Subject: Slash Burning
Date: Jan 18 08:21:14 1996
From: bharrison at macnet.com - bharrison at macnet.com


Tweets, OB's
When I was growing up in a small coastal community, my family spent
many summer afternoons in the wilds. We hunted, fished, hiked, picked
berries, etc. I remember when we would go bear hunting, we would visit
vast clearcuts that had grown up with salal, huckleberry, salmon berry, and
all sorts of other brambles. I can remember seeing flocks of hundreds of
Band-tailed pigeons feeding on the salal berries, which I'm sure no one
sees anymore. This was before the logging corporations and the state and
federal governments started slash burning clearcuts in that area. Does
anyone else share the opinion that slash burning destroys, or prevents the
development, of potentially good habitat for all sorts of wildlife
including many species of birds. Clearcutting may or may not be a practice
that continues, The question here is this: given that the practice of
clearcutting exists, is slash burning afterward a good idea for birds like
the Band-tailed pigeon, and other wildlife, or is it only good for
mono-culture tree farming, and a detriment to wildlife? Anybody have an
opinion? Are there any studies that address this question?

Bruce Harrison
McMinnville, Oregon