Environment v. Forestry

Great Debates
21

As for Zenster’s concerns, In the Northwest the USFS doesn’t do much monocultrual “tree farming” anymore. While there’s no denying that there is an effort to direct a particular stand to “desirable” species, most clearcuts are re-planted to more than one species. As I mentioned earlier, Silviculture is an evolving science. There were and are experiments in mono-culture, but most foresters agree that it is not a great idea. It’s interesting to note though, that one often finds a mono or near monoculture in nature, particularly with lodgepole pine, but you’ll see it in almost any tree species, so its not necessarily always bad.

Mono-cultural tree farms are primarily used by corporate forests and you won’t find me defending them. But as a capitalist/environmentalist I will defend their right to ruin their land any way they want to.

If the USFS ever expects to produce valuable timber on portions of it’s land, it needs to aggressively “treat” dense, small diameter stands. Treatment could consist of release cutting which takes away much of the competition and allows superior trees to flourish. The condition in most forests today, since we’ve done away with fire, is dense over-grown stands. I think that if there is a market for pulp or small diameter timber it should be utilized if possible. The problem is, fire used to thin the forests for free. Thinning will almost always cost more than can be paid for by the resulting products.

Pacific yew, long before its brief jump to fame as a cancer treatment, was valued by “land stewards” as a significant winter food source, particularly for moose. Pacific Yew only grows in old growth Hemlock/Cedar forests, so it is valuable today as an indicator species.

I agree with everything you had to say Jorge. We too have lost nearly all of our small industry here. One of the big problems the FS needs to address is the need for smaller sales, commonly called “green slip sales”, to encourage the return of more small mills and craftsmen. The vast majority of all sales the FS puts out is geared to the large corporations. They, the corps, keep it that way by spending huge amounts of cash with our friendly congressmen.

22

Depends on which part of town you’re in. We stay Uptown where it’s mostly families and picnics and a relatively low crowd density. Most of the drunkeness occurs in the French Quarter, where I’ve heard stories of the crowd packing in so tightly that people cannot move. You can have as much fun as you want to, with as many people as you want to. Come on down!

In the Southeast (my area of practial experience) BMPs are all voluntary. If you don’t follow them, and get caught (which seldom happens since no pre-harvest notification occurs - - officials seldom know where active harvest sites are located) when your job puts sediment into the water, you’ll likely get another chance to improve before fines or other sanctions kick in. The flip side, if you don’t leave a streamside zone and you luck-out and don’t pollute the stream, there’s no penalty whatsoever. BMPs do raise costs here, but not significantly. Furthermore, there’s no Streamside Law like you folks have in Montana.

Not everyone has to follow all the acts I mentioned. Private entites do not have to comply with NEPA, the NFMA, or administer an appeals process: these apply only to federal gov’t agencies (NEPA) and the USFS (NFMA). If you’re a private landowner with threatened and endangered species on your land, you will have to get involved with the ESA.

I agree with you there. Non-timber and recreation activities have been understaffed and under-served for years, often due to their status in the accounting system (timber monies come back to the forest supervisor, recreation monies don’t, if I remember correctly).

Again, I agree. The FS has a mission: “Caring for the land and serving people.” So far they’ve done little of either, and have gotten upset when that’s been pointed out to them.

23

I don’t have anything to add to this discussion - Lord knows I don’t have the sort of concrete knowledge that Ivorybill and bare have on this subject - but I wanted to say that this thread has been fascinating reading, and I’ve learned a lot.

One question: has any environmental group ever proposed a ban on exportation of lumber from the national forests? In the perennial conflicts between environmentalists and those whose livelihood depends on lumber harvested from the national forests, this strikes me as a win-win sort of proposal: on the enviro side, it would cut out one source of demand for wood from the forests, while ensuring that whatever wood is harvested creates as many jobs domestically as possible.

Obviously, the corporations that cut and export the lumber would be against it, and their money talks, but this is one of the sorts of issues where that hardly seems insurmountable.

