question for loggers....

[mga]

i noticed, watching the many scenes from wild fires, that many trees are still standing after the fire has passed. i presume they're mostly all pine trees.

are these trees still considered as being good for lumber use? it appears that the tree itself is still good, just the branches have burned off.

 

[slowp]

Not a logger, just a forester, and yes, much of it is good if the fire didn't char all the way through. Pine has to be salvaged quickly or bugs and "bluing" of the wood occur. Salvage logging or just working in burned salvage units is nasty. Everything is black, there isn't much shade, and you become black with black stuff coming out the nostrils...icky.

 

[mga]

Not a logger, just a forester, and yes, much of it is good if the fire didn't char all the way through. Pine has to be salvaged quickly or bugs and "bluing" of the wood occur. Salvage logging or just working in burned salvage units is nasty. Everything is black, there isn't much shade, and you become black with black stuff coming out the nostrils...icky.

yea, i figured it would be a dirty job, but i wasn't sure if all that wood just went to waste or if they went in there and cut it down. seems to be a shame if they just left it.

 

[slowp]

It depends on who the property owner is. Right now, if on National Forest (owned by U.S. taxpayers) there's likely to be a lawsuit filed to stop any salvage logging. This tactic is well known, and even if the suers lose, they have won, because the wood deteriorates during the lawsuit process--often becomes worthless. Depending on where it is, sometimes no salvage can be done. Lots and lots of wood is wasted this way. Ooops, not really wasted. Let's say rots away and returns nutrients to the soil unless it reburns.

 

[redprospector]

No, that's ok slowp, you can go ahead and say wasted.
Our trees are a crop, nothing more or less. Leaving an entire burn un-salvaged is the equivelant of a farmer growing a corn crop, and then not harvesting it. And then he could argue, it wasn't wasted, it will all return nutrients to the ground.

Andy

 

[smokechase II]

Options

The FS does have the option of declaring an emergency (legislation about 6 years ago) to get the fire stuff out in a timely manner.

Locally that was done by one district after a 2003 fire but not by another district after another 2003 fire. Guess who has the biggest mess?

=============

When you look at these events think three stages,

(firefighters help create mess over decades)
1) Insect or disease,
2) First large fire,
3) Second large fire.
(legal mess)

The insects don't kill all the trees but what they do kill is burned in the first fire that then kills the rest of the trees that also fall over as new growth comes up forming a perfect fuelbed for the 2nd fire.

I admire Lodgepole for its willingness to die for the sake of firefighter incomes.
What a tree!

 

[smokechase II]

What

What I'm trying to say that trees are way more than just a crop.

Crops are grown in fields by farmers.

Forests are huge multiple use places that provide for dozens of uses and users.

===========

By the way, if we choose some reaonable level of logging we can stop stage 1 or stage 2 or stage 3 and get more of all those others uses of forests.

Plus some lumber for our homes.

Just a question of what we value and do not want to waste.

==========

Those two fires that I mentioned above lost 18 spotted owl nests and no birds have returned. Everyone in wildland firefighting is waiting for the second fire in about 5 - 10 years. Hey, if the wildlife people don't care about owls enough to take some sort of action to prevent their demise in dry east side forest fires its not our fault!

 

[redprospector]

Smoke,
I agree, and spoke to hastily. Trees are more than a crop. But the way things are run (in fear of going to court) there is a terrible waste.
I don't know about the forest where you are, but the Lincoln is hurting because the FS is catering to the Sierria Club, etc. There's got to be a middle ground.

Andy

 

[RPM]

Not a logger, just a forester, and yes, much of it is good if the fire didn't char all the way through. Pine has to be salvaged quickly or bugs and "bluing" of the wood occur. Salvage logging or just working in burned salvage units is nasty. Everything is black, there isn't much shade, and you become black with black stuff coming out the nostrils...icky.

A bigger problem than insects is that the trees will 'check' / crack / split b/c the bark has either been burned off and / or the tree is dead or dying. The sawmill manager doesn't like "checked" wood b/c it screws up his recovery factor. Another factor with burnt wood is that you can't sell the chips to the pulp mills b/c they are contaminated with burnt wood / charcoal.

 

[smokechase II]

Very much correct

"There's got to be a middle ground."

It drives you nuts when you're next to all these mistakes day after day.

 

[Bushler]

3 billion dollars worth of timber was allowed to rot after the SourBisquit fire.

Management by waste. All my life I have practiced conservation, and to see a prime resource wasted just irritates the **** out of me.

The '3 billion' was just an estimate a logging supervisor (retired) came up with at the time. I don't know what the FS numbers were for that fire complex.

 

[Humptulips]

The FS does have the option of declaring an emergency (legislation about 6 years ago) to get the fire stuff out in a timely manner.

