The Past and Present Logging Frontier

Question for Discussion: According to Robbins,
how has the lumber industry shaped the resource
extraction history of the West. Was logging ever
more important than mining in the American West?

Reading: Robbins, "The Western Lumber Industry";
Robbins, "Logging in the National Forests" ;
Lewis, "Major Public Land Laws 1960 to 1994"

Video: Logging in the Northwest Forests

Book: Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Foresty (1993)

Maps of the New West

Map of the American West today
State Map of the 20th Century American West
( in-class)
Maps of American Population 2006 ( in-class)
Population per Square Mile in the West ( in-class)
The West from Space at Night ( in-class)
Western Land owned by the Government ( in-class)
Federal Lands and Indian Reservations in the West
( in-class)
Government Agency Land in the West ( in-class)
New Oil and Natural Gas Wells in the West ( in-class)
Map of the National Forests ( in-class)

Logging in the National Forests

National Forest Service
Federal Lands and Indian Reservations in the West
The Problem: Timber Sales on Public Land
( in-class)
Myths and Facts about Logging in the
National Forests ( in-class)
Boom and Bust Cycles in the West ( in-class)
The Spotted Owl Controversy in the West ( in-class)
Robbins, The Western Lumber Industry
Robbins, Logging in the West
NRDC: What is Clear Cutting? ( in-class)
Environmentalists Challenge Clear Cutting
A Forest is more than Just Trees ( in-class)
More Than Trees
Society of American Forestry: Position
Statement on Clear Cutting
The Healthy Forest Initiative :
Bush's Plan to allow more Extensive
logging in the National Forests ( in-class)
National Forest Protection & Restoration Act (NFPRA) ( in-class)
National Forest Recreational Use: 1925-1990
( in-class)
$100 Billion Dollars created by Recreational
Use of the National Forests ( in-class)
Salmon Swimming against Logging Tide ( in-class)
Forest Service Employees for
Environmental Ethics
Forest Industry Network
Oregon Forest Industries Council

Federal Laws Affecting Logging
in the National Forests
"Major Public Land Laws 1960 to 1994" ( in-class)
National Environmental Policy Act (1969)
National Environmental Policy Act:
Basic Information
The Endangered Species Act of 1973
History of the Endangered Species Act
National Forest Management Act of 1976
The Forest Service and the Endangered Species Act
Pacific Salmon and the Endangered Species Act

Environmentalists Challenge
Clear-cutting
NRDC: What is Clear Cutting? ( in-class)
Sierra Club: Forest Protection and Restoration
( in-class)
National Forest Protection & Restoration Act (NFPRA) ( in-class)
Earth First Media Center
Earth First Tree Sits
FSEE: Old Growth Protection

Boom and Bust cyles in the Pacific Northwest

"The boom-and-bust era is over now in the Pacific Northwest. There are no more resources to take with such abandon. Only remote areas remain unlogged, and lawsuits aimed at protecting spotted owls and other endangered species have shut down or slowed logging in many parts of the region. Many of the remaining salmon runs are threatened or endangered, and Canadian and American fishing interests are squabbling over the remaining catch.

This region is polarized by disputes over resources. In parts of rural Washington state, for example, a typical grocery store carries T-shirts with a target superimposed over a Spotted Owl. People carry guns; threats to federal resource managers are not uncommon.

The people of the Northwest know that the boom-and-bust way of life is over, and many are beginning to look for a different way of living, a way based on treasuring and stewarding the remaining abundance, on staying rather than just passing through, on coming to deeply know this place, and with that deep knowing, coming to love it."

Sustaining Watersheds in the Pacific Northwest

U.S. National Forest Service Lands

Established in 1905, the Forest Service is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Forest Service manages public lands in national forests and grasslands.

Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, summed up the mission of the Forest Service— "to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run."

National forests and grasslands encompass 193 million acres of land, which is an area equivalent to the size of Texas.

