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Old 22-01-2003, 07:27 PM
Aozotorp
 
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Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

http://observer.co.uk/international/...856005,00.html

Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

Ed Vulliamy in Forks, Washington state, reports from a forest land that could
become a wilderness as George Bush backs the commercial pillagers

Sunday December 8, 2002
The Observer

Ray McMahon steadies his feet on the spongy soil of the forest bed and sends
his saw screeching through the wood of a Douglas fir. It totters, creaks and
crashes to earth slowly, the weight ripping its own trunk. 'It's a tree,' he
said, 'it will grow back'.
This is land that borders US Highway 101, west of Seattle through the Olympic
National Forest and down to a series of tiny, ancient, maritime Indian
reservations; a wonderland of lakes, killer whales and forest.

The sky is pierced by snow-painted pines, their craggy trunks pre-dating the
existence of the United States by centuries.

But now a new feature marks the landscape - the barren 'clear-cuts', where the
trees have been felled. They appear like scars, slashed across what would
otherwise be the most awesome landscape in America; wastelands gouged into what
were once forest but are now huge stretches of castrated tree trunks and the
debris of destruction.

They are a picture of the future as the lumber industry, after years of
restraint by rules and protective regulations, is unleashed by new regulations,
announced last week by the administration of George Bush, giving managers of
America's 155 national forests rights to approve the exploitation of the land
they control - primarily logging and mining.

At present, under numerous pieces of national and, in the Pacific North-West,
regional legislation, managers of federal forest country are obliged to conduct
thorough surveys on the environmental impact of any commercial activity. From
now, that obligation is removed.

The author of the scheme is the Bush administration's forestry supremo, Mark
Rey, former vice-president of the American Forest and Paper Association -
co-ordinator of an industrial lobby which was among Bush's biggest contributors
during his White House campaign of 2000, providing about $300,000.

The new rule, says Sally Collins, chief operating officer for the Forest
Service, is intended to 'better harmonise the environmental, social and
economic benefits of America's greatest natural resource, our forests and
grasslands'.

But conservationist groups say the last of the 'old growth' forests now face
destruction. 'It's just a case of "they get the trees and we get the stumps",'
says Leeane Siart of the Oregon Natural Resource Council. 'What we are talking
about here is saving the last bit of our native and old-growth forest'.

They also contest the promised social benefits; Mike Anderson of the Wilderness
Society calls Bush's pledge to create 100,000 jobs through the changes
'complete fantasy'.

In all, 58.5 million acres of forest are now vulnerable to commercial
development. But the forestry proposal is just one prong in what is becoming a
battle for the soul of the West - between environmental and business interests
- as the Bush administration sets about a counter-revolution to open up the
wilderness to economic opportunity.

The most famous of these initiatives was a proposal to open tranches of Alaska
to oil drilling, in accordance with the government's desire to boost energy
production and, according to critics, as payback to the oil industry for its
entwinement with the Bush administration and family.

Although the Alaska drilling was held up in the outgoing Senate, last month's
Republican election victory has led Bush to demand a revisitation of his plan.

About half of all land in the 11 western states is federally owned and managed
by the Department of the Interior, whose Gale Norton wants to open it up to the
'new environmentalism involving people who live on and work on the land'.

Norton was formerly committed to the abolition of the very agency she heads.

'We're being besieged,' says William Meadows, president of the Wilderness
Society. 'There's damage everywhere you turn.'

There are few issues in American politics where the loathing between competing
sides is as acrimonious as timber and logging. Along the cappuccino bars of
Broadway in Seattle, the logging companies are regarded as 'rapists of the
wilderness, the real Nazis, the most evil people that ever lived', as Stewart
Bridges, a supporter of the Earth First group, calls them.

But the logging industry is among the few employers left in an area of rural
slump, populated by maritime Indians and lumberjacks.

Among the employees (and ex-employees) of various logging companies who gather
in the roadside bar at Forks, on the edge of the Olympic National Forest, the
descriptions of students who put spikes in trees, injuring colleagues and
threatening local jobs, are unrepeatable.

'What we need is a Puget Sound chainsaw massacre of ****ing tree-huggers' is
one of the more charitable sentiments - that of Earl Brown, who was laid off
two years ago after 12 years as a logger.

