Old Growth logging?

Mark Chisholm

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The Mystery Behind a Photo of a Logged Old-Growth Tree | Outside Online
https://www.outsideonline.com/2424656/mystery-behind-photo-logged-old-growth-treeThe Mystery Behind a Photo of a Logged Old-Growth Tree | Outside Online
Yeah they are mowing them down left and right. The statists on illegal logging are off the charts. A few years back I volunteered to gather genetic material from bigleaf maple. I got stuck between two fires in the Olympics. One was by the road, the other was from poachers on the edge of the national park. It was a sobering adventure, when the smoke was so thick ash was falling from fires 100’s of miles away
 
 
It said that log wasn’t even protected, the dbh would have to be greater than 9’ and change and that was 7’ and change.
 
In 1975 started as tree planter (12 seasons), pre commercial thinner eventually evolving into forest tree climber brush monkey doing cone collection and snag creation. Full respect to all arborists which I am not. Have never rope climbed, only spurs. Dealing with the elements, steep brushy slopes, high crowns, large dbh trees, packing the gear to perform work etc. is what defines my work. Have worked every National Forest in Oregon, WA. Have seen the use of herbicide and clear cutting go away on Federal ground in the early 90's. Tree planting on Federal ground basically halted as it was replaced with commercial thinning allowing natural regeneration. Some light thin, some heavy thin. Light needs to hit forest floor for natural regeneration to happen. Forest Service has done a good job in transitioning from clear cuts to thinning. Allowing small clear cuts for foraging ground is needed for deer and elk. Canada (Crown and Provincial) can use an upgrade of there forest practices for sure. The fact the tree was ID'ed as instrument grade wood is very positive. The tree will live on creating hopefully fine music. Excuse my ramble, but after 46 years of observation I have some thoughts.
 
So I look out my windows at Vancouver Island every day and have done numerous trips there, literally from one end to the other (~300 miles) including a road trip a few years back where I mostly camped in logging areas. Other than a few select spots, it almost feels like the entire island is nothing more than a timber plantation. There is essentially a single north-south road, and logging is all you see, almost the entire way up.

While we certainly need timber and forestry can be done in a sustainable way, the truth is Canada has done a pretty good job of 'green washing' itself as a country while actually having a pretty poor record when it comes to resource extraction from mining to oil to logging. Every nation did a lot of terrible stuff back in the day in terms of the environment, and many nations still do, so I'm not picking on our neighbors to the north too much here, but it is frustrating to see certain things still happening when we know better, and when we know what is taken in many cases can't be replaced.

Anyways, if you've never seen this kind of logging or Vancouver Island, here is what it looks like:

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Money talks. That's the bottom line. It sickens me to see a tree that large dead on a truck just for a greasy buck. The amount of oxygen production, carbon fixing, cleaning of our air and soil stabilization a tree that size can do is irreplaceable.
 
The single log on the back of the truck really leaves more questions. It’s obviously been cut a for quite a while. It blew up on my social media with captions as if it were just cut down.
Another photo of some folks laying on a stump to show scale of the harm done. But if you are a tree person you can tell that the cut was very fresh, piles of loose fluffy saw dust, but the root flare had no bark and was very weathered. It raised a large range of comments, all decrying the horrors.
It wasn’t until much later I found a photo where the protestors had a large cookie on the front lines. It looks like they were the ones who cut the stump for the cookie. Which all of this is fine, but it can lead to the impression of things blown out of proportion. There is enough horror in the actual events, YouTube shows gigantic trees up there getting mowed down.
click bait photos without proper captions does more harm to the ‘cause’ because it’s so easy to dismiss as misinformed hippies picking a fight.
 
So I look out my windows at Vancouver Island every day and have done numerous trips there, literally from one end to the other (~300 miles) including a road trip a few years back where I mostly camped in logging areas. Other than a few select spots, it almost feels like the entire island is nothing more than a timber plantation. There is essentially a single north-south road, and logging is all you see, almost the entire way up.

While we certainly need timber and forestry can be done in a sustainable way, the truth is Canada has done a pretty good job of 'green washing' itself as a country while actually having a pretty poor record when it comes to resource extraction from mining to oil to logging. Every nation did a lot of terrible stuff back in the day in terms of the environment, and many nations still do, so I'm not picking on our neighbors to the north too much here, but it is frustrating to see certain things still happening when we know better, and when we know what is taken in many cases can't be replaced.

Anyways, if you've never seen this kind of logging or Vancouver Island, here is what it looks like:

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I’ve certainly been seeing more log booms than I’ve seen since I was a kid.
 

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