What is clearcutting?
What is site prep?
Aren't these areas replaced with natural forests?
Aren’t these at least economically successful ?
What is the correct method for obtaining wood from forests?

The forest ecosystems of America are undergoing a crisis of survival. Our federal forests, far from being an oasis of pristine wildlife and natural ecology, are in many cases examples of very bad forest mismanagement. Over the past decades, the agencies managing these public lands have severely overcut these forests so that in some regions, entire Ancient forest ecosystems on federal lands have been destroyed, and may never recover.

One of the main "techniques" used by the US Forest Service and other agencies in their attack on the natural forests has been clearcutting (even-age logging) and its associated practices of roadbuilding, slash burning, site preparation and pesticide use. Since the Forest Service adopted even-age logging as the primary method about 35 years ago, many of the ecologically richest federal forests have been wiped out, mangled by clearcutting. The irony is that the Federal government is paying billions of dollars per year to the Forest Service and other agencies to administer our national forests, which includes the logging program. Billions of taxpayer dollars have bee lost.TOP

What is clearcutting?

Clearcutting and its variations: seed tree, shelterwood cutting and group selection, is the method of logging a forest so that all or most of the trees are cut down immediately or within a few years. The existing natural forest, with its biodiversity of plant and animal species, and the clean water and clean air it produces, is entirely eliminated. In many logging operations on National Forests which employ clearcutting, as much as 66% of the wood is left as debris or residue, a phenomenal waste of our precious forest resources.

• Clearcut areas can be small or large. Shelterwood cutting is a type of clearcutting which leaves a few trees per acre to reseed the area from those remaining trees. However, those trees are cut down a few years later. The euphemistic technique termed "group selection" as normally practiced is really just a patchwork of clearcuts.TOP

What is site prep?

After the devastation of clearcutting, the Forest Service subjects the site to preparation for replanting tree seedlings. Individual living trees which were not wanted for lumber, and were left standing, are killed by various methods. To "clean up" the site, bulldozers scrape the land, pushing the remains, woody debris, broken vegetation, and unfortunate animal victims into piles. In many regions of the country, these large slash piles are burned in huge smoldering fires, creating tremendous air pollution, and destroying forever the genetic blueprints of the local populations of the wide variety of plants and animals that lived in the area. Many times one or more applications of herbicides are applied to kill remaining vegetation. Sometimes individual living trees are injected with poison to kill them.TOP

Aren’t these areas replanted with natural forests?

No! The Forest Service and other agencies eliminate the natural forests, and replace them with artificial stands of genetically similar tree seedlings. They grow trees in monoculture (only one type of tree) plantations for wood, chips or pulp.

• The stands are not natural forests.
• Natural forests are filled with many types of trees, plants, animals, and healthy abundant soil, all working together for the most efficient and maximum growth of the trees and all other living biomass in the forest. The natural forest is filled with old, middle age and young trees, and is naturally resistant to damage from fire, floods and drought.
• In contrast, these artificial stands of trees are a "biological desert". They are devoid of all of the magnificent, diverse and myriad forms of plant and animal life, which have made up the fabric of life in America’s forests for thousands of years.TOP

Aren’t these replanted tree stands a good replacement for America’s natural forests?

No!

• First, many replantings are complete failures. After a clearcut, in many cases, the newly planted tree seedlings die. Clearcutting removes the forest, exposing the tiny tree seedlings to extreme heat, cold, dryness, and wind, killing them, and leaving once healthy forested areas barren.

Furthermore, clearcutting causes massive soil erosion and nutrient loss, making it impossible for a large, natural old-growth forest to grow on some sites again! The final result is a landscape devoid of most vegetation; many clearcut areas of our National Forests in high elevations, dry or extreme cold or hot areas, or on steep slopes, are now parched wastelands.

• Second, even when these artificial stands of trees do grow on a clearcut area, they are not a good replacement for a natural forest because these tree stands must be intensively managed against nature. As in farming monocrops, repeated applications of toxic chemicals are used to prevent the process of natural succession, that is, to stop the natural diversity of plants and trees from returning. The trees are viewed as a crop, and all others forms of life as pests. These monoculture stands of trees are extremely susceptible to massive infestations by pests and diseases, which then prompts the Forest Service to cut down uninfested as well as infested trees. Also, these stands have no moist underbrush, as do natural forests, and therefore are very dry and susceptible to intensely hot unnatural fires. The Forest Service has recently greatly increased "salvage" logging of burned, diseased, or bug infested forests, claiming to do so to increase forest health, even though fire, disease, and bugs are all part of nature. The salvage logging is simply an excuse to cut as much timber as possible, by whatever name.TOP

Aren’t these artificially maintained stands of tree at least economically successful replacements for natural forests?

No!

• Forest Service timber programs in nearly every National Forest lose money for American taxpayers. The small revenues from federal timber sales never pay back the enormous costs involved in subsidized logging. Costs include road building ($10,000 or more per mile), heavy machinery to clearcut, expensive site preparation methods, hand replanting, and the enormous Forest Service and other overhead costs in the bloated administrative bureaucracies.
• Even using the Forest Service’s own deliberately confusing accounting system (TSPIRS), the Forest Service has lost an astounding $365 million in a recent fiscal year.
• The destruction to fisheries and outdoor recreation causes tremendous economic losses and unemployment in those and related industries. These financial losses are far greater than the revenues from timber cutting.
• Timber workers must suffer the ravages of boom and bust cycles of unemployment.
• Subsidies applied to below cost federal timber sales put the federal forest timber in direct competition with timber from small woodlot owners. This creates incentives for the woodlot owners to clearcut and sell off their forests for a short term profit, instead of managing their land in an ecologically and economically sound manner using selection management.
• The only beneficiaries of clearcutting our federal forest lands are the few timber companies and lumber mills that are taking the cream of America’s public forests at bargain prices.TOP

What is the correct method for obtaining wood from forests, without destroying the forests in the process?

• The last Ancient Forests, Roadless forest areas, streamsides, second growth areas with critically important ecological values SHOULD NOT BE LOGGED AT ALL. These are the last remaining wild areas left in our national forests, and must be permanently protected as core forest areas.
• Outside the core forest areas, strictly limited amounts logging should be permitted, but not clearcutting. As an alternative to clearcutting, selection management is the method of cutting only individual or small groups of trees in a healthy natural forest at periodic intervals, such as every ten years. The forest is continually planting new tree seedlings on its own, without the expense of additional human labor involved in site prep. High quality timber is available from the same stand on a perpetual basis. Employment is more stable over the long run. More jobs are assured. The soil and its fertility are continually replenished by the natural forest processes, so no expensive artificial fertilization is necessary.
• Timber companies all over America practice selection management on their own land. They know selection management is good financial management. It is money in the bank, with guaranteed income on continuous timber sales for decades ahead, and all this with lower capital costs than even age logging (clearcutting).

On Federal lands, selection management can efficiently produce timber to be a small, steady supplement to our nation’s timber supply, the vast majority of which comes from America’s privately owned timberlands. By ending logging in core forest areas, and prohibiting clearcutting, whole natural forests will begin to return, bringing the native vegetation, tree species, and animal forest inhabitants back to the newly recovering forest ecosystems. TOP