It was to cut a compromise that President Bill Clinton came up with the
North-West Forest Plan in 1994 to protect 'old-growth' forests from
exploitation and also the future of the timber industry.

It was based on the decision by his predecessor, George Bush senior, to
designate the spotted owl as an endangered species. Clinton's plan protected 80
per cent of 'old-growth' areas of mature trees where the owl lived, while
guaranteeing the timber industry a harvest of one billion 'board feet' of wood
per annum.

The timber industry was unhappy, managing to harvest only 145 million of its
promised billion board feet, because of litigation and because most firms had
by now moved away from handling larger logs, in response to the controls now
being torn up. They campaigned for what they obtained last week.

'People have this conception', says Alyn Ford of the Roseburg Forest Products
company, 'that we need to totally preserve anything that's a certain age.
Preservation of old growth is not, in our way of thinking, a management
concept. A forest is a living dynamic.'

Bush began his campaign to open up forests to development last summer, in the
aftermath of a wave of fires. He entwined the need to thin forests for safety
reasons with a promise to cut 'red tape, regulations and endless litigation'
that hindered logging projects. November's mid-term elections, giving the
Senate back to the Republicans, removed the last obstacle to the
administration's ambitions.

'It'll be like playing hockey without a goalie for the next two years,' says
Bill Arthur, head of the mainstream conservationist Sierra Club in the Pacific
North-West, anticipating an 'aggressive assault' on the environment.

Bush's forestry rules essentially repeal the National Environmental Policy Act,
passed under Richard Nixon in 1970. It required loggers and developers to
report in detail the impact of any commercial enterprise and take measures to
minimise them.

The head of the task force that devised the new rules, Horst Grecmiel, adds:
'We're out there to try and make it better. In common parlance, we want to cut
out the fat and beef up the beef.'

To the green side this is a declaration of war on the last vestiges of 'old
growth', a fraction of the ancient forests that once defined this region.

In Washington state, the Olympic National Forest and Gifford Pinchot National
Forest, the mark of condemnation - a blue dash of paint across the bark of the
old trees - is ubiquitous again.

The 'monkey-wrenchers' who spike and camp up trees are busy planning in the
coffee bars of Seattle. 'They'll meet all the resistance we can throw at them,'
promises Andrew Jozwick, a militant with Earth First. 'The trees will live.'

Washington state's Democrat representative, Jay Inslee, fights the cause of the
forest against the White House.

'We're very worried,' he told demonstrators in Seattle, 'that the Iraq war is
going to allow the President to do all this behind a kind of smoke-screen. The
President does love trees: the problem is he loves 'em horizontal; we love them
vertical.'

  #2   Report Post  
Old 23-01-2003, 12:47 AM
mike hagen
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

Aozotorp wrote:
http://observer.co.uk/international/...856005,00.html

Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

Ed Vulliamy in Forks, Washington state, reports from a forest land that could
become a wilderness as George Bush backs the commercial pillagers

Sunday December 8, 2002
The Observer

Ray McMahon steadies his feet on the spongy soil of the forest bed and sends
his saw screeching through the wood of a Douglas fir. It totters, creaks and
crashes to earth slowly, the weight ripping its own trunk. 'It's a tree,' he
said, 'it will grow back'.
This is land that borders US Highway 101, west of Seattle through the Olympic
National Forest and down to a series of tiny, ancient, maritime Indian
reservations; a wonderland of lakes, killer whales and forest.

The sky is pierced by snow-painted pines, their craggy trunks pre-dating the
existence of the United States by centuries.

But now a new feature marks the landscape - the barren 'clear-cuts', where the
trees have been felled. They appear like scars, slashed across what would
otherwise be the most awesome landscape in America; wastelands gouged into what
were once forest but are now huge stretches of castrated tree trunks and the
debris of destruction.

They are a picture of the future as the lumber industry, after years of
restraint by rules and protective regulations, is unleashed by new regulations,
announced last week by the administration of George Bush, giving managers of
America's 155 national forests rights to approve the exploitation of the land
they control - primarily logging and mining.

At present, under numerous pieces of national and, in the Pacific North-West,
regional legislation, managers of federal forest country are obliged to conduct
thorough surveys on the environmental impact of any commercial activity. From
now, that obligation is removed.

