To the average citizen, the image of removing dead, diseased or dying trees from the forest - known to foresters and loggers as "salvage logging" - is probably one of a reasonable management activity which improves the health of the forest. In more and more cases across the western United States, and most notably the Headwaters Forest of Humboldt County, nothing could be further from the truth.
Even when salvage logging is not being abused, the forester's mindset that only young and thrifty trees should be allowed to remain in a managed forest is simply wrongheaded from an ecological perspective.
To the contrary, a healthy forest ecosystem benefits from old, decadent trees and from woody debris on the forest floor. Apparently unknown to most foresters and loggers, the health of the forest is dependent upon insects, fungi, and microbes, all of which rely upon decaying organic matter supplied by dead trees and downed woody debris.
Over-applied, the forester's mindset of fastidiously removing these natural forest components leads to ecological damage, not improved forest health.
And what about abuse of salvage logging? Sadly, evidence of such systematic and cynical abuse of salvage logging is now amounting to a national scandal.
On the federal forests, large corporations and the Republican Congress have cynically attempted to exploit fears of wildfire as one of the reasons for wholesale exemptions from environmental regulations.
Known as "logging without laws", the efforts of the timber industry are carefully wrapped in the language of salvage logging, all purportedly for the good of the forest. How stupid do they think we are?
Closer to home, Pacific Lumber would have us believe that logging of dead, diseased, and dying trees in Headwaters and the other five ancient forest groves is good for them. Please!
It's only good for the Hurwitz pocketbook. And their salvage logging flies in the face of the state forest practice regulations which stipulate that trees must be dead or likely to be dead within one year if they are to be harvested under the salvage "exemption."
If the regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. weren't asleep at the switch, Pacific Lumber's damaging activities in these majestic groves would be stopped.
The redwood-Douglas fir forests of California's North Coast are notable for their imperviousness to attacks from pests and fire. Redwood trees have no common disease except spot-rot, an occasional slow-growing infestation which virtually never threatens the life of a tree.
Further, it can't be credibly used as a justification to cut down a purportedly "dying" tree, as spot-rot is not externally visible. And any school kid who walks though an ancient redwood-Douglas fir forest can see that fire does not destroy the thick-barked giant trees.
Almost every old growth tree on the North Coast has fire scars - many of which are centuries old - that clearly demonstrate their ability to survive fire.
The fact is, there is very little in our coastal forests that can be legally harvested under the exemption/salvage provision of the state forest practice regulations. Even those majestic old growth trees which have dead tops and/or scarred trunks have lived, and will continue to live, for decades or even centuries - certainly far beyond the one-year prognosis required by the "salvage" regulations.
Our old growth forests - what few remain - have been around for centuries. It is the height of cynicism for forest plunderers to ask the public to believe that their actions are good for the forest.
It is sad that the forest practice regulators charged with protecting our public trust resources actually encourage the money-hungry "salvage" logging which is currently damaging Headwaters and other western forest areas.
It is high time for our Legislature to prevent the foolish, wasteful practice of unregulated logging.
(From Press Democrat, Jan 15.)
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited