Clear Cut, #2, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, 2019
What is Clear Cutting?
Clear cutting is the mowing down of every tree in a specific, designated area, and it is indeed still a thing on the Olympic Peninsula, as these pictures show. Luckily, it isn’t quite as popular as it was back in the day of Teddy Roosevelt and our great-grandpappy and mommy.
Yes, there has been quite a bit of replanting going on to recover and reclaim these old and massive clear cut scars, and there has been significant progress. For example, at this link you can compare satellite photographs from 32 years apart (1984 to 2016): Surviving Logging: The Return of the Olympic Forests.
These replanted areas are a wonderful thing and will be a nice legacy to hand off to our great grandkids. Perhaps, with time–and a yuuuge helping hand from Mother Nature–these zones will eventually look somewhat like the original, mythical, and spiritual old growth forests.
The New Way: Selective Thinning
A more progressive logging method of which the Forest service is a now proponent is called “Variable-Density Thinning” (VDT). Unfortunately, it looks like–from the USDA’s own website–they are way behind in the maintenance required to keep these VDT zones on track to grow into the bio-rich organisms that existed before–note the “0.5 percent” reference at the end of the following quote…
From the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service website:
“The Olympic National Forest is comprised of more than 200,000 acres of young-growth forest, established primarily through past tree planting efforts after clear-cut timber harvesting. These tree plantations were initially created on the forest to maximize wood fiber production. However, the focus shifted from fiber production to ecological restoration on the forest with the inception of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Today forest managers work with multiple partners to help Olympic National Forestlands regain natural ecological functions and processes.
Variable-density thinning (VDT) is the primary commercial thinning method we use to accomplish restoration goals within forested stands. It entails increasing the variation of tree spacing to promote structural complexity, increase plant community diversity, and create a mosaic of habitat conditions. An area treated with VDT will have both “skips,” untreated areas, and “gaps,” where some trees were removed to create small canopy openings, usually less than a quarter acre.
Managers on the Olympic National Forest typically apply Variable Density Thinning treatments to stands that are 40 to 80 years old in order to accelerate the development of old-growth forest characteristics such as large diameter trees, long live tree crowns, and continuous vegetative canopies. Many of the plantations on the Olympic National Forest require more than a single thinning entry to achieve restoration objectives, and we currently treat a very small portion of them, less than 0.5 percent each year.”
In this post, I present a few views of clear cut areas on the Olympic Peninsula. In them you can also see the young, replanted, forests in the background. In the last two photographs, the few stumps from harvested old growth trees are quite obvious…
Clear Cut, #4, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, 2019
Clear Cut, #5, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, 2019
Clear Cut, #6, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, 2019
Clear Cut, #8, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, 2019
You might also like
4 Comments
A travesty. Perhaps you would like a book that is out now, The Overstory. I recommend it as a complex tale of the lives of American Trees. Also of interest, perhaps, Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer. Both books highlight the American Chestnut devastation.
I appreciate the recommendations, Teresa. The Big Burn by Timothy Egan is another one that I found interesting–the origins of the Forest Service and their management policies in a very readable narrative.
In the interest of how and what happens to a clear-cut, why not publish some 5 /10 / 20 year follow up pics . In my decades of wandering about the Olympic Peninsula, I have yet to find a clear cut that permanently exists!! Yes, a clear cut is initially, no thing of beauty. With a little luck, it becomes a fire weed and honey bee bonanza, that exists until the reprod takes over. One of my most amazing mushroom patches was found in a stand of 40 year old mono-culture third growth Doug Fir. It’s currently what it was 40 years ago. Things change but life goes on…and on…and on…
Thanks for your perspective, Doug. Another example might also be the destruction caused by the many massive wild fires we have seen throughout the West. It is amazing how quickly Nature bounces back. Yes, photo documentation over the years of clear cuts and burned out areas would be an interesting long-term project.