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WHEN YOU SEE a logging truck on the road
and realize that someone's property has just been cut, do you
wonder how much logging has gone on countywide over time? What
is the bigger picture? Does anyone actually keep records?
Yes, evidently they do, but the recorded
data sit on a remote shelf that is hard to find. By rooting around
major libraries and state agencies, I have turned up seemingly-accurate
harvest records for the past 50 years. Additional data, not included
here, extend harvest volumes back to 1925.
Without hard data, opinions about the social,
economic and ecological consequences of timber harvesting will
remain just that - opinions. What follows is some of the fundamental
information that must be incorporated into a rational dialogue
regarding our forests.
HARVESTS GO IN CYCLES
HOW MUCH TIMBER is cut and sold each year
in the San Juans? As the following graph shows, harvest volumes
for the last half century have fluctuated cyclically. Three periods
of heavy logging (1950s, mid-1970s and early 1990s) were separated
by slumps in activity. In the late 1990s we entered a period
of relative "bust," mostly due to temporarily depressed
log prices and slow Asian markets.
The first "boom" coincided with
the post-WWII expansion in home construction market. Indeed,
earlier records going back to 1925 (not included here) show that
logging was very low, except for a one-year spike in 1934, until
the end of the war. Logging prior to 1925 was probably fairly
heavy in cetain regions to generate fuelwood for lime kilns,
other commercial uses, and domestic use, as will be explored
in another page dealing with forest history.
The recent boom of the early 1990s coincided
with major shifts in timber availability regionwide due to federal
spotted-owl policy. Limited cutting in national forests created
sharply rising log prices that peaked around 1995 and the demand
sought out timber in vulnerable (or willing) private forestland
holdings throughout the state, including San Juan County, where
essentially all of the forests are privately owned.
Damaging windstorms of late 1989 and early
1991 in this county also stimulated high volumes of harvesting
in the very early 1990s. The amount of downed timber exceeded
the capacity of local logging operators at the time so many gyppo
loggers came into the islands for the salvage work. An inflated
workforce, combined with the dramatically panicked landowners
and tempting log prices, precipitated a circus of opportunistic
cutting that far exceeded salvage harvests. In the frenzy many
landowners and forest sites were abused, as will be examined
in greater detail on another page devoted to nuances of logging
activity during the 1990s.
Regarding the data in the above graph,
harvest volume is reported in board feet, not trees. How many
board feet are there in a tree? Of course, it depends. One useful
rule-of-thumb conversion is the volume commonly carried by a
loaded logging truck: in our setting, a loaded truck conventionally
carries 3000-4000 board feet of logs, say about 3,250 board feet
on average. Accordingly, if 10 million board feet are cut and
sold from San Juan County in a given year, about 3000 truck loads
are transported to out-of-county mills and dealers. That's ten
trucks every working day! (For a variety of reasons, many logs
are actually transported by raft or barge, in addition to logging
trucks, but full logging trucks are easily recognized on the
ferries, especially on the low-traffic runs, when, coincidentally,
they are less observed.)
HARVEST ACREAGE
THE AMOUNT OF forestland acreage subjected
to timber harvesting has also been recorded. Once again, the
data show peaks and troughs of activity, without clear distinction
between clearcuts or partial-cut harvests.
The above chart shows peaks of a couple
thousand acres harvested each year. Is 2000 acres of logging
in a year a lot? Is it too much? Well, relative to what?
The San Juans have a total of 70,000 acres
of forestland - 60,000 acres in private ownership, where virtually
all of the logging occurs - so 2000 acres cut in a single year
is more than 3% of the overall resource. This rate of cutting
is many times greater than the rate of local timber growth, which
is exceptionally slow relative to other parts of Washington (see
"productivity" below). The many aspects of local timber
productivity will be expanded in a later page.
SHRINKING HARVEST YIELDS - ARE THE TREES
SMALLER NOW?
THE BEST WAY to see what is happening in
a forest is to take an informed look at the plant community itself,
especially the trees. But getting the historical, countywide
picture presents special problems that field work alone can't
solve. Fortunately, there is an analytical approach which uses
the 50-year harvest stats shown above. So, leave your boots by
the door for a while and carry out the following simple calculation.
The result may be disturbing.
A given year's harvest yield is
calculated by dividing its harvest volume by its harvest
acreage; this gives the yield in board feet per acre that was
extracted in that year. By comparing 5-year average annual yields
during the three boom harvest periods, there is a progressive
and obvious decline.
The harvest yield in the 1990s was only
about one-third what it had been in the 1950s. This strongly
suggests that trees harvested from our forests are getting dramatically
smaller. After all, logging in San Juan County has always focused
on removing the most marketable trees, i.e. "taking
the biggest and best, and leaving the rest." It is well
known in forestry that the predictable consequences of repeated
"high-grading" is progressive forest decline. And that
is what seems to be going on in San Juan County. The present
rate of harvest in the San Juans is evidently excessive; wood
is being removed from the forests faster than it is being replaced
through growth.
LONG-TERM RATE OF HARVEST
ANOTHER WAY TO look at the rate of cutting
is to plot the acreage data cumulatively. The chart below shows
that harvesting has advanced through 75,000 acres of forestland
since 1949. That is, in a span of merely 45 years an area equivalent
to the entire forested landscape, which is 70,000 acres, has
been cut. (Virtually all cutting has occurred on the 60,000 acres
of private forestland.) What are the consequences of cutting-over
the county's forests in a mere 45 years?
