GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

10-12-2002, 08:44 PM

Larry Caldwell wrote:
In article ,
writes:

Nothing like a little black humor to point up a problem. There's too d..
many people out there. At least fire is cleaner than plague.

Actually, my point was that fire is a wonderful thing as long as it is
somebody else's neighborhood that is burning down. I was at the Portland
Community College Rock Creek campus a while back. There is about a 160
acre development of brand new town houses out there, all of them zero lot
line with cedar roofs. Fifty years from now it will be a slum. Urban
renewal is going to be easy in that neighborhood.

When I was a teenager, there was a comedy song called "Little Boxes"
about housing developments built out of identical units.

My wife tells me that the last lumber mill in the Illinois Valley is
scheduled to close in February. Losing that market is going to be a real
blow to small woodland owners. You would think there might be enough
salvage out of half a million acres of forest fire to keep one mill
going, wouldn't you?

You bet. Not that fire salvage HAS to take place everywhere - but in
good locations, why not? Get Larry H. to mark em. I doubt that many ESA
listed species are hanging about the hard burned spots.

I just got a circular in the mail from the UW Rural Technology program
(RTI). They've calculated that anyone growing DF above 24 inches
diameter is now paying a $100 to $150 penalty when they sell. This is
because remaining mills have retooled to small log/fast rotation fir.
They saw a significan advantage for small Northwest timber growers to
switch to 40 year rotation Red Alder and Red Cedar. Small sized Df logs
are now a commodity which can't compete with world wide logs of similar
size. Alder and cedar have niche markets which insulate them from world
wide competion.