Clear-Cut Disagreement
By Dylan Darling, Redding Record Searchlight
January 13, 2007

A checkerboard of green and brown flanks Highway 44 as it heads toward Lassen Peak.

Green where third- to fifth-generation timber stands. Brown where 20- to 30-acre patches of forest have been clear-cut.

From the air, environmentalists see the clear cuts as deforestation. On the ground, timber managers see clear cuts as productive plantations starting anew.

Their differing views are at the heart of the debate over clear cuts, which continue on private timberland around the north state after being halted on federal land almost two decades ago.

On their own land, timber companies are allowed to clear patches of up to 20 acres and can cut as much as 30 acres if they fill out additional paperwork and meet other requirements.

"There is no way you can stand in a clear cut, where all the vegetation has been removed, and say it is beneficial," said Randy Compton, who lives in Round Mountain and is trying to spread the word that clear cuts must be stopped.

Compton, who was a logger for five years in his 20s, snapped an aerial photo of the patchwork of clear cuts near Shingletown in late December that ran as part of a full-page, full-color advertisement in the Dec. 29 Record Searchlight. Mauro Oliveira of Montgomery Creek led the effort to raise money for the ad. Oliveira said that by e-mailing the photo to friends and neighbors, he was able to raise $1,600 in four days, enough to cover the cost of the ad as well as the chartered flight.

"From the air, from that photo, it looks like devastation," said Mike Mitzel, Lassen district manager for Anderson-based Sierra Pacific Industries, whose district encompasses 300,000 acres in four counties.

But take a closer look, he said, and you'll see a healthy forest.

"What we are doing is not deforestation," said Mark Lathrop, a spokesman for Sierra Pacific, which has 1.7 million acres of timberland statewide. "We are harvesting a forest, but planting a forest."

Still cutting

Although many people think clear-cutting is no longer used as a harvesting method, loggers are still clearing all the timber off swaths of private land around the north state.

Clear-cutting a timber stand is akin to a farmer cutting a crop in the field. Almost all the trees in a stand are brought down, either by machines that resemble road-building equipment or by timber fallers, old-school loggers who bring trees down using chain saws.

Cutting on the stands near Shingletown started in 2001 and continues today, Mitzel said. Depending on how many trees are in a stand, a clear cut can yield 3,000 to 30,000 board feet per acre. A board foot is a measurement of lumber that is 1-foot square and an inch thick.

After the cut comes the planting of seedlings, grown in nurseries using seeds taken from trees close to the clear cut, he said. To keep grasses and brush from beating out the young trees for water and sunlight, possibly killing the trees, Sierra Pacific and other timber companies spray the stands with herbicides, usually chemicals similar to Roundup weed killer, Mitzel said.

As the trees grow, work crews come in and thin out the trees, taking out those that are growing too close together. It's "no different than a garden, we want to cull out tomatoes or carrots to get growth," Mitzel said.

In all, Sierra Pacific plants 5 million to 7 million trees a year on its 1.7 million acres around the state, Mitzel said. The seedlings usually are put into the ground at least a year after a clear cut and can grow quickly. A five-year-old Ponderosa pine stands about 6 feet tall, and a 10-year-old tree reaches 20 feet.

Mitzel said the clear-cutting and replanting is good management of the forest, but Oliveira and an increasing number of people who live close to the cuts disagree.

Cut consequences

Oliveira said clear cuts can lead to erosion problems, loss of wildlife habitat and the replacement of a diverse forest by much of the same kind of tree. He calls the practice deforestation and wants to see it stop.

As a first step, Oliveira and others are attempting to sway public opinion by circulating photographs and videotapes of clear cuts. They've even posted a video on YouTube.

A Round Mountain resident since 1953, when he moved there with his family as a 4-year-old, Compton said the forests have gone from being his playground, to where he worked, to where he goes to relax. Now Compton said he wants to save the forests from clear cutting.

"I've watched it disappear in my lifetime," he said. "It's a tree farm; it's not a forest anymore."

Logging has long been part of life in the forests east of Redding, but now many of those who once worked in the woods are concerned about the damage that might be done by the clear cuts, Compton said. Once tucked away from the communities, the clear cuts are now visible on hillsides and off back roads. In response, visitors to Big Bend are now greeted by a wooden sign with a red slash running over the words "clear cut."

"People around here are not anti-logging, we just don't like clear cuts," said Gary Orwig, who lives in Big Bend and is concerned about nearby clear cuts.

In particular, Orwig is worried about a clear cut on a steep slope a short walk from his home. He said the clear cut has increased erosion, decreased wildlife and is an eyesore.

"It's amazing how it transforms it," he said. "It was just a beautiful, healthy forest before this."

Proud practice

Although a fresh clear cut can look dramatic, the practice leads to a revival of the forest and benefits wildlife, said Larry Strawn, owner of Blue Ridge Forest Management, which is under contract with Sierra Pacific to do much of the clear cutting near Shingletown.

The company also did the clear cut close to Orwig's house in Big Bend and, Strawn estimates, 80 percent of the clear cuts pictured in the ad run by Oliveira.

"I wouldn't do it if I thought it was wrong," said Strawn, who is in his 38th year in the logging business. "This is managing the forest. We just don't come out and do this."

Clear cuts are part of a Sierra Pacific 100-year plan that balances growing forests with harvests. The clearings, which have pockets of timber left as "wildlife retention areas" that become popular with deer, eagles and other animals and can benefit the forest more than if loggers went in and selectively logged, Mitzel said.

"If anything, wildlife flourishes," he said.

He said that's because in selective logging, equipment would traverse more of the land.

"Basically you are impacting more ground by covering more acres," Mitzel said.

Although clear cuts have a negative image, Strawn said they're a forest practice used around the world to maintain productive forests.

"I'll be honest with you, we're proud of them," he said.

Stop or continue

With Sierra Pacific planning to harvest the seedlings planted today in about 80 years, clear cutting is a practice that's probably here to stay in the north state, said Mitzel, who compared the process to a farmer who brings in his crop and then replants the field.

But the timber company timeline is vastly different than that of a crop farmer.

"Ours is stretched out a lot more than the farming community," he said.

It's a timeline that Oliveira, Compton and others living near clear cuts want to see come to an end.

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