re: #142 Obdicut

That’s what the logging projects are— they’re about logging the old-growth. That’s what environmentalists object to.

Commercial logging has no place in fire prevention. In isolated cases, where, as you say, we need to play catch-up because we haven’t let the natural fire cycle take place in decades, we need to remove fuel— but that’s almost all the deadfall, the brush, and very little of the actual trees. Where it is the actual trees, it’s generally because of a legacy of clearcutting, which is where you get trees growing up crowded against each other.

Commercial loggers are not interested in the small trees, and the lawsuits filed to stop commercial logging have nothing to do with the hazardous fuel removal efforts, as the article I cited shows.

Not all logging projects are about taking old growth trees. Not all thinning projects are about logging. Not all thinning projects are commercial. Commercial loggers don’t want to restore forests, they want to make a buck. That’s not what I’m talking about.

There are thinning projects done by the Forest Service or contractors. There are a few projects, one I know of personally, where the little trees that are taken out are used for furniture and vigas, and the slash is made into commercial gardening and other products.

I don’t disagree with anything in the article you posted. I’m not saying we need more logging. But I do disagree with your middle paragraph where you say, “we need to remove fuel— but that’s almost all the deadfall, the brush, and very little of the actual trees.” There are a ton of trees involved. I’m talking about the southwest. We don’t have that much undergrowth. We have grass under the trees. We have to keep the fire down in the grass. To do that, we need to thin the trees, or burn ‘em.