-system by COLO (BLM NATIONAL FOREST
    SERVICE??) because of 3 species of wierd flowers...that will save the
    remaining old growth forests on Hoosier that the miners of the 1850's
    couldn't log only because they couldn't get to them with that era's
    logging technology. (the flowers are found nowhere else in N America
    except Canada)
    
    Unfortunately, not so in Southern Colo where old
    growth forests are being logged TODAY!! The Forest Service has made it
    ILLEGAL to even be in the area because of the protests. 
                  

With every geography, there is some "critical grade" such that clear cutting
will destroy that geography's ability to hold soil. In the northeast, a very
small percentage of the geography exceeds this magic angle; in the Pacific
Northwest, the proportion of geography which exceeds this grade is much higher.
Also, that geography is "younger", so there is less soil available _a priori_.
In fact, the little remaining old growth forest is remaining precisely because
lumber companies already know this. They still wan't those trees, anyway,
though, and the reasons have little to do with the commercial value of the 
lumber or the ability of the (BLM) land to become lumberable, renewable sources 
of second growth lumber in the future; the lumber companies get more subsidies 
from Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer for opening forestry operations in old growth forest 
than they do from lumbering second growth, widely available resources. That's 
the law, plain and simple.

	Fwiw, the situation in southern Alaska and the panhandle is much worse 
than the Pac NW...

Fog

    the Summit County side of Hoosier Pass (Tumbledown area)
    is one of the few places that sustain a large Pine Martin population,
    because Martins NEED an old growth pine eco-system in order to 
    exist. I was fortunate enough to see one while CC-skiing several years
    back. "Swam" thru the snow right in front of me.  
    
    Fog's right about Alaska...
    rfb

    The rate of regrowth also depends on what type of trees are native to
    the area.  Around here, pine is the first to take over, but after about
    100 years the slower growing hardwoods kill off the faster growing
    pines.  Very rarely do they reforest with hardwoods, even if they
    originally took hardwoods.  They're using trees now that reach maturity
    within 20-30 years. Forests like that certainly don't restore the
    original habitat.
    
    There's some places in Wilton where my father said "when I was young I
    used to hay that field" but all I see is a forest.  So yeah, woods will
    grow back if you leave them, but it will take generations to rebuild
    the balance of an old growth forest.
    
    Scott, not sure of what my point was
    

    I heard they heavily logged New England for the railroads.  Is this
    true or was it logged for every use of wood (houses, buildings, etc.)?
    
    dave

	There are very few virgin timberstands left in the State of NH.  The
	AMC book points out a few places where these exist in the Whites.

	

    RE .356
    
    Bill ... set your terminal width so's those of us without workstations
    can read your notes please!!
    
    ... Bob
    

re clearcutting
(apologies for posting this in wide format - I reposted and
deleted the original - hope this fixes the problem  /bill)

re clearcutting

In Texas and other southern states, the biggest problem with clearcutting is
the "site preparation" that goes on afterwards.  This involves burning,
poisoning, and scraping off everything left after the clearcut, and then
re-planting in monocultures (usually fast-growing pines).  The foresters
also return periodically to poison or burn young hardwoods that manage to
return.  IMHO, these site-prepared clearcuts do not produce forests, they
produce tree farms.  The result is that genetic diversity is systematically
reduced, natural habitat for wildlife populations is eliminated, and the
capability of the soil to ever again support a natural forest is destroyed.
A true forest can never grow there again, only a monoculture pine tree farm.
These tree farms are also very intolerant to parasites (Southern pine beetle
for one), and threaten all forests in the region by encouraging
infestations.

There is no comparison between walking through a naturally diverse
pine/hardwood forest in East Texas and walking through a pine tree farm.  I
will agree that we need tree farms, I just do not want to see all our PUBLIC
lands put to this purpose.  I'm afraid that, for a large part, this is a
stated goal of our National Forest Service.  In fact, there is a federal law
called the Kneutsen-Vanderberg (sp?)  law which authorizes the Forest
Service to take the proceeds from a timber sale and use them for site
preparation after the sale.  This makes clearcutting, which has the largest
site preparation cost, the most attractive alternative for returning money
to the Forest Service.  The end result is that our forests are destroyed
with almost ZERO (and sometimes NEGATIVE) dollars actually becoming federal
revenue. To that add the fact that a large amount of American timber is
shipped overseas as raw logs, and it is hard to see how anyone (except the
timber companies) wins.

I'll agree that sometimes clearcutting in the pure sense can be almost the
only way to harvest timber.  However, in the case of public lands on steep
grades, near streams which are devastated by erosion, and where site
preparation destroys natural diversity, clearcutting is totally unacceptable
and must be stopped.  Many private forests in the South, and I'm sure
elsewhere also, are very profitably managed with selective cutting.  The
Forest Service should be forced to use this method on the majority of its
harvests.

Then there is the problem of eliminating old growth forests, but since this
tirade is already too long, I'll stop here.

An excellent book on this subject is _Clearcutting: A Crime Against Nature_,
by Ned Fritz.  Ned has spent a large part of his career studying this issue
and fighting the misuse of our national lands by the National Forest
Service.

re .352: I saw a pine marten in the White Mountains NF last fall (near Mt
Carrigain in the Pemi Wilderness).  A really beautiful animal.  BTW, even
the Pemi Wilderness shows signs of heavy logging (from the early 1900s I
think) and will take many decades before this damage disappears.


Bill who is usually read-only, but this subject gets his blood pressure up