The author of the scheme is the Bush administration's forestry supremo, Mark
Rey, former vice-president of the American Forest and Paper Association -
co-ordinator of an industrial lobby which was among Bush's biggest contributors
during his White House campaign of 2000, providing about $300,000.

The new rule, says Sally Collins, chief operating officer for the Forest
Service, is intended to 'better harmonise the environmental, social and
economic benefits of America's greatest natural resource, our forests and
grasslands'.

But conservationist groups say the last of the 'old growth' forests now face
destruction. 'It's just a case of "they get the trees and we get the stumps",'
says Leeane Siart of the Oregon Natural Resource Council. 'What we are talking
about here is saving the last bit of our native and old-growth forest'.

They also contest the promised social benefits; Mike Anderson of the Wilderness
Society calls Bush's pledge to create 100,000 jobs through the changes
'complete fantasy'.

In all, 58.5 million acres of forest are now vulnerable to commercial
development. But the forestry proposal is just one prong in what is becoming a
battle for the soul of the West - between environmental and business interests
- as the Bush administration sets about a counter-revolution to open up the
wilderness to economic opportunity.

The most famous of these initiatives was a proposal to open tranches of Alaska
to oil drilling, in accordance with the government's desire to boost energy
production and, according to critics, as payback to the oil industry for its
entwinement with the Bush administration and family.

Although the Alaska drilling was held up in the outgoing Senate, last month's
Republican election victory has led Bush to demand a revisitation of his plan.

About half of all land in the 11 western states is federally owned and managed
by the Department of the Interior, whose Gale Norton wants to open it up to the
'new environmentalism involving people who live on and work on the land'.

Norton was formerly committed to the abolition of the very agency she heads.

'We're being besieged,' says William Meadows, president of the Wilderness
Society. 'There's damage everywhere you turn.'

There are few issues in American politics where the loathing between competing
sides is as acrimonious as timber and logging. Along the cappuccino bars of
Broadway in Seattle, the logging companies are regarded as 'rapists of the
wilderness, the real Nazis, the most evil people that ever lived', as Stewart
Bridges, a supporter of the Earth First group, calls them.

But the logging industry is among the few employers left in an area of rural
slump, populated by maritime Indians and lumberjacks.

Among the employees (and ex-employees) of various logging companies who gather
in the roadside bar at Forks, on the edge of the Olympic National Forest, the
descriptions of students who put spikes in trees, injuring colleagues and
threatening local jobs, are unrepeatable.

'What we need is a Puget Sound chainsaw massacre of ****ing tree-huggers' is
one of the more charitable sentiments - that of Earl Brown, who was laid off
two years ago after 12 years as a logger.

It was to cut a compromise that President Bill Clinton came up with the
North-West Forest Plan in 1994 to protect 'old-growth' forests from
exploitation and also the future of the timber industry.

It was based on the decision by his predecessor, George Bush senior, to
designate the spotted owl as an endangered species. Clinton's plan protected 80
per cent of 'old-growth' areas of mature trees where the owl lived, while
guaranteeing the timber industry a harvest of one billion 'board feet' of wood
per annum.

The timber industry was unhappy, managing to harvest only 145 million of its
promised billion board feet, because of litigation and because most firms had
by now moved away from handling larger logs, in response to the controls now
being torn up. They campaigned for what they obtained last week.

'People have this conception', says Alyn Ford of the Roseburg Forest Products
company, 'that we need to totally preserve anything that's a certain age.
Preservation of old growth is not, in our way of thinking, a management
concept. A forest is a living dynamic.'

Bush began his campaign to open up forests to development last summer, in the
aftermath of a wave of fires. He entwined the need to thin forests for safety
reasons with a promise to cut 'red tape, regulations and endless litigation'
that hindered logging projects. November's mid-term elections, giving the
Senate back to the Republicans, removed the last obstacle to the
administration's ambitions.

'It'll be like playing hockey without a goalie for the next two years,' says
Bill Arthur, head of the mainstream conservationist Sierra Club in the Pacific
North-West, anticipating an 'aggressive assault' on the environment.

Bush's forestry rules essentially repeal the National Environmental Policy Act,
passed under Richard Nixon in 1970. It required loggers and developers to
report in detail the impact of any commercial enterprise and take measures to
minimise them.

