How ironic will it be when the results of their efforts are another massive forest fire. Oh, thats right, Destroying 100% of a forest with fire is better than logging 10% of it. What was I thinking? Why let logic and reason rule the day when clueless hyperbole and ignorance are so much more fun.

I have actually LIVED in Oregon my whole life. I love rock-n-roll (go Wolfmother!), friends, family, a good party, smoking the chron, homebrewed/microbrewed beer, and lots of stuff that these liberals also love. I also was raised in a pro-logging scene. I believe these transplanted hippies don’t know 1/2 as much about forest care as they think. Oregon has TONS and TONS of forests, most of which just sit there and do nothing. They just sit and wait to burn. No revenue from timber cutting comes in like it used to. Nothing. We are being held hostage by enviromentalists, and it’s LAME!! I love a good hike through an old growth forest as much, if not MORE, than the next guy, I camp as much as I can every summer. I love Oregon a LOT. But I have to say: if we open up more forests for logging, it will not be the end of the world. Oregon will still have protected lands. These hippies need to actually LEARN forest management, and think with their brains, not hearts. But since they are hippies, that will never happen. It’s sad, really. These transplanted Trustifarians (i.e. trustfund liberals) need to go back to the East Coast and let us mind our own state.

And it sounds like “Duh” knows what’s up, too.

No, Rolling Stone….These kids ARE idiots.

I think “Duh” said it all. Last time I checked, trees were a renewable resource!!

Hey Duh, Mutt, and JEF: Take note: 500 scientists just signed a letter rejecting the idea that logging after fire helps forests recover. Every old-growth conifer forest you’ve ever seen was once burned to the ground and yet recovered to full glory without being logged. The Pacific northwest is so over logged that there are several species on the brink of extinction. The science behind the Northwest Forest Plan says we need to protect what little old-growth we still have and grow back much of what we lost. If we want complex old forests we have to start with complex young forests, not simplified slavaged logged tree farms. The ecological roles played by dead trees include: soil erosion, nutrient storage and slow release, nesting-roosting-foraging habitat for a huge fraction of native birds and wildlife, water retention, etc. Please keep an open mind and continue to learn about the wondrous world you live in.

Doug forgot to mention the recent science from Oregon State University which shows that salvage logging (a) kills the young tree seedlings that form the next generation of forests, and (b) produces logging slash which increases fire hazard. This all too obvious study result was so contriversial in the pro-logging OSU College of Forestry that it almost brought down the dean.

I’ve lived in Oregon all my life and I can tell you this: If you drive from the Willamette Valley into the Cascade range, if you open your eyes, you will see patch after geometric patch of Alder stands in the middle of the firs. These patches were not always there. Those are old clear-cuts that were not re-planted in time to replenish the supply. It seems that some logging companies prefer to pay a stump fee rather than doze and burn the slash, and then replant—it’s easier. The stump fees then get buried in administrative bureaucracy and get tossed into budget mixes. As a result, the government is 20 years behind in their reforestation practices. We are losing ground. Sure! maybe Oregon will never be without trees. But, they won’t remain good timber trees. In 1965 a tree in federal forests had to be 110 years old, and now they are harvesting at half that age. We are losing ground to the big logging interest’s. These are our’ forest’s that they are cutting to extinction. I’m tired of all the skewed convoluted bull-shit science they use to justify whatever makes them money.

Yo bp,
You aren’t the only one who grew up in Oregon. I’ve been here my whole life (almost forty years), I’m also from a timber/agriculture family, and I’ve also been out in those treesits — because if you’re not blinded by timber propaganda then it’s totally obvious that what they’ve been doing to the forests around here for the last fifty years is an absolute disaster.
I also got a degree studying old growth forests, from books AND on the ground, and I also happen to know that most of the other people you think are Trustifarians are actually broke as hell, smart as hell, and some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. The only reason they’re doing what they’re doing is to protect some tiny slice of this country for YOUR grandkids, so shut the fuck up.

Wow. So much for peaceful dialoge, huh I Grew Up Here? Typical hippie shit: closed minds, quick tongues, with no sense of humor or brevity at all. It’s funny how you ‘open minded’ hippies are only open minded when it’s something you already agree with. So go on, get all worked up over the comments I make, tell me to shut the fuck up. It’s what I expect from a stinkin’ hippie like you. have a GREAT day!

The Siskiyou range is the single most diverse conifer forest in the world. Most of the old growth is gone in Oregon as well as every other Western state, except British Columbia and parts of Alaska.

Coniferous forests reproduce more slowly than deciduous ones. The Siskiyous are extremely imperiled and many scientists have called for wide-scale protection for this region.

As a former Forest Service firefighter, I can tell you that the best way to prevent large scale fires in the West is to maximize the amount of old-growth. The oldest cedars, hemlocks and spruce are much harder to burn with less chance of ladder fuels accumulating to carry the fire into the crown of the trees.

Forest scients studied the issue exhaustively and concluded that clearcutting was one of the largest contributors to the massive deadly conflagrations that are becoming more common. All the trees grow back at the same time, become over-crowded and choke each other out, then create a mix of dead wood and weak trees that burns like crazy.

Trees are renewable – ancient forests aren’t.

