Editor's Column
Posted: 2011-12-13
Posted: 2011-05-26
We have been deluged by responses to Barry Wynsma's thoughtful essay on Forest Service leadership - or the lack thereof. Provided here is some feedback on the essay.
Posted: 2011-05-17
View Editor's Column Archive
W.V. "Mac" McConnell writes from Florida. He is a U.S. Forest Service retiree whose Power Point presentations have appeared on our website many times. His latest efforts are nearby: an updated version of his earlier "Timber Resource Management" Power Point and a fascinating photograph, "One Landscape: Four Views," that shows what is happening on adjacent public and private forests at Deep Creek, near Townsend, Montana.
Guest Columns
Posted: 2012-02-02
Posted: 2012-01-09
Editor's comment concerning Mike Petersen's (Executive Director - Lands Council) Response To Dr. Tom Bonnicksen's Essay, "Death Of A Forest: Why We Should Care"
Posted: 2012-01-08
View Guest Columns Archive
Woods Wisdom
Boise Cascade Corporation procurement forester, Craig Halla is barely visible inside a stand of four-year-old hybrid poplars growing on leased farmland in Minnesota. They were 20-feet tall when they were photographed in 2000. Poplar is used extensively by Minnesota's pulp and paper industries.
Potlatch Corporation forester Greg Bernu, is surrounded by four-month-old aspen sprouts near Cloquet, Minnesota. Though these stands look pure, they often contain 14 or more species of hardwoods and softwoods. On sites like this one, variations in soil type are a controlling factor in determining which tree species sprout naturally after harvest.
This red pine seedling was grown at Potlatch Corporation's giant Cloquet, Minnesota nursery. Red pine is a fine lumber tree that grows very well in the Great Lakes region. In 2000, the Cloquet nursery produced about 2.5 million seedlings including red, white and jack pine plus white spruce, white cedar, blue spruce, European larch and hybrid poplar.
No one in Minnesota has invested more time or money in white pine restoration than Jack Rajala, a timberland and sawmill owner at Big Fork, Minnesota. Rajala, who has written a book on white pine restoration techniques, has planted more than 2.5 million seedlings on land his family owns between Deer River and Big Fork.
Abbie Acuff was Potlatch Corporation's seedling production supervisor in Lewiston, Idaho when this photograph was taken in 1996. The facility was then capable of growing 2.5 million seedlings at once. Seven species native to Idaho forests were being grown for outplanting on company lands: ponderosa, ledgepole, Douglas-fir, western larch, western red cedar. Engelmann spruce and blister rust resistant western white pine.
Miller Lumber Company forester, Albert Carter, beside a cypress tree on company lands south of Jackson, Tennessee. When this photograph was taken in the summer of 1997, Mr. Carter bragged about the fact that Miller's forests held naturally regenerating residual trees that 99 percent of the company's competitors would have given they eye teeth to have. He may have been right. Most southern landowners don't hold their timber as long as Miller has over the years.
The Wilkins family Tree Farm west of Indianapolis is both a working farm and a working forest. Most of Indiana's forests are owned by families or individuals. Retaining working forests is a major challenge for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources because so many tracts are now owned by people who have no connection to the land. Many of them don't even live in Indiana and do not understand the value of their landholdings.
The Case family Tree Farm near Carbon, Indiana is a typical working hardwood forest. This one is managed by Pike Lumber Company foresters. Land management objectives on this tract include retention of multiple species in varying age classes plus maintenance and protection of wildlife habitat. Periodic harvests keep this forest healthy and growing.
Washington state Tree Farmer, Tom Wynne, stands atop the fruits of his labors - a deck of Douglas-fir logs harvested from his forest near Olympia, Washington only days before this photograph was taken in the summer of 1996. Surprising to many is the fact that Tree Farmers like Mr. Wynne supply most of America's domestic timber supply. What makes this fact even more amazing is that the majority of the nation's Tree Farmers consider wood to be a byproduct of their management objective which, in most cases, has much to do with conserving or creating wildlife habitat. So much for the unsubstantiated claim that timber harvesting and wildlife conservation can't go hand in hand.
A tough as nails old school forester named Mart Allen saved the Greater Rochester, New York YMCA from bankruptcy by convincing them that they needed to better manage the timber on their 1,200-acre camp in upstate New York. One sheepish YMCA director later admitted to Mr. Allen that he thought that "logging meant all the trees would be chopped down." But in fact Mr. Allen's harvest plan did much to beautify the organization's timberland, to say nothing of the $90,000 in harvest revenue his management plan produced for the Greater Rochester YMCA.
"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."
P.O. Box 1290, Bigfork, MT. 59911 • Tel: (406) 837-0966 • Fax: (406) 258-0815 • Email:
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."