The head of the task force that devised the new rules, Horst Grecmiel, adds:
'We're out there to try and make it better. In common parlance, we want to cut
out the fat and beef up the beef.'

To the green side this is a declaration of war on the last vestiges of 'old
growth', a fraction of the ancient forests that once defined this region.

In Washington state, the Olympic National Forest and Gifford Pinchot National
Forest, the mark of condemnation - a blue dash of paint across the bark of the
old trees - is ubiquitous again.

The 'monkey-wrenchers' who spike and camp up trees are busy planning in the
coffee bars of Seattle. 'They'll meet all the resistance we can throw at them,'
promises Andrew Jozwick, a militant with Earth First. 'The trees will live.'

Washington state's Democrat representative, Jay Inslee, fights the cause of the
forest against the White House.

'We're very worried,' he told demonstrators in Seattle, 'that the Iraq war is
going to allow the President to do all this behind a kind of smoke-screen. The
President does love trees: the problem is he loves 'em horizontal; we love them
vertical.'

What a load a crap. The Forks area doesn't have any old growth that
isn't protected four ways from Sunday - especially not on federal lands.
If the Shrub found a way to skip the paperwork, they'd still have to
rebuild the roads, rebuild suitable sawmills, relieve the timber glut,
raise pulp prices and last but not least, find a logging crew skilled
enough to run a high lead show without killing off half of em the first
week. And there are no pines here. Somebody obviously needed to fill six
inches of column space and never got further into the field than that bar.

  #3   Report Post  
Old 23-01-2003, 08:21 AM
Daniel B. Wheeler
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

mike hagen wrote in message ...
[snip]
What a load a crap. The Forks area doesn't have any old growth that
isn't protected four ways from Sunday - especially not on federal lands.
If the Shrub found a way to skip the paperwork, they'd still have to
rebuild the roads, rebuild suitable sawmills, relieve the timber glut,
raise pulp prices and last but not least, find a logging crew skilled
enough to run a high lead show without killing off half of em the first
week. And there are no pines here.

Really?

No Pinus contorta, aka Lodgepole or Shore pine? Must be a barren place indeed.

Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com
  #4   Report Post  
Old 25-01-2003, 12:32 AM
mike hagen
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

Daniel B. Wheeler wrote:
mike hagen wrote in message ...

snip

Really?

No Pinus contorta, aka Lodgepole or Shore pine? Must be a barren place indeed.


ha - I knew you'd pick up on the biological content. Beach pine runs in
a very narrow strip along, hey - the beach. It's essentially all in the
national park. Pinus monticola does exist on forest service lands at
about a frequency and spacing of a tree per 40 acres. Seems to be the
reason it hasn't all died from blister rust.


Since the only pine I'm aware of in the PNW that is found close to the
Pacific Ocean outside of California is Pinus contorta, I presume that
your Beach pine above and my Lodgepole pine may be synonymous.

As for Pinus monticola: you have that in the Forks area? I'm amazed.
Here in Oregon it is found only at elevations above 2500 feet, and
even then is relatively rare. I know that east of Forks there would be
suitable habitat, but I didn't think it would be found native at that
low an elevation.

Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com

You can find individual white pines all through the washington cascades
and Olympics. Frequency seems equally low everywhere. I used to
consider it rare but after twenty years of cruising here, I find I can
count on several individuals per day.
Blister rust is present. Often the tree is dead or dying when I find
one. They do live long enough to re seed. Most are in 75-100 year old
stands. I imagine the frequency of western white pines (and other minor
species like Yew) will drop even lower in modern managed forests.

  #5   Report Post  
Old 25-01-2003, 05:01 PM
Daniel B. Wheeler
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

mike hagen wrote in message ...
Daniel B. Wheeler wrote:
mike hagen wrote in message ...

snip

Really?

No Pinus contorta, aka Lodgepole or Shore pine? Must be a barren place indeed.


ha - I knew you'd pick up on the biological content. Beach pine runs in
a very narrow strip along, hey - the beach. It's essentially all in the
national park. Pinus monticola does exist on forest service lands at
about a frequency and spacing of a tree per 40 acres. Seems to be the
reason it hasn't all died from blister rust.


