Battle Continues Over Clear-Cutting of Forests

New restrictions on the way loggers harvest timber in the vast Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois has given environmentalists hope that others will follow suit.

A Shawnee management plan that went into effect last year bans almost all clear-cutting, the chopping down of all trees regardless of their age in tracts of 20 to 40 acres, instead of selective cutting of individual trees.

“What happened in the Shawnee is nationally significant because it’s never happened before,” said Jim Bensman of the Sierra Club. “Now you can say: ‘Look at the Shawnee. If they can do it, why can’t we?’ ”

But the U.S. Forest Service, which manages 156 national forests, is not rushing into a nationwide ban on clear-cutting.

“Our management philosophy is to let these things be worked out locally, as it has been done in the Shawnee,” said Forest Service Chief F. Dale Robertson. “We want to be at peace with the local people.”

Some heated words were exchanged in the battle of the Shawnee, a 262,000-acre forest of oak and hickory bounded on the east by the Ohio River and on the west by the Mississippi River.

Joe Glisson of the Regional Assn. of Concerned Environmentalists, a grass-roots organization, called his opposition “bumbling idiots.” Charles Daugherty, president of the Illinois Wood Products Assn., called Glisson’s group “meddlesome folks” and troublemakers.

Somewhere in the middle was the U.S. Forest Service.

Environmentalists say clear-cutting causes erosion, degrades water quality, reduces the wildlife habitat and leaves an ugly landscape of stumps and ruffled underbrush.

But the Forest Service, while conceding that clear-cutting adversely affects some wildlife, maintains it’s the best method of caring for and cultivating forests.

Clear cuts, the agency argues, emulate natural disasters such as fires, which rejuvenate timber stands. The large cuts allow sunshine to saturate the forest, enhancing growth.

The practice also benefits some game animals, such as deer and wild turkey, the Forest Service says.

The agency reminds critics that federal law requires it to maintain timber for America’s use and that without logging roads the public would have no access to the forest.

Len Carey, a Forest Service spokesman in Washington, likens clear-cutting to harvesting corn.

“What about clear-cutting in the cornfields? Isn’t that what we do? Grow the corn and cut it down?”

The National Forest Products Assn. points out that the timber industry nationally employs 1.3 million people with an annual payroll of $29.6 billion.

“We’re not the bad guys,” Daugherty said. “We’re who make the jobs.”

Chopping individual trees was the predominant method of logging before World War II. After the war, the Forest Service approved stepped-up clear-cutting to satisfy the growing demand for lumber.

The goal of clear-cutting is twofold: the immediate sale of a large quantity of timber and the replacement of the natural forest with even-aged stands of trees of the commercially preferred species.

Of the 11 billion to 12 billion board feet cut annually from the 191 million acres of federal forest land, about half is harvested by clear-cutting, said the Forest Service’s Dick Fitzgerald in Washington.

But the Wilderness Society puts the figure closer to 75%.

The Shawnee dispute is rooted in the National Forest Management Act of 1976, which required national forests to devise 50-year management plans.

The act also required that clear-cutting only be used when found to be the “optimum method” of tree harvesting.

In November, 1986, the Shawnee approved its forest plan.

Four appeals were filed by environmental groups.

The original draft of the plan emphasized clear-cutting as the preferred method of harvest and placed annual hardwood harvest levels at 12.6 million board feet.

On Aug. 15, 1988, after mediated talks, the agency agreed to alter its forest plan, eliminating clear-cutting almost entirely.

All but one appellant, the Assn. of Concerned Environmentalists, agreed to drop their appeals.

Forest Service officials and environmentalists say that although management plans in other national forests limit clear-cutting, none comes close to the Shawnee.

According to environmentalists, many of the ecological problems linked to clear-cutting are reduced by using individual tree selection or group selection--smaller cuts in the forest.

Leon Minckler, a consultant on environmental forestry in Virginia and a 33-year veteran of the Forest Service, conducted a 20-year experiment in group selection on the Kaskaskia Experimental Forest in Southern Illinois.

He believes it works.

“The Forest Service has in almost no cases shown that clear-cutting is the optimum method,” Minckler said. “It might be the optimum method for the logger. It’s not optimum for the forest.”

Minckler said the Forest Service balks at group selection because it’s time-consuming and costs more money. Foresters must examine each tree to determine if it’s ready for the mill.

The agency contends alternatives are unproven, although Minckler’s research found that under group selection the forest remains highly diversified, providing a wide range of habitat for wildlife.

But the Forest Service said more acreage is affected by group selection and its smaller cuts in order to get the same harvest volume as clear-cutting.

The Regional Assn. of Concerned Environmentalists, unlike the Sierra Club, opposes all clear-cutting, except for the elimination of diseased timber stands--a position that riles the timber industry.

Rich Hoppie of the Wilderness Society called the Shawnee clear-cutting ban “a small step.”

“We want to see it done more,” he said, “but we have no expectations that the Forest Service will do so willingly.”