DECONSTRUCTING CHIP
MILL PROPAGANDA
Chip mills only use waste wood and poor quality trees.
Chip mills will use any wood that is fed into them. If the
owners of the chip mills have QUOTAS to meet, which they always
do, they'll take anything, including grade timber and smaller
trees that could become grade timber if left to grow. The same
applies for contract loggers who have quotas set by the chip mills.
Chip mills don't hire foresters to mark trees for their loggers
to cut. Nor do they issue silvicultural guidelines for the loggers
to follow themselves. They just issue quotas. And they pay when
those quotas are met.
But who says all so-called waste wood should be utilized anyway?
Shouldn't top wood and culls be left to rot and enrich the soil?
Shouldn't some stands that have been heavily cut in the past be
thinned by girdling (rather than commercial cutting) so that all
the all the waste wood will go back into the soil?
Chip mills don't encourage clearcutting.
Well, they may not issue specific INSTRUCTIONS to their contractors
to go out and clearcut, but neither do they hire foresters to
develop sustainable management plans for landowners, nor do they
issue silvicultural guidelines to their contractors that prohibit
clearcutting.
In fact, most of the contractors that supply chip mills use
large mechanical harvesters that are unsuited to selective cutting
unless they are run by highly trained personnel, which is rarely
the case. These machines are very expensive to own and operate,
and are most efficient working on clearcuts where the operators
don't have to worry about maneuvering between trees and scarring
them in the process.
If they don't want to encourage clearcutting, why don't they
agree to make their permitting conditional upon contracts with
the state stipulating that they will only buy wood from landowners
and contractors that have been certified under sustainable forestry
programs?
Besides, clearcutting mimics natural processes like hurricanes
and wild fires.
So clearcutting is best understood as a NATURAL DISASTER? But
even with severe windstorms, many trees will be left standing.
Hurricanes typically cause severe damage only on slopes facing
the strongest winds, the southeast facing slopes, and on wet soils.
Fires also leave many live trees, particularly those with thick
bark that insulates them from fires. Thin-barked maples, birches,
pines and hemlocks will often die; but thick-barked oaks and hickories
will survive, plus older trees of other species. Wet areas won't
be affected by fires.
Clearcutting is necessary on many woodlots to reverse
the bad effects of decades of high-grading.
OK, a bit of the truth emerges. Translation: Industry (facilitated
by bureaucracy) has so badly MUTILATED the forest that the only
remedy is to level it and start over. The first part is of course
true, but how does the second part follow from it? Why not try
to salvage what is left rather than throw the proverbial baby
out with the bath water?
Most high-graded forest stands still have 30-50% of acceptable
growing stock, that is, trees that if left to grow will produce
valuable timber in time. After one or two improvement harvests/thinnings,
these trees will grow into very respectable timber stands. And
they will produce high rates of return over the next 10-20 years.
Landowners won't have to wait for two generations to see another
harvest as they will after a clearcut.
Clearcutting is but one tool of science-based forestry.
Now that they've high-graded the piss out of the forests for
40 years, they want to give them the COUP DE GRACE by clearcutting
them. Then they'll move elsewhere for 40 years. Then, as soon
as the trees are big enough, they'll come back high-grade the
piss out of them for 40 years. Then they'll clearcut them again.
This is science-based forestry.
Given the choice between continued high-grading and clearcutting,
the latter is the better choice.
Once again, a bit of the truth emerges. What they're really
saying is they've screwed things up royally. They admit to having
done MASSIVE ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE, but now they've figured out how
to redeem themselves. There certainly is truth in the diagnosis,
and there's a certain idiot logic to the prescription, but given
their history, can you trust these people?
It's sort of like saying, well, hitting the thing with a hammer
didn't work, so now we're going to try a sledge hammer. Let's
see if that does the trick. Trust us. We know what we're doing.
We're trained in science-based forestry.
We tried doing selective cutting and we found it left
too may inferior trees behind.
What they tried was CLASSIC HIGH-GRADING: cutting the best
and leaving the rest. It was selective only insofar as they "selected"
the biggest and best trees. And of course they left all the inferior
trees behind because they were only thinking of the short-term
returns from logging.
There's a big difference between selective logging and selective
silviculture. They tried the former, but not the latter. Selection
silviculture would have called for just the opposite of what they
did: leaving the best and cutting the rest. And it would have
resulted in highly productive, sustainable forest stands.
Landowners have property rights and it's up to them how
they'll sell their timber.
The typical landowner sells timber only once or twice in a
lifetime. Loggers and procurement foresters buy timber every day.
Who do think will win contests of NEGOTIATING SKILLS under these
circumstances?
Given the the amount of knowledge and experience that are required
to design and execute a sound forest management plan, landowners
need professional guidance and assistance. They need to know how
to avoid destructive high-grading and clearcutting, and how to
plan for the long-term productivity of the forest.
What some loggers and procurement foresters really mean when
they talk about property rights is THEIR right to landowners'
property. They believe they are entitled to go in and cut whatever
they want, however they want, and pay the landowner whatever they
feel like paying. Studies have shown that consulting foresters
get at least 20% more for the same timber as loggers and procurement
foresters.
Chip mills won't come in and level 10,000 acres in one
night.
No, it will take the average chip mill about A YEAR to level
10,000 acres. And then it will level another 10,000 acres per
year after that until there's nothing left to cut within the "procurement
area" of the chip mill.
The reason that we have so may chip mills in the first place
is because the big pulp mills and OSB mills that the chip mills
feed have exhausted THEIR procurement areas, and have developed
the satellite chip mill technology to EXPAND their procurement
areas.
What we don't need is more regulation. We already have
enough regulation to choke a horse.
What we really have is NO REGULATION at all. The so-called
best management practices that are in place in most states are
strictly voluntary on the part of loggers and landowners, and
they only cover things like stream crossings and erosion control,
not silviculture or management.
The few states that do have regulation of cutting practices
have it to protect loggers from a plethora of local regulations
and ordinances, many of which could be quite restrictive if the
state didn't intervene on the loggers' behalf to preempt such
local regulations. State cutting practice regulations also typically
include mandatory best management practices to appease local environmentalists.
Opposition to chip mills is just a pretext on the part of
preservationists to control forest industries and private property.
Given their past record, would anyone is his/her right mind
NOT want to control forest industries? They admit having screwed
things up royally through decades of high-grading. And now they
want carte blanche to fix their mistakes with rampant clearcutting!
Who wouldn't be opposed to this travesty except those who profit
from it?
What most sane people want is to give more control to well-informed
and well-advised landowners so that they can make the best choices
about the future of THEIR private property. Most landowners worked
hard to come up with the money to own their land. They don't want
to have their property values destroyed by rapacious chip mills
and their contractors.
Many studies have shown that sound silviculture yields 2-3
times the annual returns of high-grading and clearcutting over
time. Likewise, net present values of well-managed forests are
2-3 times those of clearcut or high-graded forests.
Karl Davies, Silviculturist
http://www.daviesand.com
Northeastern Forestry Reformation List Server
http://www.daviesand.com/Connections/NEFR_List/nefr_list.html
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