Clearcut logging: Destruction of forest or path to restoration?
A logging operation in Headwaters State Forest, including 51 acres of clearcut land that will be replanted in the winter, sparks a debate over tree removal
Brenda Wiley, of Cedar Mountain, hikes up a recently logged parcel in Headwaters State Forest.
By Dan DeWitt
Brevard NewsBeat
BREVARD — Brenda Wiley was on her way to a hike a few weeks ago when she was stopped short by the sight of a newly deforested hillside in Headwaters State Forest off Glady Fork Road.
“I slammed on the brakes and said to my hiking partner, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then we just sort of gaped in sheer disbelief,” said Wiley, of Cedar Mountain, a board member of Waterfall Keepers of North Carolina.
On a return trip last week, she climbed to the top of the hill to take in the vista of stumps, bare earth, scattered tree limbs and wood chips.
“Just ill,” she said, describing how she felt at the sight of the denuded land. “I mean sick.”
Michael Cheek, the forestry supervisor of Headwaters, a three-year-old, 6,730-acre state forest in southern Transylvania County, said people often react with shock when they first see the results of clearcutting but usually change their mind when they understand its purpose.
This is not, primarily, to generate revenue, as many critics assume, he said, but to replace aging, unhealthy forests — in this case a crowded, 40-year-old plantation of white pines — with a more varied, vibrant habitat.
“We’re doing this for the health and diversity of the forest and to allow the management actions that need to occur to keep it healthy,” Cheek said.
That clearcutting acts as a reboot for natural lands is the prevailing view among land managers, said Robert Bardon, a professor of forestry and an agriculture extension specialist at North Carolina State University. Clearcutting, which also goes by the more ominous-sounding name of “final harvesting,” is the “predominant form of logging in the Southeast,” he said, and the most effective method of replacing unhealthy forests.
Not everybody agrees. Chad Hanson, a widely published researcher of forest ecosystems and the director of the California-based John Muir Project, said that “clearcutting is not an ecologically sound or defensible practice.” It does nothing that nature cannot accomplish better over time, he added, and “my recommendation is this: do nothing.”
Cheek said that understanding the use of logging in Headwaters requires understanding the property’s history and how the clearcutting fits in with the larger forest management plans.
Much of the Headwaters property was once owned by paper and plywood manufacturer Champion International, which logged large swaths of western North Carolina in the 20th century. After clearcuts in what is now Headwaters, about 1,000 acres were planted in white pine for future harvest.
That includes the 51 acres clearcut as part of an ongoing logging operation. The work began in December and is continuing with the thinning of 74 nearby acres of healthier white pine and the cutting of a series of half-acre gaps in another 39 acres of mixed hardwood forest. Both of these practices, Cheek said, will open up the forest floor to sunlight and encourage fresh growth.
The service determined that clearcut sites — 40 acres on the north side of Glady Fork Road and 11 acres on the south side — were too old and crowded to be salvaged.
The stands had never been thinned, Cheek said, and “a lot of these trees were in poor health and many of them were starting to die out. These are the areas that we are looking at for a final harvest, or clearcutting, and starting over with a young forest.”
The plan addresses one of the main concerns of Wiley and Kira King, the Waterfall Keepers’ science and education coordinator: the area’s heavy rains, they say, will erode deforested land and dump sediment — one of the most common and damaging pollutants of mountain streams — into the nearby South Prong of Glady Fork. This is an especially crucial consideration, Wiley said, because, as the name suggests, Headwaters was created partly to protect sources of the East Fork of the French Broad River.
Cheek said that stumps, roots and logging debris on the site will limit erosion, which will be further contained by water bars and “seed and straw on some of the areas of bare dirt.” The South Prong is separated from the larger clear-cut tract by Glady Fork Road and from the smaller parcel by a buffer at least 30 feet wide.
“I don’t even want to say we minimize” contamination from runoff, Cheek said. “We don’t want any sediment at all.”
Parton Lumber Company, of Rutherfordton, NC, is expected to pay the state about $195,000 for the timber, but the state Forest Service is not required to offset expenses with timber revenue, Cheek said. The recently finalized 10-year plan for Headwaters makes no mention of generating income from logging but does include the goal of creating “diverse habitat and providing dispersal corridors for wildlife.”
After the land is replanted with shortleaf pines next winter, open areas will sprout sedges, grasses and oak saplings that are a magnet for “everything from songbirds and wild turkeys, to mammals such as rabbits, bears and deer,” Bardon said.
“In general, it will be a much richer habitat.”
But Wiley remains skeptical about the benefits of the service’s plans, especially in the short term. “I don’t care how many itty-bitty pines you plant. That’s not going to help with the next eight-inch rainstorm,” Wiley said.
And King pointed to studies that show the impacts of clearcutting linger for decades, especially a long-term reduction in the ability of the soil to absorb nitrogen.
Besides, the planted pines are valuable as they are, Hanson said. “Dense stands store more carbon, are important for many wildlife species, and do not tend to burn more intensely, contrary to messaging from pro-logging agencies.”
As pines die, burrowing insects and then woodpeckers move in, feasting on the bugs and creating cavities in the snags that provide homes for “chipmunks and nuthatches — you name it,” he said.
When the trees fall and begin to decompose, they enrich soil, provide habitat for ground-dwelling animals and open sunlit gaps, allowing the remaining white pines to thrive and encouraging the growth of a variety of other species.
“Nature will shape and form that stand into a biodiverse ecosystem all on its own,” he said.
“I suggest leaving it alone.”
Good Article!!! You would think by now there would be more definitive science about clearcutting as there is about prescribed burns.
I think what's lost in this conversation is that a plantation forest of a single tree species with almost no herbaceous layer and very low biodiversity was removed and a mixed forest of native species will take its place. Regardless of how it looks, this is a win for biodiversity.