Since the only pine I'm aware of in the PNW that is found close to the
Pacific Ocean outside of California is Pinus contorta, I presume that
your Beach pine above and my Lodgepole pine may be synonymous.

As for Pinus monticola: you have that in the Forks area? I'm amazed.
Here in Oregon it is found only at elevations above 2500 feet, and
even then is relatively rare. I know that east of Forks there would be
suitable habitat, but I didn't think it would be found native at that
low an elevation.

Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com

You can find individual white pines all through the washington cascades
and Olympics. Frequency seems equally low everywhere. I used to
consider it rare but after twenty years of cruising here, I find I can
count on several individuals per day.
Blister rust is present. Often the tree is dead or dying when I find
one. They do live long enough to re seed. Most are in 75-100 year old
stands. I imagine the frequency of western white pines (and other minor
species like Yew) will drop even lower in modern managed forests.


P. monticola in my experience are associated with far older stands:
100-600 year old trees often surround the ones I have seen, with
usually some Western hemlock, Whitebark pine, and even Engelmann
spruce present. But I _think_ it is more common in OR than in WA.

Both age and health may be a function of soil types in this case. Much
of the Puget Sound area of WA is geologically formed on a cobble base,
which allows for wonderful drainage, but also allows for little humus
soil build-up. I would expect more variety in soils for the Forks
area, but also a lot of steep slopes.

South of Forks, near Aberdeen, the late Gary Menser inoculated
Douglas-fir with French Black truffle (Tuber melanosporum), hoping to
get some truffle production. T. melanosporum requires soil pH of
8.0-8.7 to fruit. To date, no truffles have been found at the site.
And yet...examination of the roots shows T. melanosporum mycelium is
still present. If an area with higher soil pH and existing Douglas-fir
could be found, it might be possible to establish a whole new economic
crop from such areas. Since the pH would have to be kept high, it
would also provide an area where crushed oyster shells would be
welcomed and recycled.

Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com


  #6   Report Post  
Old 25-01-2003, 08:10 PM
mike hagen
 
Posts: n/a
Default Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

snip
P. monticola in my experience are associated with far older stands:
100-600 year old trees often surround the ones I have seen, with
usually some Western hemlock, Whitebark pine, and even Engelmann
spruce present. But I _think_ it is more common in OR than in WA.

Both age and health may be a function of soil types in this case. Much
of the Puget Sound area of WA is geologically formed on a cobble base,
which allows for wonderful drainage, but also allows for little humus
soil build-up. I would expect more variety in soils for the Forks
area, but also a lot of steep slopes.

South of Forks, near Aberdeen, the late Gary Menser inoculated
Douglas-fir with French Black truffle (Tuber melanosporum), hoping to
get some truffle production. T. melanosporum requires soil pH of
8.0-8.7 to fruit. To date, no truffles have been found at the site.
And yet...examination of the roots shows T. melanosporum mycelium is
still present. If an area with higher soil pH and existing Douglas-fir
could be found, it might be possible to establish a whole new economic
crop from such areas. Since the pH would have to be kept high, it
would also provide an area where crushed oyster shells would be
welcomed and recycled.

Interesting. That's quite a different vegetation type than that on US
Forest Service lands near Forks. Western white pine occurs in both the
hemlock, sitka spruce subzone and pacific silver fir types. Old growth
sections of both have multi aged components - Red Cedar to 1000 years,
PSF to 500, WH to 350, etc. These stands are rare and usually well
protected.

A much larger age class is WH and DF in the 30-80 year age group. A good
deal of this was aerially seeded in the '50s. Some was planted by the
CCC. These guys were NOT aquainted with the benefits of truffles. These
are second and third growth stands, at all elevations, all sites, the
oldest of which in big burns. Some are pretty poor looking due to being
planted seriously off site. Much of this stuff really should be
converted from both a forest manager's and a restorationist's point of
view.

There are basically four log sorts left - two sorts of domestic sawlogs,
Chp&saw and pulp. Sawlogs have to compete with not only Canadian imports
but the combined product from US short rotation forests. Pulp logs, per
se, will be minimal since DF isn't used much and the utilization for C&S
can go to a 2" top. The only use I see for much of this is something
involving engineered chips - but that's not done here yet.

I suppose it's possible to make loggers work for even less than they do
now, but why does this seem like such a good thing to the present
administraion?

 
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