The Spotted Owl Controversy in
the West
USGS: The Northern Spotted Owl
Ethics and the Spotted Owl Controversy
Owls Face Spotted Future
The Spotted Owl Scam
Save our Wild Salmon

Maps of American Population 2006 ( in-class)
Population per Square Mile in the West ( in-class)
The West from Space at Night ( in-class)
Western Land owned by the Government ( in-class)
Federal Lands and Indian Reservations in the West
( in-class)
U.S. Forest Service Lands ( in-class)
Map of the National Forests ( in-class)
National Forest Service: What does it Do?
Lewis, "Major Public Land Laws 1960 to 1994"
( in-class)
Boom and Bust Cycles in the West ( in-class)
Robbins, Logging in the West ( in-class)
Timber Sales on Public Land have cost
Taxpayers Billions ( in-class)
1976 National Forest Management Act ( in-class)
National Forest Recreational Use: 1925-1990
( in-class)
$100 Billion Dollars created by Recreational
Use of the National Forests ( in-class)
Environmentalists Challenge Clear Cutting
( in-class)
Society of American Forestry: Position
Statement on Clear Cutting
Beauty Strips: Hiding Logging in the
National Forests ( in-class)
A Bird's Eye View of Logging ( in-class)
A Forest is more than Just Trees ( in-class)
More Than Trees
The Effects of Deforestation ( in-class)
The Spotted Owl Controversy in the West ( in-class)
The Healthy Forest Initiative :
Bush's Plan to allow more Extensive
logging in the National Forests ( in-class)
National Forest Protection & Restoration Act (NFPRA) ( in-class)
Salmon Swimming against Logging Tide ( in-class)

A Forest is More than Just Trees

A forest is made up of many natural resources. Forests include trees and other plants, wildlife, water resources, and soil. All of these resources are inter-related. Each species existence is influenced and modified by the others. Trees take a long time to grow, so today's decisions have long-term impacts on wildlife, water quality, and other resources.

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More than Just Trees

WURTZ: "You're basically trying to grow the forest like corn, doing it in the most productive, efficient way you can. Well, that's the old model. And man, the whole national forest system is back-pedaling wildly. Now the new watchwords down there are forest restoration. They've had so many lawsuits filed against them for not maintaining habitat for the spotted owl. Every national forest is moving away from that old approach and trying to maintain a natural ecosystem in forest management."

Robbins, The Western Lumber Industry

"From an area standpoint the most prominent western tree is the ponderosa pine, a species that grows at higher elevations from Montana, Idaho, and Washington south to New Mexico and Arizona. Its rate of growth and density is directly related to precipitation. The primary center for most lumber production in the twentieth century, however, has been the redwood, cedar, spruce, and Douglas fir country that stretches from northern California to British Columbia. And, in terms of manufacturing volume, Douglas fir is by far the
dominant species." (234-5)

"In the Rocky Mountain and Pacific states where most of the national forests are located, two-thirds of all timberland is in public ownership. But in some western states, especially California, Oregon, and Washington, the forest industry owns a large percentage of the most productive land. The ownership pattern has meant that powerful and well-organized groups in the lumber industry have been able to exert great leverage in legislative policy at the state and federal level. In Oregon and Washington, where timber dominates industrial activity, that influence is most obvious." (235)

"Although markets beyond the West continued to expand and talk of a canal across the isthmus of Panama promised even more, the burgeoning population of California, Oregon, and Washington provided the greatest boon to increased lumber production. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Washington grew by 120 percent, Oregon by 62 percent, and California by more than 60 percent.9 A continually expanding regional market provided the most important single sustaining force in the western lumber industry through the 1970s. (235)

"Fluctuating and often depressed prices wreaked havoc on the financial world of timberland owners in the Pacific Northwest; in truth, many were over-extended. Because they had borrowed capital for their land purchases and then bonded those forest stands to finance sawmill construction and the building of transportation arterials, many lumbermen were forced to liquidate their timber rapidly to avoid bankruptcy. The result was a perpetually depressed market and even greater instability in an industry plagued with problems."(236)

"The most powerful of the western trade organizations for the first half of the twentieth century was the West Coast Lumberman's Association. Organized in 1911 and concerned with prices, standardizing grades of lumber, and equitable railroad rates, the trade group represented the tremendously productive Douglas fir region of western Oregon and Washington and southern British Columbia . In addition to its efforts to stabilize market conditions -- primarily through price fixing -- the association worked for lower timberland taxes in state legislatures, lobbied at the federal level for a duty on forest products imports, and engaged in a variety of market expansion programs." (237)

