"Extreme Logging" and "Ax Men"

[slowp]

PM me your addy and it's a done deed.

Ian

Might as well send my share to him. He's got "sun to wallow in." I awoke to the wumph of snow falling off trees in the snow now turned to rain storm. Barbecuing is in a land far far away....Like Hawaii.

 

[Gologit]

PM me your addy and it's a done deed.

Ian

Done. Don't forget Slowp's. You know I'll let her have it...otherwise I won't get any huckleberry pie.

 

[Gologit]

Do you like the local sauce (i.e., J. Lee Roy's) or do you prefer the exotic stuff imported across state lines?

I've never tried Roy's but I've heard good things about it. I missed out on Haywire's BBQ sauce at the GTG last year but I've heard good things about it, too.

 

[wilbilt]

I've never tried Roy's but I've heard good things about it. I missed out on Haywire's BBQ sauce at the GTG last year but I've heard good things about it, too.

I think JLR's is pretty good, but there are other good recipes out there. I have stumbled on a few on occasion, sometimes by accident and desperation.

I recently read in the O'ville paper that JLR is expanding their distribution. I think it's a good thing, given the current economic situation, for the town to be known for something other than casinos and a lake with no water in it.

 

[74craig]

Great informitive posts!

 

[slowp]

Are the Browning trucks symbols of dire things to come? I saw a loaded one heading to our local mill....J L Browning on the side. I get back into the office and everyone is serious looking--the weather service is predicting yet another record setting flood for our area. I'm a bit nervous, this house has never flooded but is too close to it for me. Thursday will be the bad day. Keep your fingers crossed and I will try to buck up. It'll be the third year in a row for major flooding in this county.

If we survive here, I'll be out helping the other folks clean up. Unfortunately, we have a little group of us who are getting very experienced at that dirty job.

 

[hokiewheeler]

slowp, best wishes with the weather. Good thread on forest management here. I'm curious to hear what some of your thoughts would be on the oak bottleneck issue and how to manage to reduce it. I know the PNW is mostly conifers so maybe not so much of an issue there, but here in Ohio, I have been told by OSU forestry types that logging makes it worse. Not sure I believe that because the bottleneck is caused by the fact that oak seedlings are not shade tolerant, and in old growth forests, the canopy prevents regen.

 

[Gologit]

slowp, best wishes with the weather. Good thread on forest management here. I'm curious to hear what some of your thoughts would be on the oak bottleneck issue and how to manage to reduce it. I know the PNW is mostly conifers so maybe not so much of an issue there, but here in Ohio, I have been told by OSU forestry types that logging makes it worse. Not sure I believe that because the bottleneck is caused by the fact that oak seedlings are not shade tolerant, and in old growth forests, the canopy prevents regen.

What is oak bottleneck?

 

[slowp]

What is oak bottleneck?

Heck if I know. I know about poison oak.

 

[Burvol]

And yet another perspective. I log mostly in second growth timber. Some of it was replanted after the initial cut, some of it regenerated naturally,
a lot of it is a combination of the two. Like Slowp said, in our terrain it's nigh impossible to get neat little rows of reprod growing like corn stalks in a field. Because of the nature of the terrain, the natural regrowth of volunteer trees, and the variety of tree types, our second growth forests are almost indistinguishable from what they replaced.

Our second and third growth forests are forests in the true sense of the word. They support as many, and as varied, species of wildlife as the old growth forests did. And now, with riparian conservation, watershed protection, and wildlife habitat a major concern there'll probably be even
more.
And brush? And undergrowth? Plenty of that.

Okay, that being said..theres something else. All of the above drives a lot of foresters and sawmill people absolutely nuts. What they want, and what would be most economically efficient, would be the cornstalk straight rows of trees growing all the same size, with no different tree species, and no brush. Logging is about production and production means getting the logs to the mill at the absolute cheapest cost. They could motor through it with their feller
bunchers, harvest it like stalks of grain, pull the stumps, spray for brush,
and start all over again. Just like growing any other crop...plant, cultivate, harvest, repeat.

In places like the South, and even some places out here, they're doing that and they seem to have quite a bit of success with it. Is it a forest? No. But it's what works for them.

The tree huggers need to be able to tell the difference. All they have to do is ask.

We talked about this before, the other factor here Bob is product quality. The "Production Farm" wood is not lacking in volume per acre vs. fesibility or sustainability, but overall product quality. You end up with nice, straight trees that have low ring count. The grain is looser. The wood has it's best shot at being useful in OSB, chip board, glue lams, ect. The revised building codes in several counties reflect this; larger sizes of beams, more straps, clips, nails, ect. are required than the previous 10-15 years.