24

Whew. I hope someone reading this thread knows something about exports. The bulk of the exports of NF timber have been from the Tongass NF (Alaska) and from the NFs in the Pacific Northwest (high-value hardwoods are exported from the Northeast for fine furniture, but it’s not a large amount. AFIAK, very little NF timber is exported from the South).

Back in the days before the spotted owl, the FS was allowed to harvest around 4.2 billion board feet of lumber a year from Pacific Northwest forests. (A board foot is a piece of lumber 1" x 1" x 12".) That amount was never reached; the closest they came was around 3.5 - 4 billion bf. Exports of FS timber were pretty commonplace then, IIRC. Post-spotted owl, the harvest levels have dropped to between 400 million bf and 700 million bf. I’m sure some of it gets exported, I just don’t know how much. Suffice it to say, not as much as used to be.

Several environmental groups are on record opposing ANY sale, harvest, export, you name it, of National Forest timber. There is some merit in removing the idea that the NF’s should turn a profit; even more merit in suggesting that the forests be managed to restore ecosystems (assuming you can get agreement on what the ecosystem should look like and what management meets the term “restore.”) I’d also like to see the NF’s design such managment plans to aid members of resource-dependent communities.

Some environmental groups have recently dropped the “no harvest” attitude and have adopted a position that allows for the ecosystem-management harvest. Curiously, for groups dedicated to their opposition of below-cost sales, they have so-far called their new approach “non-commercial” sales (implying that the FS should not seek a profit) but some wise-acres have noted that, in principle, these groups are now advocating below-cost sales…

Finally, much of the timber (at least 50%, but likely more) sold by the FS is sold to small businesses (as defined by the small business administration, which is 500 employees or less). My experience in the South has been that VERY small businesses (40 employees or less) buy the majority of federal timber. Weyerhauser, Westvaco, and other “corporations” buy some too, just not as much. Thus, the environmentalists position that the FS subsidizes the big timber industry with its timber sales isn’t a completely accurate portrayal, in my region anyway. Do any others have any light to shed here?

25

Log exports…

Congress banned the exportation of raw logs from federal lands sometime around 1975 in response to lumber companies complaining of a shortage of logs for their own mills. Many environmental organizations joined the mill workers in asking congress for relief. Some of the big ones were the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Audubon.

Some states have also banned the sale of raw logs overseas, Washington and Oregon that I know of. Idaho does not and I am not sure of Montana’s current law, but I think it is still allowed. Private timber, either corporate or personal is not regulated at all.

The reason the environmentalists got on the band wagon is that the vast majority of all exports were huge, ancient old growth timber. At that time environmentalists primarily were advocating the preservation of old growth timber because they were alarmed at the speed with which it was disappearing.

Corporate minds, being what they are, immediately found ways around the restrictions and they continue in a big way today. One of the easiest ways to get around it is to process the log here in the states, the typical method is to turn it into a cant. A cant is made by turning a round log into a square one, in other words shaving the bark and a couple slabs of useless wood. Another common way, though much harder to quantify is the practice of mixing logs in the log decks. Logs don’t come with identifying numbers. Log decks may contain logs from federal, state and private jobs at any one time. It is nearly impossible to monitor compliance of the bans. Most mills anymore specialize in the type and size of logs that they process and send the species and diameters of those they can’t utilize on to another mill for processing.

As Ivorybill mentioned, most exports come from Alaska in the form of pulp wood. Pulp wood is, in theory at least, timber unsuitable for producing lumber or other more valuable products. The material is chipped up and shipped out for making paper and other products. There is a particular reason that Alaska is the biggest exporter but that would be enough to start another thread all by itself. In short, two lumber companies, one Louisiana Pacific and the other a Japanese corporation were awarded 50 year contracts on vast acreage of old growth timber in the Tongass National Forest. This is an incredibly sweetheart deal and really pisses off environmentalists. I’d be happy to expand on this later if anyone is interested. Anyway most of the exports from Alaska come legally from the Japanese corporation.

