Editor's Column
Washington Doesn't Need To Regulate Rain
Posted: 2011-12-13

Wynsma Revisited
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.

New to Evergreen: W.V. “Mac” McConnell Writes From Florida
Posted: 2011-05-17

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.

View Editor's Column Archive
Guest Columns
Judicial Regulation and Killing Jobs: The Ninth Circuit's Forest Roads' Decision – Waving Goodbye to Science-Based BMPs and More Than 35 Years of Regulatory Precedent
Posted: 2012-02-02

Mike Petersen Is Wrong
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"

Environmental Activist, Mike Petersen, Rebuts Dr. Tom Bonnicksen's Evergreen Essay, "Death Of A Forest: Why We Should Care".
Posted: 2012-01-08

View Guest Columns Archive
Woods Wisdom
Why Implementation Procedures For Environmental laws Must Be Reformed
Posted: 2012-01-31

Why Implementation Procedures Of Federal Environmental Laws Must Be Reformed
Posted: 2011-11-29

Are Environmentalists Ripping Off U.S. Taxpayers?
Posted: 2011-08-16

View Woods Wisdom Archive
Notes From All Over
Gallery Home | The Producers

 

The Producers - Malcolm Cajero, right, was running a portable sawmill for the Pueblo of Jemaz when we visited with him in the summer of 2002. New Mexico staff forester, Todd Haines, left, was helping him find logs. Almost no milling infrastructure remains in the Southwest - thanks to environmental litigation - so it is very difficult for landowners, including the state and federal governments, and Indian tribes, to find viable private markets for the small diameter trees they need to remove from their fire-prone forests.
Malcolm Cajero, right, was running a portable sawmill for the Pueblo of Jemaz when we visited with him in the summer of 2002. New Mexico staff forester, Todd Haines, left, was helping him find logs. Almost no milling infrastructure remains in the Southwest - thanks to environmental litigation - so it is very difficult for landowners, including the state and federal governments, and Indian tribes, to find viable private markets for the small diameter trees they need to remove from their fire-prone forests.
The Producers - Stephen
Stephen "Obie" O'Brien is one of the last logging engineers in the entire U.S. Forest Service. His travels take him to four Rocky Mountain regions plus Alaska. This photograph was taken in 2004 on a Forest Service biomass thinning project near Bonners Ferry, Idaho. John Deere was demonstrating its biomass bundler, which collects and bails brush and small trees in bundles that can be easily transported in pickups or dump trucks. Mr. O'Brien was there to observe the machine at work on slopes that were steeper than normal for the bunder. Even so, it performed very well. Millions of acres of federal forest land need to be thinned - and the bundler is an ideal tool, though it is expensive to operate.

The Producers - Grass roots activist, Mary Wirth, posed for this 1997 photograph which appeared on the cover of an issue of Evergreen Magazine that focused on forests and forestry in the U.S. eastern hardwood region. Ms Wirth was then working as public and legislative affairs manager for the B.A. Mullican Lumber and Manufacturing, a Marysville, Tennessee company that makes hardwood flooring. Ms Wirth had spent enough time studying the West's problems with radical environmentalism to have decided that the same economic disaster that had by then befallen much of the rural West would soon begin to impact the rural East's timber communities. She was right.
Grass roots activist, Mary Wirth, posed for this 1997 photograph which appeared on the cover of an issue of Evergreen Magazine that focused on forests and forestry in the U.S. eastern hardwood region. Ms Wirth was then working as public and legislative affairs manager for the B.A. Mullican Lumber and Manufacturing, a Marysville, Tennessee company that makes hardwood flooring. Ms Wirth had spent enough time studying the West's problems with radical environmentalism to have decided that the same economic disaster that had by then befallen much of the rural West would soon begin to impact the rural East's timber communities. She was right.
The Producers - Mike Covey was regional manager for Plum Creek Timber Company when this picture was taken at the company's new medium density fiberboard plant at Columbia Falls, Montana in 1996. Mr. Covey has since moved on and is now chairman, president and chief executive officer of Potlatch Corporation. Potlatch was the Intermountain West's largest vertically integrated forests products company until it sold its manufacturing facilities and became a real estate investment trust. It owns 1.6 million acres of timberland in Idaho, Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Mike Covey was regional manager for Plum Creek Timber Company when this picture was taken at the company's new medium density fiberboard plant at Columbia Falls, Montana in 1996. Mr. Covey has since moved on and is now chairman, president and chief executive officer of Potlatch Corporation. Potlatch was the Intermountain West's largest vertically integrated forests products company until it sold its manufacturing facilities and became a real estate investment trust. It owns 1.6 million acres of timberland in Idaho, Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Producers - A D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer moves slowly up a massive chip pile at Boise Cascade Corporation's International Falls, Minnesota paper mill in this 2000 photograph. At the time, the mill employed more than 1,100 workers and was producing about 1,500 tons of paper daily. Among its customers: Xerox, Staples, IBM, Kinkos and Canon. Minnesota's paper industry has been hit hard by poor market conditions and foreign competition. Boise Cascade is a very different company today. Its timber lands now belong to Forest Capital, a real estate investment trust, and its manufacturing facilities belong to Madison Dearborn, a Chicaogo-based private equity group. The renamed Boise is an office products retailer.
A D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer moves slowly up a massive chip pile at Boise Cascade Corporation's International Falls, Minnesota paper mill in this 2000 photograph. At the time, the mill employed more than 1,100 workers and was producing about 1,500 tons of paper daily. Among its customers: Xerox, Staples, IBM, Kinkos and Canon. Minnesota's paper industry has been hit hard by poor market conditions and foreign competition. Boise Cascade is a very different company today. Its timber lands now belong to Forest Capital, a real estate investment trust, and its manufacturing facilities belong to Madison Dearborn, a Chicaogo-based private equity group. The renamed Boise is an office products retailer.
The Producers - Grass roots activist, Leon Favreau, was one of the Northeast's best known small sawmill owners when this picture was taken in 1998. His Bethel, Maine company - Bethel Furniture Stock - makes chair parts for the furniture industry. He has been active in Maine politics for many years.
Grass roots activist, Leon Favreau, was one of the Northeast's best known small sawmill owners when this picture was taken in 1998. His Bethel, Maine company - Bethel Furniture Stock - makes chair parts for the furniture industry. He has been active in Maine politics for many years.

