Timber insiders debate harvesting

Excerpt from article by Guy McCarthy, The Union Democrat

“In Region 5 – California – we grow in excess of 4.3 billion board feet a year but we only harvest 300 million board feet a year,” said Hanvelt citing timber industry statistics. ”That means’ we’re putting 4 billion board feet into the forests each year. It’s fuel we’re putting into the forests, and we’re burning the state down.”

Either much of the extra growth will burn, or there are opportunities to take some of the extra growth out as saw logs or biomass so there’s less fuel for wildfires, John Buckley of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource said.

Forest Service scientists, Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions member groups, and elected officials agree there needs to be more low intensity prescribed burning as well as thinning and biomass, Buckley said. ”But today it’s not just the need to do logging, it’s the need for all interests to promote the broad range of treatments that combined will actually make a huge difference.”

So industry needs to support prescribed burning as well as biomass removal and other fuel reduction treatments such as mastication and shredding even though they might even though they might not generate profits,” Buckley said. ‘And conservation groups and business interests need to support all treatments including biomass and thinning, because in the big picture by doing all these treatments in a proactive way we’re less likely to have another Rim Fire.”

Sonora-based Yosemite Stanislaus solutions is billed as a group of diverse stakeholders working together to help federal land managers strive for healthy forests and watershed, in the Rim Fire burn scar and other areas in need of rehabilitation.