50 million feet blowed down last winter on the ridge behind my house. There was a community meeting and the FS supervisor said they would not even consider envoking the emergency clause.

 

[slowp]

50 million feet blowed down last winter on the ridge behind my house. There was a community meeting and the FS supervisor said they would not even consider envoking the emergency clause.

Because they would end up in court. It is my opinion that the objective of most forest's isn't multiple use, but to stay out of court. Going to court does cost an obscene amount of money-- Hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more. Taxpayer dollars also pay some of the suers via grants. A world gone mad.

The Biscuit B.S. was so stupid. The environmental groups were flat out telling lies and the press printed it as fact. The FS sat back and lost so much.

 

[Bushler]

I have a real hard time dealing with this problem of being controlled by the GreenPeople. Its my feeling that if they want to challenge a sale they should have to put up a non refundable bond for the value of the sale, and if they lose in court they reimburse the govt. for all legal expenses.

The endangered species act was not about preserving a species, its about control, power, and money.

The GreenPeople are doing the same thing with the fisheries. Our salmon runs are being depleted by overpopulations of sealions, protected under the Marine Mammal Protection act.

Now I'm all agitated and mad. I hate GreenPeople.

 

[redprospector]

Maybe those of us in the timber industries should start a "group", and start sueing the greenies for......oh, I don't know........Loss of income, mis-management of natural resorces, screwing up our forest's, and just being a$$ holes in general.

Andy

 

[forestryworks]

Maybe those of us in the timber industries should start a "group", and start sueing the greenies for......oh, I don't know........Loss of income, mis-management of natural resorces, screwing up our forest's, and just being a$$ holes in general.

Andy

tried to rep ya, but i'm out

great post

all hail andy!

 

[Gologit]

tried to rep ya, but i'm out

great post

all hail andy!

I got him for you...and I agree with his post. We do a lot of burn salvage and it looks like we're going to do a lot more.

We're still doing a fifty-five thousand acre burn salvage from last year. About half of it is on private ground, the other half is federal.

On the private ground we had the Timber Harvest Plan pretty much in place before the fire was even contained. We started rocking roads and doing ditch/culvert work as soon as we could get in...usually while it was still smouldering. We logged until the snow drove us out last winter and hit it hard again this Spring as soon as we could get in.

The private ground will be finished this fall. The federal ground hasn't even come up for bid yet. This is typical. When it does go for bid the wood will be almost 18 months dead and decaying rapidly. Nobody will bid what the Feds figure they should have so it will probably have to go re-offer and the whole process will start again. In the meantime the timber continues to rot on the stump. Just a sad and total waste of the resource. Nobody filed any litigation on this sale...too remote and not enough readily available media attention.

What we're watching for now is litigation on the fires that are burning this year. There was enough publicity that these fires are now famous and have attracted a lot of attention. Some lawyers and eco-whackos will join hands and the whole circus of suit and injunction will begin again.

In the meantime, the private timber will get salvaged. We have lawyers, too. And they're tough.

The government wood will, probably, stay in the mountains. At least until it reaches the point where it isn't good for anything but chips and mulch. We makes chips and mulch out of slash and tops. Good saw-logs shouldn't end up that way.

 

[clearance]

Maybe those of us in the timber industries should start a "group", and start sueing the greenies for......oh, I don't know........Loss of income, mis-management of natural resorces, screwing up our forest's, and just being a$$ holes in general.

Andy

Good idea. And why do tree planters get paid? There are so many treehuggers out there you would think they would be planting as volunteers. But thats hard work (never planted, only juvenile spaced but I know it is), and that ain't good, better to sit around whining. This whole topic drives me wild, people who have never really done anything, never sweated, trying thier best to destroy the jobs of the good men and women.

They want to stop it all, meanwhile they consume like the rest of us. Hip-o-crits, a hundred years ago they would have starved to death, useless.

 

[Bushler]

Its not about the littles and the earth muffins, its way bigger than that. The enviromental groups, (I only call them that because its what they call themselves), are so well funded through endowments etc. they are financially impervious.

They buy off liberal Federal judges by hiring them for speaking engagements.

I believe they (enviromental groups) have become the 4th branch of govt., and the most powerfull people on earth. Think again before you go up against them, because you will probably lose.

Our Fed Forest service people should be cataloging site indexs, doing timber cruises, engineering road systems and planing for optimum yield on a sustained basis.

Not defending in court. What a farce.

The same mentality by the ignorant GreenPeople and their Fed puppets has caused a catasrophic failure of our west coast fisheries as well.

Obama told Oregon gov. Kulongoski, (Oregon's dumbest man) that we needed more Wilderness areas and marine parks.

 

[The Lorax]

I was talking about this last week.

I work in the fishing industry, I am not a fisherman now but was for over 10 yrs.
I found this article in the Guardian.
It might interest some of you.