Re: RE: Politics, Fires and Trails

["Duncan Fletcher" <dfletche@gte.net>]

A plague on both your houses.

Sustained yield (As I understand it), originally meant cutting the entire
forest on 100 year cycle - ultimately zero old growth and zero unroaded
areas.  From the perspective of a trail user, much of the trail loss we have
endured is because roads have been built on top of trails. On the plus side,
some of the harvest money was used to maintain other trails. The extreme
environmentalist have also closed trails and made trail maintenance more
difficult and more expensive.

From a fire standpoint timber harvesting is also a mixed bag. Timber
companies have not been much interested in removing smaller trees or damaged
trees that contribute to the fuel load. In areas where selective cutting has
been practiced, increased spacing by timber harvest has reduced tree spacing
and risk of severe crown fires. The environmentalists tended to resist any
tree cutting.

Private timber companies do a better job because they are willing to spend
more money up front. They do things like precommercial thinning which will
clear out some of the fire load but essentially costs them money when they
do it for better yield later.

Duncan Fletcher
dfletche@gte.net


----- Original Message -----
From: <CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com>
To: <RDCARRIE@aol.com>; <bobmorris@rmci.net>; <hikryrdg@evansville.net>;
<ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 4:21 PM
Subject: RC: RE: Politics, Fires and Trails


> In a message dated 8/25/00 3:48:07 PM Pacific Daylight Time, RDCARRIE
writes:
>
> << So what to do?  The simple answer, that most agree on, is to reduce the
> fuel load.  "How" to best do that is the million-dollar question.  The
> problem of fuel loads getting so high didn't happen overnight, and it
won't
> be fixed overnight.  Prescribed burning is one answer...get fire back into
> the ecosystem to restore the forest to what it once was.  But - the lack
of
> fire for so many decades means that it's very difficult to restore the
forest
> with just fire, without including more "drastic" means.  That means some
sort
> of harvest, preferably directed at reducing fuel loads, rather than just
> harvesting a certan number of board feet of timber.  Has there been
> mis-management by the Forest Service?  Depends on what you call
> mis-management.  Believe me, I have yet to see the day when the FS
> voluntarily errs on the side of not harvesting trees!  But timber harvests
> are somewhat market-driven.  >>
>
> All very true.  The problem comes when initially the USFS's hands were
tied
> by so-called "environmental" groups who do not understand that care of the
> environment includes active involvement with it (just as care of your
> domestic animals means feeding, watering, training, etc., rather than
simply
> turning them in the street to be "free"), and thus also came pressure from
> politicians who wanted to pander to that segment of the voting public.
The
> USFS when I was growing up was very much involved with multiple use and
with
> the concept of "sustained yield" of timber harvest--in other words,
> continually harvesting the right amount to keep fuels down and to maintain
a
> perpetual source of trees.  This concept has been greatly eroded in recent
> years.  Sadly, a great many of USFS employees on the lower rungs of the
> ladder are all too aware of this, but they are not the ones making
policy...
> <sigh>
>
> Heidi
>
>