🚀 go-pugleaf

>Robert Froese writes:
>>I, Jim Hurst, write:

>You speak with apparent anger of clearcutting as an "archaic and
>destructive practice" as if it were a self evident truth, and offer the
>defense:

Anger?  Nah, more like disappointment and disgust mingled with a 
deep cynicism.

But anyways.  Shame, Robert.  Context stripping isn't nice.  I said 
there was an emerging body of scientific evidence of the resource 
damages of clearcuts, but that most people weren't attuned to 
scientific thinking.  Rather...

>>They ["people"] go out and look at the moonscape clearcutting leaves, and
>>say, "This is OUR land, and they did THIS to it?!" and go home furious. 
>>Stumps don't lie. ....They may not know the science, but they know what
>>they like.

And those that bother to check the facts find that there is indeed good
evidence that Something Is Wrong In the Woods.

>So how did I become an apologist for the status quo?  

Pardon me if I mispresented your position.  Linking clearcutting to 
freedom, heralding clearcutting as a symbol rather than a silvicultural
practice, implying our credit limit will run out if we don't clearcut;
all these things confused me.  At least we lost the objectivists, whew.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but from here, it did look from here that you were 
rather gleefully touting clearcuts as a philosophical and technological 
triumph of Man Over Nature.  Clearcut (de)forestry is the status 
quo, hence my simplistic assumption.  

Anyways, I appreciate the more moderate tone of your recent posts.

>It seems that I
>appear to question the rationale behind wholesale condemnation of
>clearcutting as a silvicultural practice.  

Indeed, and a forestry intelligent public should question it.  Let's
talk about it.  I entertain certain objections to clearcutting in the 
coastal temperate rainforest for a variety of reasons, many of which are
based on the fact that it doesn't mimic natural processes, and so does
considerable damage to the resource.  I'm willing to explain in detail 
my condemnation of clearcutting as a silvicultural practice.  Stick around.

>I have never argued that forest
>practices are above question, nor do I intend to do so. 

Good, then we have things to talk about. 

>>Myself, I think most
>>_industries_, at least, are more motivated by economics than symbols.
>
>Let's talk economics.
>
>Forest land use issues are complicated in B.C since 96% of the Province is
>public land.  As the Government of B.C. acts as agent for the Crown in
>management of this land, it is the mandate of government to make land use
>decisions.  

Interesting.  "We're from the government, we're here to tell you what to
do with the land."  Hmm, for all its faults, BC makes the Forest Service
down here look good.  They respond to citizen input in a variety of 
ways.  Citizens can actually influence policy down here, that sounds
suspiciously like freedom of some sort, and good government of some sort.

Y'know, 96% is more than I'd trust the govt. with.  But, for the 
moment, you're stuck with it, or blessed with it, as the case may be.

>Obviously, this method is and will continue to be a
>confrontational one, as various and often conflicting interest groups
>continue to attempt to pressure the government to implement their agendas.

Agreed.  In the past however, wouldn't you say it is true that one 
particular interest group has essentially dictated govt. policy regarding
public timberlands, and that this group has been industry?

>It has been argued, I believe very
>convincingly, that the forest resource has never been managed in such a
>fashion as to return the maximum economic benefit to its owners,
>regardless of who they have been.  

Certainly true.  But is the maximum economic return the best management
policy for public property?  If so, we'd sell off all our parks and musuems,
something most of the public wouldn't support.  The same holds true in 
forestry, I suspect:  the public wants a reasonable economic returns, but
they also desire the many non-fiber amenities that forests provide.  Forests,
not tree farms.

>B.C. policy has never provided forest
>tenure holders with the security necessary to justify efficient forest
>management in the long term.  

Aaah, but you see, the TFL system is based on the concept that the 
forest is only a timber farm.  I maintain that this is a relatively 
obsolete assumption.  As native forests become more scarce, the non-fiber
amenities they produce become correspondingly more important relative
to the fiber farms.  And as commodities like timber and minerals become
relatively less valuable in a knowledge intensive economy, communities
totally tied to extractive industries risk becoming marginalized.

