Flying Finns
Tillamook
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| Larry Fick “I look at what is today, and remember what was, 50 years ago.” |
The Center has a wonderful array of interactive and static display items along with historic photographs that are sure to give the traveling public something to think about when it comes to the value of forestry and forests.
For Ross Holloway, Tillamook District Manager, the construction of the Center is “very timely, an educational tool that is needed. Public awareness of wildfire salvage has increased so much, and here is an example of a large wildfire, where 50-60 years later, you have this forest. I’d bet there are a lot of people who drive through here, the Burn never enters their mind.”
The Tillamook burns, in 1933, 1939, 1945, and 1951, together burned and re-burned a total of 355,000 acres in a “six-year-jinx” cycle, the worst year being 1933 when 240,000 acres burnt before the rains came. The private owners salvaged what they could over the years and then abandoned the land to the counties. In 1951, a statewide ballot issue was brought before Oregonians, who voted to assume the lands and back $12 million in bonds for a huge replanting effort that today is a huge success.
While touring the Tillamook Center we were treated to some living history in the form of Larry Fick, who worked off and on for the Oregon Department of Forestry for 50 years, retiring in 1986 to another ten years of forestry research and book writing. An Oregon State College of Forestry alumnus, Mr. Fick came out of the Army Air Corps after World War Two “concerned about getting out of college with enough education to get a good job.”
So, forestry it was. Mr. Fick got his forestry degree and then joined the Oregon Department of Forestry in 1947, coming to the Tillamook Burn as a Rehabilitation Assistant in January 1956. “After I got the job, my boss took me up to camp at South Fork. I thought that was the most miserable place I had seen in my entire life. There was about a foot of snow on the ground, there were only two colors, black and white. When we got there I thought I was back in the Army, with tarpaper shacks.”
Mr. Fick notes the total investment in the camp was $14,600. “Wow…but I began to figure it all out. I had inmate and hired planting crews, inmates and contractors falling snags, road crews, the works.”
Planting a forest on such a massive scale was new. For example, when you visit the Tillamook Forest Center, there is a display of hoedad planting tools, the design of which was changed as reforestation crews learned the hard way what shapes worked, and which ones didn’t. Another lesson quickly learned was
latching on to every advantage to give tree seedlings a chance. “We preached to our planters, go for the dead shade,” what is today called a “microsite.”Fancier words, same deal.
Today, Mr. Fick is “happy I got to get involved in this program. With reforestation, you can see the accomplishments. I can go out there today and get lost, and it’s great.”
That it is.
There are two lessons to be learned from the Tillamook that apply to the Donato-Law debate. First, the Donato-Law paper says that logging hinders regeneration. Salvage logging was conducted in the Tillamook from 1933 until 1958 when the decision was made to stop salvaging, a span of 25 years. By all
accounts, the forest turned out fine—so fine that in 2004, environmentalists offered Ballot Measure 34, a proposal to turn half of this man-made forest into a wilderness. The measure was soundly defeated.
The other lesson of Tillamook concerns capturing the value of burned timber—either by cutting and running, or as is the problem today, not cutting at all. The private owners of the land and the logs captured the salvage value and left Oregonians with the reforestation bill. While the ast bonds are to be paid off this year, the interest on those bonds has been forgiven. In short, if salvage operations are not conducted and natural regeneration is delayed or thwarted, any future reforestation will be a fiscal loser. In 1951, because the previous owners didn’t reinvest in the land as they should have, Oregon voters made a sacrifice for future generations.
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."