North Carolina, USA: Logging, Chip Mills Increase, Threaten Hardwoods

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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1/27/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

As old growth logging in the Pacific Northwest has been slowed

somewhat, the industrial timber industry has had to go back for

another round of over-intensive management to areas they had

previously cleared. Much of the southern U.S, the North Woods near

Lake Superior and Michigan, and other areas of regrowth that are now

displaying late successional characteristics, are now having their

logging ramped up. Chip mills in the south threaten to replace

regenerating natural forests with vast plantation monocultures.

g.b.

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Title: Logging, chip mills both increasing, threatening hardwoods

Source: The Associated Press

Date: January 19, 2000

CHARLOTTE (AP) -- A draft of a two-year study of North Carolina's

proliferating chip mills warns that increased logging may thin the

state's hardwood forests because regeneration will lag behind tree-

cutting.

While the preliminary report on the study -- whose scheduled release

Tuesday in Statesville was postponed by snow -- doesn't blame the chip

mill industry for the increased logging, environmentalists were

willing to.

"There's no question about causation -- they go hand in hand," said

Josh Abrams of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental group that

opposes expansion of chip mills. "The clearest thing is that there is

no room left for increased logging and new chip mills."

The preliminary report predicted that in North Carolina over the next

decade, hardwood trees in the mountains and Piedmont will be cut

faster than they grow. Pine plantations, which support a smaller

diversity of wildlife, will continue to replace naturally growing

forests.

Fred Cubbage, a North Carolina State University forestry professor and

study leader, said logging has increased where chip mills are

prevalent. The final report, to be released in March, may explain what

the correlation is, he said.

Cubbage said projections showing logging of hardwoods exceeding their

growth rate reflects the fact that hardwoods grow slowly. He said

researchers found that in 20 years, 3.1 percent of the state's

hardwoods would be cut each year, compared to a 2.7 percent growth

rate.

"The decline there is hardly precipitous," he said.

Gov. Jim Hunt ordered the $250,000 fact-finding study, the first of

its kind in the South, where environmental groups say about 100 chip

mills have opened in the past decade. The mills shred trees into

postage stamp-size pieces. The chips are used to make paper and other

wood products.

In 1980, two North Carolina mills sent chips off-site. Now, there are

18, with another of the highly mechanized mills planned in Stokes

County, just south of the Virginia border.

Between 1990 and 1997, North Carolina pulpwood production rose 21

percent. Pulpwood from oaks and other hardwoods rose 66 percent in the

Piedmont, where nine chip mills are located.

The study was conducted by the Southern Center for Sustainable

Forests, a collaboration of North Carolina State University, Duke

University and the state Division of Forest Resources.

Mill operators say the mills have created a market for timber once

considered unfit for processing.

Robert Slocum of the N.C. Forestry Association, an industry group,

said study researchers found "almost no harvesting done solely because

of chipping."

"What I've seen shows me the forests will continue to be healthy,

diverse and productive, and that chip mills will continue to be part

of that," Slocum said of the study. "I don't see anything there that

says chip mills are a big problem."

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