Let's talk about efficient forest management.  Even granting long term
concessions (which has a less than sterling track record, or perhaps you
could give examples of timber concessions that worked?), what incentive
will there ever be for MacBlo and the boys to do anything but grow fiber?
The wood coming out of native forests is mature saw timber, fine-grained
large dimension stuff.  The long exposure to the discount rate guarantees
that commercial outfits will be given major incentives to level the little
tree farms are soon as they'rer merchantable.  Or, in a period of relative
timber abundance, they may grow them to the CMAI (cumulative mean annual
increment, basically the inflection point) of the growth curve.  Still,
they will never grow big forests again, it just takes too long.  So, they're
liquidating public assets and replacing them with something less valuable.

This is an extractive use of public resources.  Euphemisms about trees
being a renewable resource aside, industry is renewing trees, but not
forests.

The free market is the most powerful technology known to date for 
allocating human resources, but it is partly blind:  clean water, 
forests, wildlife, biodiversity, all these are things externalized
in the TFL system.  As such, it skews the economics against more
principled operators who try to preserve the long term productivity 
of their resources.  There are little timber towns in Oregon sitting in
the middle of hundreds of square miles of clearcuts (Butte Falls comes 
to mind).  They are sad little places, doomed because they stripped their
"renewable" resources faster than they renewed.

Is this what you want for the small towns in BC?

>The coastal BC forest is the most responsive
>to intensive silvicultural investment;  

Most responsive of what?   Better than the southeast US?

Yes, temperate rain forests are quite productive.  Long growing seasons,
lots of water, where they have good soils they'll be quite productive.
Then again, "intensive management" doesn't necessarily mean clearcutting,
there are intensive operators using selective cutting, like Orville Camp
and Collins Alamanor.  (what's that guy in BC, Merle ???, ifergit). 

Intensive selective management produces economic bennies, plus keeps a
healthy forest, and provides many non-fiber amenities.

>investment that is not made on
>public land for presicely the same reasons as Clayoquot or South Moresby. 

?  I'm having trouble understanding your point here.  Who doesn't invest
on public lands for what reasons at Clayquot?  Do you mean they don't 
replant because their concession runs out?  So they just strip public
lands and leave?  My, isn't that a fine way to treat the public!  

>The government has demonstrated that investors in forest enterprises have
>little reason to believe that over the long periods of discounting you
>speak of they will see any return on their investments.

Meaning that the forest concessionaires are failing in their duty to 
regenerate trees?  Meaning that the TFL system is a failure?

Consider another alternative to the problem of encouraging forest investment.
The Oregon Forest Practices Act was passed around 1974, and it states,
more or less, "If thou cut trees, thou shalt regenerate trees."  Oh, there
was weeping and wailing amongst industry at the time, but it turns out they
could live with such a law rather easily.  Compliance is usually around 
99%.  Not that their aren't other problems, damage to streams and fisheries
and such.  But it's a good start.  It's a success, many states now have
such laws.

This was a *state* response to a problem of deforestation.  There were a 
couple of problems addressed in this law:  in the Coast Range and Cascades,
heavy timber harvest (virtually all clearcutting) was severely damaging 
fisheries.  On the eastside (high, dry, lodgepole/ponderosa country)
clearcut harvest was occurring on sites that could not regenerate, due to
soil damage, so that (private) forest land was being converted to sagebrush.

It being in the public interest to preserve fisheries, and keep forests
productive, a bill was hammered out whereby those who profit from timber
harvest were required in some assure that trees come back, and some level
of protetion was given to fish-bearing streams (revisions to the riparian
protection are being hammered out, extending buffers above the fish bearing
streams and providing for recruitment of instream woody debris, neither of 
which industry likes One Bit).  

With the highest standard of living in the world, perhaps Canada could
try something innovative like this, rather than allowing private interests
to deforest public lands in the name of propping up something from the
colonial era like the TFL system?