:::Capitalist Hat On:::

The vast majority of log exports are to Japan. Japan prefers to import raw logs because they employ different methods of building than we do here in the states. For one thing they use the metric system and prefer to work with metric lumber. Another reason is they primarily build with post and beam techniques. They also enjoy the aesthetics of ancient timbers employed in the building of their homes.

For some reason I can’t fathom, U.S. producers don’t want to retool their mills to cater to Japanese preferences. As far as I am concerned, anyone should be able to sell any of their logs to whomever they choose or whoever is willing to pay top dollar.

Same goes for paper products, everything is based on the metric system, so they prefer to make their own products. It’s our own fault that we choose not to produce for the Japanese market.

:::Capitalist Hat Off:::

We apparently differ here in the Northwest in that the vast majority of timber is sold to large corporations. Louisiana Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, Plumb Creek and others. As I explained in an earlier reply, most of the federal sales are designed for the larger companies and smaller companies cannot come up with the bonding and purchasing money.

26

Thanks, guys, for the illuminating responses.

My main response to your capitalist-hat statement, bare, is that the trees from the national forests start off as public property, and they should only be cut to the extent to which said logging serves the public interest. If logs are cut and shipped overseas, that only serves the interest of the outfit that cuts and sells them.

Needless to say, that argument does not apply to logs cut on Weyerhauser’s or Georgia-Pacific’s private landholdings. They want to sell those abroad, that’s their right.

But I see your point about the near-impossibility of enforcing the law. Thanks for educating me on the enormous gap between theory and practice. You and Ivorybill have done much combatting of ignorance in this thread.

And please feel free to expand on the Tongass deal. As Perot used to say, I’m all ears. :wink:

27

Tongass…

My dad always taught me not to bite the hand that feeds me, but this particular bug-a-boo brought to us compliments of the USFS and those friendly congressmen I spoke of earlier, really tweeks my sensibilities.

The Tongass National Forest is a huge area, remote in every sense of the word. I was fortunate enough to visit a portion of it, the Lisianski River in 1978, while I was working up there as a surveyor for the Native Claims Settlement Act.

I was all set to go on a tirade about it but in looking up the proper spelling of Lisianski, I found an article written By John Scow in Sports Illustrated, March 1988. It reminds me of that wonderful country and John tells it so much better than I…

http:holysmoke.org/wb/wb0116.htm

28

One of these days, I gotta learn how to make a link. Let’s see if this works.

http:holysmoke.org/wb/wb0116.htm

29

Figured out the link, now I have to learn how to type. Third time’s the charm?
http://holysmoke.org/wb/wb0116.htm

30

bare is on the money with the explanation of export get-arounds. Remember that is an industry enforced set of rules: there are no inspectors, USFS, USCS or otherwise, at the docks in Tacoma. While I agree in principle that there shouldn’t be any particular restrictions on whom you sell your goods to, that should only apply in a elastic market supply of say, pulp. The idea unfortunately falls flat on the merits when export of, say raw old-growth woods (or any other timber good with relatively inelastic supply) reduces availability for internal needs, in turn placing political pressures to remove proper management practices while screaming Help ! and blaming them fuzzy environmental whackos. [Please see Aesop’s fable 'bout the ant for how that game should work.]

A parallel issue on national lands and the natural resources therein: the State of Oregon, IIRC, recently settled a suit with several gasoline companies over artificial gas price increases, which had been articulated as based on “lack of supply”. The supply normally comes from Alaska operations at Prudhoe et al.; the shortfall was artifice itself, as a similar proportion of “unavailable” petroleum products was getting exported to … Japan.

This at a time when Big Oil claims we are dependent on the Arabs and must open up ANWAR for national security’s sake.

31

bare, I read the SI story you linked to, and I’m still appalled, days later. It’s bad enough when old-growth forests are cut down to produce quality timber, but for pulp?? To make, what was it, rayon and cellophane?? How even Alaska’s paleolithic Congressional delegation can justify that, I don’t know. That’s absolutely insane.

And of course, the USFS was spending exorbitant amounts of money to make it happen. It might be cheaper to just put the lumberjacks, etc. on the dole at whatever they’re making to cut down trees.