 

[wilbilt]

I get back into the office and everyone is serious looking--the weather service is predicting yet another record setting flood for our area. I'm a bit nervous, this house has never flooded but is too close to it for me. Thursday will be the bad day. Keep your fingers crossed and I will try to buck up. It'll be the third year in a row for major flooding in this county.

Wow. Three years in a row? Stay safe!

Major flooding here has most recently happened in 1986 and 1997. 11 years apart. That would make us overdue for another. We sure need some rain, but I hope it doesn't happen all at once.

 

[slowp]

The Eastern part of the county, where I live set a record for a big flood in 2006--winter.
The Western part got hammered in Dec. 2007
I guess, technically 2008 was not a flood year although we had a small one in November.
This one is supposed to hit the entire county. The weather guy is predicting 40 mph winds also. The radio said they have started evacuations in our community. During the 2006 flood, people were surprised and there were a few coast guard helicopter rescues and boats were used. Two people died.
One when he put his pickup in reverse, and went over the river bank, the other guy drove through a manned roadblock, into the water and his body was found up against the grocery store after the water receded.
We don't have the elk hunters to worry about this time of year. Most of the logging equipment is out of the woods too. That'll make it less complicated, but still nasty.

I'll still go by my plan of drinking the alcohol supply up at the bar next door, which saves my reserves for last. Well, I better go to work. We'll probably have a meeting about staying safe.

 

[Tzed250]

Take care slowp...

 

[hokiewheeler]

Oak bottleneck is something you run into in mature stands of oak trees where the acorns don't sprout so you don't have any saplings to replace the old trees when they die or are cut. Maples (silver and norway mostly I think - the not desirable ones) come in the understory and then as the oaks die off they are gradually lost from the stand. An example of this that I am familiar with is in northern Ashland county in a park known as Kroll woods. There are a lot of 200 plus year old trees there, a mix of tulip, white oak and hickory. There were also some tulip saplings in there that were about 3" dbh and cored at 80+ years old. I was there with OSU extension for some forest soils training for work and they got talking about the oak bottleneck issue and said that the research says logging makes it worse. I would think you could remove the maples in the understory and it would be ok, but the more I learn about forestry, the less I know. I'm an agronomist by education.

 

[hammerlogging]

HW- Interesting theory, I've never heard of this oak bottleneck idea. But, there are many factors you're not addressing. The oak and poplar regen thrive in a disturbance type regime, they need sunlight for germination and good growth. They will definately end up supressed when growing in the understory/midstory, hence the 80 yo poplar- hickory and oak will do this too. This is in fact a large reason not to do diameter limit cuts, becasue you are leaving supressed trees that will never get the intended "release". You don't open the canopy up enough in a typical high grade to get adequate desirable regen. The red maples are more shade tolerant so can hang in the understory longer, and don't get supressed like the oaks, etc. But, this has more to do with sunlight. I just don't know about how (over)mature oaks acorn production changes, but if I was concerned about regen, and associating logging with poor timber species replacement, I would immediately address the light issue before enterring some sort of conversation about "oak bottleneck" and acorn production. You don't have to clearcut, if you want 2-3 age classes, figure your leave trees and save them, but cut all the junk, and whatever timber you can justify within your parameters. A 200 yo oak is definately justifiable in many ways- very slow annual growth, liekely quality and value decline.

There are very few locations that are not prone to the "disturbance regime" that makes our oak/hickory/poplar stands. A very small amount of land. They are generally physically protected from wind/ice/fire in some geographic manner.Theres proably some reason the oak stand you're talking about has gottne so mature, other than protection from harvesting-- try fire prevention? Interesting, I'm still interested for a little more info on this bottleneck theory.

 

[hokiewheeler]

I don't have any more info than what I've already posted and that was the first I'd heard of oak bottleneck. This area is a park now so it's not gonna be logged. Half of the preserve was logged or cleared at some point in the 1800s and the other half is undisturbed. The half that had been cleared at some point was more diverse with shagbark hickory, white oak, and tulip. The virgin half was very large white oaks and tulips mostly. The forester was talking about how as mature trees die and eventually collapse, they are being replaced by maples because the maples grow faster. So the proper way to address a mature woods would be to not log the mature trees, or would be to take them because they are gonna die and rot? I recently reviewed a harvest plan for a site in my county that I think was probably a high grade cut as you stated. They took a lot of large old trees out. We don't review the timber they plan to take, just their erosion control practices. In Ohio, forestry is under agriculture not EPA, so they don't have to deal with NPDES.

 

[hammerlogging]

If logging were in the picture, an appropriate prescription might include something like this: mark leave trees- next crop (age class 2, say 20 years from harvest) and whichever of the best "heritage trees" (3rd age class) for seed trees, sentimental value, whatever. Then, harvest for regen (1st age class). All unmarked trees to be cut, down to say 2", that includes merchantable and unmerchantable, harvested or not. This should knock back the maple pretty good and you've gotten the light in there you need for oak/poplar regen. You still have to deal with vigorous coppice growth from the maples, so 7-10 years down the road you may need to do some precommercial TSI- crop tree release- a phase often overlooked.

