The following article was first published in Wild Earth, vol. 2, #1, pp 69-70, 1992. Some changes in punctuation have been introduced into the text. Also, a correction and an addition are enclosed in brackets. It should also be noted that US Forest Service and Industry lexicon and practices have changed little between 1992 and 2007.
To hear the U.S. Forest Service tell it, our primitive Appalachian forests in all their virgin splendor, were really impossibly decadent, scarcely alive. And to hear these bureaucrats, the ancient trees lacked only one ingredient to cure their ills: clearcutting. A simple remedy!
To get this message across to an initially gullible but increasingly skeptical public, these industrial foresters use a well-honed rhetoric and lexicon of terms ranging from euphemistic to scary. Thus the present forest, with trees far younger than those of the primary forest, dating mostly to the turn of the century or later, when it arose from the holocaust of logging and fires, is said to be "aging." This characterization is almost invariably used for 80-90 year old trees in environmental assessments of timber sales despite the Forest Service's own literature (Agricultural Handbook No. 271, USDA Forest Service, 1965), which shows that some major tree species add their greatest yearly growth increment at 100 years of age, and that some species live 500 years or more. Stands of trees 80 years of age are sometimes said to be "falling apart," and one ranger admonished citizens at a public hearing that "it's a dying forest out there." Obviously there is no appreciation here for the dead trees and downwood characteristic of old growth, traits essential for the health of the forest. Such a forest doesn't "age" but exhibits dynamic equilibrium between all ages of trees, including the dead and dying.
We frequently hear or read that clearcutting is required to revitalize "stagnant stands of timber," which then "regenerate" as "vigorous" and "thrifty" sprouts. The forest is said to be in need of "opening up" or "daylighting," implying that shade intolerant but commercially desirable species such as oaks and Tuliptree could not grow but for the aid of chainsaws and bulldozers. To discredit gentler methods of logging involving selection of trees or groups of trees, they raise the specter that the forest in the dry oak-rich George Washington and Jefferson National Forests might be overrun by shade tolerant and commercially inferior species such as Beech, Red Maple and Black Gum. This argument has also been made in the Monongahela National Forest, where shade tolerant species such as Sugar Maple and Beech are common and where oaks are not as common because of moist conditions. How puzzling then that both shade tolerant and intolerant species were abundant in the original virgin mixed mesophyte forests of the moist Cumberland and Allegheny Mountains, while intolerant oaks thrive without management elsewhere (Lucy Braun, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, Macmillan, 1950)! As pointed out by the prominent ecological forester Dr, Leon Minckler in numerous publications (e.g. Journal of Forestry, vol. 72, 1974), the large openings of clearcuts are not required to generate intolerant species. In the old-growth primary forest this was simply accomplished by tree fall gaps and other disturbances that generally left openings far smaller than clearcuts, or by fire, whose role in most Appalachian forest types is still not well understood.
When we carefully examine clearcut areas, the picture that emerges is quite at variance with Forest Service propaganda. Since most clearcuts done under Forest Service management date back no further than the 1960s, its silviculturalists haven't seen their handiwork mature. However, some private lands have older cuts of a similar nature, and some of these are informative. Even for the Forest Service the trends are disquieting, as reflected in their reports. Valuable species such as Northern Red Oak, White Oak and Black Oak are frequently replaced by less valuable Scarlet Oak, Black Gum or a plague of Red and Striped Maples. A striking example is revealed in a 12 April, 1990 scoping notice on Timber Stand Improvement in compartments 1 and 6 of the Lee Ranger District of the George Washington National Forest. Original stands consisting of 45% Northern Red and Black Oaks of "good quality" were replaced (in descending order of abundance) by Red Maple, White Pine (planted), Scarlet Oak, White Oak, Virginia Pine, and a mixture of seven other hardwoods and Virginia Juniper. A similar example may be observed in a 10 year old clearcut near the popular North River Campground of the Dry River R.D. in the GWNF. Here the uncut forest surrounding the clearcut consists dominantly of upland oaks with little Red Maple. However, Red Maple has practically taken over the clearcut.
Also, in many areas in which the Forest Service has tried to use clearcutting to convert hardwoods on poor sites to pine, this fight against nature has proved expensive and frustrating to the industrial mindset. Thus in a 16 May, 1990 letter from the James River Ranger District of the GWNF relative to a "White Pine Release" E.A. we read: "From experience we can say that the majority of stems which are overtopping the pines are Red Maple, Scarlet Oak and several types of brushy species." In these cases the FS uses herbicides, adding to the general degradation of the watershed. In a Virginians for Wilderness examination of many clearcuts, these appear to be common trends. Certainly this challenges the Forest Service axiom that Red Maple and other relatively shade tolerant species pose a threat only in small selection cuts and clearings.