>So it seems to me that a healthy approach in resolving land use conflicts,
>as well as improving general or specific economic benefits, would be to
>persue a policy of providing some true long term security in tenure to forest
>companies in exchange for the surrender of some existing tenure agreements and
>their conversion to other resource uses, such as recreation.  

That is certainly an approach that industry would like to bring to the table.
However, note that industry has been greviously deficient in fulfilling their
contractual obligations to date.  The Crown might well be best served by 
simply nullifying their current contracts and starting from scratch.

What evidence do you see that it is in the public's best interest to convert
large tracts of coastal temperate rain forest (for example) into industrial
fiber farms on the long term?

>This would
>likely be accomplished through the sale of legal title to Crown Land and
>the establishment of park areas.

I question whether this approach is one that serves the broader public 
interest.  Then again, 96% of the land belonging to the feds does sound a
bit too much.  Still, how does one get good value from a large scale land
auction?  By going slowly, I suppose.  There is always the danger of a
large scale transfer of wealth from public to private hands, a la Reaganism.

It seems to me that a healthy approach in resolving land use conflicts,
as well as improving general or specific economic benefits, would be to
require a forest practices of a high standard on all public lands.  
Amongst the goal managed for would be:

	long rotations
        sustained yield
	preserving the natural biota
	ecological balance, maintaining good distribution of native habitats
	extreme care to protect the soil
	good economic returns

Contrast this with clearcut forestry, which emphasizes only the last.
	
>clearcutting can be both an economically and silviculturally efficient
>system that does not unduly effect the potential for ecosystem recovery. 

That it is the most economically efficient in the short term in terms of
fiber production I do not argue.  Of course, it's not going to produce high
value saw timber, so your little plantations will have to compete with the
radiata pine from Chile, New Zealand, and the large scale cutting that will
be going on in Siberia.

I grew up in the Southeast US, and when the old growth in BC is gone, you'll 
no doubt be taking lessons in efficiency at harvesting your plantations from 
that area.  Harvesting fiber farms is much more labor efficient, meaning less 
people needed in the woods, for starters.  No more chainsaws, just drive up
in a Cat that hugs the tree and cuts it off at the base.  

But does it really not unduly effect the potential for ecosystem recovery?
What about interior species?  Once you've made the commitment to 
clearcutting, it may be 200 years before much of the native fauna can
survive on that piece of ground.  Coastal temperate rain forests tend 
toward a patchy spatial distribution of stands with a single dominant
age class.  The biodiversity in these forests is highest at two of these
dominant age classes:  very young and very old forest.  In very young, 
there are grasses and herbs, then the canopy closes at age 20 or 30,
and doesn't open up until around age 150+.  No commercial outfit will 
grow stands this long, so these stands will never reach ecological maturity.
So once you began fiber farming on plantations, an important ecological 
component of the forest is lost until you stop.

What about damage to the soil?  There are better and worse sites:  in the
OR Coast Range, the soils are deep, steep, and nutrient rich.  If you're
going to hammer land with clearcuts, this is a pretty good area, because
the soil can handle some erosion and remain productive.  Many clearcut
sites in the Cascades, with thin volcanic soils, can't regenerate trees
twenty and thirty years later.  This is not good forestry.

>there are
>issues around clearcutting that deserve attention as well as many clear
>examples where clearcutting results in disturbance that hampers tree,
>plant, wildlife and microbe regeneration to an unacceptable degree.

Agreed.  I maintain that, because of the drastic nature of clearcutting,
the onus is certainly upon its proponents to show that it will not be
destructive to the public resource on any given site.  But when you talk
about timber concessions where they clearcut by the square mile, with
little or no regard to riparian areas, aspect, sensitive soils, etc, 
it's not very surprising that lots of areas don't recover.  It's not
surprising that public outrage builds up, either.

