The academic forestry community will not be satisfied until every tree in America is destroyed by fire or disease.

You think only the Forest Service benefits from salvage logging. Poor people are the real beneficiaries. When the timber is salvaged, the cost of housing drops.

It is very easy to go in and replant the seedlings with a fertilizer pellet and space them out to prevent future forest fires. Timber companies have been doing that for over 80 years and there has been a forest fire on their lands.

That is much better than letting a $1000 log rot on the ground to create a fire, insect and disease risk.

Those are some amazingly glittering generalities.

• The academic forestry community is hardly unified, as I noted in my article.
• The cost of housing is far more dependent on other factors than the cost of wood.
• Replanting the way you say can be very costly and is often not justified by the returns, especially on steep national forest lands of marginal productivity.
• A log is only worth $1,000 if you get that much for it. No log creates a fire risk and insects and disease are not serious in the Biscuit fire area -- except for one disease that is spread mainly by logging trucks.

How was the forest managed before the fire--was it 'protected' by 'no-fire' policy or allowed periodic small colder fires? Were trees periodically harvested and thinned? If the policy is 'no revenue stream overlooked' why hasn't the Service been more agressive in persuing sustainable harvest BEFORE the fires. A harvested tree has more value than a salvaged tree.

Tom,

The part that is being salvaged is in a roaded area which means some of the area has previously been clearcut. There probably has never been any thinnings as this was largely a mature or old-growth forest. Nor has there been any periodic burnings -- outside of the Southeast, the Forest Service limits burnings to areas that have been cut (to burn off the fine fuels) and wilderness areas (where natural fires are occasionally allowed to burn).

Prior to 1990, the Forest Service was aggressively managing these lands for revenue by clearcutting the old-growth forest. The famous old-growth controversy plus other questions about the sustainability of the Forest Service timber program led to a dramatic cessation of timber sale levels on this and many other national forests after 1990. Contrary to the implications of some, this cessation did not contribute to the size of the Biscuit fire.

In fact, the forests in this part of Oregon are not the type of forests that normally have frequent light fires. Since they are not adapted to such fires, the absence of such fires over the past century did not make them more flammable.

If you download RMRS-GTR-87 and look at the map on page 36 (Acrobat page 44), only the aqua colored forests (identified in the legend as "I: 0-35 yr frequency. Low severity") are conditioned to frequent light fires and only these forests need some sort of management to reduce fire hazards. As you will see from the map, these are located mainly in the Southeast, the Sierra Nevada, and a few scattered areas east of the Cascade Mountains and in the Rockies. Only about a third of the West is in this type.

Randal

Randal

The academic forestry community is committed to "lock it up, let it rot, and burn it down" policy that will mean the end to the forests in America.

Cost of materials makes up 25% of the cost of the house. The price of lumber has a direct bearing on whether a person can afford the mortage payment or not. Five logs rotting on the forest floor means that a poor family will not realize their dreams of owning a home.

Why can timber companies afford to replant? The US Forest Service also replanted before "lock it up, let it rot, and burn it down" crowd got power within the Service. It might be nice if the "environmental" groups divert the hundreds of millions of dollars it gives to Democrats every year to replanting our forests.

Logs rotting on the forest floor are a sink for destructive diseases and insects plus they are a great fuel during a forest fire.

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