Restoration Project Puts Ex-Loggers to Work Saving Trees : Forestry: Removal of logging roads lessens erosion and stream pollution in redwood country. It also creates jobs in areas hit hard by timber industry layoffs.

Jay Franke used to help his father cut the biggest of the ancient redwoods, plucking them from forests that seemed to stretch forever in the Northern California fog.

His father closed Twin Parks Lumber Co. in 1977, about the time many of the remaining old-growth trees were absorbed into Redwood National Park.

Now Franke is back in the woods moving soil--not logs--to restore land damaged by decades of timber harvesting.

It was at his father’s mill that Franke, 50, learned to operate a bulldozer and the other heavy equipment he now uses to remove many of the same logging roads over which his father’s logs were hauled.

“I never used to believe this,” Franke says, “but roads cause the landslides.”

Many scientists agree. Loss of tree cover isn’t what causes the majority of erosion that contaminates streams in redwood country and degrades conditions for spawning fish. It is the miles of logging roads that cut into hillsides and disrupt natural water flow.

“Nobody would have given it a second thought years ago,” the quiet-spoken Franke said. “But now we know we have to put the soil back the way Mother Nature meant it to be.”

The restoration efforts are getting more attention these days. After the timber summit in Portland, Ore., in April, phones at the national park office near Orick began ringing off the hook.

Restoration work brings the promise of jobs to areas hard hit by timber industry layoffs. In addition to the national park project, the U.S. Forest Service is considering removing old roads that slice through the woods near here.

The removal of old logging roads from Redwood National Park began 10 years after it was created in 1968. Park officials began to worry that erosion from old timber roads would eventually topple the tallest tree in the world: a nearly 368-foot redwood surrounded by many other trees nearly equal in height.

In 1978 the park expanded 12 miles up Redwood Creek and inherited thousands of acres of clear-cut land, 300 miles of two-lane logging roads and 3,000 miles of narrow skid trails. The trails, which crisscross the hillsides, were caused by bulldozers dragging trees to the large roads.

Erosion from the exposed land “filled in Redwood Creek by about 8 feet,” said Terry Spreiter, supervisory geologist at the park. Salmon and steelhead trout runs in the once-pristine valley have declined to almost nil, park officials said.

Starting with labor-intensive projects designed to employ laid-off timber workers, park officials found their early restoration efforts were inefficient. They decided to start thinking big.

“You’ve got to get in there with the beast that created the problem to solve the problem,” Spreiter said. Now huge excavators and bulldozers back their way out of park roads, removing sediment from tributaries and “outsloping” logging roads.

When restoration is complete, the old roads remain just wide enough for a horse or a couple of hikers. Water flows down natural drainages instead of pooling along the roadway or running down steep slopes, carrying away precious soil.

Recently, after the heavy equipment finished, Dick Mayle used a small farm tractor to build a horse trail along one old logging road. At 42, Mayle is the park’s roads and trails foreman. Before that, he worked as a “cat logger,” cutting roads for Simpson Timber Co.

“Trail work is real similar to working in the woods,” Mayle said. “It’s all chain saws and physical labor.”

He took a chance 10 years ago and accepted a $2.50-per-hour pay cut to work for the park.

“I’m probably better off than I’d be (still working for Simpson),” Mayle said. After thinking a moment, he added: “Well, I probably wouldn’t have a job, so I’m definitely better off.”

Bill Campbell is a timber worker who builds roads for small timber companies in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. He also removes roads in the park occasionally.

Like many who have roots deeply embedded in the Pacific Northwest, Campbell does not get misty-eyed when he sees a big old tree. “I see a lot of houses and a few jobs,” he said.

But he also wonders at the changing landscape. “It’s kind of sickening in a way,” Campbell said. “There was virgin timber all over. We didn’t think we’d lose it.

“But now there’s no future in the woods. There hasn’t been for years.”