"Despite the heavy cutting in the redwood forests through the years of the Great Depression, the heyday
of lumbering in northern California lay in the future. Because most of the old growth forests in western Washington had been cut over by the end of the Second World War, many lumber capitalists (like the Simpson Company) headed south to the still largely untapped Douglas fir stands on the California coast. Billed as the "lumber center of the world" by local boosters, the Humboldt Bay area vied with counties in southwestern Oregon who claimed the same honor in the postwar era." (240)

"Because it is part of the same extensive forest environment and because it often competes for the same markets, the Canadian province of British Columbia has been a vital segment of the western North America lumber scene. Like its industrial competitors to the south, the forest products industry in Canada evolved westward from the eastern provinces. Even the ownership patterns--with private holdings dominating in the East and public in the West--are similar to those in the United States ." (241)

"Despite rumblings of concern in the forestry profession and in Congress, neither state nor federal governments took action to restrain private harvesting practices. At the same time, reports about diminished private timber supplies--many of them from the Far West--continued to multiply. The Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station reported in 1927 that almost half of the privately owned forests of the Douglas fir region was not being adequately re-forested. " (242)

"Until at least the Second World War, industry leaders as well as the Forest Service gave broad support to sustained-yield proposals. That the most ardent proponents of the idea came from the Pacific Northwest should come as no surprise; for it was on the north Pacific slope--the center of lumbering activity during those years-- that the greatest harvests were taking place." (243)

"In the Pacific Northwest, however, he thought the work of foresters had "lessened the . . . impact of this cut and get out philosophy." 44 The work of professional foresters, however, was not the factor determining the rate of harvesting on private timberlands." (246)

"The story of the modern lumber industry is also a tale of merger, consolidation, corporate takeovers, and the increasing concentration of land ownership among the largest units. For their part, the corporate directors and executives who spoke the loudest on behalf of free enterprise began to pursue business policies that worked to undermine a competitive economy." (247)

"Through all of the production records established during the postwar years, the huge Weyerhaeuser empire remained in the lead in virtually every sales category. The firm built new manufacturing facilities near its extensive holdings ( Cottage Grove and Coos Bay , Oregon , are two examples). The company also increased the volume of its harvests in the 1960s in some areas--selling timber to other firms and initiating a major log export program, primarily to Japan. On one of its large holdings in southwestern Oregon, a forester notes that local residents were aware that Weyerhaeuser was "cutting a great deal faster than they could sustain." 50 But the same could be said for the rate of harvesting from Eureka north to British Columbia . " (248)

"But, amidst the great boom in production, there were indications that the tide was beginning to run out. There were voices of caution, some of them coming from the areas of greatest output. A Forest Service study of the Douglas fir region warned of a rapid "inventory depletion," inadequate reforestation, and that the "high rates of log production ... have a limited future." The extraordinary harvests and the increasing mechanization of the woods and mill operations contributed to a reduction in the industry's workforce as early as the 1960s." (249)

"And then the whirlwind--a rash of mill closures beginning in 1979 and continuing into the early 1980s. That social and economic disaster struck especially hard in the lumber producing regions of northern California , Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and western Montana . A severe recession in the United States in the early 1980s and an expanding southeastern wood products trade have compounded the problems for the north Pacific slope (with the exception of British Columbia where production is still high).The federal government's borrowing and runaway federal deficits have kept interest rates high; the strong American dollar, another reflection of costly interest rates, has driven up the price of lumber for foreign buyers; and that has made it possible for Canadian lumbermen to undersell domestic producers in the United States market. Imports from Canada represented 18.7 percent of the lumber products consumed in the United States in 1975 and 32.6 percent in 1985. That state of affairs has meant protracted depression for timber-dependent regions of the American West. And the outlook for the immediate future is not bright."(249)

