Timber Firm Plans Clear-Cutting in Bid to Save Trees

Just up a mountain road from this town in the heart of Sierra logging country is a spooky patch of forest that, simply put, has too many trees.

The trunks of the pines are inches apart, their branches indistinguishable. No sunlight reaches the ground, and there’s no room to walk between the trees.

It’s a tinderbox that could feed a catastrophic fire.

Environmentalists and loggers agree that such second-growth forests, which result from years of fire suppression, are not as healthy as those where trees grow as much as six feet apart and sunlight filters down to the forest floor.

Sierra Pacific Industries, California’s largest timber company, says reducing the danger of wildfires on its vast holdings will be one benefit as it shifts from “selective thinning” to what it calls “visual retention,” virtual clear-cuts that leave four to eight trees per acre.

The company says it will then be better able to manage the next generation of trees that grow in clear-cut areas.

Environmentalists ridicule the notion that all but leveling a forest is the best way to save it.

One thing is clear: After a fire season that burned more than 293,700 acres of wild land in California, the issue of whether clear-cutting is an effective fire management tool is heating up.

Fires struck Sierra Pacific’s property as well as land managed by the U. S. Forest Service, which owns 20 million acres, or one-fifth of the land in California. About 4.5 million acres of that is designated as wilderness, where no timber is cut. Another 600,000 acres in river corridors are not cut either.

Fire is a natural, important part of a healthy Sierra forest. It leaves old dead trees, called “snags,” for birds and other animals to nest in; it clears away small trees and leaves the large ones to provide habitat; it keeps the trees from crowding each other; it helps return nutrients to the soil.

But the fires that consume unhealthy dense forests have so much fuel that they can burn so hot, they burn up all the nutrients in the soil and make the ground as hard as concrete. Even water can’t penetrate it, and the water and ash run off into streams.

The dense stand near Arnold is right across the road from a clear-cut, a piece of land that has been stripped of trees and has little vegetation.

“We try to design these along major ridge lines or roads so we can control fire better,” said Mike Mitzel, a district manager for Sierra Pacific Industries.

Environmentalists say clear-cuts eventually could lead to greater fire danger if the replacement trees are allowed to grow back too densely.

“If you take everything away, a fire’s not going to burn effectively,” said Sierra Club organizer Warren Alford. “But in 8 to 10 years, in a dense forest, that’s an increasingly dangerous fire opportunity.”

Sierra Pacific plans to leave just four to eight trees standing per acre on between 50% and 70% of the 1.5 million acres of timberland it harvests over the next century. About 240,000 acres have been designated for actual clear-cutting, while about 560,000 acres will have clumps of trees left on them.

Once the company completes the visual retention or clear-cuts, it will go back to selective harvests, said Mark Lathrop, community relations manager for Sierra Pacific. That could take decades.

California has 40 million acres of forest land, 16.7 million acres of which is harvestable. On average, timber companies clear-cut about 8,350 acres of the state’s 279,000 acres that are harvested in a typical year, according to the California Forestry Assn.

Logging almost always increases fire danger, said Steve Pyne, professor and fire historian at Arizona State University.

“All of the large fires in American history have followed logging or land clearing because you’ve created a huge amount of fuel,” he said. “A lot of material may be used, but a huge amount is left--branches, needles, small stuff or slash, that’s particularly vulnerable to fire.”

And the trees planted to replenish the clear-cuts are susceptible to fire because they are young and small. Older, bigger trees are more resistant to fire.

But harvesting trees can be beneficial if the forests are properly maintained.

“Where logging works as a fire protection measure is really kind of gardening,” Pyne said, “where you convert it to a garden and you intensively weed it and manage it and cultivate it.”

That practice, however, can cost the forest biodiversity and ecosystem health, aside from being expensive and labor-intensive, Pyne said.

The threat of intense, catastrophic fires has increased because the more frequent, cooler fires typical of the Sierra have been suppressed, and the forests don’t receive the fires’ restorative benefits.

That’s where clear-cutting comes in, according to Sierra Pacific Industries.

The company maintains that the clear-cuts will provide the disturbance needed to let new trees grow to restore the health of the forest and help prevent intense fires.

“Nothing can stop a fire in these dense stands,” said Cajun James, the company’s principal research scientist. “We’ve suppressed fires long enough that when they get that intense, they can’t fight them.”

Alford, of the Sierra Club, counters that clear-cutting does not mimic a healthy fire in the Sierra. He said too much is taken out for a healthy forest to grow back in its place, and the herbicides that are put on clear-cuts--to keep down the vegetation that might interfere with replanted trees--can be harmful to people.

Clear-cutting is controversial throughout the state. Even the U. S. Forest Service has significantly cut back on clear-cutting, shearing only a few acres at most and only rarely, spokesman Matt Mathes said. In 1992, the Forest Service stopped its practice of clear-cutting and selling the timber.

“Society has made it fairly clear to us that they want to see less emphasis on timber harvesting,” Mathes said. “The laws of the land to protect wildlife and water quality have been factors in our move away from clear-cutting.”

Instead, the Forest Service thins the forests, taking out brush and small-diameter trees, then finishes up with a prescribed burn, which means that it sets controlled fires in the spring and fall to clear the rest of the fuel that could feed a catastrophic fire.