Since harvesting isn't in the picture, you just need to do the crop tree release when you have a massive blow down (we mimic this with "group selection" mini-clearcuts) so your desired species crown out, not your undesired species. Herbicide or chainsaw, your choice. Silviculture, science and art.... just my take on it.

 

[RPM]

hey RPM i have a quick question about selective logging. on the private lands here, there is a decent amount of single stem logging going on in the steep riparian areas. i've heard some people rave about how good it is for ecological reasons. aside from riparian and terrain stability, how "eco-friendly" is it? particularly around here in the doug-fir forests.

is there enough opening created for young douglas fir to thrive, or is it too shady? my uneducated guess would be that hemlock/balsam etc. might out compete the young fir in a shaded forest.

last, how does the high-grading affect the forest quality over the long term? essentially only the best Fd/Cw/Yc, is worth climbing, jigging, and flying out. economically it seems like it will make the area not feasible for harvesting for quite a while.

i was only involved in local (south island) stuff. i see it having its purposes when there's terrain stability issues, but ecologically, it seems like its been overly hyped up. i heard they've done some in the charlottes/prince rupert area, but i really know nothing about the ecology of the north coast.

Managed forest land (private) on Vancouver Island is largely owned by 2 companies -TimberWest and Cascade Forest Products (owned by Brascan - formerly Weyerhauser - formerly McMillian Blodel). These are the areas east of the E&N line from Sooke to Campbell River (approx. 2 million acres) which was granted to the E&N rail road company in the late 1800's.

Both are publicly traded companies and therefore have shareholders who want to see a return on investment (ROI). Single stemming riparain areas from an economic point of view is called generating a bigger ROI. These companies are milking their holdings for the biggest bang for the buck and are not looking at long term forest management ie:......producing timber over over the long run. TimberWest for example generates a large amount of revenue from selling off prime forest producing land after it has been logged for real estate developments, rather than replanting. Private forests are managed to economic rotation age rather than a maximum rotation age where the stand has reached its maximum potential or culmination age. I am a forester, not an economist - but basically you are looking at weighing the return on capital for carrying the stand from year to year - vs - the cost of doing so......

Single stemming riparian areas probably isn't the most ecologically sound thing to do...especially on larger streams where other values such as fish (Salmon) are involved. Private forest land owners are governed in BC by minimal gov't regulation - most of which is around fish and water quality. The Private Forest Land Association (PFLA) has a set of Best Managenment Practices that land owners are suppose to abide by but there seems to be little enforcement behind it. The bigger companies don't mess about with water and fish because the Federal Fisheries Act is enforced. And your right about Doug-fir - it is shade intolerant and depending upon location and in the absence of any major stand disturbance (fire / wind) the stands will revert to hemlock / balsam stands (climax species).

On crown lands (public forest), single stemming is not called high grading but rather "variable retention". It is an alternative to clear cutting but isn't like the selective cutting that slowp is involved with. These areas have a variety of opening sizes as well as large areas of standing residuals that have been "jigged". I haven't seen any of these variable retention areas post harvest so don't know what the residual stand looks like - but the intent is to have a variety of stand structure left (-vs- a clear cut) which would maintain some biological diversity on hillside. It is also intended to mimic natural disturbance patterns like fire and wind events. What it has done is allowed us to harvest certain areas that we probably wouldn't have been able to clear cut for 20-30 years out or forever in some cases.

In the end many of these areas are planned for a single entry with no intent on going back again. Which tells you about the quality and value of the stand after they are finished. Stand value has to be high for heli logging, never mind single stemming. So, while it may be good for the animals, from a long term harvesting point of view it may be a little short sighted. I believe in logging the timber profile (some bad with the good) over the long term. What is hard about the statement now is that we are constrained by world markets and demand for wood is low so you do what you have to do to survive at some cost.

Don't get me wrong about making a living out of the forest...I'm a company guy and my job is to ensure that whatever I do benefits the company and its shareholders.....but I need to work for at least another 20 years too. We work the system to its limits because thats what you have to do to not loose it to some hippie group or other bleeding heart society....use it or loose it we say around here. Sometimes though when you sit down and try and look ahead 5 years out as to where you might go logging - its getting harder to put a solid plan together.

Its Friday right....

 

[gavin]

thats a good and big answer, thanks a lot. i've been reading some books by Ken Drushka lately and they bring up some interesting perspectives, although he doesn't seem to think too highly of the MOF. Some of the heli logging has struck me as a quick way to make money, and leaving the lower grade stuff around it not worth persuing conventionally. But there will always be that trade off of economics and other interests. Thanks again for the answer.