Wish y’all who are so sure logging is harmless could show us, not tell us, that you think with your brains. How much forest science have you studied? How many different schools of forest science have you considered, and why do you believe the ones you believe?
Or- what experiences of forests have given you the point of view you have? What factors are essential to forest health? How do you know this for a fact?
Love,
A hippie

Really is a shame at the dialogue on this issue. Even loggers agree that the real problem in our National Forests is a combination of 50yrs of fire suppression, automation and exportation. Get a clue people and do a little research before you write this stuff. Fact: our National Forest Service sales are in the negative every year. We sell our forests at a discount and lose money every year. Look it up. We subsidize corporations through road building and are destroying the last refuges of wilderness in the Pacific Northwest with our very own taxdollars. Do you think Georgia Pacific gives a crap what happens to people or ecosystems or communities after they take everything away? Fact: We allow huge corporations to come in and clearcut with one fell swoop of a buncherfeller and put it all on truck, thus eliminating jobs in the forest that used to be small, forest loving loggers with a saw slung over their shoulder. Then we send raw material overseas just to have lumber and finished products sent back to us. This eliminates the need for mills, once again eliminating jobs in an already dying bust/boom economic state. Thanks to Gatt and Nafta, we can pay some child migrant worker to make some shoddy piece of furniture and sell it back to the crappy import stores all over America. Once again, eliminating the jobs and need for skills of craftspeople here in this country, not to mention the difficulty one has finding good quality products. One only has to read biology reports by the government itself to see that clearcut logging on steep slopes, unstable soils and high elevations (which is basically whats left of our public forested lands since Weyerhauser, GP etc. bought up all the lush lowland valley forests years ago) will not be sustainable logging, even when they try to “reforest” with one single cell, genetically derived mono-agricultural species. Even OSU couldn’t stop this reality and the dean and the college is disgraced by their lack of acknowledgement. Fact: Forest fires don’t burn down 100% of forests and loggers don’t stick to 10% when clearcutting. Seriously, educate yourself on fire ecology. We wouldn’t be in this fire mess if it weren’t for Smokey. Even the forest service admits this and is trying to rectify years of fire suppression by now prescribing burns. This is not a hippie movement you idiots!!!!!! This is straight up economics and science. It is all there in black and white, not in the minds or hearts, but on cold hard paper. Pulp and chip mills will devestate what is left of the lungs of our planet. Oregon’s salmon and trout are dying and our water quality is on a steady decline. You people are fools and a disgrace to the intellegence of humans by trying to deny the seriousness of these issues by claiming them to be insignificant beliefs by people of a certain set of values or financial factions. As for enough trees to make a forest, you should spend a little time noticing an entire ecosystem (if you could even wrap your little minds around that vastness) because what we will have left for our children is not that, but pretty much the equivilant to a corn field is what will be left soon.

I don’t know… When I looked at the photos and comments I thought: I wouldn’t be able to do this, I wouldn’t feel comfortable. I oppose violence, but also many other things. I need to study more theory about the practice on one hand, but on the other I need to be talking to people.

I’ve been a Forester for twenty years and I have some reasonable opinions on this subject.

The increased frequency of catastrophic wildfires are for the most part a result of fire suppression over the last 100 years. The decision to supress fire was political in nature and was opposed by many early day Foresters who utilized fire to burn slash and promote natural regeneration.

Re-introducti on of moderate to low intensity fire in various regions of the west is seen by many forest scientists, foresters and ecologists as the most important activty to be undertaken to improve forest health. This includes Jerry Franklin who states in the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP), pg. 653 “Active management to restore low to moderate intensity fire to existing and prospective late successional/old growth forest ecosystems is the most important management action needed to restore more natural conditions and reduce the risks of loss to catastrophic disturbances, i.e., intense stand-replacement wildfires”. “Passive or lassize faire approaches to management may result in unacceptable losses of such forests”.

Other comments from SNEP: Pg 809 – “SNEP assessments clearly indicate the changed nature of fire regimes over the last century in the Sierra Nevada. The risk of severe fires is higher than during any other period that has been evaluated in the Holocene. Large, stand-replacing fires such as are likely now, present significant risks to gene pools of forest trees and plant communities, with direct and indirect consequences to other plants and animals that live in them.”

Pg. 87 – “Resource management by Native Americans in the Sierra Nevada bioregion was long term and widespread, producing ecological and evolutionary consequences in the biota (Blackburn and Anderson 1993). Therefore, many ecosystems in the Sierra are not self-maintaining islands that require only protection to remain in a “pristine” state.”

The experts have spoken. Fire plays a critical role in maintaining forests. In regards to salvage logging, intense stand replacement fires burn up your seed source and seed, not all of it mind you, but enough that what once was extensive networks of forests may end up brush fields with small patches of naturally regenerated trees for the next hundred years or at least as long as it takes for another fire to come through to clear away the brush.

Harvesting some of the most severely burned areas of forests have been shown to reduce soil erosion by increasing ground cover i.e. logging slash and eliminating areas of hydrophobic soils through tillage. Planting of seedlings actually increases your genetic diversity because seed sources are not limited to only local seed (natural seeding) but from various areas throughout the regions seed zone where they are collected.

Controlling the brush for the first five years through manual slashing or herbicides will allow these seedlings to release from competition. The end result is a forested landscape in much quicker time and with much more success.

Daniel Donato’s seedling research is applicable in that many of our native forests contain pioneer species of pine and doug-fir that will seed in after fire. The question is will they survive competition from fast growing brush for water and nutrients.

I’m all for letting natural reforestation occur, but if you have 500,000 acres burned and you forego salavaging 400 million of the billion or so feet of lumber value out there so that 80% of it can come back as brushfield… then you’re not thinking.

I am 100 percent positive that if you were to dedicate 10% to 20% of National Forest lands to intensive forest management and preserve in parks and wilderness the remaining 80-90%, you could harvest 10 times the amount of timber the National Forest is harvesting now, sustainably. You can also bet that the environmentalist people in the biscuit would protest despite having the 90% locked up.

yes, trees are a renewable resource. old growth forests are not- at least anytime in our lifetime. why cut 700 year old forests when sustainable forestry somewhere else could produce the same amound of wood? many species are endemic to these forests. meaning they only exist in these spots. what is the truly sustainable route?

good to see this fight is still going on….