We are told that one advantage of clearcuts is that they provide numerous sprouts which, since they utilize the root systems of the large trees they replace, grow faster than seedlings, at least initially. However, this proliferation of sprouts also has disadvantages. The sprouts are usually crowded on and around the stumps. The straightest of these sprouts are at the center of the clump and usually originate on the stump, sometimes high up. However, this exposes them to basal rot as the stump underneath rots away. Sprouts the originate on the roots around the stump are sounder but tend to be bowed outward and so may yield crooked timber. Although vigorous, clearcut sprouts may not be thrifty. [Another characteristic of sprouts is their genetic identity to the trees from which they originate, so the forests they form have a lower potential for genetic diversity than those derived from seeds.].Of course, clearcuts result in numerous sprouts only if the trees cut are hardwoods and sufficiently small, since large hardwoods seldom sprout much, and conifers almost never do so. Most of the existing clearcuts in the Central Appalachians were done in very immature stands less than 50 years in age, hence the sprouting success. However, the trees clearcut were by and large derived from seedlings that resulted from cutting the original primary forest of large trees. In view of the characteristics of sprouts as previously discussed, trees being clearcut are probably straighter and sounder than those now developing from these sprouts in clearcuts.
The many small trees cut in clearcuts have resulted in other disadvantages. Because most of the nutrients in the tree, exclusive of those in the leaves, limbs and roots, reside in the inner bark or cambium, and since small trees contain a larger proportion of cambium than do large ones, their removal depletes the soil disproportionately when compared with the removal of large trees. It is likely that this effect contributes to the disproportionate growth in clearcuts of Red Maple and Scarlet Oak, species adapted to poor soil. Also, an analogous process affects the economics of clearcutting. This point is discussed in Gordon Robinson's book The Forest and the Trees (Island Press,1988), with tables showing that small trees cost considerably more to cut, limb, buck, skid, load and transport than do large trees. This helps explain the below cost timber sales associated with clearcutting.
Proponents of clearcutting usually say that opponents object to the method because the results are unsightly and then patronizingly assure them that nature will soon heal the scars. Yet no informed critics of clearcutting base their criticism on mere appearances. To many people, fire scars and blowdowns would seem as unsightly as clearcuts. However, natural disturbances have few if any of the negatives of timber extraction. Nutrients are not hauled away with wood products. Compaction of soils and destruction of the forest floor do not occur unless the fire burns very hot-usually as a result of human-induced fuel loads. Most important, unless human intervention via fire suppression and salvage logging occur, naturally disturbed areas have little contact with the outside human-modified world. Consequently, there are fewer avenues of entry (i.e. roads) for alien species-including humans. Still, appearances do count for something, and the ugliness of clearcuts also indicates their destructiveness. Striking examples showing gross erosion scars, acres of barren ground, and poor regeneration are found in the ecologically distinctive Hidden Valley Special Management Area in the Warm Springs Ranger District of the GWNF. Here, on dry, low site index land, west of the Jackson River, a forest of largely Scarlet, White and Chestnut Oak trees less than 10 inches in diameter was clearcut with disastrous results. Bare, sandy eroding soil is exposed over wide areas, while regeneration is confined to widely spaced clumps of crowded and inferior sprouts. These clearcuts are in gross violation of the forest plan, and were done despite citizen objections. Policies of rape and run clearcutting continue on all Appalachian National Forests.
Here we have confined our discussion largely to silvicultural effects of clearcutting on National Forests. The same arguments apply to State and private lands, except in the case of private lands government subsidies are lacking or smaller. Unfortunately, clearcutting on state lands, where it is justified as wildlife habitat improvement (as it is on National Forests), is as yet little challenged. We have barely touched upon the many negative ecological effects of clearcutting. Many of these have been documented in our widely distributed flier "Clearcuts: Why They're the Worst."
This paper is a contribution of Virginians for Wilderness to Alternative Forest Plans for the George Washington, Jefferson, and Monongahela National Forests. The enthusiastic assistance of Mike Jones, Steve Krichbaum and Gus Mueller is appreciated. Virginians for Wilderness can be reached at [727 Stingy Hollow Road, Staunton, Virginia 24401].
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