>>I maintain that clearcutting is a destructive, inappropriate management 
>>technique for most public lands.  Would you be so kind as to explain to me 
>>why this isn't so?

>With the assistance of _Balancing_Act_ by Hamish Kimmins, and the
>disclaimer that the ultimate choice of harvest method depends on the
>management objectives being pursued, not the absolute tolerance of harvest
>method, I provide the following points:

Hmm, haven't read it.  My favorite forester/author is probably Gordon 
Robinson, "The Forest and the Trees."  Chris Maser, "The Redesigned
Forest," and Elliot Norse, "Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest"
are close seconds.  Just for the record, what's is Kimmins background?
Is he a partisan?  I particularly like your admission that the ultimate
choice depends on the management objectives.  The objective of industry
is to make profit.  The objectives of the public are complex, but it's
obvious that there profit is only one of several, conflicting objectives.  
Clearcutting serves the former admirably, the latter poorly.

>1.  The regeneration of some species of trees whose seedlings are poorly
>tolerant of shade is generally much more successful in clearcuts than
>partial cut systems.  

In particular, in the coastal temperate forests, we're talking largely
about Douglas fir, I think.  Foresters explained to the citizenry for a few 
decades that Douglas fir couldn't regen except in full sunlight.  This is
not true.  They certainly don't regen in full shade very well.  But on 
harsh sites, they actually require shade to survive.

A closer approximation to the truth might be that Douglas fir prefers lots
of sun, and in shady spots is at a competitive disadvantage to more shade
tolerant species, such as hemlock.  A light selective harvest can be used
to shift the advantage to douglas fir.   Problems with species mix in regen
don't have to be dealt with the first year in a selective cut.

>Some tree species in some types of forest will
>survive only in full sunlight.

Could you please provide a few examples of these species?  Absolute statements 
are so interesting!

>2.  Clearcutting may provide for easie weed control, easier site
>preparation for both planted and natural regeneration, and a greater
>opportunity to control species mix.

There's no doubt, when you level a forest, napalm the stumps and duff, 
and douse them with herbicide, the opportunities for control are 
greatly facilitated.

As Richard and I are discussing, perhaps on sites with high potential for
weed competition, you want to be a little gentler.  Remember, all that
burning, dousing, and planting is expensive, and it's a long time til
the payback.  The FS ducks the issue by taking profits from the harvest, 
and reinvesting them in tremendously expensive reforestation techniques.
Some maintain, however, that investments in regeneration should stand on
their own profitability, and that sites that cannot be profitably 
reforested should probably not be logged, and certainly shouldn't be 
clearcut.

>3.  Clearcutting takes advantage of economies of scale and is often the
>most economically efficient silvicultural system both in the long and
>short term.  

Hmm, economies of scale.  I don't see how this applies more to clearcuts
more than selective cuts unless they get quite large.  And then you're 
really hammering some ground.  

Short term, yes.  Long term, hmm, no one has successfully clearcut in the 
long term to my knowledge.  Would you be so kind as to provide us some 
examples of long term experience in clearcut forestry?  The only case I
know of is the German experience.  Ferinstance, here's what Plochman, the
District Chief of the Bavarian Forest Service at the time, wrote in 1984
(From Chris Maser, The Redesigned Forest).  The context is a discussion 
of the replacement of hardwoods with softwoods:

	The calculations made 150 years ago ... proved to be exact in one
	regard... The economic superiority of the softwoods over the 
	hardwoods is an indisputable fact.

	The biological consequences are less pleasant.  It took about one
	century for them to show up clearly...  Anyway, the drop of one
	or even two more site classes during two generations of pure spruce
	is a well known and frequently observed fact.  This represents a 
	production loss of 20 to 30 percent.

Granted, there is the hardwood/softwood matter complicating the issue.  But
can you come up with any other long term examples of clearcut forestry?
The southeast is having some problem on their second generation, so I 
hear.

>This system may provide the opportunity to recover initial
>costs before discount rates have rendered them excessive.