"Under these circumstances, it is the sawmill towns and lumber communities that bear the brunt of the suffering. The corporate giants cut back on production, extra shifts and speciality production units are laid off, and some of the smaller operators are forced to close permanently. As for the plant owners and managers, their investment capital is diversified to the point that they are able to ride out the slump in the market. A forest products executive put that in classic form in an address to the Oregon Logging Conference in March 1985: "We are engulfed in a tidal wave of overcapacity and overproduction. But tidal waves subside and there will be survivors"5 (249)

"Finally, historians should pay more attention to the influence of federal and state policy and its relation to the lumber industry. The failure to re-forest public and private lands, for instance, has dire implications for the future economic health of timber-dependent areas. In the same way, national and international development--depression, trade volume, and war--have exercised a critical influence in shaping policy toward resources. What has this meant to heavily forested states like Washington and Oregon or the province of British Columbia ?" (250)

Robbins, Logging in the National Forests

"The debate over logging on the public lands in the West is the fiercest resource debate of all. To many westerners, the saddest, most unreasonable chapter of all in the saga of developing the resources of the West is the logging that has taken place in the last century or so, especially the past three decades. On every level, they say, it defies common sense. They call it indiscriminate. Rapacious. Biologically unsound. But mostly they say it is damn ugly. Some of these clear-cuts are so big they are visible from satellite photographs."

"The companies and the people who work for them say it is business. Communities depend on logging for jobs and economies. The housing industry in the United States depends on a steady supply of timber. Companies depend on profits. But they are squirming. More and more people who live in cities, removed from nature, want it preserved. Environmentalists say the companies know that, and are trying to cut as much timber as they can before they are stopped. "

"One of the reasons people have become so incensed with the cutting is that it is not taking place on privately owned tree farms, but on the 191 million acres of Forest Service land owned by the public. The Forest Service works for the taxpayer, managing the timber for sale to private companies. But under the 1976 National Forest Management Act, the Forest Service is charged with managing the forests under a principle called multiple use. Timber cutting is supposed to be done in a way that also provides protection for fisheries, for recreation, for grazing and a host of other uses."

"The reason the forests are so overcut, environmentalists claim, is that the levels of timber harvest, which are set by Congress, are established for political instead of biological reasons. The Forest Service also has a financial stake in cutting more timber: it gets to keep gross timber receipts for its budget, a kind of profit that fuels the bureaucracy. Until World War II, the national forests cut about one billion board feet a year; that level is now eleven billion per year.

It is not only the destruction of forests that angers critics, but the fact that the destruction is so uneconomical for timber companies that the federal government has to subsidize much of it. Part of the problem is that private owners claimed much of the good timber in the last century, and the forests left to the government were of poor quality. These forests are so unprofitable for timber companies that the Forest Service pays for the preparation of the sales and for the expensive roads into a sale site."

"Economists for Congress and groups like The Wilderness Society estimate that taxpayers are charged about $200 million a year to sell their forests. That does not take into account the damage done to other values. In 1990, the Forest Service estimates that of its 122 forests, 65 lost money. Independent estimates place the number of money-losing forests at 108. One ex-forester and Congressional Research Service economist estimates that in the last decade the subsidy to timber companies amounted to $5.6 billion. It costs taxpayers $20 million to sell timber in the Greater Yellowstone alone, " Why not just give the money to the millworkers and loggers directly?" says an angry Michael Scott, head of the Northern Rockies Office of The Wilderness Society, in Bozeman, Montana. "Why should the taxpayers subsidize the destruction of the ecosystem? "

"Most of the money for timber sales is spent on road building, a transportation network that allows access to the timber. The national forests are crisscrossed with an estimated 340,000 miles of dirt roads built to accommodate logging trucks, eight times the length of the interstate highway system. A hundred thousand miles of new road will be built in the next half century. Primary logging roads cost the Forest Service $45,000 a mile to build; secondary ones about $15,000 a mile. "

"One of the rebels, in fact, turned out in 1991 to be John Mumma, a regional forester in charge of 25 million acres in fifteen national forests (including three of the four forests in the Montana portion of the Yellowstone ecosystem). At one point in tears, he told a congressional subcommittee that Congress had mandated the cutting of timber beyond any reasonable levels, and was actually forcing the U.S. Forest Service to break the National Forest Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other federal environmental laws--doing serious damage to the
nation's forests."

