Foresters Tout Better Clear-Cuts

They gape like ulcers in the lush green carpet of the Rocky Mountain forest, ugly reminders of national forest logging practices in the 1980s and earlier.

Clear-cuts--which remove all trees--became an embarrassment to the U.S. Forest Service a few years back and have fueled calls for less logging, even a ban. But the agency says the huge eyesore cuts are history; today’s clear-cuts are far fewer in number, smaller, better designed and better justified.

Critics scoff, saying that the Forest Service simply has taken clear-cutting under cover. They cite forestry practices such as “seed tree” and “shelter wood” cuts as clear-cuts by another name.

“There are new words for it, new looks to it,” said Steve Kelly, a spokesman for the environmental group Friends of the Wild Swan in northwest Montana. “They leave a few trees and say it’s not a clear-cut. The public relations aspect has been better than the forest practices themselves.”

“Certainly the big-block cuts have been reduced,” said Stewart Brandborg of Darby, a conservationist and son of a former Bitterroot National Forest supervisor. “But some of the cuts we still see cause grave concern . . . eliminating most of the big tree cover.”

Clear-cuts are ugly and they remain so for years, often decades; both sides agree on that. The dispute goes deeper.

Critics say that the clear-cuts disrupt forest cycles, harm wildlife and contribute to erosion and stream pollution. But some foresters argue that a clear-cut is the best long-term choice in certain situations, encouraging forest growth by letting in light and reducing competition for water.

“The biggest problem [from clear-cuts] is associated with aesthetics,” said Kevin O’Hara, an associate professor at the University of Montana School of Forestry. “The perceived environmental problems are not quite as bad as most people think.”

Six years ago, looking at photos of scarred forest, Congress ordered a 25% reduction in clear-cutting throughout the national forest system, figured from 1989 levels.

Clear-cutting occurred on 40% of the national forest logged in Montana in 1989, said forester Barry Bollenbacher at the Forest Service regional headquarters in Missoula. That dropped to 17% in 1997.

Or did it? In addition to the clear-cuts, the Forest Service said seed-tree and shelter-wood cuts were used on 26% of the national forest timber cut last year.

Seed-tree cuts leave 10 to 15 trees per acre east of the Continental Divide, and fewer to the west, where growth is faster. A shelter-wood cut leaves 30 to 50 trees east of the Divide, fewer to the west. Both are intended to provide seed for new growth; a shelter-wood cut is supposed to provide wildlife shelter as well.

The agency’s critics say these are essentially clear-cuts, because few trees remain and those that do are so unprotected that they often blow down.

“People don’t even like to hear ‘clear-cut,’ ” said Kathy Lloyd of Clancy, just south of Helena. “So let’s call it something else. The public-relations machine is cranked up.”

Near her home, the Forest Service has proposed a “vegetation manipulation project.” Lloyd’s translation of the bureaucratese: burning and logging, including some clear-cuts.

Dave Spores, the Forest Service’s regional timber officer for nine years until his retirement in January, denies that names are all that have changed. He says terms such as seed-tree and shelter-wood cuts are accurate and long-standing scientific descriptions.

“We haven’t invented any new terms,” he said.

When clear-cutting does occur in the national forests, it is done differently than before to minimize the Swiss-cheese effect, Spores said.

“We’ve changed the manner in which we cut, trying to reflect natural forces,” he said.

The agency now demands irregular rather than straight edges and often orders “clear-cuts with reserves,” in which a few trees are left standing, as they might be if a fire swept through.

Historically, clear-cuts in Montana ran into the hundreds or even thousands of acres, but now the law limits the size to 40 acres, unless the regional forester authorizes an exception.

“It’s a question of, are they leaving enough for the forest to continue as a forest, or did they overdraw this account?” said Mike Bader of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in Missoula.

Clear-cuts, as well as seed-tree and shelter-wood cuts, are used by private landowners. The Plum Creek Lumber Co., the state’s largest landowner, uses clear-cutting for about 5% of its logging in Montana and northern Idaho, said Mike Covey, Plum Creek’s manager of Rocky Mountain timberlands. That is down from 30% to 40% in the late 1980s, he said.

Covey attributes the reduction to a change in corporate policy and to Plum Creek’s near completion of projects removing lodgepole pine killed by beetles. Clear-cuts were the most effective way to get rid of those diseased trees, he said.

Unlike the Forest Service, Plum Creek categorizes seed-tree harvests as clear-cuts.

Dale Burk of Stevensville, author of “The Clearcut Crisis” published in 1970, said today’s clear-cuts and other national forest practices reflect an imbalance in the Forest Service’s approach to land management. The agency still puts too much emphasis on producing timber and building roads, Burk said.

Whitefish conservationist Steve Thompson said he believes that the Forest Service is shifting “from the timber frontier mentality to more of an ethic of stewardship. We are in a transition away from the clear-cut mentality, but we aren’t completely there yet.”