Why not more visible logging?

[Forestech]

Heavy fuel buildup has been identified as a factor with respect to this year's fire intensities across the southern interior.
I'd be interested in everyone's feedback whether they would have tolerated some tastefully designed clearcuts on the Kelowna skyline over the past decade in the interests of fuel reduction (and making the "fuel" into boards).

[Somegurl]

Nice idea, but the environmentalists and tree huggers in the community would never let anyone get away with it.

You should see them fight like dogs to protect one tree on a heritage site. They'd never go for a tactical clearcut.

[ogopogo]

I`d of been very happy to see selective logging take out the dead wood and pine beetle infested trees.

[songdove]

I grew up in and around forestry areas, personally knew a guy who looked after replanting, logging practices, and overall sylviculture for the area. He and his wife were family friends.

Selective logging tends to make forests unstable. The reason for the instability is that the trees tend to intertwine their roots below the surface of the ground. When several trees in an area die, their root systems weaken. When wind storms come up, the remaining trees blow over alot easier, wrecking good wood capable of being logged.

Removing underbrush also gets rid of the homes for animals that rely on it for cover and protection, such as deer, ground squirrels, raccoons, bears, etc.

Clear cutting removes the chances of trees being blown over and their market value being destroyed, and if accompanied by a controlled slash burn, returns the needed nitrogen and other nutrients back into the soil, allowing the underbrush to grow back up faster than it would if a controlled burn didn't happen.

Prairie natives have long known that burnning off the grass each year in old times helped crops to grow better the following season.

Sylviculturalists also report these days that a good solid burn of dead material in forested or grassy areas replenishes depleted soil. Environmentalists don't like clearcuts or slash burns because of how unsightly they look, and they don't like the smoke going up into the air.

But that's what I find totally amazing about this fire. They aren't being heard at all right now. "Mother nature" has done a slash burn herself, going totally against what environmentalists think is healthy for "mother nature", and is replenishing the depleted soils herself.

Someone posted a really pretty picture of an area in the Yukon that suffered a forest fire and the picture is beautiful, full of flowering underbrush that is no doubt giving home to the smaller creatures who had been driven from their home by the fire.

Forestry companies can mimic that on a controlled scale but doing clearcuts followed by slashburns. The neat thing about how forestry companies do clearcuts, is that the trees they leave around the edges of the clearcut blow their seeds out into the open space with the wind, almost naturally reseeding the area. Sure forestry companies hire treeplanters to go in there and replant, but the trees that ring the clearcut do planting of their own too.

Sylviculture(assuming I keep spelling it right) is a fascinating study, especially for someone who'se grown up in an active forestry area. I used to teach the basic life cycle of a managed forest to Cub Scouts a few years ago. The local forestry office was more than willing to help out with information.

So I encourage anyone who wants to know more about selective logging versus clearcuts, to go to the local forestry office and request information. You could also go to any sylviculture course instructor to get information as well.

Having seen the effects of trees falling over on cars and houses or hikers and tents and other camping equipment, I can't safely recommend selective logging practices. And although I have to agree that clearcut patches tend to look unsightly for the first year or two till the brush begins to gain some height to it, it is safer, and healthier for the environment.

The forestry companies I was familiar with tried to make sure that their clearcut patches were unseen from well-travelled areas, so only those on backroads ever had to view them.

That's just my view, having grown up around forestry practices that included everything from harvesting to replanting methods.

[ogopogo]

I think when this is over all of the water bombers should be loaded with a mix of wild flower seeds and fertilizer and do a couple of drops on the hilsides.

[songdove]

Hey that's an awesome idea!!!

[ogopogo]

it just might become a tourist attraction.

[Ironic cynic]

Let's give tourists a chance to be a heroic fire fighter for a couple of weeks by setting ablaze unwanted fuels! They can ride in planes, helicopters, and get fitted with a jump suit and use axes... sign me up!

[KK]

A refreshing breath of wisdom in a world of ingorant reactionism.

Your comments are dead on. It's time the science, and there are volumes of it, supporting the benefit of logging as a replacement, albeit not nearly as effective, of clearcutting in our forests.

This fire is not a disaster as the media is constantly calling it. People losing their homes, the lose of an irreplaceable historic site, the millions of dollars vaporizing in a futile effort to extinguish the inextinguishable, those are true disasters. But don't cry for the forest. Our fragile and minuscule lifespan on this earth compared to botanical time collides headlong into what is a completely natural part of the ecological cycle of a forest.

Clearcuts and forests look bad. But that's about where the story ends. Old growth forests are valuable for some species for some habitat and denning. But these old growth forests are largely sterile as a food source for most species. The supermarket of the backcountry are burns, swampland (kept open by fire), grasslands (kept open by fire), avalanche slopes and like it or not…clearcuts.

Our sense of aesthetics is a poor and dangerous guide to what is best for our ecology. After the first few rains in September, some grasses will return. Next spring, the area will be flush with fireweed, wildflowers and rich grasses. By the end of the summer, tiny pines will start to grow from the consolidated ash. The animals that walked away from the fire and others will return to a rich bounty of feed that had been choked off by a century of tangled growth.

Environmentalists or more specifically, preservationists who want everything to look nice and nothing in the forest to change live in a static fantasy world based on a selfish interest to keep everything the same.

This fire was going to happen. Cry over the loss of houses (until the insurance companies rebuild them and fill them with new furniture, likely better than what was lost), cry for the tragic loss of true family momentos and memories, cry for the Myra Canyon trestles for which no amount of money or effort can replace. But rejoice in the rebirth of an aged, deceased and crippled forest. Don't look at a blackened hillside. See past the aesthetics and see a truly vibrant dynamic ecology in full bloom.

There is a company in Kelowna ready to do tours to show the rebirth of the area. They have spent 2 years touring the KVR, Chute Lake and the back of Little White. As part of their tour they show the danger of forest fuel buildup and the risk of fire to the region. Now they are going to show it's regeneration. If you want to see the real thing try them at Geoqwest Tours in Kelowna. I did. It's worth it.

[Sam the Man]

Visible logging. Isn't that a redudant term?

All logging is visible. And that's the problem. Logging looks bad the the average Canadian's opinion stops there.

To log Okanagan Mountain Park, any other park in the country or areas near towns to create fire breaks would raise howls of objections from everyone except those who have taken the next step to relize that there is a huge range of benefit to clearcuts. Sure there is some damage. And a self service environmental movement and an alarmist media ned and love to cover that aspect. The good news stories and the science of modern clarcuts are lost because it make boring press and the enviros would be out of work.

With all the human tragedy in this fire, as time moves on, lets take some lessons from it. Shake roofs are stupid, logging is good in many places (sounds like blasphemy doesn't it..shows what a good snow job the enviros have done), smokey the bear was wrong...fires need to burn to, go figure, stop fires!
But try this...a politician with the cahonies standing up to champion logging in provincial parks. We have a better chance growing palm trees at the north pole.

[LogIBurnItPaveItAuditIt]

Forestech said:

I'd be interested in everyone's feedback whether they would have tolerated some tastefully designed clearcuts on the Kelowna skyline over the past decade in the interests of fuel reduction (and making the "fuel" into boards).

Yeah, something tasteful, like just log out the word, "Drink Coke," or something like that. Maybe we could use the advertising money to build tressles!