Remember that lots of logging went on in
the San Juans prior to 1950 when the presented data begin. It
began seriously in about 1890 and continued with a vengeance
up to about 1930, by which time most of the pre-settlement forest
in the county had been cutover (though not necessarily clearcut
by today's standards). After a slowdown with the Depression and
the War, logging began in earnest in the last years of the 1940s.
So most likely the above chart represents, on average, the second
time the forest has been cut.
The amount of time between cycles of cutting,
regeneration and regrowth of mature trees, and then subsequent
cutting of a forest stand is called the "rotation time."
A rotation as short as 45 years is highly unusual anywhere
in Washington.;45-year rotations are sometimes practiced by the
most intensively managed industrial tree farms located on the
most highly productive timber growing sites of the Cascade foothills;
but anywhere else, such short rotations are prima facie evidence
of forest destruction. It is common sense: just how much can
a tree grow in 45 years, especially where tree growth is slow
(see below) and what is the overall average condition of a landscape
that is cut so frequently?
Obviously, the forests of San Juan County
still exist today, despite the above cumulative harvest acreage
during the past 50 years. This seeming contradiction dissolves
because partial cutting, rather than clearcutting, has become
the common standard here (except, of course, for ~1-acre home-site
clearings and certain other cases). Partial cutting always leaves
some trees behind, even though the usual - and imprudent - practice
is to remove the economically (and ecologically) most valuable
trees and leave the lesser ones. Thus, the concept of rotation
doesn't quite pertain in ten San Juans; essentially every acre
of our forests may indeed have been harvested twice since 1890,
but only partially harvested. To the undiscerning eye, therefore,
we seem able to eat our cake and yet still have it too. The real
question, however, is what the meaning of "it" is....
What kind of forest remains after high-grade logging?
A REGIONAL VIEW OF PRODUCTIVITY
RELATIVELY SHORT ROTATIONS (i.e., time
between cuts) are arguably sustainable in regions where timber
productivity is sensationally high. How do timber-growing conditions
in the San Juans compare with others in Washington state: are
ours sensational, average, or mediocre? An answers to this question
may lend meaning to the high rates of harvest, high extent of
harvest, and short rotation cycles reported above. Is San Juan
County bonanza timber-growing country or does our rate of cutting
exceed our forest's capacity to re-grow trees?
Many people have heard that trees grow
more slowly here than in some other places in Washington, but
how have the experts actually quantified our timber productivity?
(The term "timber productivity" refers to the peak
potential for growth in a hypothetical mature stand and is based
on local growing conditions, which in turn defined "land
grades." This peak rate of growth occurs at a characteristic
age, i.e., at "culmination.") The following
chart puts San Juan County's timber productivity into a region-wide
perspective and can be read like a report card of potential timber
productivity. Our county gets the only grade "D"
in Western Washington! Its timber productivity is the absolute
lowest in then class.
The comparative chart at the above shows
that San Juan County's forest productivity is by far the lowest
in western Washington. Our trees grow substantially slower than
elsewhere. The average land grade is between IV and V, which
means that timber growth is severely limited by soil and climatic
conditions. (Land grades in the county actually range locally
between III and V; the geographic distribution of productivity
grades will be explored more fully in another report.)
Low timber productivity in San Juan County
means that, even at culmination, the rate of volume growth is
low. Culmination - the age at maximum timber growth - is also
relatively delayed compared to more productive areas. In this
county's forests culmination is at 100-120 years, whereas in
forests on "good" land of grade II culmination is at
about 50 years. For sustainability, age at culmination should
be matched to rotation of timber harvesting, so it follows that San Juan's forests are being
harvested 2 to 3 times too rapidly (turning over ever 45
years vs 100-120 years).
From this comparison of timber productivity,
we should become very vigilant of the trends in timber harvesting
in San Juan County. Our forestry practices seem to be way out
of balance with our local limitations. Our forests are being
cut at an exceptional rate and in a destructive manner that is
neither sensible nor prudent. Furthermore, since timber productivity
here is instrinsicaly so diminished, regrowth after harvesting
is unusually slow, which means that the visual and ecological
consequence of harvesting will persist much longer than elsewhere.
So, if we want to retain our forests, let
alone to incease the quality of our forests for the future, our
harvesting practices need to be geared to local realities, not
simply to expediency, short-term profitability, or mainland standards.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. 50-year harvest volume and acreage:
1949-86, Washington Timber Harvest Annual Reports, Washington
Dept. of Natural Resources (harvest volume and acreage); 1987-94,Washington
Timber Harvest Annual Reports (timber volume only); 1988-99,
Forest Tax Reports, Washington Dept. of Revenue (volume only);1987-1999,
Forest Practices Applications for San Juan County, Washington
Dept. of Natural Resources (projected volume and acreage).
2. Productivity: Averaging land
grades over large areas is unconventional and problematical.
To prepare this chart, overall county average land grades were
determined by averaging acreage-weighted land grades based on
acreages and grade designations from Washington Department of
Natural Resouces.
Now visit these other
pages in fOREST iNFO
Home
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of lime industry
Tom Schroeder
tom@rockisland.com
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