The Producers - Robb Davis, Forest Energy Corporation, Show Low, Arizona, turns low quality wood fiber into wood pellets and other products including cat litter and animal bedding. He teamed with a logging company a few years ago in the purchase of a 10-year, 100,000-acre forest stewardship project on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Mr. Davis brings excellent entrepreneurial skills to the venture, but because so little milling infrastructure remains in the Southwest, he will have a very difficult time finding viable markets for the enormous amount of low quality fiber the project will likely yield.
Robb Davis, Forest Energy Corporation, Show Low, Arizona, turns low quality wood fiber into wood pellets and other products including cat litter and animal bedding. He teamed with a logging company a few years ago in the purchase of a 10-year, 100,000-acre forest stewardship project on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Mr. Davis brings excellent entrepreneurial skills to the venture, but because so little milling infrastructure remains in the Southwest, he will have a very difficult time finding viable markets for the enormous amount of low quality fiber the project will likely yield.
The Producers - This Hermann Brothers Logging Company tub grinder is working in a log merchandising yard near Port Angeles, Washington. It's a good example of the effort underway today to recover every penny of value from every tree that is harvested from industrial timberlands on the Olympic Peninsula. Nothing is wasted: not treetops, not bark or even limbs. If it comes out of the woods on a truck, this company will find a way to process and market it.
This Hermann Brothers Logging Company tub grinder is working in a log merchandising yard near Port Angeles, Washington. It's a good example of the effort underway today to recover every penny of value from every tree that is harvested from industrial timberlands on the Olympic Peninsula. Nothing is wasted: not treetops, not bark or even limbs. If it comes out of the woods on a truck, this company will find a way to process and market it.

The Producers - This log deck on the White Mountain Apache Reservation holds 80 truckloads of logs [enough to build almost 50 three-bedroom homes] salvaged from tribal forests in the aftermath of the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire. The tribe moved quickly to salvage what it could, but thanks to timber sale appeals and bureaucratic red tape, the Forest Service was unable to salvage several hundred million feet of publicly owned timber that were also lost in the fire.
This log deck on the White Mountain Apache Reservation holds 80 truckloads of logs [enough to build almost 50 three-bedroom homes] salvaged from tribal forests in the aftermath of the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire. The tribe moved quickly to salvage what it could, but thanks to timber sale appeals and bureaucratic red tape, the Forest Service was unable to salvage several hundred million feet of publicly owned timber that were also lost in the fire.
The Producers - Diminutive grass roots activist, Mary Adams, has been raising hell in Maine since she went on the warpath over school funding in the 1970s. She and her colleague, Kenneth Johnson, have twice defeated anti-clearcutting initiatives that had been placed on the ballot by a wealthy Connecticut investor. Had they passed, the initiatives would have forced Maine's timberland owners to close their lands to public recreational use and sell out real estate developers.
Diminutive grass roots activist, Mary Adams, has been raising hell in Maine since she went on the warpath over school funding in the 1970s. She and her colleague, Kenneth Johnson, have twice defeated anti-clearcutting initiatives that had been placed on the ballot by a wealthy Connecticut investor. Had they passed, the initiatives would have forced Maine's timberland owners to close their lands to public recreational use and sell out real estate developers.

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human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."
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