Hmm, it seems to me another rewarding option is economic thing is to to 
leave enough capital standing so that the investment requirements are 
minimized.  Yes, you take a little less off, but you also preserve non-fiber 
amenities.  Salmon, mushrooms, water quality, special forest products, 
recreation, ...

>4.  In terms of safety, clearcutting is considered easier and less
>dangerous than many alternative harvest methods, especially in decadent or
                                                                ^^^^^^^^
>windthrown forest stands composed of interfering stems and/or branches.

No question on the safety issue.  I've seen enough selective cuts, and talked 
with silviculturalists enough to come to the conclusion that, given the choice 
between logging and not logging, industry will find same ways to selectively 
log with a degree of safety comparable to that found in clearcutting.  Still,
logging is one of the most dangerous jobs still around.  Just another reason
that it is becoming marginalized.

>5.  As many of the negative environmental effects are caused by roads,
>clearcutting, which allows for the use of skyline or other long reach
>cable yarding methods, may result in fewer roads than ground based harvest
>systems.

Hmm.  Cumulative impacts of timber harvest in watersheds is one of my 
interests.  The measurements I've seen suggest the cumulative impact to a 
watershed, per acre, is about 3X worse for roads than for clearcuts.
It depends on the site and the treatment, of course, and the quality 
of the road.  Still, I don't think MacBlo and Weyerhaeuser are in the 
backcountry building 20 square miles of roads at a time, whereas clearcuts 
that large aren't that unusual.

The impact of roads varies a lot, mostly depending on the steepness 
of the ground, but also on the quality of planning and construction.
A selective operation with well planned and built roads can use techniques
appropriate to the terrain.  No points on this one from me.

>6.  Some plant and wildlife species acieve greater success under forest
>conditions more closely resembling early seral states, which are
>facilitated by harvest methods that remove the majority of standing timber.

The increased species diversity of early seral states in in large part due
to the fact that lots of sunlight then reaches the ground, which in turn 
generates herbs and forbs, which attract all kinds of things.  Lots of weedy
species thrive in clearcuts, but once the canopy closes up, nearly nothing
thrives in tree plantations.  

Then again, remember the clearcut doesn't resemble the early seral state in
several important respects:  the diverse structural legacy is removed (snags,
downed woody debris).   And clearcut forestry means you never reach the 
later seral stages, which many species also depend on.

Given the situation on the ground, species which thrive on clearcuts are 
likely to be most plentiful for another 20 - 30 years.  The same cannot be
said for interior species.

>7.  Some coastal forests, even on steep slopes, may suffer from reductions
>or inhabition of tree growth due to excessive accumulations of acidic
>materials in the forest floors that inhibit tree growth unless
>significantly disturbed.

Hmm, this is a new one.  Interesting.  Too acidic for conifers?  Conifers 
tend to acidify the soil, partly as a chemical defense against broadleafs (the 
broadleafs have their own special conifer_suppressing chemicals too.
Imagine, chem warfare in the woods.  It's a jungle out there).  

Could you be a bit more specific here?  How common is this?  Is it a 
soil thing?  What soil types are susceptible?  Unless it occurs on a
significant scale, it seems relevant only in isolated cases.  

>8.  Some coastal forests in areas of high rainfall may suffer from
>chemical changes in the soil that restrict growth unless the soil is
>sufficiently disturbed.

Again, more details, please?  "may suffer?"  Is this speculation, or 
research?  Soil leaching does occur in areas of high rainfall, no doubt, 
that's why the soils in moist tropical forests tend to be so poor.  Then 
again, clearcutting is hell on the soil.  Compaction, erosion, then the 
burning, meaning more erosion, plus disruption to the soil fauna and 
nutrient loss.

So, Robert has made an excellent case of the benefits of clearcutting,
such as they are.  Next time we'll consider its weak points, I gotta go
now.

> ...  "Clearcutting is not a Crime"
>>	Clearcutting is not a crime.  In Canada.  Yet.

					Cheers,

					Jim