On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Don Baccus wrote

> I'm not exactly sure when clearcutting became the harvest method of
> choice eastside. Early 1970s? I remember, though, being pretty
> damned surprised when I first saw them. After being taught so
> many years earlier that industry only harvested using the best
> methods, and that was clearcutting westside and select logging
> eastside...
>
> So much for exposure to propoganda in one's early years!


Don,

I worked for the Klamath Indian Game Commission in 1978, and remember
that the Winema Nat. Forest sylviculturists were engaged in "stand
management" for the ponderosa/lodgepole/true-fir woods from Chiloquin
north to the Little Deschutes. Having grown up on the west-side, I sure
couldn't tell that forest practice from good ol' clearcutting...

I did catch H-E-double toothpicks from the Winema bios as well as the
Tribal bureaucrats (something about local jobs) when I raised cain about a
gopher-food-poisoning project above Chiloquin. Foresters claimed that,
following fire, "stand management" or whatever, pocket gophers were the
reason that they couldn't get Reprod established. So, they were soaking
hundreds of acres in herbicides *to kill herbaceous plants to starve out
the gophers*!! After that, they claimed, the trees would grow just fine...

Well, they poisoned off all the grass and forbs, and they still didn't
get the reprod established. Something about that pumice soil being so
reflective in the summer that their precious little fir seedling would
cook.

The point is that, in a lot of situations, harvest and site preparation
methods that work on the west-side forests might not be transferable to
the east side forests. I would venture to guess that our Oregon
4th-Grade training may actually have been right on that one... But then
again, wasn't that the same class that told us the fish ladders worked so
well on the Columbia River dams?

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, WA
anderjda at dfw.wa.gov