Reply to Aug/Sep Mother Earth News editorial:

Dear Mother,

“Are We Losing…” in the Aug/Sep 09 issue is right on target.  But I would like to elaborate on your comments on sustainable forestry.

You state we need to “grow trees fast enough to satisfy our demand without ruining the forest in the process”.  The reality is that we have vast tracts of forested land where lack of harvest has condemned them to death by insect and disease.  There is no shortage of trees – we just need to develop (and publicly accept) methods of harvest that are satisfactory to our senses!

Mother Nature has a way of cleansing the forest – we call it fire.  But we have suppressed fires, both “natural” and man-made for a century in many areas and the growth has produced trees that are unnaturally crowded.  The Western Slope of Colorado has lost 90% of the native lodgepole pine to beetles in the past 5 years.  Now those large stands of dead trees can no longer house the wildlife that should be abundant there.  Fire will clean it up and, in a dense standing-dead forest, it is not likely we will be able to control it.  Watershed damage will ensue and we will all wring our hands and ask “how can this happen?”

If we exclude fire, we must allow harvest – and that is where the fight begins.  The view of a clear-cut, with the attendant brush piles and apparent scars, looks horrid – forest management techniques such as strip or patch cuts have alleviated the visual concerns and provided surviving stands that can house the displaced wildlife.  Selective harvest is also possible but very expensive and therefore not popular with commercial loggers.

Before we cut even the correct tree, we must have a method to process it.  In Colorado in 1950, virtually every county had one or more small sawmills, even out on the eastern plains.  In those days, the sawdust was burned in conspicuous cones and these were targeted for elimination by the public even before air pollution was a national issue.  Since technology did not offer alternatives (we now have many uses for sawdust), the small sawmills disappeared.

Larger commercial operations have been attempted with almost all coming to grief when a reliable harvest could not be provided.  The most egregious example would be the state-of-the-art stud mill in South Fork, Colorado.  Harvests in the Rio Grande and adjacent National Forests were frustrated by well-meaning “environmentalists” (the kind that chain themselves to the equipment!) to the point that no further tracts were offered for harvest.  The sawmill was deactivated and dismantled, the employees out of work, and the site properly cleaned up.  The following year, a forest fire destroyed many times more acres than the harvest would have taken.  Wow, what a success! 

It is argued that small-scale logging and sawmill operations cannot compete with the large businesses and Canadian imports.  I disagree.  The great advantage that the small firm has is fuel cost avoidance – the logs (or processed lumber) does not have to be trucked or railed 1000 miles to the point of use.  The challenge is the inspection of the lumber – most large sawmills have on-site inspectors that look at each board and grade it to an acceptable standard.  When you build your home, the mortgage company wants to know that the materials do meet that standard.  It is quite costly for small operators to train and retain grade inspectors.

When we overcome this obstacle (and we will), the small logger,  operating with equipment that is less disruptive of the land surface, and the small sawmill operator, using either band- or circular-saw equipment, can produce very high quality material from the forest and market it in their own community.  This will promote sustainable forest management and insure our watersheds, wildlife, and forest scenes are properly protected.  Lumber yards, are you listening?  Support your local small operator!

Carl Unlaub
Member, American Tree Farm System