"Pinchot, the godfather of the U.S. Forest Service, was the consummate professional, and is credited with bringing that attitude to the forests. He was a distinguished-looking gent, with gray temples and an enormous, droopy mustache. Not a preservationist in the mold of John Muir, who favored protecting forests intact, he [Pinchot] instead favored sustainable use of the forests, orderly exploitation of the resource, and tree farms--a set of concepts learned in European forestry schools."

"Loggers have organized themselves to fight against the protection of any more land, both among themselves and with groups like People for the West!, which have been especially active in the Greater Yellowstone. Leppell and Colin King, an injured logger, started the American Loggers Solidarity Movement, which is part of Communities for a Great Northwest, based in Libby , Montana . The group, largely sponsored by the timber industry, is trying to mobilize loggers to fight back in the arena of public opinion, especially in the press. The group estimates that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost because of protection of the spotted owl."

"Franklin says the reason the spotted owl is losing ground in spite of efforts to save portions of old growth is something called "fragmentation, " or the turning of a forest into a large Swiss-cheese-like mosaic of cut and uncut areas. "It makes the forest so small , " Frank lin said, "it really doesn't function as a forest anymore."

Something called the "edge effect" takes place. At the edge of the islands of forest left behind by loggers, the trees are exposed to the wind and sun, which have a drying effect, changing the habitat. Because trees regulate heat, temperatures inside the island drop. Winds blow down the trees around the edge, and species that dwell near the edge find their habitat has changed dramatically. Cut off from the rest of the gene pool or suddenly exposed to predators, they often die out. Many islands of trees are so small they are virtually all edge, and the rate of extinction soars."

"The problem with clear-cuts is this. When a forest is logged, the woody debris that once littered the forest floor is gone. This material contains the insect populations and organic material--called a biological legacy--that would begin again a rich, diverse new forest. The newly planted trees, meanwhile, are evenly spaced, and all grow taller together. In an old-growth forest, the trees are a great variety of sizes, types and ages--a multilayered canopy, which provides habitat for a variety of plants, insects and fungus. Snags, or dead trees, for example, provide homes for insects and for cavity nesters such as woodpeckers."

"Clear-cutting trees beyond their capacity for re-growth is even more radical, for not only is the health of the forest destroyed, but so is the ability of the land to sustain Iogging over the long term. What is needed, scientists say, is a Pinchot approach that sustains not only trees, but insects, birds and mammals along with recreation, research and other opportunities for humans."

"Clear-cutting has also been killing streams, which create the Northwest's multimillion-dollar fishery, and sustain animal life of all kinds. A stream is more than a channel of water running across the ground. It has a life of its own, but a life that depends in great measure on the forest around it. Leaves, needles, cones, twigs and other organic material tumble into the stream. Large boles, or tree trunks, crash into the stream, pooling and slowing water, allowing tiny woodland creatures to do their job. Downed trees are vital to diversity, for they create plunge pools and myriad other niches. "

"In 1992, the Pacific Fishery Management Council placed the most restrictions ever on the salmon fishing industry in the Pacific Ocean off of California, Washington, and Oregon, for a lack of salmon. While in 1982 fishermen caught 1.2 million chinook, the top commercial salmon, in 1992 that number was 268,000. Contributors to the decline of fish, biologists say, include dams and home developments along the rivers. And logging. When ground is denuded, the soil washes into rivers, clogs them, and suffocates salmon spawning. "It's years and years of habitat disintegration and destruction," says jack Coon, salmon staff officer for the Pacific Fishery Management Council."

"The situation has pitted angry fishermen against loggers, whom they blame for the decline of their livelihood. In 1982 in Oregon, 3,269 fishing boats landed salmon, mostly chinook and coho. In 1991, there were 1,217 boats fishing. In Washington during the decade, the number dropped from 2,253 to 811, and in California , from 4,013 to 1,763. In essence, the income being made by the logging industry is being paid for by fishermen and people who must pay for flood damage, for a loss of forests and other things ."