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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Chipping
Away at America's Southern Forests
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
7/23/97
OVERVIEW,
SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The
Environment News Service reports on relentless clearcutting for
woodchip
production in Southern forests of the United States. The massive
industrial
forestry operations are described as "deforestation on a
massive
scale, clearly unsustainable. It needs to be stopped." Short
cutting
cycles and massive scales of operation make regeneration of a
natural
forest ecosystem unlikely.
Cumulatively, such intensive forest
management
will inevitably lead to forest ecosystem decline. There are
already
enough degraded forest lands where plantations could and should be
established. There is no need to push remaining natural
forest
ecosystems,
albeit diminished through past high-grading, into tree farms.
Let the
forests live, regenerate and continue to provide benefits rather
than
being literally mowed and left in an unnatural and ecologically
unhealthy
state.
g.b.
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Title: Chipping Away at Southern Forests
Source: Environment News Service,
http://www.envirolink.org/environews/enews.html
Status: Copyright, contact source to reprint
Date: July 23, 1997
Byline: Glynn R. Wilson
KNOXVILLE,
Tennessee, July 23, 1997 (ENS) - Southern forests are
undergoing
an alarming rate of clear-cutting by chip mill operators not
seen in
the region since the cut-and-run logging days of the early 20th
century.
The number of chip mills from Kentucky to Alabama has grown from
10 to
140 in the past 10 years, mostly in a corridor along the Tennessee-
Tombigbee
waterway.
"The
native hardwood forests are being stripped for the domestic and Asian
pulp
mills and, in some cases, converted to pine plantations," says Doug
Murray
of The Center, one of 33 environmental groups recently consolidated
under
the umbrella of the Dogwood Alliance out of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
"This
is deforestation on a massive scale, clearly unsustainable. It needs
to be
stopped."
Champion
International has become the symbolic target of Earth First! And
other
environmental groups in recent days. Champion sold out its vast
properties
in Montana and other states in the West a while back and has
moved
its satellite chip mills into Tennessee and other Southern states.
Along
with companies like Huber, which makes strand board from just about
any
size tree, and several U.S. and Korean conglomerates, a program of
cutting
native hardwood forests is underway with a determination not seen
since
sawyers clear-cut the South's forests from North Carolina to Texas
between
1890 and 1940.
This
time around, the efficiency of the machinery for felling trees is
unparalleled.
Logging methods today are technological, industrial marvels.
The average
value of a saw timber tree is $400. But when taken for chips,
the
smaller, lower quality trees go for about $4, from land where property
taxes
average only $1.50 to $2 an acre. The size of the log doesn't
matter,
and the transportation method is cheap. Logs are shredded into
postage
stamp sized chips, loaded onto trains, and then onto river barges,
which
make their way to the Port of Mobile, Alabama and then overseas to
Japan.
It amounts to what environmentalists are calling "a quiet rape" of
the
Southeastern environment.
Companies
and forestry officials say the forests need to be cut to allow
regeneration.
Select cutting has taken the quality lumber and furniture
veneer
trees - oak, ash and walnut - over the past few decades, leaving
behind
lower value species such as red maple. Critics argue that the
presence
of a certain number of board feet of timber, in the form a
limited
number of economically "valuable" trees, does not a forest make.
"When
you're recutting every 30 or 40 years, you're never going to get the
benefits
of a regenerated forest," Murray says. "You're not going to
produce
any saw logs. Talking about gaining quality forest is a moot
point.
It's all going to go for pulp forests."
One of
the major concerns prompted by clear-cutting is the health of
rivers
and streams running through the affected forests. Clear-cutting
leads
to soil erosion and siltation, which clogs streams and kills fish, a
major
concern of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Dr. Lee
Barclay, the Fish and Wildlife supervisor for the Tennessee-
Kentucky
field office, has a reputation for opposing the chip mill
operations
based on the potential damage to wildlife habitat. Yet he
agreed
to serve on an advisory panel to Champion.
"Champion
wants to do the right thing, as long as it doesn't cost an arm
and a
leg," Barclay says. His concern is for the many species of mussels
in the
region, already endangered from development activities, along with
a
number of plant and animal species. These include India and gray bats,
which
are forest-dependent and could be directly or indirectly harmed by
clear-cutting
on the scale now underway.
Barclay
has joined the efforts of the Dogwood Alliance to get a long-term
study
by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This effort may be
picking
up some steam in Washington, according to a letter from the Region
4 EPA
office in Atlanta dated June 13. The EPA regional administrator has
agreed
to set up a meeting with the Dogwood Alliance, as well as with
other
stakeholders from industry and other government agencies, to
consider
the impacts of chip mills in the Southeast.
"We
are looking at the cumulative impacts," says Cielo Myczack, who
recently
took the reins as network coordinator of the Dogwood Alliance.
"It
takes 50 to 100 years for a hardwood forest to truly regenerate."
Myczack
and other activists beat back the chippers in 1993 by defeating a
Tennessee
Valley Authority/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for three
new
docks on the Tenn-Tom waterway. They thought the victory amounted to a
virtual
moratorium on chip mills along the Tennessee River. But the
chippers
went into the forests and began using trains to move logs to
existing
docks. To fight back, Riverkeepers, one of the groups making up
the
Dogwood Alliance, sued the Corps of Engineers to stop chip loading at
another
12 existing docking facilities. That lawsuit is pending.
Dr.
George Hopper, professor and head of the University of Tennessee
department
of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, says there are
"justifiable
concerns" about the environmental and economic consequences
of the
recent upsurge in clear-cutting and chip mill operations in the
region,
although he downplays the threat.
"I
personally don't think we have to worry about a massive amount of
clear-cutting,
on the level of 85,000 acres during the next 10 years," he
says.
"That would not be sustainable. If I suspected that was going to
happen,
I would be the town crier."
Environmentalists
say Hopper needs to take an overflight of the area to
see the
level of activity.
"We've
been watching the clear-cuts grow and grow," Myczack says. "When
you fly
over, you really get a sense of urgency."
Hopper
says Champion, Huber, and other companies are chipping away the
forests
of the South now because a market has opened up for using low-
grade
trees to make paper, cross-ties, pallets, and other wood products.
He
acknowledges that a new inventory of forests in the area is needed and
that a
movement is afoot to conduct forest surveys annually. The U.S.
Forest
Service is in the process of conducting a 10-year updated inventory
of the
forests in the South, due out by 1999.
For
more information on chip mills and Southern forests, visit Glynn
Wilson's
homepage at http://funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~gwilson1
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